School's Out Forever (The Afterblight Chronicles: The St Mark's Books)

by Scott K. Andrews

  A rope perhaps? I file that thought away.

  I notice a sign directing me to the House of Lords and I figure I may as well take a look. I’m surprised to find a guard on the door. He sits on a chair staring into space, not enough wit even to read a book to pass the time. As I approach I wonder if he’s in some kind of coma, but he looks up as I reach for the doors.

  “You got the boss’s permission to go in there?” he says, his voice a low moan of thoughtless boredom.

  “No. Do I need it?”

  He purses his lips and shrugs. “Knock yourself out,” he says. “The one with the tattoos swings both ways. You clean up after yourself, though. If you damage anything, I mean. I’m not bloody doing it.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I push open the door and enter the second chamber.

  I’m greeted by a young black woman in a short black dress.

  I stare at her for a moment, in surprise. Then my gaze moves past her to take in the room beyond. There are about twenty women here, all dressed casually. The upper benches have been made into little nests, with blankets and pillows and piles of clothing. It only takes me a moment to work out what I’ve walked into.

  “Hey Jools, we got fresh blood!” yells the woman in front of me. A short Asian woman steps down from her nest and walks across the floor towards me. All eyes are on me.

  Jools stands in front of me, hands on hips, assessing me.

  “You a bit scrawny,” she says. “They’ll feed you up, though. You got a name?”

  “Jane. I’m, um, not... Are you the boss here?”

  A chorus of cackled laughter makes me blush. “Look behind you, sweetheart,” says Jools. I turn and there, written across the doors in white paint is the legend: “We are your lords now. Bow down before us.”

  “Only boss here is Spider,” she says. “But he visits me more than most, so I got his ear, like. You know?”

  A woman on the bench behind her laughs and says: “You got his cock, more like!” More laughter from the ranks.

  I can’t help but assess Cooper’s preferred concubine. My height, small hips and breasts but a pretty heart shaped face. A woman, but girlish. Tough though, streetwise.

  “So that makes you, what, top dog in the harem?” I ask.

  “Summat like that, yeah. So we’ll get you a bed sorted then you can tell us your story.”

  “No,” I say hurriedly. “I won’t be staying.”

  She cocks her head and narrows her eyes, all welcome swept away by sudden suspicion.

  “That so.”

  “I’m a doctor,” I say, as if that explains anything.

  “Shit, I was an MP,” comes a voice from somewhere to my left. “Don’t make no difference here.”

  “I mean,” I go on, “that I’m here to help. How many of you are there?”

  Jools doesn’t answer.

  “Are you all well? When did you last have a check up?”

  “We all clean, if that’s what you mean. If we weren’t, we’d be in the river.”

  “That’s not...” I’m too uncomfortable to know what to say. I’m out of my depth here.

  “How many of you are there?” I ask again.

  “Nineteen,” says Jools.

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll, um, I’ll see you around, I guess.”

  Jools steps forward and gets right in my face, chin up, eyes wide. “Not if I see you first,” she says.

  I can’t get out of there fast enough.

  Yet as I walk away from Cooper’s rape room, it occurs to me that there are nineteen women in that room, and the ones who haven’t gone all Stockholm will be very angry indeed.

  I have nineteen potential allies on the inside. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

  THERE IS A special quality behind the eyes which all the men who work for Cooper have. Something cold and dead and hidden. Every one of them has it. The guy following me around Parliament is the same. It makes sense, I suppose; to be the kind of person who treats other people as cattle you must either have to kill some part of you off, or be born without it in the first place.

  Whatever that part of a person it is – compassion, empathy, simple kindness – it dies easy. All it takes for it to wither away is peer pressure and time.

  “What did you do? I ask him as I open my bedroom door in the morning and find him standing outside, patient as stone. “Before.”

  He shakes his head, unwilling to discuss it. I don’t think he’s one of the original SAS team. I wonder who he was, and I wonder what changed him. School teacher who watched his pupils die, perhaps? Accountant who found comfort in ledgers and spreadsheets but feels cut adrift in a world without numerical order? Drug addict forced to go cold turkey? Or just a family man who held his wife and children as they bled out?

  He’s a pretty nondescript bloke. Not a muscled heavy or a lean military type. He’s in his early forties, slight spare tyre around the waist (which testifies to how well they eat here), receding hairline, pallid skin. The threat that he implies comes not from physical strength or bullish machismo; it comes from the way he looks at me as if I were a tiresome detail, a turd laid on new carpet by an eager puppy which has to be cleaned up. Just a bit of business.

  What would his pre-Cull self have done if he had known what he would become? Rub his hands in glee or put a rope around his neck and end it all?

  What would I have done, had I known who I would become?

  I’ve not slept a wink. All night I’ve lain in bed staring into the darkness, trying to work out a strategy but I’ve got nothing.

  No-one’s coming to rescue me. I guess the kids we brought with us to Thetford may have made it back to the school and told them what happened, but their standing orders are to fortify and defend. There’s no-one there with the authority or gumption to attempt a rescue. Anyway, it would be suicide.

  Cooper still doesn’t know where the school is now. The Yanks will have told him about Groombridge, but they never learned about Fairlawne, so it should be safe.

  Unless I tell him. Maybe that’s what he’ll do – wait until he’s bored with me and then torture me to get the location of the school. Rich pickings for him there.

  I may have to work out a way to kill myself. But I’m not there yet.

  Not quite.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Wilkes and Tariq to start arguing.

  “I’ve been trained for this, mate.”

  “In peace time. I led the resistance against the American Army in Iraq. I have experience that you don’t.”

  “Of getting everyone under your command killed.”

  “John delegated command to me if he didn’t make it.”

  “You aren’t the boss of me, mate.”

  “I’m not your fucking mate.”

  And so on until eventually Caroline shouted: “Oh why don’t you just whop your cocks out right now and we can see who’s biggest?” which made Jack snigger but didn’t exactly help.

  “Listen,” I said to the council of war gathered around the fire. “We all agree we need a clear chain of command. Yes?”

  Wilkes, Ferguson, Tariq, Jack and Caroline all nodded. Green just stared into the flames.

  “And we all agree that if my dad were here, we’d be happy to let him lead us because of his experience and training?”

  Again they all nodded.

  “So we should make finding him our first priority. We know he was on his way to Hammersmith to meet up with Caroline. For some reason he never got there. We have to track him down. We can’t win this fight without him.”

  “Lee, we have no idea where he is or what happened to him,” said Tariq. “I want to find him as much as you do, but we have no leads and we don’t have any more time. Jane is on the inside and God knows what they’re doing to her. We have to get her first.”

  “Don’t you think I want her safe?” I countered. “But we have no chance if we keep fighting amongst ourselves like this. We need a strategy and a leader
. Dad’s the only one we would all agree on.”

  “We could vote,” said Jack.

  “What?” asked Wilkes, incredulous.

  “He’s right,” said Caroline. “We could vote. Elect a leader.”

  “I won’t take orders from him,” said Tariq, more apologetic than angry.

  “Then we don’t vote for a leader,” continued Jack. “We vote on a plan. Chances are we’re going to need to break into at least two forces anyway. As long as each group has a leader who agrees to the plan, we’re fine.”

  “I’m not going into battle with a strategy voted for by children,” said Wilkes.

  “We may seem like children to you,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice, “but between us we’ve seen more combat than you.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion for breaking this deadlock?” asked Caroline.

  Wilkes considered for a moment, then shook his head. “What do you think, Pat?”

  “If we can come up with a plan we all agree on, it sounds sensible to me,” said Ferguson.

  I leant over and whispered in Jack’s ear. “Well done, Your Majesty, you just convened your first Parliament.”

  WE TOOK THE discussion inside then, to one of the lecture halls of the old college. Ferguson drew a map of the enemy stronghold on the whiteboard. His attention to detail was impressive. He picked out the fences, minefields and gun towers, as well as various internal details such as where the children were being kept, and the location of the Lords’ brothel.

  There came a point where the level of detail began to disturb me.

  “Question,” I said as he picked out Spider’s sleeping quarters. “How the hell did you get inside, collect all this intel and then get out again without being caught?”

  “With great care and a little help.”

  “From?” I tried not to sound too suspicious, but failed.

  “Once the lorries arrived at Westminster I got straight out and ran inside, shouting that I needed the loo. If I’d hung around, they’d have realised I wasn’t their man. I’d been in the Palace of Westminster once before, on a tour, so I vaguely knew where I was heading. I made straight for the Lords.” He looked expectant, waiting for us to realise something. When none of us did, he said: “The brothel.”

  “Jesus, Pat,” said Wilkes.

  “If I’d tried to hang around making sketches and stuff, I’d have been caught,” Ferguson explained. “The only chance was to get in and out as quickly as possible. So I went straight to the brothel and told the guard on the door that I was a new recruit and I’d been waiting all week for some loving. He let me in, no problem.”

  “You sick...” began Caroline.

  “Let him finish,” said Tariq.

  “There’s about twenty women in there. Well, women and girls. They have these kind of bunks set up on the benches. Some of them got up and came over to me, but most just lay there hoping I wouldn’t pick them out. I pushed the eager ones aside and picked out the youngest and most frightened girl there. I figured maybe the confident ones might not have been exactly trustworthy. The girl led me to a little nook behind the Speaker’s Chair where there was a mattress.

  “Her name was Tara.

  “And there, in total privacy, where no-one would disturb us, I got her to tell me everything she knew about the snatchers’ operation. Layout, routines, names – everything. I got lucky picking her; she paid attention.

  “When she’d told me all she could, I went out the main doors again. I found an office overlooking the river – luckily it was low tide, so I climbed out and down to the shore.”

  He noted my look of disbelief.

  “I used to be a rock climber, okay?”

  I held up my hands. “Ok.”

  “I was inside for forty minutes at the most. Then I waited ’til nightfall, found an eyrie in one of the buildings on Parliament Square, and spent a day mapping the external defences and noting their patrols.

  “Big Ben still chimes, you know. All their scheduling hangs off it.

  “Happy?”

  I nodded. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and went back to giving us the lowdown.

  IT WAS SUNDOWN again before we all agreed a plan of action. After that there was nothing to do until morning. Tariq came and found me as I lay on a hospital bed, failing to sleep.

  “So what do you think?” he asked as he sat on the next bed.

  “I think it’s a crazy plan, but it just might work!”

  “Ha, yeah, reckon that’s about it.”

  “What do you think, Tariq?”

  He bit his lower lip and held my gaze. “I think it’s the best we can do in the circumstances.”

  “But...?”

  “But I wish John was here. What do you think can have happened to him?”

  I shrugged. “God knows. Caroline says he never reached them, so somewhere between Thetford and Hammersmith something went wrong. As soon as we’re done with the snatchers, I’m going to retrace his route. For all we know, he could be lying in a ditch with a broken leg or something.”

  “Why not go now?” asked Tariq. “We can handle the assault. You go find your dad.”

  I regarded him coolly. “Still don’t trust me in a fight, huh? Still trying to get rid of me.”

  He hesitated a moment, choosing his words carefully. Then he said: “Do you remember when we rescued Jane back at Groombridge, the day John was shot?”

  I nodded.

  “You were... I don’t know what you were like. Those Yanks were shooting at you and just walked towards them like you were bulletproof.”

  “So?”

  “You’re not bulletproof, Lee. And neither am I. I stood with you, followed your lead because I had no choice – it was either that or leave you to die. But I was sure we were dead men.”

  I shook my head, unsure exactly what he was getting at. “We weren’t though,” I said. “We won that fight.”

  “God alone knows how. We should have been killed a dozen times over that day. Luck like that doesn’t hold, Lee. Sooner or later it runs out. You acted like a mad man. That’s fine if it’s only your life you’re risking. But it was mine too.”

  “What’s your point, Tariq?”

  “My point is that tomorrow you’re going to lead a team of children into battle against the fucking SAS and I want you to realise that you’re not invincible. If you go wading in there like the Terminator, it’s not just your life you’ll be throwing away.”

  “Did I ever tell you about Heathcote?” I asked. Tariq shook his head. “He was one of my school mates. The Blood Hunters held him captive during the siege. I took a knife and slit his throat just for a chance to get close to one of the bad guys. Sacrificed him in cold blood. I’d do that a hundred times over if it meant winning.”

  Tariq stared at me, his face a mask. I couldn’t tell if he pitied me or feared what I might do. Then he stood up and walked away without a word.

  I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep.

  But the sound of Heathcote’s screams, and the hot slick feel of blood between my fingers, kept me awake ’til dawn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IT BEGAN TO snow heavily as they split their group into three.

  The younger kids who had escaped Hammersmith with Caroline were taken back to St Mark’s in the removal van, driven by one of the Rangers. They had no place in a battle, and they’d be safe back at the school.

  Lee, Jack and Ferguson had taken off on horseback at first light, heading for the Thames, their saddlebags heavy with ordnance.

  Everyone else had piled into the three school minibuses Tariq had used to bring the team from St Mark’s. They headed west, to Heathrow.

  The ranks of Caroline’s little army had been swollen by a bunch of the older kids from the convoy they’d attacked. There were nearly fifty of them now. Wilkes, who was in joint charge of this part of the operation alongside Tariq and Green, had in
sisted that there be an age limit. They’d fought over that for an hour until they’d agreed that any child under thirteen was not to be involved in the fight.

  The other bone of contention had been firearms. The team from St Mark’s had brought crates of various types of gun with them, and plenty of ammunition. Caroline felt strongly that every child should be given a gun, but no-one agreed with her. Too risky, they said. More chance of them shooting each other than the bad guys.

  In the end they’d compromised. Only those kids who’d been trained would carry machine guns and grenades, which meant all the St Mark’s lot. Her lot would be allowed handguns if they were sixteen or over. The younger teenagers could have knives, clubs, bats or that kind of thing, and they were to stay behind the kids with guns, as a second wave to mop up stragglers. Wilkes was unhappy with this compromise, but Lee and Jack insisted that the children be allowed to fight. It was, Lee said, their fight in the first place.

  Caroline was relieved when Lee left. There was something behind his eyes that she didn’t trust. Right up to the moment she met him again she had been unsure what she would say.

  “Hi Lee, long time no see. By the way, I executed your dad the other day.”

  “Wow what a coincidence bumping into you! ’Cause, you see, I bumped into your dad a few days back. Yeah. Blew his brains out.”

  “Lee, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your dad’s dead. The churchies got him.”

  That last one had been her favourite. Blame it on Spider, get Lee fired up for the attack, make it personal. But it turned out he and Matron were together now (and by the way, euw, she was like, ten years older than him) so he had a personal stake in the attack already. Anyway, if she told him that, he’d press her for details and she was sure he’d have worked out she was lying sooner or later. Being caught in a lie like that would be worse than just staying silent.

  She told herself that she was being silly, that he was an ally and a friend. But she looked into his eyes and was absolutely certain that if he knew what she’d done, he’d kill her on the spot.