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

by Scott K. Andrews

  He shoved the gun into his pocket – no point throwing it away just yet – grabbed a second sword, and ran down the stairs, a blade in each hand. Cold steel, he decided, felt much better than a firearm.

  The cellars were a maze of tiny winding passageways, and Wilkes checked each door, finding pokey offices, store rooms, and finally a bar. The door opened from the inside just as he was reaching for the handle, so he stepped back and raised the blades. One of Cooper’s men stood in the doorway, weapon raised, but the sight of a man with two swords took him by surprise. That instant of confusion was all Wilkes needed. He lunged forward, both swords level, and felt both the steel blades slide through the man’s clothing and body smoothly and with little resistance.

  So they were sharp after all.

  The guard went rigid and the machine gun fell from his hands. The two swords were the only thing keeping him upright as blood poured from his mouth and his eyes rolled back in head.

  Wilkes executed a perfectly poised fencing retreat, withdrawing the swords in one fluid motion, letting his skewered opponent crash to the floor, then he leapt over the body into the bar.

  Here he found Ferguson tied to a chair, his face a mass of bruise and blood, stripped of his shirt, his chest a dot-to-dot of cigarette burns.

  He cut through the plastic ties on the ruined Ranger’s hands and knelt down so they were face to face, hoping against hope that his friend had not been broken by his ordeal.

  Ferguson looked up, swollen eyes full of fury. He asked for water, his voice a faint whisper. Wilkes found a pitcher of water on the bar and gave it to him. Ferguson gulped it down then stood, a trifle unsteadily. He held out his hand and Wilkes passed him his shirt and hoodie. Ferguson dressed himself carefully then looked down at the dead body of his tormentor, machine gun laying beside him ready for use.

  Ferguson looked up and held out his hand.

  “Sword,” he said.

  GREEN AND I advanced through the wreckage of the Commons Library. Jane and Jack hobbled after us, covering our rear and sides.

  “Remember,” I said quietly as we picked our way across the rubble, “his core team were SAS. They know more about close quarter combat than all of us put together. Our only hope is to contain them, pen them in, give them nowhere to run. If this turns into a running fight, they’ll pick us off easy.”

  The explosion had set fires in the old wooden building. Already flames were licking at the bookcases that lined the walls. Huge, heavy, leather bound copies of Hansard began to smoulder.

  “This place,” said Green, “is going to go up like a candle. We don’t need to follow them in there, Lee. We can just stay outside and wait. The fire will force them out.”

  I looked down the long corridor ahead of me – a shooting gallery if ever I saw one – then back to the burning room. He was right.

  “Back outside, now,” I yelled, and we retreated to Speaker’s Green. Burning pages began to rain down from the walls as we backtracked.

  “We need to think this through,” I said, turning to Jane. “Do you think he’ll stand and fight or run for it?”

  “Fight,” she said firmly.

  “Good, then what we have to do...”

  My voice was drowned out by a roar somewhere off to our left. I glanced at the others in confusion then ran through the snow, underneath Big Ben and into the yard. A tide of children was pouring up out of the underground car park. At their head ran Caroline, a machine gun in her hands. The women from the Lords brought up the rear, yelping and whooping and firing in the air.

  I tried to wave them down, to prevent them hurtling headlong into the Palace, but there was no stopping them. This wasn’t an army, this was a mob and God help anyone who got in their way.

  Caroline ran over to me as the mob streamed into the building, screaming and yelling and tearing the place apart, every one of them carrying a club, chain or gun.

  “Not quite how we planned it,” she said to me, panting and excited. “They left all our weapons in a pile in the car park, so we just collected them.”

  “We need to come up with a strategy for this, some plan...”

  Caroline cut me off with a derisive laugh. “Forget it,” she said. “Genie’s out of the bottle, Lee.”

  I stood there, frustrated at the way the situation had slipped out of our hands so quickly.

  “Fuck it,” said Jack. “Let’s follow them.” He didn’t wait for my assent, he just stomped off. Caroline went with him, Green shrugged as if to say ‘what can you do?’ and followed suit. I turned to Jane, who was looking anything but excited by this turn of events.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  Her face clouded. “I don’t want anyone getting to him before I do. Cooper’s mine,” she said. Then she too limped after the others.

  I watched her walk awkwardly until she reached the door to the building – ripped off and smashed to pieces.

  “I see what you like about her,” said the voice in my head. “She’s feisty.”

  Jane stopped and turned to look at me.

  “Are you fucking coming, or what?” she shouted.

  I WALK THROUGH the Palace of Westminster with Lee at my side, trailing in the wake of the mob.

  My foot pounds agonisingly as we shamble through the corridors of power. Everything has been ripped apart. Shattered wood panels litter the carpet, paintings and murals have been smashed and shattered.

  The Commons is a scene of total devastation. The plush green leather benches have been slashed and the stuffing lies everywhere, mirroring the snow outside. The Speaker’s Chair lies broken next to the upturned debating table. Centuries of tradition reduced to firewood in a few minutes.

  A soldier lies sprawled in the middle of the floor. His head has been bashed in with a dispatch box that lies next to him, its lid snapped off. There are two dead children on the stairs that lead up to the back benches. I hurry over and kneel beside them, but they are shot to pieces and beyond help. One, a young girl, is a stranger to me, but I recognise the boy from St Mark’s. I close their sightless eyes and stand, gripping my gun tightly, eager for retribution.

  The row of grimy windows at the top of the chamber to our left begins to flicker orange as the fire sweeps parallel to us. It won’t be long before it reaches this chamber.

  We emerge into the Members’ Lobby. Marble figures lie on the ground, arms broken, heads smashed off. We pass a group of four kids toppling a statue of some long forgotten administrator, his outstretched finger hectoring and stern; it snaps off as the figure crashes to the tiles.

  Ahead there is gunfire and shouting, explosions and screams, and the constant angry roar of children on the rampage.

  There are a series of loud reports down the corridor to my right. I spin to see a soldier backing away, firing a handgun as he goes. Then it clicks uselessly, the ammunition exhausted. He throws the weapon at whoever is advancing towards him, then turns to run in my direction. I raise my gun to cut him down but before I can fire a tall figure bursts into the corridor in a flurry of limbs and steel. The soldier raises his arms to protect himself, but the swordsman brings his blade down in a sweeping arc and cleanly severs the man’s head from his body. It rolls towards me, the cadaver toppling to the floor behind it. The swordsman stands upright and walks towards us, dripping blade at his side. His face is a mass of bruises.

  “Ferguson, is that you?” says Lee.

  The figure nods as he reaches us. One of the four kids, finished with the statue now, runs forward and kicks the soldier’s severed head as if taking a penalty. It soars into the air and narrowly misses a second sword-bearing Ranger who emerges from the corridor and ducks in alarm as the head flies past, breaking the window on its way out.

  “Fucking hell!” swears the Ranger. He turns and shouts at Ferguson. “We’re supposed to disable when possible, Ferguson. You know the boss doesn’t like us killing if we don’t have to.”

  Ferguson turns and stares at Wilkes who immediately puts his hands up.
/>   “But, you know, do what you feel, pal,” he says sheepishly.

  The kids laugh and high five the head kicker, then they take off towards the Lords, following the sounds of the fight.

  Lee, the two Rangers and I follow on behind.

  AS WE WALKED through that corridor something strange happened to me. I felt my pulse racing, faster than it had even when I was lined up in front of the firing squad. My hand started spastically clenching and unclenching on the stock of my gun and Mac began to shout at me.

  “Come on Nine Lives, what are you doing straggling at the back?” he bellowed. “Fucking get in there. Crack some skulls. Come on, for fuck’s sake.”

  I tried to ignore him but he was too loud, too insistent. The desire to kill grew so strong that I could barely hold myself in check.

  “Stay with her,” I said to Wilkes. Then I looked at Ferguson as if to say ‘You coming?’ He nodded once, and we ran ahead, into the fray. I heard Jane shouting at me to be careful, but it barely registered.

  We came to the Lords and found the doors smashed open. The noise from inside was indescribable. As we entered we found the mob of children, nearly all of them, I reckon, formed into a circle. Some were standing on the red leather benches to get a better view of the makeshift arena they’d constructed on the floor of the house. They were literally baying for blood, chanting, cheering, jeering and yelling. I fought my way through the crowd to the front edge and found two of Cooper’s soldiers – big, burly men in black combats, shaven headed and scary – standing with their backs to each other, circling around and around waiting for the crowd to surge forward and tear them to pieces. They were bleeding, desperate and cornered.

  The men were unarmed, and the children had enough weapons between them to gun them down a hundred times, but it seemed the crowd was eager for a more primitive spectacle. They were hurling anything and everything they could find at the men – books, computer equipment, chairs, heavy wooden boxes. The men were, I realised, being stoned to death. I felt a surge of excited bloodlust and ran out into the lobby where I had passed some more shattered statues. I grabbed a heavy, sharp piece of marble and ran back, fighting my way through the crowd to the front again, cradling it in my hands.

  The men were batting away the objects that were flying at them, but they couldn’t get them all. A gold finial smashed into the face of one of them and he reeled backwards. The children cheered as blood began to pump from his nose. He stopped for a moment and bowed his head, wiping the blood onto his sleeve. I smiled as I stepped forward, raised the heavy stone block, and brought it crashing down on the man’s head, feeling his skull crack and crumble beneath it.

  “Yeah!” cried Mac. “That’s more like it! Kill the bastard!”

  The man slumped against me, blood spurting from his head, spraying all over me. I brought the rock down again and again, splashing his brains all over my chest. The children cheered and stamped their feet. The other soldier stepped forward, holding out his hands. I’m unsure whether he was begging for mercy or trying to get me to stop. I brought the stone down one more time and the man collapsed to the floor. I dropped the stone on what was left of his head, drew my gun and shot his colleague in the face. There was a huge cheer from the crowd as the man’s head jerked backwards and he toppled to the floor.

  I raised my blood drenched arms, gun in hand, and I roared. The crowd echoed my triumph. If I registered the horror in Ferguson’s face, Mac’s encouragement was enough to make me to ignore it.

  “Come on!” I cried.

  The crowd of children parted before me then fell into step behind as I ran past the broken golden throne and out the rear doors into the Royal Gallery – a long corridor lined with opulent paintings of heroic military scenes from the nineteenth century. I ran at the head of the mob down that hall towards the doors of the Queen’s Robing Room. The doors were slightly ajar, but there seemed to be nobody ahead of us, so I ran headlong toward them.

  Only when I was two thirds of the way down the hall, with a hundred screaming children behind me, did the doors suddenly swing open to reveal four men, two standing, two kneeling, machine guns raised. And standing in between them was Cooper, smiling as he saw us approach.

  “Fire!” he shouted.

  The four machine guns opened up simultaneously.

  It turned out I was right – being shot multiple times doesn’t really hurt. It’s like being punched by someone wearing boxing gloves; you feel the impact in your torso but there’s no pain, just a sudden pressure and shocking push backwards as you absorb the momentum of the bullet as it spins into your flesh, tearing and ripping and smashing its way through you.

  I hit the tiles hard and slid forward on a tide of my own blood.

  All I could hear was gunfire and screaming.

  And then, as silence fell inside my head, Mac whispered one word, clear and calm.

  “Gotcha.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I HEAR THE volley of gunfire and the sudden change from yelling to screaming as I pass the threshold of the Lords.

  Ahead of me I can see the mass of children pouring past the Queen’s chair, waving their weapons in a frenzy. Suddenly the tide turns and they back away and turn to run towards us. The children at the back are taken by surprise and some fall to the ground to be trampled by the mass panic that sweeps over them.

  I try to wave them down, to get them to stop and regroup, but they’re like a herd of panicked cattle – unthinking and unstoppable. Wilkes pushes me hard, flinging me onto the front bench, saving me from being trampled in the rush.

  When the stampede has passed, I pull myself off the bench and see Wilkes picking himself up across from me. We can hear the commotion of the retreating mob behind us, and the groans of the injured and dying ahead.

  “Put that bloody knife away and pick up a real weapon,” I hiss at Wilkes, annoyed by his sword. He nods reluctantly and pulls a handgun from his pocket with his left hand, although he keeps the sword raised in his right. We advance either side of the throne into the corridor beyond.

  The long, wide room is strewn with bodies. The air is thick with smoke so it’s hard to make out the far end, where Cooper and his men must be. The light is streaming through the windows behind them, casting their shadows into the smoke, making them seem ghostly.

  I turn to Wilkes.

  “Find someone, anyone, and go around. Get behind them.”

  But before he can move there is a cry from the far end and the sounds of a struggle. The shadows dance and writhe in the smoke, there is a brief burst of gunfire, then footsteps on the tiled floor as someone comes running towards us.

  “Stay right there!” I yell. The running man stops dead as the smoke begins to clear.

  As the scene fades into view I first make out Cooper, standing about a third of the way to us, holding a handgun. He stares at me and snarls, a cornered animal. Then behind him I gradually make out four of his men, kneeling with their fingers laced behind their heads. Standing behind and above them are Green, Jack, Jools and some of the other women from the Lords, who have managed to outflank them.

  “You’re trapped, Cooper,” I say, sighting my gun carefully on his chest. “There’s nowhere for you to run. Your army’s defeated, your prisoners are freed, your Palace is on fire.”

  He looks left and right desperately, searching for an escape route, but there is nothing. Then he looks down at his feet, at the dead and dying, and he barks a short, humourless laugh.

  Quick as a flash he drops to the floor and grabs one of the shot children, dragging them to him and then pulling the body to the side wall.

  I nearly scream as I realise that the bloody mess he’s dragging is Lee.

  My knees give way and I crash to the floor as I cry out. It sounds like someone else. Surely that scream of anguish can’t have come from me?

  In a moment Cooper is sitting with his back to the wall, legs wide, with Lee slumped back against his chest as a human shield.

  My breat
h comes in short, ragged gasps and I try to focus through my tears. Lee is still breathing, I can tell that, but he’s been shot multiple times, across the chest and abdomen. He is literally soaked in blood from head to toe.

  His head lolls back against Cooper’s chest and his eyes open, rolling wildly, confused and in shock.

  Cooper brings his gun up, presses it against Lee’s temple, and stares at me over my dying lover’s shoulder.

  “He’s still alive, Kate,” he says, no longer shouting.“There’s a chance you could save him. Get him to St Thomas’ quickly and you never know.”

  Lee’s eyes focus on me and his face forms a question. Then he looks down at the forty or so dead and dying children that litter the floor before him and his mouth hangs open.

  “What did I do?” he whispers as he surveys the carnage. He looks up at me with eyes clouded by tears and blood. “Matron, what did I do?”

  I hear myself sob. This isn’t the resolute warrior Lee has become. He just sounds like a frightened child.

  I take a deep breath and force myself to take control. I slowly rise to my feet.

  “Okay,” I shout. “If you let him go, I promise you can walk out of here.”

  “Like fuck he can!” It’s Jools, shouting from the far room, bringing her gun to bear on Cooper. “That rat bastard is mine.”

  “Julia, darling,” says Cooper. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  He takes the gun away from Lee’s head for an instant and fires a single shot towards the far room. The gun is back at Lee’s temple before Jools’ lifeless corpse hits the ground. Jack cries out in alarm. There are shouts and screams both ahead and behind me.

  Lee’s looking left and right, starting to focus, starting to get a sense of his situation.