Storm (28 page)

He is not here…

And me?

I think I am pretty much entirely destroyed.

The most hideous thing outside my own head is that I am going to have to dump the Princess for sure this time. I cannot—I will not—take her with me. I gotta talk to the kid, haven't I? I've got to tell her that this is it; I'm dumping her. Like, really, she should be OK about it. She'll probably be happy about it. I mean, we haven't exactly been the best of friends, have we? And I don't suppose what happened last night has improved things.

It's just I can't think how to say it. I can't
bring myself
to say it. Kind of literally, since in my mind I'm already driving back down that highway, with this part over and done with. So I don't say it. Until, in the end, I'm going to run out of road to say it in.

Just around the corner from the Lancaster people, I stop the car. I clear my throat. I look out of the window. I clear my throat again. I turn and I look at her, and she's looking at me like she knows what's coming. Maximum Princess glare is in effect.

“Look, kid,” I start. She doesn't like it already. “Princess,” I start over. Her nose twitches like the first time I called her that, but her scowl tells me I may have mistaken what that nose twitch meant. With the Danster, it always meant he secretly liked something. With this kid, it is possible it means the opposite. Not got time for this, can't get into this. “I've got to leave you here.”

! Could she make this any more difficult?! I can't look at her. I look out through the windshield.

“I feel pretty awful about a whole load of stuff right now, but I'm going to go and get Darius, you see.”

Why does this sound like a bad fairy tale?

“And it's too dangerous for you to come too.”

I cannot imagine specifics. I truly feel like this is the abyss. It's possible he's dead already. And if he's not, I cannot imagine what might happen—like, what? I'm going to rock up at the army place, tell them, “I've come to get my friend,” and they're going to say, “Oh, OK, then. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea first?” and I'll say, “Oh, no thanks,” and they'll say, “All right, then. We'll just get him,” and shout “Darius! Your friend's here!” and that'll be that?

So I just stick to what I want to believe will be true.

“So I'm going to go and get him, and then we'll come straight back.”

It sounds like the worst kind of bull
anyone ever told a kid. (It sounds like the worst kind of bull
I've ever told myself.)

“But I've got to leave you here while I do that…just in case it is dangerous. Which it probably won't be. But just in case it is.”

There. Said it. I look at the kid.

Don't do that, kid. Don't go teary on me.

But she does, and I see her tears…and in them I see the rain, and the trouble it has brought me. So I say it: “And don't tell anyone…how you are. Don't let anyone see that you're different. Don't tell or show anyone the rain doesn't hurt you.”

Still, her tears won't stop.

I can't handle it. I start up and drive to the house.

I'm not sure whether it's the whole mud-woman look—I'm still covered in it—that freaks the Lancaster people out, or whether it's just the sight of trouble. They are all outside, packing up to leave. Their welcome isn't exactly warm; it has been chilled by fear. But they are kind people, and I guess it takes a lot for kind people to stop being kind, so although people mutter and hang back, no one runs away. Only the children are discreetly bundled inside; their little faces pop up at the windows.

“Hello, Ruby,” says Bridget.

No one is smiling. They do not want us here.

“About last night…” I start out. I hear the gunshots in my head. I see pain on faces. Oh no…please don't say…

“They killed Chrissie,” spits an angry woman.

I don't even know which one Chrissie was.

“They murdered her,” says the angry woman—one of the ones who bundled kids indoors. She is so angry with me right now, I can't even look at her. I bow my head.

“They didn't mean to,” Bridget says quietly. “They just got scared.”

“
Got scared?
!
” snarls the angry woman. “
They're the
army
.”

“We shot first,” says Bridget. “We did shoot first.”

Whoa. This ripple of tension spreads through the group and breaks, swirling around this rock of a man—the man who greeted me, glaring over a shotgun. Barry's glaring now too, but in the way anyone would do when, if they didn't glare, they'd cry.

“It was a warning shot,” another guy says; he puts his hand on the glaring man's shoulder and squeezes it, which causes a tear to roll from the glaring man's eye.

Bridget nods, but other people don't. The tension, it's really choppy now.

“Who
are
you?” the angry woman starts on at me. “Who are you to bring this here to us?”

“All right, calm down, Catherine. You can see she had nothing to do with it.”

That's what Bridget says, but when I look up, I can see Bridget's not convinced I had nothing to do with it. I look around. I have to speak.

I have to speak.

“I'm really sorry,” I say. That sounds pathetic. It is pathetic, but it is true. “I am really, truly sorry. It's…I didn't think…”

“Oh, I can't listen to this!” says Angry Catherine. “Just go away, will you?”

“I'm going!” I snap—and catch myself. I know that this angry woman—these kind, angry, frightened people—must be feeling really terrible right now. Everyone around me is feeling really terrible. I am feeling really terrible. It is so unfair that I am feeling really terrible. But I must not yee-haa.

“This is all your fault, isn't it?” spits Angry Catherine.

I look down at my mud-caked shoes again. Nope, I cannot stop myself—I yee-haa.

“IT'S NOT MY FAULT!” I shout.

So there's this water barrel at the side of the house. A water barrel to catch the runoff from the roof, the kind of thing that would have been brilliant thinking in the days before the rain went poisonous but is now a cauldron of death; probably they worry about it every day, telling the kids NEVER to go near it. I march up to it. I plunge my hand into the water.

I could never have imagined what a group screech of horror would sound like until I heard one.

I've done it now. I cannot undo it. I take advantage of the washing opportunity and have a quick splosh all over my still-muddy face. Ever seen someone have an angry wash? I wash
furiously
.

“So that's why they came, right?” I tell my audience, wiping my face dry with a sleeve that is so caked in mud I can feel I'm just smearing mud all over my face again.

I stand before them; no one will touch me now—no one wants to come close.

“How…?” a woman asks. That's as far as she can get with the question.

“I don't know how come I'm like this,” I tell them all—loudly but not quite shouting again, not yet. “But I am. That's why the army wants me. That's why they came here.”

But they've got the Spratt, they've got the Spratt, they've got the Spratt.

“Oh my
,” people are muttering. “Oh my
.”

“You're immune?” Bridget says.

“I guess. They don't call it that. There's a thing on my skin, this thing called a phage and—”

“They could get a vaccine from you,” some woman speaks up.

In a corner now, aren't I? How much more should I blab?

“Yes, yes,” Miss Vaccine is explaining to someone. “An antibody. She must be carrying an antibody.”

“So she could cure us?” someone asks her.

“Not cure: prevent. If she's immune…”

People glance at me. At the freak. This really is—in every way—a huge and unwanted step backward. Telling people
IS
a nightmare.

“…a vaccine could be made from her blood,” Miss Vaccine declares.

Miss Vaccine is really starting to get on my nerves.

“It's not IN my blood; it's ON my skin,” I scathe.

People mutter nastily at my rudeness.

“What is?” someone asks.

“A PHAGE,” I yell.

“A what?”

“I DON'T REALLY KNOW,” I yell, because I truly can't be bothered trying to explain it. “IT'S A ROCKETY THING. IT LIVES IN MY NOSE—AND I DON'T KNOW HOW I GOT IT EITHER, SO DON'T START ON ME.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” says Miss Vaccine. “That rings a bell. Phage therapy! It's a Russian thing—”

“Oh, please,” I super-scathe. “What do you know?”

She's one of the useless, isn't she? She has to be, or else why would she be here with these people instead of scarfing luxury nosh in comfort at an army base?

They really don't like my rudeness. Too bad.

“I mean, what? So you're some kind of
scientist
, are you?”

Yup, I'm scathing out. People gasp at my rudeness. They actually gasp.