Today at The Book Bratz we're featuring The Storm by Virginia Bergin! We also have a giveaway at the end of this post, so stay tuned! :-)
About The Storm:
Title: The Storm (The Rain, #2)
Author: Virginia Bergin
Publisher: MacMillan
Paperback, 371 Pages
Published February 2015
Summary: Three months after the killer rain first fell, Ruby is beginning to realise her father might be dead . . . and that she cannot survive alone. When a chance encounter lands her back in the army camp, Ruby thinks she is safe - at a price. Being forced to live with Darius Spratt is bad enough, but if Ruby wants to stay she must keep her eyes - and her mouth - shut. It's not going to happen. When she realizes what is going on - the army is trying to find a cure by experimenting on human subjects - Ruby flips out . . . and makes an even more shocking discovery: she's not useless at all. The Storm begins . . .
Excerpt of The Storm:
I come out of the bathroom. I walk to the end of the corridor. I look out of the window in the door. My recollection of the night before is so hazy and jumbled, I wouldn’t have known I was even looking at “the hospital,” but I see the ice-cream van parked outside, under a canopy, alongside an ambulance.
I think about Saskia.
I block out the hideous memory of her screaming.
I feel pretty sorry for myself right now, but the stuff that’s in my head is a mess of ugly choices that exist in reality—and not in fear. Sask has not had the benefit of a calming anti-freak-out chat from the Spratt. As far as I know, no one is offering to go anywhere with her—and if, before the rain fell, my life was surely going to be fantastic (I was convinced it was heading that way), Sask’s already was.
When you look at it like that, taking dead families out of the equation, she’s lost things she actually had (including, specifically, a foot). I’ve lost things I never had (a hot boyfriend, a life).
So maybe that means I can’t have lost them?
Hn.
It just feels like it.
It also feels like…the least I can do is to go and see her. Maybe, if she hasn’t started screaming again, I’ll be able to give her a calming anti-freak-out chat. And I’ll just see if there’s anything she wants. Like flowers and fruit! That’s what people take people who are in the hospital, isn’t it? Flowers and fruit! Ha! And if there is any fresh fruit to be had anywhere, Monsieur le Chef would have it. And I’ll ask Sask about him too—whether he really is that guy off the TV.
Yes. I’ll go see Sask.
I step out of the building.
From the door I leave by, there is no polytunnel walkway; there is just open space—and clear sky. Clear September sky. A school sky: clear and blue and warm—only the odd dunce of a congestus cloud skulking about. They are my weak point, those clouds: cumulus mediocris, cumulus congestus. One rains, one doesn’t. In my opinion, no one but a total nerd could tell them apart.
In any case, I am not worried—not in the least. The sky above me, the only sky that counts, is blue as blue can be, which explains why there are kids out. I catch a glimpse of one wandering up to the ice-cream-van ambulance. Makes me smile, seeing that; he’s studying the menu of delights—poor thing. Half an arm missing, bandaged.
You’re probably thinking things already. I wasn’t. I just saw a hurt kid.
And as I get closer, I hear other kids—laughing, shouting…one crying…and I…I detour, around the back of the building, figuring, if I am thinking anything at all, that this might be an easier way in. No tricky nurse station/desk/explanation/camera situation. Just slip in, right?
I round the corner.
Kids out playing in the yard. Emergency exit door to ward open.
I don’t really think about what this is. I don’t think about it until I walk into the ward.
I don’t want them to make a film out of this story anymore. I do not want this picture—ever—to be seen in another person’s mind.
Except…maybe you should know it. Maybe you should know.
The ward. What would I say, Darius Spratt? How much time, really, does it take to understand what you are seeing if you look? In 0.1 MICROMETERS OF A SECOND I get it:
The ward is full of kids—KIDS. Some are out of their beds, walking or limping about…kids with hands and arms and feet and legs chopped off. And fingers. I’m guessing those are the lucky ones in the ward. The ward of bandaged stumps.
They look with wide eyes at me, at the scary crazy lady—yeah, I guess that’s what I am to them, even though I am only fifteen years old. Shaved head, black eyes, wearing a boy’s clothes, tooth missing in a mouth that is open in a silent scream.
I can hardly breathe.
Find author Virginia Bergin on:
***GIVEAWAY***
One lucky winner will receive a Grand Prize survival kit with all of the awesome stuff shown in the pic below!
We'd like to extend a special thank you to Sourcebooks for allowing us to be a part of the tour for The Storm by Virginia Bergin! Best of luck to everyone who enters the giveaway! :-)
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ReplyDeleteMy three must haves for my end-of-the-world survivor kit are a book, my contacts and a blanket : )
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