After the Rain | Page 2

each others' shoulders and watched it avidly. It was about a woman who was in love with two men and the men hated each other and there was fighting and glorious kissing and sophisticated, cutting insults, and oh, they dressed so well! The audio was dubbed over from English, but that was OK -- the voice-actors they used were very good.
After the second showing, she and her friends allowed their seats to lower and set off for the concessions stand, where they found the beaming proprietors of the cinema celebrating their opening day with chocolates and thick sandwiches and fish pies, and bottles of brown beer for the adults and bottles of fizzy elderflower for the kids. Valentine saw the cute boy who Leeza liked and tripped him, so he practically fell in Leeza's lap, and that set the two of them to laughing so hard they nearly didn't make it back to their seats.
The next picture barely had time to start when it was shut off, and the lights came up and one of the proprietors stepped in front of the screen, talking into his phone, which must have been dialed into the cine's sound system.
"Comrades, your attention please. We have had word that the city is under attack by our old enemies. They have bombed the east quarter and many are dead. More bombs are expected soon." They all spoke at once, horrified non-words that were like a panic, a sound that made Valentine want to cover her ears.
"Please, comrades," the speaker said. He was about sixty and was getting a new head of hair, but he had the look of the old ones who'd lived through the zombiism, a finger or two bent at a funny angle by a secret policeman, a wattle of skin under the chin, loosened by some dark year of starvation. "Please! We must be calm! If there are shelters in your apartment buildings and you can walk there in less than ten minutes, you should walk there. If your building lacks shelters, or if it would take more than ten minutes to go to your building's shelter, you may use some of the limited shelter space here. The seats will lower in order, two at a time, to prevent a rush, and when yours reaches ground, please leave calmly and quickly and get to your shelter."
Leeza clutched at her arm. "Vale! My building is more than ten minutes' walk! I'll have to stay here! Oh, my poor parents! They'll think -- "
"They'll think you're safe with me, Leeze," Valentine said, hugging her. "I'll stay with you and both our parents' can worry about us."
They headed for the shelter together, white-faced and silent, in the slow-moving crowd that shuffled down the steps into the first basement, the second basement, then the shelter below that. A war hero was handing out masks to everyone who entered, and he had to go and find more child-sized ones for them, so they waited patiently in the doorway.
"Valentine! You don't belong here! Go home and leave room for we who need it!" It was her worst enemy, Reeta, who had been her best friend the week before. She was red in the face and pointing and shouting. "She lives across the street! You see how selfish she is! Across the street is her own shelter and she would take a spot away from her comrades, send them walking through the street -- "
The hero silenced her with a sharp gesture and looked hard at Valentine. "Is it true?"
"My friend is scared," she said, squeezing Leeza's shaking shoulder. "I will stay with her."
"You go home now," the hero said, putting one of the child-sized masks back in the box. "Your friend will be fine, and you'll see her in a few minutes when they sound the all clear. Hurry now." His voice and his look brooked no argument.
So Valentine fought her way up the stairs -- so many headed for the shelter! -- and out the doors and when she stepped out, it was like a different city. The streets, always so busy and cheerful, were silent. No air-cars flew overhead. It was silent, silent, like the ringing in your ears after you turn your headphones up too loud. It was so weird that a laugh escaped her lips, though not one of mirth, more like a scared laugh.
She stood a moment longer and then there was a sound like far-away thunder. A second later, a little wind. On its heels, a bigger wind, icy cold and then hot as the oven when you open the door, nearly blowing her off her feet. It smelled like something dead or something deadly. She ran as fast as she could across the street, pounding hell for leather to her front