The Rain by Virginia Bergin Read Free Book Online Page B

peeped round the corner. There was no one in the sitting room, but for a moment the TV caught me there because I saw the pictures for the words I’d heard the night before. Now there were
no words, but because I had heard them already I thought I knew what they would be. I thought I knew what they’d be saying. The pictures . . . these I had not expected. Not even because of
what they showed, but because – well, it just wasn’t how they do stuff on TV, not even when something really serious is happening and they’re probably all in a flap. It was
amateur
. You know what it reminded me of? When me, Lee, Ronnie and Molly had done our media studies project together: a news report on a zombie outbreak. We should have given it to Zak to
edit, but Ronnie insisted. The costumes, the make-up, the location – the woods at Zak’s place – were brilliant. The edit wasrubbish.
    (For information: we got a B. Zak and Saskia teamed up with some of the others and got an A* for a spoof washing-powder ad. Zak was supposed to be the producer, but somehow Saskia seemed to end
up doing most of that and most of everything else (voice-over; lead-role glamorous housewife; speccy-but-hot washing-powder scientist) . . . but, still, can you believe it? Wasn’t the whole
zombie thing, even with aedit, a whole lot more creative? Ronnie said they didn’t care about that, and that’s pretty much
what the teacher said too – but I ask you, which project turned out to be more relevant, huh? How to survive a disaster situation v. how washing powder gets sold? I’m re-grading us to
an A*.)
    Anyway, the TV. They were cutting in and out of a studio, where a woman behind a desk was talking to two men on screens behind her; it said they were in Manchester, and Edinburgh. In between,
they cut to stuff they’d filmed earlier . . . a hospital; a corridor filled with people, bloody, writhing, groaning. You didn’t have to hear it to know; just like Caspar. Back to Studio
Woman. Then shots of lines of cars. Back to Manchester Man. Then a clip of a politician . . . OK; I’m not all that up on political stuff, but it could have been the prime minister; some bloke
in a suit, trying to look like he really, really meant what he was saying and totally looking like he didn’t. Then a clip of the American president – him I knew – doing the same
thing. Then back to the studio.
    And then a graphics thing – a rubbish graphics thing – of the world. As it rotated, weird red raindrops splopped on to countries . . . until it went back to the Europe bit –
splops already in place – and zoomed in on Britain. Splop, splop, splop. The whole of the south-west got covered in one big red tear-shaped splop.
    Underneath, a stream of words said nothing much different to what I had heard the night before: STATE OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED . . . PUBLIC ADVISED TO REMAIN INDOORS . . . DO NOT CALL 999
. . . NO TREATMENT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE . . .
    You know how normally when they do that ticker-tape stream of headlines along the bottom of the screen and they move from one subject to another? They didn’t. Same subject; it just kept
coming and coming, on and on . . .
    . . . SCIENTISTS CLAIM BACTERIUM IN RAIN IS CAUSE . . . SYMPTOMS INCLUDE BLEEDING, SEVERE PAIN, NAUSEA . . .
    And then they showed it: the thing. They put up this picture of this microscopic
thing
. This thing that looked so pretty: a little round sun with these wiggly rays. A little blob of a
thing, with squirming tentacles.
    I had felt sick before; I felt even more sick now. I didn’t want to look at it. I wanted a cup of tea.
    I went into the kitchen.
    The house was so quiet I didn’t expect anyone to be there. Simon was at the table. Apart from the cooker and the table, every surface in that kitchen – and some of the floor –
was covered with every kind of container; all of them filled with water. That was weird, but I didn’t want to go there. I saw; I did not want to