Storm (3 page)

It's that, I think, more than anything, that made my default setting LIE LOW. Anytime I went to a place to check it out for water or food and I even thought for one second that someone had been there, I left. (Quickly.) Even if there was a whole Aladdin's cave of stuff right in front of me and no naked man singing, if I saw something—a spilled thing, crumbs, mold even—that looked fresh or even halfway fresh (know your molds!) or I smelled something recent-ish and human, I'd just leave. (Quickly.) That's how it got. That's how sharp I could be when I wasn't zombied out with misery.

The church bells
stopped ringing.

“Oh
.”

I said it out loud. I think I said it out loud. Seemed to me my own voice boomed out in the silence louder than any bell. It was, perhaps, the most complicated “Oh
” there has ever been. On the one hand, relief swept over me—because I could maybe think that it was over, so chillax, Ruby, go back to sleep (as if!)… On the other hand…someone else was in town. Someone who really wanted people to know they were around. A crazy someone-anyone setting a trap—or a desperate someone. Or. Or. Or.

“
!” I boomed.

I opened the door.

The sky looked OK—for now—some kind of cirrocumulus stratiformis thing going on = basically a high-level mess of clouds that could turn into a whole bunch of nastier ones…but not yet.

I'd run out of all excuses other than fear.

In my family, unless someone was getting married, we went to church once a year—at Christmas, because my mom liked the carols. For me, this was going to be the second time this year, if Salisbury Cathedral counts as a church. That's the apocalypse for you: makes you go places you wouldn't normally go, do things you wouldn't normally do. It's just great that way, isn't it?

I prowled down into the town, the raincoat rustling way too much for my liking. I prowled
cautiously
, listening for every and any sound…but it was difficult to hear any sound that wasn't CLANG DONG CLANG because that CLANG DONG CLANG started up again when I was halfway there.

When the only sound disturbance in your world, for ages, has been yourself or the wind or the
rain, any other sort of noise is REALLY FRIGHTENING. Not that many times but often enough for me to be pretty sure I wasn't dreaming, I'd heard planes. I'd even heard other cars a few times. But this?

It was the loudest thing I'd heard in months (that wasn't coming out of a CD player in a car). Louder even than the WTCH-UH, WTCH-UH thump of my own heart—which was hammering so hard it felt like I could hear it.

I snuck up to the church. I hid behind a grave. The bells stopped.

WTCH-UH, WTCH-UH. My body detected nervous sweat pouring from my armpits. WTCH-UH, WTCH-UH, WTCH—HUH?!

Someone came out of the church.

I suppose I did just pop up from behind a gravestone. I suppose it might have been a bit sudden. Anyway, whatever it was, Saskia screamed.

“Saskia?!” my ragged, broken voice squealed out like a strangled thing.

She just stood there, a frozen human explosion of fright. It seemed a little over-the-top if you ask me. (Considering, before the rain fell, we'd seen each other every day at school and every weekend too.)

“
Sask?
!
” Erm, so I suppose my voice
was
a bit grunty and cavewoman-like. It definitely sounded pretty weird.

“
Ruby?
!
” she whispered, like she really wasn't sure about it when—Hey?! Hello! Of course it was ME. OF COURSE IT WAS ME!

“Oh my
!” She gasped. “What HAPPENED to you?!”

I wasn't really listening. I felt this massive…this massive…I want to say it was totally, like, some kind of surge of love and human compassion (even though she looked as annoyingly fresh and perky as the last time I'd seen her, safe inside the army base with all the
useful
people, and—allegedly and apparently—shacked up with Darius “Don't Ever Want to Think about Him” Spratt). The truth is, when I realized it was her, just her and not random, scary someone-anyone other people, I felt this MASSIVE SURGE OF RELIEF…which sort of became this massive surge of…oh, I don't even know what, but before she had time to dodge out of the way, I sort of lunged forward and grabbed her. I hugged her.

She gasped again. “You scared the hell out of me!”

I think I might have tried to grunt something back.

“I didn't know if you'd be here! I didn't know where you lived! I didn't know how to find you!” she cried.

And then there was just this…we hung on to one another, rocking and swaying and trying to hold the world still in the middle of a graveyard. A graveyard full of people who'd died when they should have died—or maybe even tragically, but with people alive to comfort each other, people alive to share the pain and the sweetness of remembering.

We had none of that.

We had only each other.

It took a little while to really get your head around that. It took a lot less time for us both to regret it.

“
!” Saskia choked, gagging, when I opened the front door.

“
!” she shouted and made a terrible retching noise.

I was somewhat offended, but also I somewhat got it because I also somewhat knew what she meant. How my family smelled. So I found this pot of menthol rub I had for the times it got to me too (total
CSI
job) and Sask smeared some under her nose and did this oh-so-obvious “bracing myself here” thing, then came inside.

“Oh my
,” she murmured from behind the hand that was over her mouth.

It took a visitor to make me see the house for what it was. The smell was one thing and could not be helped. Everything else, I realized, seeing it through Saskia's eyes, could,
possibly
, be helped.

Everything else was down to me.

OK, so I hadn't cleaned up much. Household hygiene wasn't a huge priority on Planet Ruby. Also, for convenience, activities that would normally be assigned to designated rooms pretty much all took place in one room. The sitting room—apart from still being my sitting room, where I'd spend hours, um, sitting—was also my dining room, my field kitchen (got me a little camping stove in there), and my bedroom. Also my hair and beauty parlor!

You could just make out a sleeping spot in the corner, littered with empty packets of painkillers and cola cans, but the whole of the rest of the room was…OK, so it was a mess, but there was a way through it, all right? You just had to be careful about not slipping on the treacherous slopes of the CD mountain, but that was preferable to wading through the clothes, books, and makeup swamp because—OK, so there was a lot of food-related debris involved.

But I mean, most of the cans and bottles and jars and stuff were more or less empty and the whole fly situation had gotten a whole lot better just lately. And it was hardly my fault that there was no more electricity, so that waterfalls of wax had cascaded from the candles that stood on every flat surface. The TV actually looked quite pretty, in an arty sort of way, but it remained an
unfinished
work, as I'd eased off on the candle burning after the coffee table fire.

Unfortunately, the sitting room was also my bathroom. Vast flocks of used wet wipes and, um,
tissues
frolicked in the central swamp area. No sanitary napkins, though, being as how I hadn't actually had a period since the rain fell. (I'm assuming that when my body realized the only reproductive opportunity left was Darius Spratt, subnerd of subnerds, it went on strike.)

Ah. Then there were the bathroom buckets. Defensive measure. No use trying to explain to Sask that a full bathroom bucket had once saved my life. Hadn't I chucked one into the face of a someone-anyone scary man? There was a bleach-frothing, half-disintegrated poo floating shamelessly in the closest bathroom bucket. I tried to nudge the bucket out of the way…

“Oh my
.” She choked, as a fresh waft of stink added itself to…

So my house was a stinking pit, all right?

“Why don't we go through to the kitchen?” I suggested, knowing it wouldn't be any better but that at least no poos lurked there.

At least I thought not; on Planet Ruby anything was possible.

Saskia stumbled her way through.

She looked frightened. I think it was the writing on the walls that did it.

“It's in case my dad comes,” I said.

She just looked at me.

“So he knows where I've gone…”

Looking at it through Saskia's eyes, the only place my dad would think I'd gone was Nutsville. Every time I'd left the house, I'd written when I was going (day, date, time), where I was going (or roughly, if I wasn't sure), and when I'd be back. EVERY TIME. But the messages, which had started out all neat and orderly and efficient, had gotten a little vague and scrawly.

First the date went—what did it matter?—then I dropped the days—too much hassle—then the time became approximate. Things like “10:57 a.m.” had become “morn.” You could see the moment—some time back now—when I'd realized this was happening, which coincided with the whole watch/clock panic.

I haven't really explained that, have I? I am only going to explain it now so you don't join Saskia in thinking I'd lost it. I mean, obviously I
had
lost it, but there had definitely been moments when I hadn't, and the whole clock/watch thing is a perfect example. The very first time I realized I was losing track of time, I had dealt with it. That's when the first digital watch and the wind up (backup) happened. Then I forgot to wind the watch, and the digital one fogged up after a hair-washing session in the camp, so I went into overdrive. Basically, I'd ticked (two wind ups), and the house had ticked (Ruby the clock keeper), although getting all these watches and clocks to agree with each other was exhausting. (I might have given up a bit.) (Though some of them were still hanging on in there, ticking away.)

Anyhow, after the clock/watch panic, the messages on the wall pulled themselves together for a bit before they slumped back into their old bad habits. The most recent stuff on the door (I'd run out of wall and cupboard space)…it didn't really look like human handwriting at all.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked her.

“Ruby…oh my
…” she breathed (not heavily). She actually had tears in her eyes. (Though it could have been the menthol rub; it can really make your eyes water.)

Now, see, here's a funny thing. You'd think, wouldn't you, that this could be some kind of lovely moment when I realize that at last a friend has come (well, not a friend, but at least a someone I know), and that she is distressed to see my situation. Let me tell you, it got right on my nerves. Instantly. I felt like she had NO RIGHT to stand in that kitchen dripping with pity. A million times I had felt howling pity for myself, but hers I did not want. Just one look at her was enough to tell you that life on Planet Saskia had been just fine and—

I stopped myself. Though the spirit of yee-haa (saddling up my high horse for a fight!) rose like a dear, stroppy old friend, and though there was something really heartwarming about realizing I could still feel like that, I did stop myself. It wasn't just that Saskia now appeared to be the only real, human “friend” I had in the world; it wasn't even that I wanted to find out what she was doing here; and it certainly wasn't because I wanted to know a single thing about Darius Spratt. (NO INDEED!) It was because…honestly, I didn't know if I was really up to it. My body hurt a lot, but I could feel my mind hurt too.

I felt so tired.

Dog tired. Dead tired.

If Saskia hadn't been there, it would have been one of those moments when I'd just crawl off for a nap—and the urge to sleep right then was so bad I'd have suggested it, but somehow I didn't think Sask would be happy touching anything in the house, much less sleeping in it. (Though there could hardly be worse diseases lurking inside than the one that was outside.)

“Yeah, well…” I muttered. “It's not like I'm going to stay here. I was just going to leave, anyway. Today.”

“Where are you going to go?” Saskia blurted, looking scared.

OH NO: THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS.

That's what it was, and my brain wasn't remotely ready for it, so I came out with the thing I'd been thinking for weeks (months? What date was it anyway?), the thing I'd told myself I'd do, but when it came down to it, I was too scared to go and do it.

“I'm gonna look for my dad,” I said, like it was obvious.

I watched her mouth tighten.

No
, I thought,
no
.
You don't get to do that
.
Don't you do
that.

“Look, he came here,” I said, pointing at the wall where he had written.

RUBY—WHERE ARE YOU? That's what the message said. WE ARE GOING TO GET GRANDMA. STAY HERE! BACK SOON! LOVE DAD AND DAN. The smiley face after Dan's name. The trail of kisses.

“That's my stepbrother, see?” I told her, stroking Dan's scrawled name. “That's my stepbrother.”

Through Saskia's eyes, I saw the trail of desperation that followed, the hundred and one explanations of where I had gone.

Her mouth—it screwed up tighter.

Yeah, that's right
, I thought.
Don't you say that thing. Don't you dare say
ANYthing.

But then her mouth opened a little and I was worried she was going to say it, so I tried to say it for her—or at least the version I could cope with.

“I mean, I know it's…” I trailed off. I couldn't say the words that probably ought to come after that, which would be: VERY, VERY UNLIKELY INDEED THAT MY DAD AND MY BROTHER WILL STILL BE ALIVE. “I'm just going to go and look,” I said.

“Where?” said Saskia quietly.

“Loads of places.”

On the kitchen table, my mom's address book sat in its own special clear patch. I laid my hand on it. I picked up the piece of paper with the scrawled list I'd worked out weeks (months?) ago.