Don't Breathe

by Heleyne Hammersley

  He felt Raynor shift next to him and he knew that the man would be desperate to ask questions. Cam prayed that professionalism would override curiosity and that any awkward queries could wait until the students had been dispatched.

  ‘I need you to pair up,’ Cam continued. ‘Each pair needs to collect a note and I’ll tell you which room to go to.’

  A few students started to get to their feet, but Cam waved them back down, the sheaf of papers in his right hand fluttering like a caged bird.

  ‘Not yet!’ He knew he was shouting but he couldn’t afford to lose control of the situation. If he had to yell, he’d yell himself hoarse to save his son.

  ‘We need to do this methodically. Listen. I’ll give each row an area of the school to cover. You’ve all been here long enough to know how many rooms there are and where each one is. I also need to send some of you to the main hall with Mr Raynor. There are two half-year groups in there that need to be told to leave. I’m relying on you to make sure every member of staff and every student is off site within the next twenty minutes.’

  He was frightening them. Two girls in the front row had gone pale and a few others of both genders had angry red flashes across their cheeks and looked like they might get up and shout at him, or each other.

  ‘I don’t want anybody leaving here until they’ve been allocated a room to visit. The person at the window end of each row is in charge of making sure that everybody on their row knows where they’re going. When you’ve delivered your message, you’re to accompany the class teacher and the class down to the theatre in town. I’ve made arrangements for it to be opened by the time we get there.’

  A flurry of waved hands followed his final statement.

  ‘No! I know you’ll all want to ask questions and I know some of you are worried. I’m not going to give any additional information except to say that the safety of everybody in school depends on this going smoothly. I’ll send a member of the leadership team to the theatre as soon as possible to explain what’s happening. If you follow my instructions, you won’t be in any danger, but this is a time-sensitive issue.’ He was making it up as he went along but he needed to keep talking so there was no room for speculation or rebellion. This had to be done and done quickly.

  Cam gave instructions to Jack Raynor to allocate the science block and two other areas to the students and handed him half of the A4 sheets before making his way to the back of the room and the last few rows. Here he told the students to go to the first and second floors and the staffroom.

  ‘What about learning support?’ A boy asked. ‘There are usually a couple of classes there and, even if there aren’t, some of the staff might be around.’

  Christ! Cam hadn’t even thought about the specialist unit that he’d been so proud to secure funding for a couple of years ago. Some of the most vulnerable kids may well be in there. Kids who wouldn’t understand the break in their routine and would potentially be difficult to persuade to leave the safety of the school.

  Then he remembered what Ruth had said when she’d printed the registers out. There was a trip today and they’d already left. It was the annual Christmas visit to the bowling alley in Carlisle and nearly all the SEND students would be on it.

  ‘Good thinking,’ he said to the student, in his most reassuring tone. ‘But I think most of the SEND kids are on a trip. Could four of you go and check. Give one of the notes to anybody you find there. And make sure you check all the rooms.’ Glancing across at Raynor, Cam could see that he’d completed his task and was waiting for further instruction.

  ‘Okay,’ Cam said, clapping his hands together twice. ‘You all know where you’re going. Tell the staff that you don’t know anything beyond what’s in the note and make sure that they know it’s urgent. Students can take bags and coats – it’s not a fire drill – but we need to clear the site as quickly as possible. Off you go.’

  He watched the whole group file out of the common room before turning to Jack Raynor. ‘We’ve got a group of armed men on site, Jack,’ he said.

  Raynor glanced around the room as if expecting to see a gunman burst from one of the corners.

  ‘They’re in the humanities block holding one class hostage. Tom’s in there.’

  Raynor reached out and placed a firm hand on Cam’s shoulder. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Get out to the front of the school and try to make sure that the evacuation goes smoothly. We’ll need to…’

  ‘Mr Cleaver!’ The uniformed policeman burst through the door to the common room his face flushed, eyes bright. ‘I need you to come back to reception immediately. We’ve had contact from one of the men in the classroom. He’s asking for you.’

  7

  Annie Bainbridge lunged at Harley, hardly aware of what she was doing. All she could think about was stopping Tom from getting hurt and all she could see was blood.

  ‘What have you done? What the fuck have you done?’

  She could hear that she was screaming but she didn’t seem to be able to get herself under control. Tom was hurt. Tom could die. She didn’t care about the armed men; she didn’t care about the rest of the people in the room. She cared about Tom and she hadn’t even told him how she really felt. Her mum had given her permission to take the day off, to go shopping, have a break as it was so close to Christmas, but Annie had needed to see Tom. They’d argued and it had all been her fault. She’d needed to make things right between them.

  ‘Annie, get back!’ She felt hands on her upper arms, holding her back, pulling her away and swung round to see Miss Frith’s frightened face close to her own.

  ‘Annie! Let me get through. I need to see what’s happened.’

  She took a step to the side, wanting to look at Tom’s injuries, to see how badly Harley had hurt him but she was terrified. At least, if she didn’t look, she wouldn’t know, and she could pretend that everything was all right. But how could everything be all right? The whole class was being held hostage by three armed men and Tom Cleaver had just been stabbed.

  Pale faces all around her. Some she trusted, some she loathed but she knew them all. Yet not one of them was trying to help. They were all just sitting there, not even looking at her, or at Tom.

  ‘What’s wrong with you all?’ she yelled. ‘Somebody do something. Get some help.’

  And then she turned fully round and saw what her classmates were looking at. All three men had shouldered their rifles and were pointing them at Harley Morton and Tom Cleaver.

  ‘Put the knife down!’ Larry yelled. Harley was staring down at his hands as if he’d just noticed them and wasn’t convinced that they belonged to him. In his right hand the knife trembled and Annie watched, horrified, as a drop of blood formed on the tip of the blade before dropping to the floor.

  Harley’s eyes drifted from his hands to the barrel of Larry’s gun and back again.

  ‘Drop it!’

  His fingers relaxed and the blade glinted in the weak sunlight as it slid onto the table. Larry gestured to Mo, who dashed forwards and knocked it onto the carpet. ‘Somebody get some tissues or something, I’m not touching that. Who knows what the kid might have. I’m not getting AIDS for nobody.’

  ‘Fucking pussy,’ Larry hissed. He elbowed his companion out of the way and grabbed the knife by the handle. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’

  Harley reared back as flecks of Larry’s spit sprayed his pale face but he didn’t respond.

  ‘Jesus. Sit back down and don’t fucking move. And you, teacher, back to your desk.’

  Harley’s legs seemed to buckle under him as he collapsed into the nearest seat, trembling, his eyes wild and unfocused. Miss Frith kept her eyes fixed on Tom as she backed away, clearly reluctant to leave him alone.

  ‘What about Tom?’ Annie asked. ‘He’s hurt. We need to get help.’

  Both men were looking at Larry, and Annie could see that they were panicking. This hadn’t been part of the plan, she realised. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. The
guns were intended to subdue the class, but she doubted that any of the intruders had been instructed to shoot.

  ‘I said, what about Tom? We can’t just leave him here to bleed to death.’

  ‘Look after him,’ Larry snapped, lowering his gun. ‘If you care about him that much, then you sort him out.’

  Annie could see that she wasn’t getting through to him. This man didn’t care about Tom, he was collateral damage, if he died it would be inconvenient, but it was Harley’s fault – Harley’s guilt. She needed to do something.

  Tom was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, both hands clutched to his left side. Annie knelt down next to him.

  ‘Hey,’ she said gently. ‘How’re you doing? Where are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Tom said, his voice shaky. ‘He stabbed me in the side. I don’t think it’s too bad. Stings a bit. It hurts to breathe; he might have caught one of my ribs.’

  His face was grey, his breathing rapid and shallow. Annie desperately tried to remember her anatomy lessons. What was there on the left side of the body? Which major organs were at risk? Tom’s hands were too low down for Harley to have injured his heart or lungs but she couldn’t remember what else was there. His kidneys? His liver? Oh shit! She couldn’t remember. Where was his liver?

  ‘Annie.’ Tom had removed one of his hands from his wound and was gripping her forearm leaving bloody fingerprints on the sleeve of her top. ‘Don’t spin out on me. I don’t think it’s too bad but I’m bleeding quite a bit. I need to keep pressure on it.’

  They’d both had first aid training last year as part of their PHSE programme. They’d bandaged each other’s limbs and breathed life into a plastic doll, but Annie couldn’t remember anything about the lessons.

  ‘I need something absorbent,’ Tom said. ‘Something I can press against the wound. You need to help me. Come on, Annie, think.’ He gave her arm a tight squeeze and suddenly her mind cleared. Compression. She needed some sort of pad to ease the flow of blood and absorb any that was still leaking out.

  ‘I need some help,’ she said, standing up and addressing the class. ‘I’ve got to put some pressure on this wound. Has anybody got a spare T-shirt, paper towels, anything I can use to slow the bleeding?’

  The students looked at each other blankly and Anne could see that they were struggling with shock. The glazed eyes, flushed cheeks and lack of comprehension suggested that most of them were dangerously close to shutting down completely. They needed a task.

  ‘Girls. Check your bags. Sanitary towels would be perfect. And you, Miss,’ she said, including the teacher, forcing her to engage with her students.

  Miss Frith shook her head and mouthed ‘tampons’ but the other girls were picking up their bags while the boys looked on in confusion and embarrassment.

  ‘PE kit,’ Annie said. ‘Tissues if that’s all you’ve got. Come on. Look.’

  Larry raised his rifle again.

  ‘One at a time,’ he instructed. ‘Everybody else keep your hands where we can see them. You first.’ He pointed at Jess Moffatt.

  Jess pulled her bag towards her and reached inside.

  ‘Try these,’ she said, handing Annie a half empty packet of sanitary towels.

  She kept her eyes on the desk in front of her and Annie could feel the embarrassment radiating from her. None of the girls liked to talk about periods in front of their male classmates and, in any other circumstances, this would be mortifying. She grabbed the package gratefully. ‘Thanks, Jess.’

  ‘Right. That’s sorted. The rest of you. Bags off desks and stay in your seats.’

  Annie knelt back down, fingers fumbling with the packaging of one of the sanitary towels. Finally freeing the pad, she stared at it, trying to work out what would work best.

  ‘Give it here!’ Tom said, snatching it away from her. Keeping one hand tightly pressed to his side, he slipped the sanitary towel underneath it, grimacing as he put pressure on the injury.

  ‘Let me see,’ Annie said, placing her hand over his.

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘Tom, let me see!’

  Tom took a deep breath and removed both hands and the sanitary towel, which was already soaked. Carefully, Annie lifted his T-shirt for a better view, allowing her to assess the extent of the injury.

  The wound was less than an inch long, but it gaped like a tiny mouth, pulsing faintly as the blood, relieved from the pressure of Tom’s hands, flowed freely.

  ‘Tom, it’s–’

  Tom put a bloody finger to his lips, silencing her. ‘It’ll be okay if I keep the pressure on it. They can’t keep us here forever. It’s not even bleeding that much.’

  Annie unwrapped another sanitary towel and passed it to Tom, the glimmer of an idea forming in her frazzled mind.

  ‘Hey,’ she yelled at Larry. ‘You can’t keep him here. He’s bleeding way too much. I think the knife might have nicked his liver.’ She had no idea if this was even possible, but she wanted to sound convincing. ‘I do A-level biology. I know what I’m talking about. There’s a serious amount of blood.’

  She hoped she was right about the men having no real desire to hurt them. She was half convinced that their situation was more about causing fear than actual harm. If she could play on that, they might have a chance of getting help.

  ‘It might be Harley who stabbed him but, if you don’t get help, you’ll be just as responsible if anything happens to him. All of you.’

  Curly glanced at Larry and Annie saw him lick his lips nervously. She was right. Killing the students wasn’t part of the plan. Whatever they’d signed up for, it wasn’t this.

  ‘He could die!’

  ‘He’ll be fine. Look after him,’ Larry said, his eyes flicking to Curly and back to Tom.

  ‘She’s right,’ Miss Frith said. ‘If he dies, you’ll all be charged with manslaughter.’

  Harley moaned as if he’d just realised the seriousness of his own situation.

  ‘Shut up!’ Larry raised his rifle and carved an arc in the air, pointing it briefly at each student in turn. ‘All of you. Shut up!’

  ‘I’m not in this to kill kids,’ Mo said. ‘It was just supposed to be for the cash. Nobody gets hurt. That’s what you said. That’s what he said.’ Annie could see a thin film of sweat above his upper lip.

  Larry pointed the gun at Mo. ‘You do as you’re told. Get a grip and let me think this through.’

  ‘We need to ring Cleaver,’ Curly said. ‘We’ve been here too long already. You were supposed to talk to him straight away.’

  Annie watched with interest. This had something to do with Tom’s dad – they’d used his name. But was it because he was the headteacher or was it more personal?

  She passed Tom another sanitary towel – only four left, she was going to have to ask the girls again – and watched as he removed the bloody one. Was the flow slowing down? It was difficult to tell.

  ‘Right, everybody quiet!’ Larry snapped. ‘One sound from anybody and I’ll shoot.’ He reached into his pocket and, for an awful, slow second Annie thought he might have a bomb or a grenade. ‘Not a word,’ he repeated as he dialled a number on an old-fashioned mobile phone.

  Somebody must have answered almost instantly because he hissed into the receiver, ‘Get Cleaver. Now!’

  Before

  Annie hadn’t wanted to stay on in the sixth form. She’d wanted to study psychology, but it was only offered at a school in Penrith and that was too far to travel. Subject choice wasn’t the only reason she wanted to escape Fellbeck. Ever since her mum had got the deputy headship, Annie had been desperate to go somewhere else. She didn’t want to ‘set an example’ and hated it when her mum said that she couldn’t do something because ‘it would reflect badly on me’. It wasn’t up to Annie to make her mum look good – she just wanted to get some decent grades and get out of Cumbria – but her mum seemed to think of her daughter as some sort of Mini-Me and never let Annie just be herself.

  Everything had chan
ged in the summer. She’d been predicted A grades for all her A-levels due to her hard work so her mum had agreed to allow her to go on holiday with a group of friends as a reward. Actually, it had been a bribe at first. Annie knew that her mum had very little faith in her daughter’s academic abilities and had set out to prove her wrong, and to give her no reason to veto the holiday. It wasn’t like they’d planned to go to Ibiza or Ayia Napa – a week walking Hadrian’s Wall and camping was hardly a high-risk proposition – but Annie had been forced to use every trick and excuse she could think of to persuade her mum to let her go. Including lying about her walking companions. Keely and Jess weren’t a problem, but Tom Cleaver was definitely on Penny’s list of ‘boys to be avoided’ – which only made him more attractive to Annie.

  Penny had never been explicit about her objection to Tom. She’d never banned Annie from seeing him. But whenever she mentioned him, or if Annie dropped his name into the conversation, however innocently, Penny’s lips would compress into a disapproving line and her eyes would narrow. Annie assumed it had a lot to do with Tom being the head’s son and the ‘incestuous’ overtones of a relationship with him would have reflected badly on her mother – or allowed Mr Cleaver deeper into Penny’s life. Annie deliberately hadn’t mentioned Tom’s intention to join the girls on their walk.

  The morning they were due to start dawned dry and bright. Keely’s mum was going to pick them all up and drive them to Carlisle where they’d decided to begin the walk – opting to avoid the fourteen miles from Bowness-on-Solway into the city because, as Jess put it, ‘who wants to spend a day walking across a flat bog?’ Annie was desperate to get away, from the house, from her mum and from her life. She’d spent the previous evening checking and re-checking her clothing and equipment and had polished her old leather walking boots to a glossy shine.