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

by Scott K. Andrews

  “Surprise,” said Wilkes dourly, pulling out a chair and sitting down wearily.

  I scrambled to my feet, the implications racing through my head. All my questions died in the face of their presence as one by one the obvious answers presented themselves. In the end there was only one thing left to ask.

  “Where’s Tariq?”

  When Green also took a seat, not meeting my eyes, that answer also became apparent.

  “How?” I ask eventually.

  “Spider,” said Green.

  “Short guy? Blond?”

  Green nodded.

  “His name’s Cooper,” I said. “Spider’s his stage name. Cooper sounds a lot more ordinary, doesn’t it? Less menacing, more suburban. Call him Cooper, robs him of some of his power, I reckon.”

  “Whatever you fucking call him,” growled Wilkes through gritted teeth, “he shot your pal in cold blood less than five minutes ago.”

  “I don’t think he likes you,” whispered Mac.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked.

  “No idea,” said Green. “They took us away before they opened the lorries. I reckon they’ve got them locked up somewhere. That’s assuming they didn’t just leave them in the lorries and drive them back to Heathrow.”

  I shook my head. “Not in this snow.”

  “Did you not hear me?” barked Wilkes, red in the face and suddenly furious. “Your friend is dead, Keegan. Does that not register?”

  To be honest, it didn’t. I’d seen so much death, lost so many friends and comrades, Tariq’s death just added a digit to the death count. I didn’t think anybody’s death could affect me any more. Maybe even Jane’s. I knew I’d do anything to save her, but if I imagined her death it left me cold. I knew that whatever happened I’d just carry on living. I didn’t think I could be any more damaged than I already was.

  “Jack’s dead too,” I said, as if it were an answer to his question. “We were caught before I even got in the window. He ended up in the river. Did you know he was the rightful King of England?”

  “What?” Wilkes looked at me as if I was a madman.

  “No really. King John. Honest,” I said. “He was being looked after by the military when we met him. He kept it very quiet, though. Didn’t want anyone to know. Just wanted to be one of the gang. Someone out there became the monarch earlier tonight. But whoever they are, they’ll probably never know.”

  Wilkes shook his head in disbelief. “You are a bunch of fucking loonies. How the hell did we ever let ourselves get involved with you? I should kill you right now, you little shit.”

  “Easy,” said Green, his voice stern with warning. The sight of this slight teenager telling the burly Ranger to behave was laughable, but such was the authority in Green’s voice that Wilkes just clenched his jaw and turned away in disgust, done with the pair of us.

  “Ferguson’s alive too, in case you were wondering,” I said archly. “I think they’re torturing him at the moment, trying to get intel on your lot.”

  Wilkes didn’t say a word.

  “Fine, you have a good sulk,” I said. “Green and I will try and come up with a plan to get us out of here.”

  Green laughed. “We’d better be quick,” he said. “They’re assembling a firing squad right now. The guy who marched us here said we’ll be dead on the last strike of eight o’clock.”

  “There’s still Jane,” I pointed out.

  “You saw her?” he asked.

  “Yeah, she was here. She got shot by Cooper and went to a hospital to patch herself up. She knew his name, and he called her Kate.”

  “Kate?”

  “Hmm. It’s her real name, from before she came to work at St Mark’s. She was there under witness protection. And Cooper said he used to be a copper. I wonder.”

  “You think they knew each other before The Cull?”

  I nodded. “It’s possible. I didn’t get the impression she was a prisoner here. Not like you’d think, anyway. Jane’s our ace in the hole. When she gets back, she might be able to influence Cooper somehow. I don’t know.”

  “You’re clutching at straws, kid,” sneered Wilkes. “We’re dead. Simple as.”

  As if to prove his point, the door to the committee room swung open and a tall soldier stood framed in the entrance.

  “Up,” he barked.

  We all got to our feet and shuffled towards the door.

  “Get a fucking move on,” shouted the lackey.

  As we walked down the long corridor between the Lords and Commons, on our way to be executed, I was surprised to find that I wasn’t nervous. I recalled the terror I felt when the Blood Hunters wrapped that noose around my neck and dropped me into space, or the fear when Blythe pulled the lever of the electric chair, or the desperation when I realised Rowles was about to blow us to dust. The urge to live, the fear of death, were strong in me then.

  But now I just felt numb, empty, resigned. Maybe even a little relieved. I’d been shot before and it hadn’t started to hurt until a good few minutes afterwards. The nice thing about a firing squad is that there aren’t any minutes afterwards. I reckoned it’d be a painless death, give or take. And once it was done there’d be no more fighting. I wouldn’t have to bury any more friends. I wouldn’t have to sit Dad down and explain about Mum.

  It’s not as if I was looking for an opportunity to die, but I admitted to myself that I wasn’t that upset about the prospect of it. Tariq had been wrong, I realised as I walked. I didn’t wish for death. I was simply indifferent to it.

  We passed through a stone archway out into the cold dawn air. The patch of grass that sat between the walls of the Palace and the edge of Westminster Bridge was almost knee deep in drifted snow. A gaggle of armed men huddled against the wall, smoking cigarettes and gossiping quietly. They fell silent as we processed into the yard.

  The man walking with us waved for us to line up against the metal fence, facing Parliament with the river at our left.

  We crunched over to the fence and stood there, unsure exactly what to do.

  There was an awkward silence as we stood there facing our executioners, who looked everywhere but at us, unwilling to risk meeting our gaze.

  “Look at us,” shouted Wilkes after a minute that seemed like an hour. “Fucking look at us!”

  One by one they obeyed, and as they did so I saw their expressions harden, their faces set. These were not the kind of men to have doubts. When it came to the crunch, they were stone cold.

  “Lovely day for a shooting,” said Cooper as he strode into the yard. Jane limped behind him, her foot encased in a blue plastic cast. She looked at me and her face crumpled. I’d not seen her cry in so long. I wanted to run to her but I knew I wouldn’t get two feet.

  “Cooper, please,” she said, choking back tears. “I’m begging you, don’t do this.”

  He turned, raised his hand and slapped her hard across the face. She reeled.

  “Fucker,” I shouted, stepping forward. A stream of bullets thudded into the snow in front of me and I looked left to see one of the soldiers waving me back to the fence.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” begged Jane, trailing forlornly after the man who held our lives in his hands.

  He stopped when she said that, a terrible smile creeping across his face. He turned back to her again, slowly this time, full of menace.

  “And what, exactly, do you think I want from you, Kate?”

  She stepped forward, her red, tear-stained face contorted into a grotesque parody of pleasing. She reached out and stroked his chest.

  “I can be anything you want, Cooper,” she said. “Anything at all. Just please, don’t kill them.”

  For the first time that day I actually felt an emotion – pure, burning fury. I bit back my protest and clenched my fists, rooted to the spot.

  Cooper reached out a hand and stroked Jane’s cheek once, gently. Then he leaned forward as if to kiss her, stopped an inch from her lips and said: “Just another whore, then.”


  He stepped away, turned his back on her and barked an order to his soldiers.

  “Put her with the men.”

  “Sir?” asked the guy who seemed to be second-in-command, surprised by the order.

  Quick as lightning, Cooper drew his sidearm and shot the man twice in the chest.

  “I said, put her with the others,” he yelled as his lackey toppled backwards into the snow.

  Another of his men, eyes wide with alarm at his leader’s sudden, shocking loss of composure, stepped forward, grabbed Jane’s arm, and dragged her over to us.

  She took her place alongside me, facing the firing squad. I reached out my hand and our fingers intertwined and grasped tightly.

  She leaned over and tried to whisper something to me, but the huge bell in the tower above us began to chime.

  The soldiers began to line up.

  The first strike of eight o’clock sounded, sonorous and familiar.

  They checked their weapons.

  The second chime of the hour.

  They all flicked off their safety catches.

  Third chime.

  Cooper bent down and lifted the machine gun from the corpse of the man he’d just shot.

  Fourth chime.

  He joined the line of executioners.

  Fifth chime.

  He flicked off his safety catch.

  Sixth chime.

  He raised his weapon.

  Seventh chime.

  He shouted “Make ready!”

  I turned to Jane and embraced her, clasping her tightly to me, ready for death, eyes closed, ears ringing.

  “I love you,” I whispered as the clock struck eight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I BALANCE THE torch on the table then take the scalpel and carefully slice down the side of my shoe, just above the bit where it meets the foam sole. Every tiny movement sends a shock of pain through my foot, so I go slowly. I’m in a small office, sitting in a padded chair, foot up on the table in front of me.

  St Thomas’ hospital has been pretty much gutted. When The Cull hit, I was safe at St Mark’s, riding it out behind thick metal gates in the middle of the countryside. I can’t imagine what it must have been like here in a hospital. The flood of sick people, all dying, incurable, hopeless and doomed. The doctors, succumbing themselves one by one but trying to keep the service going as long as possible, filling the beds and trolleys and corridors with sufferers, all hooked up to drips. At some point they must have started euthanising people, adding extra morphine to the intravenous bags, putting people out of their misery. I imagined the final deaths, when there were no more doctors left, the last surviving patients lying here in a building strewn with corpses, feverish and delirious, dying mad and raving.

  In our hunt for medicine we came across a small supply room in which sat a skeleton. It wore a white coat and a bottle of pills lay beside its outstretched hand. A doctor or nurse, immune but broken by the horror of it all, retreating into a darkened closet and gulping down pills to make it stop.

  I looked at that skeleton and thought that could have been me, if my brother had never got involved with Spider, if I’d completed my medical training, become a doctor. I’d have been on the front line of the hopeless war against the AB virus and it would have killed me, indirectly but inevitably.

  I don’t allow myself the luxury of envying the corpse in the store room. Instead, I grab a scalpel and blade, a bottle of antiseptic, a needle and thread and some gauze bandages, then I limp across the hall to an office where I can work.

  The blood-soaked shoe drops off my foot and hits the floor with a wet slap. The sock follows suit. I’m gritting my teeth in agony as I work, but I stay focused. Lee is alive and I have to get back to him. I’m the only hope he has.

  When I heard his voice echo out of the Lords I felt a powerful rush of joy and horror. Joy that he was alive, and horror that he was surrendering to Cooper. I’ve already lost one man I loved to Cooper’s schemes. I refuse to lose another.

  In one respect being shot in the foot was a blessing. Had I been upright when I’d heard his voice I’d probably have burst into tears and run into his arms like a teenage girl in a pop video. But I was already crying in pain and I couldn’t walk, so that wasn’t really an option. I tried to play it cool, not let Cooper see how much I cared for Lee. I treated him like he was just another kid from the school. But I think Cooper knew; I think Lee’s reaction to seeing me shot gave the game away.

  I probe the small hole in the top of my foot. The bullet had passed straight through, right next to the bones that run to my big toe. Luckily it’s not hit any of them, so I’m not going to be crippled. The damage is to flesh and muscle only, so if I can sew it shut, sterilise and bind it, then it should heal all right. If I stay off it for about a month, that is.

  As I sew the wound closed I say to my guard through gritted teeth: “I’ll need a cast. Go through the store rooms, there should be some somewhere. Hard plastic shell, foam lining, velcro straps, shouldn’t be hard to spot.”

  The guard lingers, unsure.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m hardly going to be running away, am I? Just fuck off and find me a cast, will you?”

  He grunts and leaves. I glance out the window.

  The moon is just starting to wane, and the snow is still coming down. We took a jeep across Waterloo Bridge to get to the hospital. The snow was so deep it was hard to drive, and I wonder if we’ll find it as easy to get back. I know I’ve got to hurry. Cooper could be torturing Lee right now.

  I splash some more antiseptic on the closed wound and stifle a cry of pain. The morphine’s beginning to wear off. No chance of finding any of that here, it will all have been cleared out long ago. I bind my foot tightly and then grit my teeth and try to stand. It feels like someone’s shoved a knife through my foot and every time I take so much as a fairy step they twist it savagely. I collapse back into the chair. No use pretending. I’m hobbled. The cast should help, though. Where the fuck is that squaddie?

  I hear the door swing at the end of the corridor. Thank fuck for that.

  “Did you find one?” I shout. There’s no reply, but I hear footsteps crunching in the broken glass and detritus that litters the corridor. They sound strange, as if the person is limping, and each alternate step sounds hard and heavy, like a peg leg pirate. The footsteps get closer until I see a figure come to a halt in the darkness outside the room. Whoever they are, they’re too short and slight to be the squaddie. The figure stands there, arms by their side, and I make out a knife hanging from their right hand. I feel a shock of fear. Then I shine the torch on the figure and gasp in surprise.

  “Hello, Jane,” says Jack.

  I FIRE OFF a thousand questions. How did Lee and the others survive Thetford? Where are they all now? He answers me impatiently until my enquiries are exhausted and I ask him to find me a cast for my foot.

  “Will this do?” asks the boy king as he appears at the door again a few minutes later, holding a blue foam cast.

  “Yes!” I shout, and grab it off him. I gingerly place my foot in it and pull the Velcro straps tight. Once it’s secured I stand up, waving away Jack’s offer of a helping hand. I take a step and, while it hurts like hell, it’s more bearable.

  “Thanks, Jack, that’s much better.”

  “You know,” he says with a wry smile, “you could just cut it off. I hear they can do wonders with prosthetics these days.”

  I look down at the piece of table leg and foam that he’s gaffer taped to his stump.

  “How did it break?” I ask, walking out as I talk. Together we hobble down the corridor, two cripples together, both too proud to join arms for mutual support.

  “Lee, this Ranger bloke and me, we’re climbing into Parliament, right? Up a rope, from a dinghy on the Thames,” he explains. “It’s bloody tough going for me, but I manage it. The Ranger, his name’s Ferguson, he helps me in through the window. So he turns back to help Lee climb up, and I grab the kit bag. But as I
do that, two soldiers come into the room and tell us to put our hands up. Ferguson spins around, fast as you like, and he’s just a blur, right, all martial arts and stuff. But one of the guys manages to shoot me. I’m standing right in front of the window and I bring the bag up as a shield, but the bullets shatter my prosthesis, I lose my balance ’cause the bag’s so heavy, and I go flying back out the window.”

  We reach the top of the stairs and finally admit that we need help, so we link arms and begin going down the stairs sideways, like some ridiculous quadrupedal crab.

  “I swear, I thought I was dead. But dumb fucking luck, I land flat on my back in the dinghy. The bag knocks all the air out of me and I’m laying there, pinned down and legless, gasping like a guppy. And I can hear shooting from above me, right, so I reckon Lee’s gone in the window. I roll the bag off, get my breath back, and try to climb up and help. But it was hard enough when I had the prosthesis; it’s fucking hopeless with one leg.

  “Eventually the firing stops and I wait for Lee or Ferguson to call down for the bag, but they don’t. So I reckon they’re dead or captured, yeah?”

  “Captured,” I say as we pause to catch our breath on a landing. The corpse of my guard lies on the floor beside us, staring at the ceiling in surprise. My torch picks out the dark stain that marks where Jack’s knife punctured his heart. “They’re not dead yet.”

  Jack smiles. “Thank fuck for that.”

  I kneel down and rummage through the dead man’s clothes until I find the keys to the jeep. I also take his machine gun, sidearm and a nasty looking knife. Jack and I link arms again and resume our ungainly descent.

  “So I figure our mission’s a bust,” he says. “But I reckon I can still be useful, right, so I untether the dinghy and manage to row to a mooring and haul the bag up onto the embankment up these old stone steps. I figure I can flag down the others and give them the bag.”

  “Others?”

  “Yeah, Tariq, Green and this crazy girl who says she knows you.”

  “Caroline?”