School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles)

by Scott K. Andrews

  “Yeah,” I muttered.

  “Did you?”

  I looked at him, incredulous. This is what he wanted to talk about?

  “She’s dead, Dad.”

  He looked down at his feet. “Yeah, of course she is.”

  Another silence.

  “So you’re going to take watch, yeah?”

  “Um, yeah,” he said, lifting his eyes and regarding me curiously, as if he had no idea who I was. “You get some sleep.”

  “Wake me when it’s my turn.”

  “Will do.”

  I lay down and turned away from him, resting my head on my folded arms and closing my eyes.

  “And Lee, thank you,” he said softly.

  I said nothing. A moment later I heard him moving away.

  Of course he didn’t wake me. A distant secondary explosion jolted me awake; the fires must have reached an old fuel tank or gas cylinder in one of the other buildings. It was still dark, but I checked my watch and saw I’d been asleep for four hours. I lay there for a moment looking up at the stars, so clear and bright now, without electric light bleeding into the sky to hide them. I pulled my jacket tighter around me as protection from the cold, even though I knew it was still hot by English standards.

  I looked around and saw that Tariq was on watch now; my dad was asleep over to my left, and David was sitting balled up in the middle of the roof, head rested on his knees, staring blankly into space. I didn’t think he’d welcome it if I approached him.

  I could tell I wasn’t going to get any more rest, so I got up and went to sit next to Tariq.

  “Anything happening?” I asked.

  “Not really. They’ve fixed the generator and gone away, but they are still searching all the buildings. It’s the third sweep they’ve done, but Blythe must think we’re still here so he’s getting them to do it over and over. Just pray he gives up soon. I don’t want to starve to death up here.” He gave a quiet, sardonic laugh.

  “Back when I first met you, you told me you were a celebrity blogger,” I said.

  Tariq nodded. “I used to blog about life in Basra under the occupation. I had two hundred thousand readers. Some of it was printed in a British paper and a publishing company wanted to do a book. A few other bloggers did it, made big bucks. I’d just signed the bloody deal when everyone started dying. Just my luck.”

  “So how…”

  “Did I become a soldier? My knowledge of covert stuff made me a natural, I suppose.”

  I was confused. “But how does a blogger become an expert in covert stuff? I mean, why would you need it?”

  “You really know nothing about what life here was like, do you?” he said, shaking his head in wonder. He wasn’t annoyed at my ignorance, merely resigned, as if he expected the rest of the world to be blind, stupid and uninterested.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Bloggers were targets. If I dared to criticise one of the militias, there was a very good chance they would find me and kill me. And that’s just for writing about how hard it was to buy bread in their district.”

  “People would try and kill you just for blogging?”

  “And I did more than that. I investigated. I chased stories, played the journalist, tried to find the truth about certain things.”

  “Like?”

  “Kidnappings, massacres, bombings. It wasn’t hard. Basra was not a huge city, the grapevine was very good. And all the time I had to keep my identity secret. If anyone ever connected me with my blog, I was dead.”

  “And did anybody ever realise it was you?”

  “No, but they laid a trap for me. I thought I was so careful, but they threatened the family of one of my contacts and lured me into an ambush. I was looking into the looting of the stores outside town. My contact told me he knew a British soldier who was helping the looters. But the militia was waiting for me at the rendezvous. Luckily a routine patrol came past, and I was able to just walk away. One in a million chance.

  “But after that they knew who I was, so I could never go home again. I had to go into hiding, which is why I ended up working with your dad. I was lucky. Some of my friends, fellow bloggers here and in Baghdad, they were not so lucky.”

  “And now you lead the resistance.”

  “What’s left of it. Anyway, I’ve got nothing better to do; my laptop’s run out of batteries. If only I had an XO, with wireless mesh networking and some good cantennas we could have a local network up and running in no time.”

  “Stop,” I laughed. “I have no idea what you’re saying. I can use computers but I have no idea how they work”

  “So what were you going to be, huh?” asked Tariq. “Before The Cull turned you into soldier boy. You were going to university to study?”

  “I have no idea. I wasn’t a failure at school, but I didn’t exactly get the greatest grades either. I’d probably have ended up doing English at some crappy university, assuming I got in. After that, God knows.

  “All my life I’ve had my dad telling me what he didn’t want me to be — a soldier. I never had a clue what I wanted to be. Rich, I suppose. Irresistibly attractive to women. I dunno. I was fourteen when The Cull hit. I hadn’t even chosen my GCSEs yet, although I had one meeting with a careers advisor to help me choose.”

  “Careers advisor? Someone who tells you what jobs you’d be good at, yeah?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “What did they recommend for you?”

  “Promise not to laugh?”

  “I swear on the grave of Warren Ellis.”

  “They said I should go into banking.”

  “Ha!”

  “Yeah, that was my reaction too.”

  He fell silent, and I could see he was trying to frame a question.

  “What you did,” he said eventually, “was insane. You know that, right?”

  “Which bit? Flying here, giving myself up to Blythe, trying to escape, letting him strap me into an electric chair?”

  “All of it. Fucking insane. I mean, I know a lot of it was my idea, but honestly, if someone had tried to persuade me to do what you did I’d have told them to go fuck themselves.”

  “He’s my dad.”

  “Is that all, though? I wonder if maybe you do not have a death wish.”

  “Don’t be daft,” I said, but he didn’t seem convinced.

  He pressed on. “You would not be the first. Many of the people who survived The Cull took their own lives. Those who could not do that looked for people to do it for them.”

  I felt a sudden surge of anger. “Well that’s not me, right?”

  He just looked at me, head cocked slightly to one side, his face asking silently “are you sure?”

  “Fuck you, Tariq,” I hissed and made to rise. He grabbed my arm and I shook it off angrily before walking back to my clear patch of roof and lying back down.

  I lay there seething. How fucking dare he!

  “Why so angry, Nine Lives?” said the voice in my head. “Touch a nerve, did he?”

  I LAY THERE a long time watching the night turn to grey twilight before the soft glow of morning bled across the skyline. David didn’t move a muscle in all that time. Tariq, on the other hand, was restless and unsettled. He moved from one side of the roof to another, checking the area, keeping his head low to avoid being spotted. He must have been worried sick about his friends.

  Dad slept like a log, proving that he was the only real soldier amongst us; he once told me that the ability to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, is one of the best tricks a combat soldier can learn.

  He woke with the sun and we gathered in the centre of the roof. No-one would make eye contact with me.

  “Sitrep?” asked Dad.

  “They’ve stopped searching, and the generator’s fixed,” said Tariq. “I think we can go now.”

  No sooner had he said that than there was a hum of power, a screech of feedback, and Blythe’s voice echoed across the compound.

  “Good morning,” he said.


  “Oh crap,” said David.

  None of us moved, waiting to hear what the general had to say.

  “I hope you slept well,” said the echoey tannoy voice. “I know you’re still inside the walls. Your chances of getting out of here alive are not that great.”

  “How the fuck…” began Tariq, but David shushed him urgently and ran to the edge of the roof, looking north. He gestured us to come and see. Blythe was standing on a clear patch of ground off in the distance, with a small group of men. It was too far to make out details, but I assumed he had a mic headset on, patched into the speakers which I now saw were hanging from every lamppost. But we were close enough to make out the detail that mattered. Five stakes driven into the ground, each with a person kneeling beside them, their hands bound behind their back.

  I heard Tariq gasp in horror. My dad put his arm around him and hugged him tightly. It was a comradely, even paternal gesture and I felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.

  “Is that all of them?” I asked.

  Tariq nodded.

  “I have with me,” the general continued, “five of your friends. I am going to kill them whether you give yourselves up or not. But you have a choice.”

  “Always a bloody choice,” said Dad.

  “If you surrender now,” said the general, “I will kill you all quickly and painlessly. You have my word.”

  “And if we don’t?” muttered Dad.

  “If you don’t surrender now,” Blythe went on, as if he could hear us, “I will impale your friends one by one and leave them to die slow, painful deaths. My soldiers will then lay fires in every building in this compound and burn them to the ground. All the gun towers are manned, there’s no way to escape. Wherever you’re hiding, we’ll smoke you out. And if you survive the fire, then you’ll join your friends on a stake. Quick and easy; slow and painful. Your choice. You have two minutes to make your position known.”

  We moved back from the edge. Tariq was in shock, David looked furious, Dad’s face gave nothing away; he was busy calculating the odds.

  “Okay,” said Dad, “here’s what we do…”

  “Pardon me Sar’nt, but I think I’d better handle this,” interrupted David. “I can get us out of here.”

  Dad looked skeptical.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I’m Special Forces, Mr Keegan. I’m trained for this kind of thing. Just before deployment I completed a SERE course.”

  “Seriously?” asked Dad. “You’re like, what, twenty?”

  “When you’ve got a father like mine, Sir, you don’t have much choice but to be the best. He started preparing me for Special Forces the day I finished potty training. I’m the youngest soldier ever recruited to my unit, and trust me, I did it all on my own.”

  “Your father must have been very proud,” I said, sarcastically.

  “I no longer have a father,” he replied, matter of fact.

  “What’s SERE?” Tariq asked.

  “Survival, evasion, resistance, escape,” he replied. “I can get in and out of anywhere.”

  “Then we have to stop him,” said Tariq, finally. “I can’t watch this happen again.”

  He looked at us desperately, but none of us could meet his gaze.

  “We can’t leave them! We can’t!” he said urgently. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself.”

  “Sit down, T,” said Dad.

  “John, I won’t let this happen,” said Tariq, almost shouting now. “They’re going to die because they followed my orders. Orders I gave trying to save your life. We can’t abandon them.”

  But his face, the tears in his eyes, betrayed the truth. Tariq knew it was hopeless.

  Dad put his arm on Tariq’s shoulder and gripped it tightly, leaning forward and resting his forehead against the distraught Iraqi’s. “They’re dead already, T. It’s over.”

  “So what, we just run?” said Tariq, crying now. “We let him kill our friends and we walk away? Then what the fuck has this all been for? What’s it all been for?”

  “Oh no, we don’t walk away,” said Dad. “Not now. Not after all this.” He turned his attention to David. “You know this camp, right?”

  David nodded.

  “You can help us move through it undetected?”

  “If you do exactly as I say and keep your heads, I believe I can, Sir.”

  “Then here’s what we’re going to do,” said Dad, and I could see the resolve harden in his eyes as he spoke, seeing my father the soldier fully apparent in front of me for the first time. Suddenly I could see why he’d commanded the respect of the resistance. When he turned to us and outlined his plan, the force of his determination was impossible to resist.

  Ever since I’d arrived in Iraq he’d been on the back foot, imprisoned, reacting to events, frightened for me. But now he was in a position to take direct action again. I realised there was a whole side to my father I’d never seen before. And it echoed in me. I learned as much about myself as I did about him in that moment, and I felt proud.

  “We’re going to hunt and kill General Blythe before the hour is out,” said Dad, calmly. “And anyone who gets in our way dies. Everyone with me?”

  All eyes were on the son of the man we were proposing to kill.

  An awful, gut wrenching scream of pure terror and agony erupted from a hundred tiny speakers.

  “I believe that is an achievable objective, Sir,” said David.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DAD TOOK ME to one side as we prepared to leave.

  “I want you to stay here, Lee.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We’re going to into combat against a vastly superior force of men who want to kill us. It’s no place for a boy. I couldn’t live with myself if I got you killed. You sit tight, wait ’til dark and then try to slip out on your own. You’ll have more of a chance that way. We’ll rendezvous at the football ground tomorrow morning. Okay?”

  I didn’t know where to start, but I felt the anger welling up in me and tried to choose my words carefully. I failed.

  “Fuck that. And fuck you,” I spat. “I’m the one who rescued you, remember? No place for a boy, my arse.” I clenched my jaw and stared him down, full of defiance.

  I could tell he wanted to get into it, shout me down, ground me, even give me a slap. But I could see the uncertainty in his eyes, no longer sure which, if any, approach would work with me. He was right to hesitate.

  Eventually he just nodded.

  AS THE DYING screams of Brett, Toseef and Anna echoed around the buildings and gardens, we moved through the compound like ghosts.

  We stole the uniforms off the first four soldiers we encountered, and took their weapons too. Viewed from a distance we would now look like a normal patrol. But we only broke cover when needed, preferring to move through the buildings and shadows.

  David was terrifying; silent, focused, seemingly without fear, and totally in control. My dad and Tariq followed his every move and gesture like the practised guerrilla fighters they were. I just tagged along behind them, trying not to give the game away with a careless move.

  When we encountered guards or patrols David would take the lead, sidling up to them with the grace of a dancer, silencing them so quietly he almost seemed gentle. He would wrap his arm around their throat, compress their carotid artery and squeeze until they passed out. Then he would lay them on the floor, take hold of their hair and slit their throats.

  When two or more stumbled across our path Dad would take the second, and Tariq would take the third. Although neither of them were as poised and fluid as David, they each held their own.

  Tariq favoured a slow, delicate, tiptoe approach until just out of striking range, and then he would suddenly leap forward with his arms raised and snap the neck of his prey with a flourish, and let them collapse to the ground at his feet as his arms went wide as if to take a bow.

  My father, on the other hand, was more straightforward. I was shocked by the calm precision with wh
ich he killed.

  He would walk casually up behind his intended victim with his knife drawn, looking like he was going to pat the guy cheerily on the back and suggest a quick beer. He would then wrap one arm around the man’s mouth as he slid the knife in between their ribs, as matter of fact as slicing open an envelope.

  We hid the bodies as best we could, but we knew we had to move quickly. Sooner or later someone’s absence would be noted, or a patrol would not radio in on time, and they would begin to zero in on us.

  It probably only took us fifteen minutes to make our way to the main palace, but it felt like a lifetime. I didn’t need to kill anyone during the journey, and I was grateful. I didn’t want Dad to see me get blood on my hands. Not yet, anyway.

  I was worried that he’d see my face as I took a life and he’d realise the truth about me.

  The first time I murdered someone — not the first time I took a life, that was earlier — I was out of my head on drugs. I remember the actions but not how it felt.

  The second time I took a life it was more by luck than judgement, scrabbling around on the floor, slick with blood, struggling to free myself from a man who was throttling me. I was stabbing his leg as I passed out; he died before I woke up. But I remember how sickeningly tactile it was. Here I was sharing — causing! — the most important moment in this person’s life, more intimate even than sex, and I didn’t know anything about him. Not his name, his sexual orientation, footy team, nothing at all. His entire existence culminated in a meeting with me, and yet we were strangers.

  After that my killing became more focused and deliberate, even clinical. I saw the confusion and pain on my next victim’s face as my knife penetrated his heart. I knew him, so his death was more than just meaningless slaughter; I was aware who and what I was snuffing out. It made me feel unbearably sad and guilty.

  And powerful.

  Then there were those that I killed in the heat of battle, gone in a flash. They were barely even people, just objects, like cars, which I had to stop in order to prevent collision. Yet each of them was unique, identifiable, and known to someone, just not to me, their killer. I had complete power over them, but they never even saw my face.