The Rain (20 page)

The stench of bodies, dead and alive, was incredible. It hit your stomach as loudly as the screams and the battering at the doors hit your ears. There was a spy-hole in each door, but I was too
scared even to look. I think it would be fair to say that I was terrified. It felt like . . . if we let them out, we’d get torn apart – like they were wild dogs, or demons.

I turned to look at Darius and saw my own terror on his face. We backed up into the nowhere room.

‘We’ll have to give them your stuff,’ I said.

He hesitated.

‘They’re just hungry and thirsty. They’re desperate. We’ll give them your stuff and then we’ll let them out.’

‘They could be murderers,’ said Darius.

‘What, all of them?’

He shrugged. ‘Hn,’ he said. ‘In here for a reason, aren’t they?’

Much though I pretty much hate Darius Spratt, I can’t claim I didn’t agree with him. I can’t claim I didn’t want to just walk away; I wanted to run away – but then
it came to me, the truth of it, that couldn’t be denied:

‘If we don’t let them out,
we’re
murderers.’

Darius stared at the floor for a moment, then groaned and dumped his supplies.

In the door of each cell was a hatch. We unbolted them, one at a time, and hands snatched what was offered. You had to shut your mind to it, the stink and the shouting and the
swearing – and then the fighting you could hear starting up in the cells as desperate men battled over bottles of water, over crummy bags of peanuts.

‘Let us out of here!
!
!
! Let us out!’

None of the keys would fit.

‘For
’s sake!’ shouted a bloke through the hatch of the first cell. ‘Come on!’

His voice, it sounded so broken. So dry, sore and broken.

‘The keys won’t fit!’ I cried.

‘
! It’s a kid. It’s a
kid. SHUT UP! SHUT UP!’ he
screamed, louder and louder. ‘
IT’S A KID!!! SHUT UP!
’

That corridor of cells, it quietened down.

‘The keys won’t fit!’ I shouted at the row of doors.

There was another outbreak of swearing until the bloke in the first cell shouted them all back down again.

‘Try the custody desk, love – behind you, on the way in. Try there.’

Darius nodded at me and went to look.

‘Love?’ said the bloke.

‘My friend’s gone,’ I said. The fear made my voice shake and stammer.

(Please note: that’s how traumatised I was: I called Darius Spratt my friend.)

Darius came back straight away with a bunch of what looked like keys to a giant’s house; four times the size of normal keys.

‘Did you get them?’ said the cell bloke, hearing their rattle.

‘Yes . . .’ I said.

It was quiet, compared to how it had been, but from every cell you could still hear it, this bubbling of swearing, cursing, desperation. It felt like any second it would all go crazy again
– and who knew what would happen when the doors were actually opened.

Darius cleared his throat. ‘Look, you’ve got to promise not to hurt us or anything,’ he told the row of doors.

It sounds so stupid now, him saying that. It even kind of sounded stupid at the time and it made those men angry. The swearing kicked off again until the bloke in the first cell shouted them
down.

‘I swear,’ he said, ‘on my mother’s life. No one will hurt you.’

Right then and there, I thought, Your mother is probably dead. Like mine.

There was nothing else we could do. Darius unlocked his cell.

There were five men packed in there; three of them didn’t come out.

The one that had spoken to us stood there with his face all twisted up and twitching . . . I suppose he might have wanted to cry, but when you get dehydrated like that you can’t get any
tears.

‘Thank you,’ he managed to say. He leaned on the wall.

‘Everyone’s dead,’ I told him. ‘Everyone’s dead.’

I don’t even know why I said that. I really don’t.

That man, he kind of nodded, like he could believe it, like he already knew.

He held out his hand for the keys.

‘I’ll do the rest,’ he said. ‘You go.’

We didn’t argue.

‘You’re good kids,’ he shouted after us. ‘God bless you!’

‘Don’t drink the water!’ Darius shouted back at him.

I guess Darius hadn’t seen what I had seen. There was a drinking fountain in that cell. I can’t think about that. They must have found out the hard way about the water.

We climbed back out through the window. The kid was still there, waiting. Some random scary bloke, bloody – like fighting bloody, eyes and nose – burst out through the window behind
us. He dropped down to the ground, nodded politely at us and then ran.

‘We should get out of here,’ said Darius Spratt.

You don’t say, I thought.

As we ran round to the front of the police station, another bloke staggered past us. I grabbed my bike.

‘Don’t you want to come with us?’ blurted Darius Spratt.

‘No!’ I said. As in, no way. As in, as if. ‘I’m going to my dad’s.’

I cycled off.

Towards home. I wasn’t so nuts that I was going to cycle to London, was I? I didn’t know how I was going to get there. I had what Simon would have called ‘a slight logistical
problem’, which is what he said when I told him where I was going to go and he’d point out that that would rely on me getting a lift from ‘someone’ and that
‘someone’ had other plans that did not involve driving me about like a chauffeur.

‘We’ll be at the school!’ Darius Spratt shouted after me.

I looked over my shoulder at the two of them, just standing there.

‘Bye!’ I shouted, which I thought was very charitable of me, considering.

Charitable, and also a further sign of how serious the situation was: girls like me don’t even acknowledge the existence of boys like Darius Spratt. It’s a basic law of nature.

I took the shortest route home, cutting across the top of the High Street.

That was some sight: in the late afternoon sun it was a river of broken glass, glittering. I leaned the bike against a wall and waded in, just a little, just to see.

Things floated on that river. Bodies – yes – but other things too: toys, electrical stuff, books, sweets, bits of furniture, even . . . and shoes, clothes, jewellery. Make-up. Really
good make-up. The kind I couldn’t afford, even if I’d been allowed to buy it.

I told myself I needed some more of that dry shampoo anyway, and while I was looking for it I just happened to wander into a couple of other shops, just to see . . . and, er, basically . . . it
turned into my own one-girl riot.

You know where normally you’d have to spend, like, about an hour trying testers on the back of your hand and umming and ahhing because you could only afford one lipstick so you’d
have to get it right? I didn’t even bother with the testers. I just took every lipstick I liked. You know where normally you wouldn’t even think of buying a DVD or CD in a shop cos it
costs so much? How you’d have to choose which colour to get a top in because no way in a billion years could you get both or all three or all four no matter how good it was? How you’d
have to put that jacket back because it was way out of your price range? How your mum would go MAD if you bought that dress? How you liked those shoes but you weren’t really sure what
they’d go with? How no way would you be allowed a bikini like that and no way not ever could you get fancy flimsy floaty flirty underwear? How you had to make do with one bottle of perfume?
And only had one decent bag? And no no no no no way could you ever get, like, proper jewellery, stuff that was actually silver or full-on diamanté mega-bling, with matching earrings AND a
tiara?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I GOT SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH STUFF!!!!!!

(Even though 1. it was Dartbridge High Street, which, as you can imagine, is not exactly Camden Lock or Covent Garden or Oxford Street or even Exeter and 2. in some cases I’d been beaten
to it, e.g. the place that sold MP3s and phones and tablets and stuff was cleaned out. I checked. Thoroughly.)

I don’t care how awful it sounds. I didn’t care then, that’s for sure, and I don’t much care now. For the first time since before it rained I was actually happy –
or distracted, I was going to say . . . but you know what: I think I really was happy. I had, like, a crazy amount of stuff – so much stuff I had to double back to loot bigger (and better!)
bags to carry it in, and I think I would have gone on and on with it – never mind how I was going to get it home – if it hadn’t been for The George. I’d forgotten all about
it and the air stank so bad anyway I hadn’t noticed the smell wasn’t just bodies – it was a burnt pub.