H2O (12 page)

“Wait!” he called as we walked away. He sat his pint glass down on the doorstep and disappeared into the pub.

I looked at Simon; he shrugged.
Uneasily
, that's what I'd say—he shrugged uneasily.

Do you see what had happened already? Where you'd just say hello to another person, or maybe chat with them a little, this fear thing came. Not even a specific “you've got a gun” or even a “what if this person is sick?” fear—and anyway that guy definitely wasn't sick and probably, surely, couldn't have been going to get a gun… It's a “what is this person going to do?” fear.

That was the first time I felt it too: I felt
uneasy
.

The guy came back out with a bunch of little bottles of cola.

“For your girl,” he said, loading them into Simon's bag.

His mouth, it twisted up—but tight, so tight, like he was tying a knot in his lips to stop himself from crying.

“I had a girl,” the guy managed to say. “Just…a little girl.”

Simon took my hand. He gave it a squeeze. We walked away.

“Don't forget that pint, then,” the guy called to Simon, his voice gone all sobby now. “Later. If you fancy it. Or another time.”

The High Street was a tad trashed—and it was completely deserted. We avoided it anyway, turning into South Street, going home the way we had meant to come.

A crow was pecking at the body we'd passed on our way to the market, at his belly, where some other creature—a fox, maybe?—must have stopped for a nibble. The crow flew off as we came close.

“At least the birds are OK,” said Simon.

I would have gotten pissed, like—how could he say such a thing? But it was true: we hadn't seen a sick or dead animal anywhere. It was only people that had been destroyed.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

The sightless eye sockets of the man who was now bird food stared back at me.

And I remembered: he had officially been my fourth dead body. Less than twenty-four hours later, I had lost count.

My first dead body, Mrs. Fitch, was waiting for us in the front yard. Flies buzzed.

“
!” said Simon, gagging as he pushed me past her and unlocked the front door.

The second he opened the door, you noticed it. It wasn't our pee buckets—they smelled a little but we'd put bleach in. It was another kind of smell altogether—the beginning of a stench I know so very well now, but had never smelt until then. It is strangely sweet. Strangely…almost spicy. That makes it sound nice, but it's not. It was like Mrs. Fitch but stronger. Mrs. Fitch and no fresh air.

We bustled into the kitchen, shutting the door behind us, dumped our haul down on the table, opened the garden door and all the windows.

I stood there, holding the flowers.

“Ruby, I don't think you should go in that room,” said Simon.

That was good; I didn't want to go in that room.

“I'll just put them outside the bedroom door,” I said.

I didn't move.

“You don't have to go up there if you don't want to,” said Simon. “I could do it.”

“No,” I said. “I want to.”

I didn't move.

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked.

I nodded. I felt like I'd felt when we were going to cross the High Street, like a small person.

I followed him up the stairs with the flowers. The smell got worse every step you took. I laid them down by the door, and we stood there, mouth breathing.

This random thought about a kid I knew, a kid in school we laughed at a little for doing that, drifted into my head. Then came this other thought that really me and Simon must look like we were shocked, that we had our mouths open in amazement, which was about right. Then came another thought that maybe this was what the world was like for that kid, shocking. Or that it all stank or something. And I felt bad for having these thoughts, all these wrong, random thoughts, but they came into my head because I wanted to think them more than I wanted to think about my mother. I did not want to think about my mother.

“Should we pray or something?” I asked.

There was a hundred-year pause before he replied.

“I can't,” said Simon.

There was another hundred-year pause. In it, I tried to think something nice about God or heaven…but my brain felt as numb as my heart.

“I can't either,” I said.

We went back down to the kitchen. We got all the food out, and we actually did eat a little, picking at the kind of junk that normally tastes delicious, the kind you'd cram your face with until you felt sick…but I already felt sick, and that food tasted of nothing but thirst and death.

“We can't bury them,” said Simon suddenly, his face grim.

We hadn't even been talking about them, but we had been thinking about them. That is to say, I wasn't—but I was, if you know what I mean. Every thought I had—like why wouldn't the kitchen faucet stop dripping, like would I ever be able to have a shower again, like how long would the supplies of baby wipes last, like whether I'd end up with crusty dreadlocks from not washing my hair—every non-them thought I had was about
them
.

“I would like to,” said Simon, “but I don't know whether it's safe—you know, to dig.”

I cried then. Sitting at that table, I cried.

“I'm so sorry, Ru. I'm so sorry,” Simon kept saying.

“It's not your fault,” I said. I'd never said that before, not once.

I knew what was coming.

Basically, I never wanted to leave the house again. I wanted to curl up, eat junk, and wait for the whole thing to be not happening—so I didn't say a word about it: not about what had happened, not about what would happen. Not about what we should do, about what we could do, about what on earth we were supposed to do.

After I'd cried in the kitchen, we went into the living room and closed the curtains and slept for a while. Or I did. When I woke up, Simon was still sitting there in the same place, and it was still the same day, and it was still the morning, not even the afternoon.

As soon as I woke, my hands twitched and—I swear—all on their own, they reached for the laptop.

“I checked everything again,” said Simon, shaking his head.

I put the laptop down. This time, the pause was a thousand years long.

In it, I felt as if Simon was watching me and waiting for me to say something, and I knew if I did, it would be the start of talking about things I didn't even want to think about. I could have gone on like that for days and weeks, ignoring even the smell—the smell that you noticed even though you'd think you might get used to it and not notice it anymore. I could do that, be the Ostrich Queen of the Universe about things I didn't want to think about. Studying, for example. Only where normally it'd be Simon or my mom that finally brought stuff up, this time my own body was going to have something to say about it, because we were going to run out of stuff to drink.

The thing is, when we emptied out our haul on the kitchen table, there was nothing to drink. Well, there were the colas and one carton of soy milk. And the last festering, grimy inch of water in the flower bucket, which I would rather die than—I won't say that again. Ever. Unless I truly mean it.

I shuffled out to the kitchen and got myself a cola. The last cola. I got my toothbrush and the toothpaste from the den and shuffled back into the living room.

Simon shook his head a little, pursing his lips at me, as I cleaned my teeth with little precious sips of cola, spitting out into the empty bottle that the cola before the last cola had been in. In the old days (the day before the day before the day before yesterday), that head shake would have been the start of a yee-haa and a half. Yes, well, maybe I'd care about my teeth a little more if I didn't have to wear these train tracks and if you'd just let me get them whitened, etc.

Instead, I just smiled back a tiny bit—nervously. I knew what was coming.

Well, not the specific thing that Simon was about to say, which was hideous and appalling.

“Did you know,” he said, “that you can drink your own urine?”

“That's disgusting,” I said, spitting toothpaste froth into the empty cola bottle.

“No really,” he said, “you can. It's just not recommended.”

I wondered how come Simon would know such a thing, but pee drinking is probably exactly the kind of thing bird-watchers know about, in case they get thirsty on a long stakeout in a bird blind. “The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds does not recommend…”

I gulped my cola. I caved. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

“What do you think we need to do?”

“Get water,” I said, because I had no choice. It sounded so simple.

“Yes,” said Simon. “Where from?”

It felt like a massive trick question. Also not. It felt like…like he was nudging me toward what I didn't want to do more than anything, which was to think.

“I dunno,” I said, i.e., I don't want to think about it.

Simon, he just looked at me, waiting.

“I don't wanna go to another supermarket,” I said.

He nodded.

“And anyway, there's no point. Because all the good stuff is gone anyway.”

I stopped there. I drained my bottle of cola. I couldn't help myself; I burped.

“Pardon me,” I said.

“I do, Ruby. Always, for everything,” said Simon.

The room filled with a sticky candy ooze of emotion. There was another of those pauses we'd been having; this one was shorter—maybe only fifty years—but it was long enough for me to think
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO. PLEASE don't start saying stuff because I NO NO NO NO NO NO cannot bear to be hearing stuff
. It was like when your grandma has had too much sherry and goes on about how much she loves you (and just so hopes you'll be OK because it was a terrible thing, your parents splitting up), or when your dad has had too much wine and goes on about how much he loves you (and never would have abandoned you, but your mother had made her decision) (conveniently forgetting to mention that it was the discovery of HIS secret “love child,” brother-brat Dan…beloved that admittedly might have kind of forced her to make that decision) or when your best friend gets trashed and wants to talk deep and meaningful (and just so isn't sure that Caspar is really right for you), and they get all gushy and you just want…to not be deep and meaningful. NO NO NO NO NO.

“Well…eventually,” said Simon, and grinned. “So what are we gonna do, Ru?”

“Get stuff from other places,” I said.

“Like?” said Simon.

Stop
it, just stop it
, I thought.

“Like other people's houses,” I said.

I burped again, deliberately. It was all I had left—to show I wasn't freaked and to keep the NO NO NO NO NO wall of shut-up strong.

There, I've said what you wanted me to say
, I thought…but for half of a half of a second, I thought he was going to say no, that he'd come up with another plan…that although he, like me, hadn't seen any of our neighbors since Day One, he was sure they were all fine and there was no way we could just go breaking into other people's homes.

“Good thinking, Ru,” he said. “I think that's the best thing we can do right now.”

So that was it, then. Without actually saying the words, we had both admitted—what? That a lot of people, and maybe even most people, must be dead. Because all our neighbors were…and why should our road be any different to any other road? And we'd admitted that we were desperate and didn't know what else to do, without actually saying that either.

“But we'll knock first, right?” I asked, feeling utter dread about the whole thing. “You know, because maybe there'll be people at home…”

“Yes, of course,” said Simon, and he went off to get the crowbar from the shed.

For what happened next, I blame myself.

Simon did say I could stay home, and I did think about it. “You can't leave me,” I said.

We got geared up all over again (about which I didn't say a word, even though it was blazing hot and sunny). We stepped out into a kind of silence. That was the most shocking thing. While we'd been inside the house, the car alarms had been stopping, one by one. To begin with, there'd just been this yowling chorus of them—most of them far from us but carrying, with the air so still and no wind to beat them back or other noise to fight them. When they started dying off, it got so you could hear the individual ones: a fast, high-pitched spaceship
weep-weep-weep-weep-weep
; a deep
honk-honk-honk
that came in a pattern, stopping then starting again; a
woop-woop
,
woop-woop
that sounded like an American police car. I got to know a whole bunch of those alarms, all of them different—and all of them trying to remind you of what had happened, and that there was a supermarket and a parking lot and a town full of dead bodies.

It's not like you ever give any thought to what a town sounds like—you don't; why would you?—until it stops sounding like a town. When we went outside, there was no people noise whatsoever. There was just birdsong, loud like you never hear it.

A second later, when the gate clanked shut, there was another sound, which was dogs barking and whining. Dogs barking and whining inside houses. I heard the howling of the terrier that lived at the end of the terrace; I could see Mrs. Wallis's grumpy shih tzus, Mimi and Clarence, at the living-room window, a low line of nose slime smeared on the glass where they had been running back and forth next to the windowsill, yapping. Her Siamese cat was upstairs, calmly watching us from the bedroom window. (She was called Ruby, which freaked me out when she went AWOL at night and Mrs. Wallis wandered up and down the street going, “Ruuuu-by! Ruuuu-by!”) You couldn't see Whitby, the golden retriever at the corner house, but you could hear his big boomy bark somewhere inside.

What you could not hear—or see—were any of their owners.

The part of me that knew their owners were dead wanted to say to Simon, “Stop, let's rescue the poor pets!” But I wanted to believe those people were still alive, that even if they weren't there right now, they'd come home and be really upset if their pets were gone, so I said nothing.

We walked on, backpacks on our backs. I felt like a criminal, and we hadn't even done anything yet. I said I didn't want to go in our neighbors' houses; I didn't want to go in any house that belonged to anyone I knew, not even people I didn't
know
know, but just knew from seeing them about. That pretty much ruled out the whole of our road. There were other houses we could go to, down at the town end of our road, but I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to go anywhere close to the shops, where there might be other people around—people going crazy, people with guns. So we went the other way.

Simon stopped outside a house toward the end of our road.

I shook my head. “Not this one,” I said.

I didn't know the people there at all, but I could picture them: this un-Dartbridge-like couple with stylish suits, shiny cars, and no kids. So we headed off our road, up another road. He stopped outside the next house. I didn't know who lived there. There was no car outside; no dog barked, no cat watched. I'd run out of reasons to say no.

We went up to the front door. Simon knocked.

We stood for a while, the afternoon heat baking us. Simon knocked again. No one came.

Simon got the crowbar out of his backpack, put on a pair of super-tough gardening gloves.

“Can't we just say something first?” I whispered. I was so worried there would be someone in that house. Someone alive. Or dying but alive. “I mean, they might be in. They might just be scared.”

“OK, Ru,” said Simon.

He bent his head down, lifted the letterbox, and shouted.

“
Hello?
”

When there was no answer, he gripped the crowbar.

“Once more?” I said.

Simon bent his head down to the letterbox and opened it. He peered in.

“
Hello?!
We're neighbors!” he called.

No reply.

He looked at me; I nodded. He smashed the glass in the door.

That smash—it was so loud. It felt like the whole of Dartbridge would hear it.

“If someone comes,” he said, “you run home.”

It seemed a little late to be saying that kind of stuff, but maybe that smash had freaked him too. It felt like you could still hear it, echoing across the whole town.

He reached his hand in and tried to open the door. He couldn't.

I'd been learning a lot of stuff about Simon, how clever he was; what he wasn't clever at, at all, was breaking into houses.

“We'll go around the back,” he said.

Really, that was what we should have tried first. We went around to the side of the house. We tried the back door—it was locked, so we peered in through the kitchen window.

It was easy. He smashed it, he opened it, and he climbed in.

I hated that, him being in there and me being outside. If something happened to either of us…

I tried not to think about that. Without being told to, I kept watch while Simon ransacked.

He handed me a can of fruit salad and a bag of ice cubes. At this rate, we'd have to break into about fifty houses just to get through a single day. And if we ever wanted to do something hygienic—like get enough water to actually ever wash again—we'd probably have to break into the whole of Dartbridge. I was just about coping with baby wipes, but although something told me Simon wouldn't consider it a priority, I was dangerously close to running out of that spray-in dry shampoo stuff. I'd actually had to move on to the blonde glittery stuff, which was strictly reserved for nights out because if I wore it in the daytime it looked kind of… “You look like you've got dandruff,” was what Dan said, doing pantomime choking after I'd sprayed it. Brat. (And I probably wouldn't have had to use it in the first place if my mom would actually let me dye my hair.) (And which I suspected she would have caved on if Simon hadn't gone and agreed with her the first time she said no.)

Thinking about all that made me completely depressed. In every way.

“Shouldn't we leave a note or something?” I asked.

“No,” said Simon, climbing back through the window.

I think I kind of glared at him. It could have turned into a fight, but, honestly, I was too depressed to bother.

“Ru,” he said. “I know this feels awful, what we're doing now, but it's what we have to do. I don't think these people are coming home. I think a lot of people are dead, Ru.”

There: it had been said.

• • •

The next house was more difficult but had much better pickings. It wasn't more difficult to get into—they'd left the back door open—but…it smelled like our house smelled: sweet and spicy. Thing is, what was in the fridge and the cupboards was so good, you didn't even care: juice, soy milk, sparkling water, and
vino
collapso
supremo
, said Simon, stuffing a fancy-looking bottle of wine into his backpack as I glugged down juice.

The third house and the fourth? I got over myself. Yes, we still knocked and shouted, but you kind of knew no one would come. And though I felt that dread about what we would find (dead people), I sort of also felt this weird thrill thing, this weird hungry energy to get stuff—the buzz when you find something, the triumph as our backpacks filled up.