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

by Scott K. Andrews

  So she’d played dumb, denied all knowledge.

  “No, no-one approached us. We left ’cause Matron told us where the school is now and we decided to risk the journey.”

  She crouched behind the enormous wheel of a 747 on a Heathrow runway, wet through and chilled to the bone, but she counted herself lucky to be there. Lee had believed her and had decided to go looking for his dad only after they’d brought down the snatchers. Plus, he was off with the Rangers leading the other pincer of the attack, so she didn’t have to be around him. More importantly still, the other kids who’d witnessed John’s death weren’t around him either. She’d not yet had a chance to take them to one side and brief them, tell them what had happened, make them swear to keep it secret. She’d have a chance to do that now, though, before they met up with Lee again.

  Assuming he didn’t die in the coming battle. Which, she realised guiltily, would solve a lot of problems for her. For a moment it occurred to her that if things went her way, she might get the chance to shoot him in the confusion. Friendly fire. No-one would ever know it had been deliberate. She pushed the thought aside, pretending she hadn’t had it, shocked at herself.

  But she had to admit, it would be convenient.

  She banished the thought and focused on the task at hand. In the near distance stood a row of lorries. She counted thirty-four in total. All had the familiar red circle of the church sprayed onto their sides. They were neatly lined up in the shadow of an enormous hangar. This was their target.

  Caroline watched Tariq and Wilkes as they ran from car to car through the car park that sat between the taxiway where she crouched, and the hangar.

  There was one guard patrolling lazily in front of the huge sliding doors that once allowed airliners in for servicing.

  When the two of them were at the very edge of the car park, Wilkes drew back the string on his bow and sent a thin shaft of wood straight through the guard’s heart. He dropped without a sound.

  He and Tariq broke cover, racing for the small, human-sized door that sat in the middle of the plane-sized one. When they got there they stood on either side of it, ready to deal with anyone who came out. Wilkes waved to Caroline, who in turn waved to the kids and Rangers sheltering behind the concrete wall at the end of the line of planes. As per their orders, they didn’t run out. Instead they walked en masse, with Green and two Rangers at their head, older kids at the front, younger ones at the back.

  When they reached her, Caroline joined them at the front. The army of children walked towards the hangar, silent and full of purpose. When the whole group stood united, she, Wilkes, Tariq and Green checked their watches and began a countdown. Then Green and Wilkes broke right while Tariq and one of the other Rangers broke left, slipping around the edges of the hangar with five armed kids in tow.

  Caroline took up a position beside the door, alongside a Ranger, waving the remaining kids back against the hangar doors. The snow fell silently as they stood there, breath clouding the air, waiting for the exact moment. Eventually, after ten minutes had passed, Caroline raised her right hand and counted down from five with her fingers. When the last finger made a fist, she took hold of her machine gun, stepped back from the hanger door and, in tandem with the Ranger whose name she still hadn’t bothered to ask, kicked it open and went in shooting.

  The second they burst into the hangar, Caroline realised they’d made a massive mistake. All their planning had been based on the idea that the kids would be sleeping on the cold floor of the cavernous, empty space.

  But in the centre of the concrete expanse stood the biggest plane Caroline had ever seen. A guard was already running up the staircase to the door in its nose. It was the only staircase running up to the plane – the doors at the midpoint and rear of the plane were closed.

  Underneath the fuselage, Caroline saw Wilkes, Tariq and their teams bursting in from the two rear doors, similarly amazed at the scale of their miscalculation.

  The kids were on the fucking plane.

  Caroline was closest to the moveable metal stairs and she put on a burst of speed as she registered the situation, racing to get within firing range before the guard could make it inside the plane and close the door. He had made it as far as the top step before she managed to get a bead on the man, and sent a stream of bullets thudding into him. The guard cried out, spun and toppled down the stairs, a dead weight and an obstacle.

  Caroline kept running, aware of the kids streaming into the hangar in her wake.

  “Don’t let them close the door,” came a distant, echoing yell from Tariq.

  “Well, dur,” she muttered as she raced towards the metal stairs.

  As she reached the foot of the stairs she jumped over the still twitching corpse of the guard she had shot and began pounding up towards the door, which began to swing closed ahead of her. The men closing it were well protected behind its bulk, and she’d climbed only a few steps before she realised there was no chance at all of reaching the door in time, or getting a clear shot at the men who were closing it.

  She dropped her gun and it swung free on its shoulder strap as she reached into the pocket of her fur coat and pulled out a grenade. She bit the pin and pulled it out with her teeth, never breaking her upwards stride as the gap between door and fuselage narrowed. She took three more steps and then stopped, drew back her arm and threw the grenade as hard as she could towards the tiny gap. It soared through the air and straight through a space merely twice its width.

  The door slammed shut amidst a chorus of shouts from inside. There was a loud clang as the door lock was engaged and then immediately disengaged. The door began to swing open again, ever so slowly.

  Then the grenade exploded, blowing a huge gaping hole in the side of the plane, sending the door, and various body parts, flying over Caroline’s head. The shockwave picked her up and tossed her backwards off the staircase into the freezing cold air high above the concrete floor, which rushed up to greet her as she screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “THEY BLEW THE bridge because the point where it meets the bank is their weakest spot,” said Ferguson.

  I panned across with my binoculars to focus on the jagged outcrop of stone that marked the opposite side of the now destroyed Westminster Bridge. I could see immediately what he meant. At the foot of Big Ben there was a patch of open ground between the wall of the Palace and the edge of the bridge accommodating some steps that led down to a tunnel entrance. The tall black fence that ringed the Palace only came up as high as the bridge, which meant that you could get inside by laying a plank of wood across the gap and leaping in. Obviously not an option when the CCTV systems were all working, but now it seemed eminently doable.

  “It’s called Speaker’s Green,” explained Ferguson.

  “What’s that tunnel entrance?” asked Jack.

  “Westminster Tube. There are tunnels direct from the station into the Palace and that big building opposite it, the one with the black chimneys. That’s Portcullis House where the MPs’ offices used to be. There’s a tunnel running from there under the road into the Palace as well.”

  “In which case we should go in underground, through the tube,” I said. “They blew the bridge but they didn’t blow the tunnels, did they?”

  “They didn’t need to,” the Ranger replied. “Once the pumps shut down, the tube tunnels all flooded. The old rivers that run under the city reclaimed them. If we had scuba gear, maybe, but even then it’d be madness.”

  “So we go in over the fence there?” asked Jack.

  “It’s an option, but it’s the wrong end of the building,” said Ferguson. “If we go in there we have to travel the whole length of the Palace to get where we’re going, which massively increases our chances of discovery. No, our best way in is there. The Lords Library.”

  He pointed to the opposite end of the Palace, to the huge tower that marked its southernmost point.

  “There are only two places where the Palace backs directly onto the river,
and that’s the towers at either end,” he explained. “In between there’s a bloody great terrace between the wall and the river. What we have to do is get on the water, moor at the foot of that tower, and climb in one of the windows. It’s our best way of getting in undetected.”

  “I don’t know about you, mate, but I’m not Spider-Man,” I said. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to scale that wall.”

  “What we need,” said Jack, “is one of those grappling hook gun thingys that Batman uses.”

  “Nah,” said Ferguson, smiling. “We can do better than that.”

  Ten minutes later we climbed down from our vantage point through the ruined interior of St Thomas’ Hospital, emerged into a street buried under a thickening carpet of snow, and set off in search of a dinghy.

  “WHATEVER YOU DO, don’t fall in, okay?” said Ferguson unnecessarily as we climbed into the small inflatable that we’d found in a River Police station half a mile upstream. “The water is freezing and the current is deadly. If you hit the water you’re dead, simple as.”

  “But we’re wearing life jackets,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t matter,” says the Irishman. “You probably won’t be strong enough to swim to the shore. You’ll stay afloat, but you’ll freeze to death before you hit land.”

  “I thought Irish people were cheery, optimistic types,” said Jack as he climbed carefully into the rubber boat.

  “What the fuck ever gave you that idea?” asked the Ranger, untethering the boat and pushing us away from the shore.

  “Um, Terry Wogan?”

  Ferguson clipped his ear and handed him an oar. “Row, you cheeky sod.”

  There was no moon, but the world was clothed in white and the sky was still thick with falling snow. The current took us quickly and we floated out into the Thames.

  “We can’t use the engine, ’cause they’ll hear us,” explained Ferguson. “And we don’t have an anchor, so the hardest thing will be to bring ourselves to a halt long enough to climb out. When I give the signal, you two need to start rowing as hard as you can against the current. Got that?”

  Jack and I nodded as Ferguson used his oar to steer us as close to the bank as possible. Although the blizzard was providing us with the best possible cover, there was no point in taking foolish chances; the further out we were, the easier we would be to spot.

  I was astonished at how fast we moved, and we were floating alongside Parliament within ten minutes. As we neared the farthest tower, Ferguson gave the signal. Jack and I dipped our oars and began paddling frantically against the tide, trying to slow us down. The Ranger took his bow and notched an arrow. Attached to the shaft was a small metal grappling hook from which trailed a slender nylon rope. Despite all our efforts, we continued to sweep down the river, but Ferguson did not allow himself to be distracted. As we reached the tower he let the arrow fly. It soared away into the white and although we listened, we never heard it land. But the rope didn’t tumble back to the water.

  He grabbed the end of the rope and looped it through one of the metal rings on the rim of the dinghy and pulled. I sighed with relief as the rope went taut and he pulled us in to the edge of the river, where the dinghy nestled underneath the concrete lip that marked the ground floor of the Palace. He tied it off and Jack and I gasped with relief as we dropped our oars. My arms were burning from the effort of rowing against a current that laughed at my exertions.

  We looked up at the blue nylon rope that trailed up into the night sky. The snow was so thick now that the top of the tower was lost to view. The rope seemed to rise up into nowhere. We all pulled on the rubber-coated climbing gloves that Ferguson had looted for us from a sports store on our way into town, and put on the strange climbing pumps which were soft and lacked soles, but had rubber moulding all over, for purchase.

  “Climbing in these conditions is extremely dangerous,” said Ferguson. “So we’ll go in the first window we come to. Take your time, don’t hurry, and remember – there’s no safety rope, so whatever you do, don’t lose your grip.”

  I handed him the heavy kit bag that was the key to our success. He slung it over his back, took the rope in both hands and launched himself off the dinghy. He scrambled up over the concrete lip in no time at all. We waited until we heard a muffled crack and saw shards of stained glass tumble past us into the water. I gestured for Jack to go first.

  He nervously followed Ferguson, but whereas the Irishman had been speedy and confident, Jack was all over the shop. His prosthesis slowed him down, and his fibreglass foot scrabbled uselessly against the wet concrete and he slipped backwards more than once as the nylon rope got wetter and more slippery. Eventually he also disappeared over the concrete lip and the rope went slack indicating that he’d made it inside.

  I grabbed the rope and pulled myself up. Every set fracture and old bullet wound protested as I hauled myself skywards, but I focused on doing everything slowly and carefully, and managed a steady, unwavering ascent.

  When I crested the concrete rim I saw a gothic arched hole where a stained glass window had nestled. I reached up to grab the window sill and two things happened in quick succession: there was a burst of gunfire from inside the room, and Jack crashed out of the window to my right, flying backwards in a cloud of glass and lead, clutching Ferguson’s black kit bag, plummeting soundlessly into snowfall.

  I braced my feet against the stone, looped the rope around my left hand, reached into my coat, pulled out my Browning and then pushed up with my legs, propelling my head and shoulders in through the gaping stone window frame, firing as I went.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CAROLINE HIT THE floor hard with her right shoulder, which made an awful crunching sound. She rolled with the momentum, tumbling like a drunken acrobat.

  She screamed as she hit, but it was more battle cry than fear. There was anger in it too, that none of them had reckoned on so obvious a reversal of fortune. That plane was huge and made a perfect billet. Somebody should have worked that out.

  When she finally stopped moving and skidded to a halt, she hurt everywhere. She just wanted to lie down, close her eyes and rest for a while. But she did what she always did in moments like this: she asked herself what Rowles would do. As soon as she asked herself that question, she opened her eyes, gritted her teeth, gripped her gun and got the fuck up.

  Her shoulder was useless and there was something pulled in her left leg; her hearing was muffled and... woah... her balance was a bit off. But she limped back towards the plane, ignoring the pain.

  The kids were pouring up the stairs and through the jagged blackened hole that denoted where the door had been a minute ago. Small circular windows ran the length of the plane on two levels, which meant that this plane was a double decker. The windows along the lower level were lit by the strobe flashes of gunfire; the upper windows revealed blurs of movement but no fighting yet.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and she whirled, gun raised. It was Tariq. He was looking at with concern and his lips were moving.

  “Speak up,” she said. “Part deaf. Explosion.”

  “I said are you okay?”

  “What do you bloody think? Come on.” She turned and kept moving towards the steps. Tariq fell in beside her as Wilkes and the ten kids that had come in the other end streamed past them towards the stairs. Caroline glanced up at Tariq, who waved them past, obviously determined to stick with Caroline.

  “I don’t need a baby sitter,” she said.

  “Well I do,” he replied, still focused on the stairs ahead. “And you’re the designated adult.”

  Caroline smiled as she swung the gun back up to her hip.

  “This plane is huge,” she said as they reached the foot of the stairs. The last few kids were disappearing into the belly of the plane above them.

  “A380,” said Tariq. “Biggest airliner ever made. Lap of luxury.”

  A huge explosion blew out the rear doors and a man dressed entirely in black and with an Uzi in
his hand tumbled backwards out of the resulting gap in the fuselage, arms flailing. He fell onto the concrete head first, his brains and lungs suddenly finding themselves colocated.

  “They do know we want some of them alive, don’t they?” asked Caroline as she dragged herself up the stairs.

  A man appeared in the hole above them, firing back down the body of the plane. Caroline hardly blinked as she squeezed the trigger and cut him down where he stood.

  “I don’t know, Caroline. Do they?” asked Tariq as she stepped into the plane.

  She glanced down at the dead snatcher then looked up at Tariq and made a sad face. “Sorry,” she said.

  Tariq tutted as he stepped across the jagged metal edge. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

  They turned and walked into the passenger section, guns raised, and all their wisecracks died unspoken as they beheld the carnage before them.

  The two aisles were littered with corpses of children and snatchers alike. The air was thick with cordite and the walls and ceilings were sprayed with blood.

  Caroline couldn’t have told you whether it was her post-explosion balance problem or the sight of that charnel house which caused it, but she turned, bent over and was violently sick.

  “FIFTEEN OF OUR children dead,” said Tariq as he sat down next to her in the business class compartment an hour later. “Seven of yours, eight of ours. Plus the thirty-two kidnapped kids they blew up in their attempts to escape.”

  Caroline shook her head in disbelief. “And?”

  “Two of the Rangers are down.”

  “Wilkes?”

  “No, he’s fine.”

  “What about captives?”

  “Two. Wilkes is just getting started on them. Thought you might want to come along.”

  Caroline thought about this for a moment and decided that no, she really just wanted to sit here drinking this nice wine she’d found in the galley.