Storm (31 page)

And when they open the gate, I still don't stop.

“
THERE'S A CURE! THERE'S A CURE! THERE'S A CURE!
” I shout as I am bundled in.

“
THERE'S A CURE! THERE'S A CURE! THERE'S A
CURE!
”

I get stuffed into the back of an ambulance by biosuits and driven away at high speed from the honking, tooting chaos that has broken out behind me.

I can't see where we're going, but we drive way farther than the hospital. We stop somewhere; then we carry on, bumping along. I am guessing we must be on the track where I had that set-to with Beardy, the soldier, and the driver. We bump until we hit smooth tarmac. And then we turn right.

You know what? All the way I keep it up: “There's a cure, they've got a cure, there's a cure,” I tell the biosuits over and over, until finally we stop and the doors of the ambulance open up. A canopy outside, the rain streaming down around it.

I step it up: “There's a cure, they've got a cure, there's a cure,” I say over and over and over as I am led inside, through security doors, through more security doors, and into a…I don't know what you'd call this place…

A pet shop for scientists?

The lights are low, but in the gloom, you can still clearly see that there are rows and rows and stacks of cages of all sizes filled with all kinds of creatures. I detect the gentle stink of guinea pig amid the waft of other beasties (amid the waft of disinfectant).

And I seem to be about to join them.

There is a short corridor of cells. We can call this area the human pet shop for scientists.

The first cell door is open, a reading light inside it is on, and it is filled with a mess I can only describe as “scientist's bedroom”; every inch of floor and bed space is covered in books and papers.

“Hello there!” Prof Beardy calls cheerily.

All the other cell doors are shut—locked, I presume. I am shoved in my very own cell and told to shut up or else.

The last of the biosuits that brought me in turns out to be a woman; she hangs back to inform me that they'll bring me some food and some
proper
clothes shortly—which I could feel fairly insulted about as I spent a long time creating this particular outfit. (Not to mention the fact that there are several bags of other lovely clothes getting rained on out in the revolutionary traffic jam.)

She hesitates. “I don't know whether you're brave or stupid,” she says quietly, “but you might want to think about keeping your mouth shut.”

And before I can open my mouth to tell her what I think about that, the door is closed and locked.

I burst into tears.

So, that's Plan R for you. It went
terribly
well, don't you think?

I called the Spratt's room in the Apocalypse Lite army camp a cell, but it was just a really small room. This really
is
a cell, “hospital issue,” with a bed, a table, a lamp, and a window—that's got bars on it.

I tell you, I'm gonna go nuts in a day here, never mind the rest of my life.

The fact that it is possible I have already gone nuts is beside the point.

I lie down on the bed. I am wet, still, but I am not cold. This place is airless and boiling. They switched the overhead light off when they left, but I've got one of those super-duper hospital-issue point-it-where-you-like reading lamps—which is fairly seriously marvelous because I could not handle being in this place in the dark.

I pull the lamp right down in front of my face and pretend I am somewhere else. On a beach, is what I try to think—but not a Devon beach. A beach someplace far, far away where there is no rain.

It is not even a Spanish beach. It is not anywhere in particular. It is just a beach. No one I know is there. I am alone. I am not even Ruby anymore. I am just a girl on a beach. There isn't even a palm tree for company. There is only the girl, the sand, and the sea.

Every time my brain starts up, I just shh it right back down. I shh and shh and shh—and sometimes it's my mother's voice I hear, and sometimes it's the sea.

And for a while it works, and then it doesn't.

Shh, shh, shh, I tell myself…but the beach won't come; the sea won't come.

All there is, is the girl. The girl lying on crisp white sheets, on a bed, on a floor, on some ground, on an island, on a planet.

The planet lies among stars and is turning.

!

I bat my lamp away from my face, leaping off the bed in fright as—KZZZZ!—the overhead lights snap on and some biosuit bursts in and dumps a bundle of clothes (that I know instantly there is absolutely NO WAY I will be wearing), then ducks outside and comes back again with my din-dins: a measly bowl of very un-chef-y looking soup (
canned?
!
) (that I know instantly there is no way I will be eating) and a plastic bottle of water (for comedy value, I expect).

And that's it. The biosuit leaves again without speaking so much as a word.

The overhead lights snap off, and I pull the lamp back in front of my face and try to get back to the beach…but it seems to have been moved to a war zone.

At first I think I am imagining it, but then it comes again… GUNSHOTS. Distant, but—again! It must have stopped raining…because the revolution has surely started!

The SAS would have a fit, because instead of taking cover (which I'm sure is the sort of thing they would advise), I shove my lamp out of the way to get to the window—and I am greeted by the horrific sight of my own reflection.

My hair may be an excellent pink, even in the reflection I can so see that…but I have zombie mascara runoff in the bags under my unsleeping eyes. My head looks like a death skull. And when I grin at it, to reassure it, it's worse: my missing tooth and the glint of braces complete the effect. I press my forehead against the skull's, then cup my hands around my face; I see through her, through the bars, to the shadow of me on the wall of the building opposite. This is my view: a tiny gap and a blank wall.

And on that wall, there she stands: my shadow in a square of light. There is another square of light next to my square of light, and from that square of light that comes from the cell next door, another human shadow stares out.

If I didn't know better, I'd think…I wave at the other shadow. It waves back.

Oh my heart! It pounds. That nerdish shadow…

It fumbles with its lamp, and on the wall opposite I see a shadow-puppet dog appear, made by a nerdish hand.

Hn. I find a smile. It
is
him. I smile bigger. HE IS ALIVE.

I get my lamp angled and—ha! My silent, happy shadow dog appears on the wall.

His dog tips up its head. It howls love for me.

My shadow dog howls back.

KZZZZ!

In an instant, the dogs are gone, zapped into oblivion as the overhead lights in my room snap on. I don't even have time to make a dive for the bed before my cell door is yanked open.

“Hello, Ruby,” says Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB. “How nice to see you've finally found a friend.”

I switch the light off. My legs feel a little shaky. I have to sit down on the bed. Gunshots in the distance. Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB (she is immaculate, as usual) frowns at me.

“You've caused us a lot of trouble,” she says.

That's the sort of thing they say in films, isn't it? The sort of thing they say before something really awful happens…torture, most likely, followed by death.

“But we'll discuss that in the morning, eh, Ruby?” she says—and yawns. She actually has the nerve to yawn. “After I've had a
chat
with your little friend next door.”

“You're just trying to scare me,” I tell her…but really I am telling myself.

“I haven't even started,” she says, and goes to shut the door. “Oh! Wait! I almost forgot!” She chucks a pad and pen down on the bed—
my
pad and pen; there's the page full of death-ish doodles. “Just in case you remember something useful.”

“I don't
know
how I got like this,” I tell her—and I swallow, tasting the memory of a rotten apple that came from a well filled with water that only people more doomed than me believed could help them.

She hesitates, gazing steadily at me. I swallow again, wishing the rotten taste would just go.

“Oh, Ruby…you've remembered something, haven't you?”

I stare right on back at her, trying to produce THE GRIN OF INDIFFERENCE but failing. Failing. Failing.

“Hn,” she says.

I feel a freezing chill crack through my bones as she smiles—icily—and shuts the door.

The second it locks, I grab my lamp. Who else in the world says “Hn” except the Spratt?! She's been on to him—questioning him—already! I need to communicate with him. I need to—
Stop
, my brain tells my hand, and the message reaches my heart, and my heart agrees. I make myself wait for the overhead lights to go off.

They do not go off.

After a while, I notice it: what I can only assume is a camera, hidden inside a small, dark, glass bubble, up above the door.

The SAS really would be ashamed of me. Very, very poor reconnaissance.

I lie down and shut my eyes.

After a while longer, the overhead lights do go out.

I am not asleep, not at all, but even though the darkness terrifies me, I do not switch my lamp back on. I roll over. I stare at the window. So dark in that nowhere space between the buildings, you'd hardly know there was a wall right there. But I know there is, and I know Darius is also staring at the wall. I wish we could just at least be together. I wish it so hard I can see invisible shadow dogs howl.

There is no let up. Every half hour, a biosuit snaps the overhead lights on and comes in to “check” on me. I know it's every half hour because when I got snappy and said, “Weren't you here ten minutes ago?!” my keeper checked his clipboard and his watch and said, “Twenty-eight minutes.” Then, when he came back what felt like five minutes after that, he said, “Thirty-three minutes,” before I'd even opened my mouth about it. “I'll try to make it thirty-four next time,” he said. (Great, I am SO being guarded by comedians.)

Sometime, when it's still dark—proper dark, not even vaguely dawn—I hear some kind of alarm or siren join the random gunshots. I feel sick. This place, everything about it, makes me feel sick. Everything about everything makes me feel sick.

The darkness chokes me. Still, I will not switch on that lamp. I will not let them see my fear or my feelings…for the boy next door.

The overhead lights come on yet again; a biosuit pops his head around the door.

“Who's fighting?” I ask him before he can go again. “Out there—who's fighting?”

“Pretty much everyone,” he says.

I crack. “Please! Don't go! PLEASE.”

He ducks out of the door and switches off the lights. Ducks back in.

“There's a little bit of a disagreement about who should be in charge,” he whispers, “and unfortunately the people who are in charge aren't that keen on discussing it. Do you understand?”

As a basic scenario, I get that.

“It's the army, isn't it? They're the ones in charge.”

“No,” he says. “But they are the ones with the most guns, so it's quite important that they make the right choice. Just be patient, sweetie,” he whispers.

Sweetie. He called me sweetie.

“And try not to be afraid. You're safe here.”

“
Ibrahim?
!
”

He is silent.

“I'm scared,” I tell him. “I don't feel safe.”

“This place,” he says, thumping the wall, “is bombproof.”

Now I really, really don't feel safe—we could get bombed?!

“And we have
security
,” he says. “Watching at
all times
. Trust me, sweetie:
everything's going to be
OK
.”

He leaves and I lie back down. I try to sleep. I do the colors/shapes thing… It refuses to work…to begin with…but trust me: no matter how troubled you are, just keep going with those colors and shapes and… Trust me: just keep going. Just keep going.

Ah. Here we go. This is what a revolution is like when you're not involved in the exciting parts.

This is what a revolution is like when you are in the eye of the storm:

Nothing happened. (To begin with.)

I finally fell asleep and I actually slept because…after Ibrahim left, no one came back. No one woke me up again until I woke myself up. In a somewhat cranky state. I'd be cranky anyway (who wouldn't be?), but honestly…more gunshots, more sirens went off as I prowled circuits of my cell, just like you see poor animals do in zoos.

Still, no one came.

You know what? Why keep quiet any longer?

It was
annoying
.

I yell and kick at the cell door.

There is a gap at the bottom of the door, a gap just big enough to shout out of.

“Hey?! HEY?! HELLO?! HEY!” I shout…just like I heard prisoners in Dartbridge Police Station shout—a lifetime ago, seems like.

And now I truly get how terrifying that must have been. What if no one comes?

I hear Darius kicking and shouting back.

I kick hell out of my door again.

I hurt my toe. I
really
hurt my toe.

I'm sitting on my bed, nursing that hurt toe, when Beardy opens the door.

I rush to get out, and he does this terrified, “No! Don't get me!” cowering thing that Dan would have done (which would have made me get Dan even more. Brother-brat beloved). But this is a grown-up, the most important microbiologist left in the country. I'm not about to get him, so I get a grip—the second the door is safely behind me.

“Ruby?! Ruby?!” Darius hollers.

“What's going on?” I ask Beardy.

“Time to go,” he says, walking off.

I trot after him. (Going past the prof's cell, I see it's in an even worse state than it was before. Less in there, but oh so much more messy. It's kind of impressive.)

“Go where?”

“RUBY!” yells the Spratt.

“Yeah—just a sec!” I yell back. “Go
where
?”

“I'm not quite sure,” he says.

Excuse me
…

“I fired off a few emails…”

You've got email?! The army has got
email?!

“And, well, it could all end up being a little awkward, really.”

Awkward?!

“The Americans are keen to have us—”

Us?!
Who?!

“—but the Russians aren't going to let us go without a fight. They've got the real phage expertise, you see.”

Excuse
me?!

“Still, you'd hope that under the circumstances, day and age, etc.… I suppose it could be China… How would you feel about China?” he says to me, marching past cages of cute pets.

Ahead of us, there is a glass wall, a laboratory inside. Behind that, there is another glass wall: huge steel tanks inside…that look like…like a brewery. Seen drums like that before at Buckfast Abbey, when me, Mom, and Simon stopped off on a tedious walk…and then Mom had to walk back and get the car and drive us home because Simon sampled too much of the monks' lethal concoction.

Beardy is already keying in a code on a security pad and opening up the glass doors to the lab.

“
RUBY?
!
” Darius yells.

“JUST A SEC!” I yell back.

I run into the lab after Beardy, who is rummaging through a mess of papers.

“Do you mean
me
?”

“What?”

“
Us
—who's going where? Do you mean me?”

“Of course I mean you,” says Beardy, his brow deeply furrowed like he cannot quite believe I could ask such a stupid question.

“But I don't want to go to any of those places.”

“Really?!” says Beardy. “Not even America? We'll be
world famous stars
, I tell you.” He whispers to me: “I think they're sending a private jet.”

For 0.1 micrometers of a milli-nanosecond I am lost in an image of me and Beardy lounging on that private jet, then climbing down one of those wheel-up stairways onto the tarmac…someplace nice and sunny. People cheering, taking photos, that kind of thing.

“
RUBY
!
” I hear the Spratt scream.

“Hey, my friend's in there,” I tell him, pointing back at the cells—but Beardy isn't interested.

“Um, now…” he says, picking through papers. Papers that are marked up with notes, blazing with lurid highlighter colors. The guy's a nerd. Total nerd.

“Can you just let my friend out?” I ask him politely. Any second now, I'm going to run out of my very—VERY—limited reserves of politeness.

“Grab that bag,” he says.

Now, see, when Hollywood comes back and this whole story gets made into a movie and I get begged to star in it, I want this whole scene rewritten. (Actually, there is quite a lot that I would like rewritten, but it's this scene that troubles me most. It has GOT to go.) What I want in its place is…

So say the whole building is under siege—lots of explosions, gunfire, that kind of thing. Not far away; close up. Probably the Americans bust in at the last second and say, “Ruby Morris?”

“Yeah,” I snarl. “Who's asking?”

And out of a cloud of smoke, this figure steps forward.

“Me,” he says. (It's the President of the United States of America, obviously.)

I square my chin proudly. “You're a little late, aren't you?”

“Yes, sorry about that,” he says.

A colossal explosion happens. I am the only one who does not cower in terror.

“Sometimes…sorry isn't good enough,” I say coolly. “But I accept your apology.”

I don't even wait for him to respond. “Keys,” I bark at Beardy. He chucks them to me and I commando leap through a wall of flame to get to Darius's cell. I unlock it and—uh, this part is going to take some working out, because something has to happen so me and Dar don't just run hand in hand through smoke and flame to freedom. I want to be carried out. I just want to know what that feels like… I know! I get overcome by smoke at the last moment (but it looks worse than it is; I'm going to recover), so Dar (weeping—that'd be good) has to carry me through smoke and flames.

“She was only ever trying to help,” he gets to sob at the president as we emerge from the building.

And I get to cough a bit weakly.

All around, people gasp. “That's Ruby Morris! Thank you, Ruby… Thank you!” they cry and I—

Oh, what's the point?! What happens instead is I grab the bag Beardy wants—it's one of those giant “eco-friendly” supermarket shopping bags (they're very useful)—and hold it open so he can dump the papers in.

This is what is technically known as
superficial compliance
, i.e., going along with whatever the parenty/teachery/scientisty-type person wants in order to ease the often complex process of getting what you want. It is a highly risky technique, because you might just end up doing whatever it is they want and still get told no about whatever it is you want. In this case, that's exactly what happens.

“Come on, then!” says Beardy.

“You need to let my friend out,” I tell him.

“No, it's OK,” says Beardy, “I just need one of you. Backup supply in case I lose the phage samples. Always losing things…”

I dump the bag. “I'm not going anywhere without Darius.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Beardy asks, squinting curiously at me.

“I…I…”

For a moment, I am gripped by a school flashback, imagining I am being asked this question in front of the entire cafeteria. I am being asked whether Darius Spratt, subnerd of subnerds, is my boyfriend. And I answer.

“Yes.”

“Oh,” mutters Beardy in a mildly interested sort of way as he revisits a pile of papers.

YEE-HAA. “LET HIM GO!” I screech.

Startled, Beardy stops what he is doing…and I follow him back to the cells to release the yelling Spratt.

You will notice, again, that this story is not quite over.

Darius and I kiss passionately in the way that only two
FREAKS
who love each other can do.

Until we are interrupted.

There is a terrible kerfuffle going on outside. So terrible we are forced to break off from the kissing to investigate. As we round the corner, we see how it is: it's the revolution! A bunch of ordinary-looking people—you know, people who just look like people's moms and dads—are trying to bust into the scientists' pet shop.

“Hey,” I yell at Beardy, who's back in the lab reading some paper or other. “You gonna let them in?!”

“What?” he says, looking up.

“We're being rescued!”

“Oh, yes,” he says, like he has also only just noticed the revolution has arrived. “Just a moment…” And he goes back to what he was reading.

But we are not being rescued.

And there will be no need for Beardy to open the door, because when I look back at it, Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB is keying in the entrance code. She is shoved out of the way (hurray!) as the good, ordinary folk bust in to poke their way through the pet shop (I only hope they're thinking about rehoming the poor fluffy ones, and not stewing them up for dinner)…but among them I spot not-so-good, not-so-ordinary folk: Xar, Court members…no Grace.

“Dar, this is bad,” I blurt and run for the lab.

I don't see what happens behind me. I just thought Darius would be right there. It's only when Beardy slams the lab door shut that I see Darius Spratt is on the other side of it.

“These people. They tried to kill me—twice,” I jabber, watching the Court approach the lab…they're armed. Dar just standing there. Why's Dar just standing there?!

Xar tests the door—the fact that it is now locked does not comfort me.

“That guy, he's in charge of them! He's a psycho! He just wants to kill everybody!”

“Ooh,” says Beardy.

“Everybody! He thinks the planet would be better off without people!”

“Well…” says Beardy. “Got a point in a way, hasn't he? I mean, environmentally speaking we—”

“He'll kill me!”

Someone hands Xar a gun.

“He'll kill you!” I try; Beardy's weird calmness is sending me into desperation yee-haa overdrive. “He'll destroy the rockety thing!”

“I'm sorry?”

“THE PHAGE!”

“Well, that wouldn't do at all,” says Beardy. “But don't worry. That glass is bombproof and—”

A bullet comes shattering through the glass wall. Beardy falls.

He is shot, blood erupting from his shoulder as he crawls for the brewery door.

“DO SOMETHING!” I scream at him as another bullet smashes through the glass—and the Court comes smashing their way in after it, using anything they can get their hands on to bust their way through.

“We-must-release-the-phage,” Beardy gasps, clawing his way up to standing and frantically keying in a code. “We-must-purge-the-tank.”

He slumps in through the brewery door, and I slam it behind us.

“Purge!” moans Beardy, sinking to his knees.

I look at the steel drums; I see a set of buttons on each. On top of a red button, separated from the rest, covered by a plastic flip-top cover, I see:

PURGE

I hardly even know what that word means. I look at Beardy, shaking my head, suddenly unsure about trusting him.

“It-will-go-down-the-drain-and-into-the-sewer-and-into-the-treatment-works-and-into-the-river-and—”

Before I can point out that I do know that stuff, actually (because we did it in geography), he collapses completely. He's bleeding. A lot. Trying to stem the flow of his own blood as he groans, “Where-are-the-
-Yanks? Where-are-the-
-Russians? The-
-Chinese?”