Storm (32 page)

I sure wish someone would come. We are going to die in a hail of bullets in a glass-walled lab filled with giant tanks of nose juice because I look up from the horror of the bleeding, swearing professor to see the Court has assembled in the lab.

King Xar cocks his head at me, like a dog would, trying to understand a most curious thing.

He fires his gun at the phage brewery.

“Ha!” gasps Beardy, so totally pleased that the bullet hardly even dents the glass. It ricochets—and the Court ducks. This place
is
bombproof and bulletproof and soundproof. From in here we can hear next to nothing… It's just unfortunate that we can
see
absolutely everything. That would include Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB, who strolls on into the room behind the Court.

“Oh no!” I shriek at the sight of her, my eyes widening.

To be honest with you, I have no idea what she was going to do…and I never will know—because Xar sees the look on my face, misunderstands it, and makes his move; in an instant, he has hold of her, gun against her head. He marches her up to the glass.

“Purge!” Beardy pants, gasping horribly with pain.

Xar stares at me. Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB stares at me. This must be pretty bad for her. In fact, I would say that
I
am now
her
Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB. I would say that the very sight of me must be making her sick to the very core of her being, and that she must be wishing quite hard that she had been a bit nicer to me. Or not. Her mouth is moving…but it doesn't exactly look like she's pleading for her life.
knows what on Earth she must be saying to Xar, probably offering him halfsies on a few countries or something. I don't think Xar's that interested. It's the whole planet he wants. As he stares too, the tiniest flicker of a smile creeps onto his face. It is for me.

“He'll kill her,” I say out loud.

“So?” Beardy gasps, and groans in agony. “Purge!”

Like, really, seems to me that the prof could have spared everyone this hideousness if he'd just quietly purged the phage himself when no one was looking, but I guess he's been up to his own international wheeling and dealing. But this is not the time to go into such matters.

I am
paralyzed
. Can't move. Can't handle this situation. Can't even look at it…so I look away. I see Dar.

A zap, a lightning bolt, of emotion goes through me, but I grab it and I stop it and I look back at Xar, and I realize I was not quick enough.

Xar grins…and turns his head. Dar just standing there. Why's he just standing there?

His glasses. He's lost his
glasses.

SO HERE IT IS, HOLLYWOOD. HERE IT IS. THIS IS THE END.

Xar lets go of Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB. And maybe she was more panicked than she looked because she crumples on the spot. For a second, it looks like all Xar is doing is leaving the lab—but only for a second. He grabs Darius.

And puts the gun to Darius's head, and as he walks the Spratt toward me, Darius's expression changes. He sees me.

And I see him.

Darius Spratt. We have been on a long journey. We are both tired. So tired.

Dar's free hand creeps up in front of his body. It makes the shape of a dog's head…that slowly points its nose to the sky and howls.

“
I love you
,” I whisper.

I know he cannot hear, but I know he
sees
.

This is what I have to do.

My heart—my small, sad, human heart—it shed one final tear.

Journey's end. I pressed the button.

So that's it. That's how I saved the planet. I pressed the button that launched the rockety thing that saved the earth.

It might seem like a lot of other people were involved, but basically anyone can see that it was all down to me.

The End

Dar is watching me write this part. He's laughing his head off (IT'S QUITE ANNOYING) and he says there is NO WAY he's going to let me get away with that ending.

He also likes to claim that NO WAY was he giving me any kind of signal that it was OK for me to go ahead and do what I did, that it was a simple “I love you” howling dog hand shape and not an “I love you, and yes it's absolutely fine for you to sacrifice me for the good of humanity bye-bye” howling dog hand shape.

But we both know that's not true.

Anyway, Xar held the gun against Darius's head for what felt like an eternity longer, during which time I became vaguely aware that Beardy was making
really
horrible and
slightly
strange, pained, choking noises that seemed appropriately death-ish, considering what was going on.

I stopped looking at Darius and looked at Xar instead. I have no conscious memory of this, but Dar says I smiled. I've got him to show me how I smiled, and I can confirm that it was THE GRIN OF INDIFFERENCE.

What
I
remember is that Xar slowly cocked his head at me again and smiled. I don't know how to describe that smile. “Creepy” just doesn't cut it.

As Xar lowered the gun, he said something. I couldn't hear, of course, but I knew what it was before Darius even told me.

“See you around, Ladybird.”

And we all watched him walk out of that lab—which he could do, because it was chaos out there, just chaos.

The End

Oh, shut your face, Darius—all right, all right…

OK, so something happened.

Turned out that although Beardy was very horribly injured, the
really
horrible and
slightly
strange, pained, choking noises were about something else entirely. As soon as Xar had gone, he let go of his wound, raised up a pointy finger, and—

“Not
that
tank,” he screamed, writhing in agony, “
that
one!”

Oh.

I hit PURGE again.

What can you do?

Whatever was in that first tank (even Beardy had no clue), no one I know of has grown three heads or anything. I'm sure it's all fine.

The End

So here we are.

We?

Me, Dar, and the Princess who is called Priti.

We are in Spain, but where the specific “here” is I am not prepared to say, just in case everything goes horribly wrong all over again. Also, the Lancaster people have basically begged me not to tell anyone.

I went with the professor in the ambulance. I wanted to just go, to leave. But me and Dar went with him.

The prof was not especially grateful about any of it…but before Beardy really did get to fly off on a private jet to a country I am not supposed to name, he told me what he thought:

“Mucus exchange,” he called it, his “theory,” which means, basically, that the snot out of my nose was enough to save people. If I kissed them. A lot.

A prettier name for it might be “The Kiss of Life.”

I told him I had seen a boy I'd kissed die in front of me…and he was really disappointed…but then he perked up, to YIPPEE! levels—that made nurses rush in to check he was OK—when I admitted I hadn't
actually seen
Caspar McCloud die.

So…scientifically, it is possible that Caspar McCloud is still alive.

Also…Andrew Difford.

Like, really, hear me now:

If I see either of you again, you are
SO
gonna wish the rain
had
gotten
you.

The Princess who is called Priti remains a mystery.

I kissed Darling the Chihuahua, and Darling the Chihuahua lickily kissed Priti…but Priti, who does now speak a little on a regular basis, says she has always been this way, from the very first night that—

She walked out of a car wreck in the pouring rain.

Her whole family died.

A mom, a dad…a brother.

A brother she adored.

Thirteen years old.

It is a mystery how she survived, one possibly involving yet another fairy/leper/hope-of-the-hopeless well, but I have yet to ask her about this.

I know what it feels like to be asked questions about a past it hurts to remember.

When Priti does speak, she swears a lot. I tell her off for it, even though everyone swears all the time.

There is no need for it
, I tell her.

Obviously, there is.

But.

We've been hanging out on the beach a lot, the three of us. If it wasn't for the postapocalyptic goings-on, you could say that I'm finally on vacation in the sort of place I always wanted to go on vacation to.

This doesn't make me particularly happy.

The Lancaster people are very nice to us, but somehow, we tend to keep ourselves a bit separate. We are still
different
, you see—or we think we are.

Prof Beardy was a bit hazy on exactly how long that tankful of nose juice would take to annihilate the micro-murderer space beast, though he did seem fairly confident that it “would, probably, happen eventually”—especially, if you ask me, since me, Dar, and Priti must have helped it along. I probably dosed up the whole of the Irish Sea by swimming about in that estuary.

I am now working on the Mediterranean, which is a lot more pleasant.

Glaring Barry, who, along with Psycho Catherine, joined the Confusion
*
at the army base, offers on a daily basis to literally test the water. He says he doesn't mind having a finger or two chopped off.

Everyone (except the keen amateur historian) is still saying no to that, but that day might yet come…because what we need is a proper testing kit, to see if the water's safe—and even though we hear rumors, like the ones about how the phones and the Internet are going to come back, nothing seems to have happened just yet.

Sort of sounds like it could be OK, doesn't it, lazing around on a beach with your true love while the environment—hopefully—sorts itself out?

Sometimes, for minutes at a time, it
is
OK…but I think I have yet to get through a whole hour without some awful, sad, or scary thought—and the nightmares? They haven't stopped either. I can't even say that it's getting better day by day, because it doesn't seem to work like that. You can have one day with a lot of really good minutes in it, and the next day…not.

Sometimes I find I can't be with Dar and Princess Priti, and then I just sit with Bridget for a bit. She lets me talk to her. She is not my mother, but it helps.

Bridget says none of us
will
ever forget what has happened. She says some things are so bad, they are remembered by the whole planet for thousands of years.

Yup, it's definitely actually fairly tricky for the world to get back on its feet after an apocalypse. It's hard enough getting back on your own feet. But I am. I will.

Mom, I am still breathing.

…I'd better wrap this up.

Um…what else is there to say?

Hn.

Although Darius can still annoy the
out of me (he says I have to say that it's mutual), we don't fight quite as much now…but the one subject we are guaranteed to snarl about is…going home.

I want to go home.

You'd think the Spratt would be up for that; I mean, what with the prescription glasses and the prescription meds alone, he's got to have a fairly serious interest in rebuilding some kind of society where you can get stuff you need.

I have less of a serious interest since I persuaded Glaring Barry to remove my braces, although I would quite like to get a replacement tooth. Dar says I look cute without it, like a sexy pirate queen.

But he says a lot of things like that, with a goofy smile.

OK—OK! With a
sexy
, goofy smile. Now quit pouring sand onto my back, Dar—yes, it does feel nice, but go away and let me finish this.

He has gone. But he says I'll never finish because I don't know when to shut up.

But he said that with a sexy, goofy wink.

We
will
be going back.

I mean, I'm guessing probably the whole of the UK has gone on vacation for the winter, but we'll go back.

I know this in my heart—where I also know Dar really feels the same. I think he is just trying to buy us all time.

But spring is here already, in this place so far from home; in the UK, it'll just be getting going. There will be daffodils flowering on the bank where Zak's mom, Sarah, chewed wheel ruts into the mud trying to get me home—on that night, the very first night when the rain fell…

No, I'm stopping myself. I'm not going to do this. That world has gone.

In the new world that I sort of keep feeling like maybe we should lend a hand with, I'm not sure what I'm up for doing exactly. I'm not even sure that I'd be up for doing much. In some ways I feel, like… So maybe I already did enough?

And also: But what could I do? I'm officially useless, remember?

Where I will start is with what I need to do. I want to put a copy of this story in Dartbridge Library, right next to my earlier epic tale of survival. I want to do this just in case people in the future need to know what happened. No more lies must be told.

I want to do that and then go look for Whitby… He
cannot
be dead. My mind refuses to allow the possibility. And sometimes my mind is right.

And then—is it wrong that this comes last?—go look for my dad.

I have ended up where I started:
Where is my
dad?

And this is where I have the Spratt for sure. He wants to look for his mother.

Together, we'll go and do that.

With the Princess. With Priti.

I will start asking her questions about the rest of her family—about grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins—but I will do it very gently, because I know how much this stuff hurts.

We are the orphaned children of the apocalypse, and we will come home.

Also:
the British Army has got my cell
phone.

*
Annoyingly, that is what people have started calling it. I was not the calm, crucial center of the storm of revolution, I was at the heart of a “confusion.”
Do not
get me started.