School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles)

by Scott K. Andrews

  That feeling of power grew in me with each death, like a sickness I couldn’t control and wasn’t sure I wanted to. Until Mac, who I didn’t even kill.

  It shames me more than I can say, but when I stood in front of Mac, preparing to put a bullet in his head, I felt a thrill of anticipation and excitement that transported me. It was only because I lingered in order to savour the moment that Green was able to shoot him instead.

  Let me be clear: I didn’t hesitate because I wanted to be merciful; I hesitated because I wanted the moment to last. I even got a hard on. I can’t stand to think what that says about me.

  And now I was watching another killer, one I had thought I knew better than anybody still living, plying his trade with cool efficiency, and I thought: “Is that what I look like? Is that what I’ve become?”

  Even with all that blood on my hands, the smooth, practised ease of my father’s emotionless murdering shocked me. It shouldn’t have. He was a soldier, after all. I knew he’d been in combat, I knew he’d killed people, just as he’d been trained to do. I knew who he was and what he did.

  But seeing those hands, the ones that used to tickle me, throw me up in the air, lift me on to his shoulders on sunny country walks, coolly sliding a blade into the back of a man whose face he’d never seen, was a revelation. I realised three things in quick succession.

  He was much better at this than me.

  I had no idea who he really was.

  And finally, if I got to know my murderous father, maybe it would help me understand his murderous son.

  OUR POINT OF entry to the palace was the cell block. There were no prisoners in there any more, so it was unguarded. Then we were into the servants’ passageway and safe in the dark, forgotten staircase. We soon came to the hidden door I had used to escape from my torturers the day before. On the other side was the vast room the general had taken as his office. The only problem was that we had no way of knowing who was in there.

  There was nothing for it but to take the plunge, so David gently cracked the door open and peered through the tiny opening. There was nobody there, so he pushed the door open and ran, soft footed, to the main doors of the room. They stood ajar, and he looked through the gap then waved us out; there was nobody around. Everyone was too busy scouring the compound for us. This was the last place they’d be looking.

  He gestured for me to watch the stairs, and waved Dad and Tariq across to search the room where I’d been tortured. There was a pool of congealed blood by the door, a memento of my most recent kill. There was a wide smear running to the balcony where the body had been dragged away and tossed over the railing to the ground below.

  Tariq indicated that the room was clear. Dad went to the balcony to scan the area. David was already at the desk, hard at work placing the small block of C4 that he’d appropriated from stores on our journey here. I heard footsteps echoing through the hallway below and hissed at them to hurry. But David continued to work. The footsteps reached the stairs, and I hissed again, but David still stayed put. I ran across to him and grabbed his shoulder but he shrugged me off. I looked up at Dad, frantic, What do we do?

  Dad ran around, grabbed my shoulder and dragged me towards the torture room. We ran inside and Tariq pushed the door almost closed behind us. Through the crack we could see David finish his handiwork and stand up, turning as if to leave. But then the main doors opened and there was his father, framed in the doorway.

  “Ha,” said the general. “You got balls, son.”

  David said nothing. I could see he held the detonator in his left hand, his thumb on the small, shiny switch.

  The general turned, said “stay outside” to the men who had been escorting him, and closed the main doors behind him.

  Father and son stood face to face for a minute before the elder man spoke.

  “Bet you ten bucks I can put a bullet in your head before you press that button,” he said in a pally way, as if referring to an old shared joke.

  “Bet you ten bucks you can’t,” said David, with a wry smile.

  But neither of them moved a muscle.

  I went to push the door open, but my dad’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.

  “Let it play out,” he whispered. “David can handle himself.”

  I nodded, but Dad kept his hand on my shoulder as a gentle reminder of who was in charge.

  “I remember the day you were born…” began the general.

  “No,” interrupted David, shaking his head.

  The general considered for a moment and then nodded, abandoning that approach.

  “I agree,” he said. “It’s gone too far for that, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has.”

  The general shook his head in weary disbelief.

  “Was it always going to end like this, do you think?”

  “No. If things had stayed the way they were, we’d be eating Thanksgiving dinner with Mom and Sarah, fighting over the gravy.”

  “But things didn’t stay the same, did they?”

  “No, they didn’t. They never do.”

  “I reckon that’s true. I love you, son.”

  I expected David to respond with “I’m not your son” again, but this time he replied: “I love you too, Dad.”

  There was a brief pause, and then a blur of movement and sudden violence that I couldn’t even process. There was a single shot and David was lying on the floor, his head at a terrible angle, glassy eyed, his limbs in spasm, a thick pool of blood spreading out from the back of his shattered skull.

  My dad gasped, his fingers crushing my shoulder (thankfully not the one I’d recently dislocated, or I’d have yelped). I placed my hand over his and squeezed back.

  General Blythe stood over the body of his dead son for a minute, silent, shoulders hunched. But there were no tears, not even a single sob. Eventually he drew himself back up to his full height and walked to the doors, pulling them open and gesturing wordlessly for a soldier to remove David’s corpse.

  When the mess was cleared away, the general was once again alone in his room with the doors closed. He sat heavily in his chair and swiveled to stare out at the rising sun.

  Tariq and I both looked at Dad, guns tight in our grips. Dad nodded and we began to push open the door. Suddenly there was a shrill alarm. I felt a rush of adrenaline. Had we triggered it somehow?

  But the general spun his chair so he had his back to us and the large flatscreen telly buzzed into life. That was where the sound had come from. Dad grabbed my shoulder and dragged me back, pulling the door almost closed again. I shrugged his hand off me, full of resentment, but resumed my previous position, watching the general as he began to talk to the man who had appeared on screen.

  It was clearly a live feed, so some satellites must still be functioning up there somewhere. The man on the screen was old; seventy at least, with a liver spotted face, pallid, ghostly skin and a thin ring of white hair around his shiny bald pate. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, all immaculately pressed, and he was sitting in front of the stars and stripes. He was obviously indoors, but well lit, as if in a TV studio about to present the news. Wherever he was he had lots of power to burn.

  “Good evening, General,” said the man. His voice was thin and reedy.

  Even with all the clues the screen offered me, nothing prepared me for what the general said next.

  “Good evening, Mr President.”

  “Fuck,” whispered Dad under his breath.

  “Progress report?” wheezed the old man.

  “We’ve eliminated all local resistance, as ordered.”

  “And the English soldier, Keegan?”

  “Dead.” So the general wasn’t above lying to his Commander-in-Chief. Interesting.

  The old man smiled a little at this news. It was not a pleasant sight. “Good. About time. Did he give you anything useful before he died?”

  “No. He didn’t break.”

  The old man gave a harrumph of displeasure. “Pity.
We’ll just have to make do with the satellite images. Did you receive them?”

  “Yes, Sir. Are you sure about the choice of target, Sir? I still believe that it might be better to take out the Tsar now, before his power base grows even more.”

  “We considered it, General, but we’ve decided that a strong Russia is actually to our advantage at this point. Let the Tsar continue his rise to power. He cannot threaten us. We predict that he will control most of Russia within two or three years, and that suits us. We have long term plans in that respect.”

  “In that case, Sir, we’ve prepared flight plans and fuelled the planes. We’re ready to go whenever you give the order.”

  “Good, good. No time like the present, General. In your own time, proceed with the plan. Destroy Operation Motherland and take control of their arsenal at your earliest convenience. Establish martial law in as wide an area as you can. Put the techniques you’ve honed in Basra to good use. Terrorise the population, bring them to heel, by any means necessary. They shouldn’t be too much trouble now they’ve been disarmed.”

  The main doors cracked open and a soldier poked his head in. The general waved him to enter, and a group of four heavily armed men silently filed into the room and stood waiting. It looked like there was now no chance for us to kill the general without sacrificing ourselves.

  “I’d like to initiate a secondary operation, if you’ll permit it, Sir,” said the general.

  “Explain.”

  “I’ve received intelligence about an armed camp. It’s outside our target area, but I believe that a show of force there could send a strong message that our operations are not confined inside our perimeter.”

  “Where is this camp?”

  “Somewhere called Groombridge Place, Mr President. I believe it’s the base of operation for a group of Special Forces, a training school for new recruits. One of them came here to retrieve Keegan and killed some good men. We dealt with him, but I think it would be wise to shut the facility down.”

  “Do I detect a lust for revenge, General?”

  “Just doing my job, Mr President.”

  “Very well, proceed as you see fit.”

  “You can count on me, Mr President. By this time next week, England will be in American hands and we can proceed to the next phase.”

  “Don’t let me down, General.”

  The screen went black, there was a momentary burst of static, and then silence.

  The general rose and barked “follow me” at the soldiers who’d waited patiently during his teleconference. They filed out of the room and we were alone again.

  My mind was whirling with the implications of everything I’d just heard. But one awful image was inescapable: me on a video screen, tied up in front of a blue sheet, yelling for someone to find the school and tell Matron about my death.

  They must have found the tape.

  Oh, God, what had I done?

  Jane.

  PART TWO

  JANE

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WORK HARD, KEEP your nose clean, own your house. That was the advice Kate’s gran always gave her.

  “It’s not difficult, dear,” she’d say. “Just follow those simple rules and you can end up like me and your granddad.” Of course, when Kate was seventeen that was the last thing in the world she wanted. But she loved her gran, so she’d nod and smile, and say “Yes, Gran.”

  On one hand I was glad that her gran died before The Cull, as it spared her all this horror. On the other, she’d have been magnificent, riding out the apocalypse on a wave of warm, milky tea and allotment carrots. It was at moments like this that I missed her most.

  But Kate and her gran were gone now.

  Rowles strained at his leash, trying to pull away from me. I cuffed him around the head.

  “Don’t mess me about,” I growled.

  He whimpered.

  The guard in front of us smiled a gruesome, black-toothed grin.

  “Can I come in and trade these kids or what?” I said. “Olly’s expecting me.”

  The guard ran his slimy tongue along his lower lip, considering us carefully, then sucked his disgusting teeth and nodded. Lee once told me he used to give people descriptive names to help him keep track of them in his head. It was something that helped him focus when he was under pressure. So I christened the door guard.

  “S’pose,” said Blackteeth. “Come on in, love.”

  He turned and waved to the man on the wall behind him, who shouted something to someone in the courtyard. The huge doors swung inwards with a shriek of rusty metal. The guard leered at me and mock-bowed, sweeping his right arm towards the doors, inviting us to enter.

  I remembered Kate willingly walking into danger — a heavy, steel-reinforced door, a cold, dark warehouse, and a man standing there with a machine gun strapped across his chest, saying exactly the same thing to her. “Come on in, love.” And Cooper’s voice in her ear had whispered: “We’re right here, don’t be afraid.”

  Eight years ago.

  I shook my head and dismissed the memory. If Lee were here he’d tell me to stay focused on my objective.

  I so wished Lee were here.

  I flashed the guard a disgusted look. “About time.”

  Drawing myself up to my full height — I’m 5’3’’ and I was wearing flats, but it’s all about posture — I strolled through those gates with all the dignity and attitude I could manage. As I passed the guard he goosed me.

  I stopped dead, turned towards him slowly, gave him my most seductive smile and slapped him hard across the face.

  “Touch me again, sunshine, and I’ll rip your balls off and feed them to you.”

  I heard Kate’s gran saying “Now, now dear, don’t be a potty mouth.” I had to bite back the urge to giggle. It’s something I do when I’m scared.

  The guard laughed.

  Caroline sobbed involuntarily. I tugged her chain hard and aimed a half-hearted kick at her shin. She looked up at me, chin wobbling, wide eyes full of tears.

  “Button it, you,” I said.

  “Third stable on the right, darlin’,” said Blackteeth. “Tell you what, when you’re done you come find me. I’ve got a bottle of real wine in my bunk. Been saving it for a special occasion.”

  I turned my back on him and walked towards the stables, tugging the kids behind me. Rowles slipped and fell on his face. I didn’t look back or break my stride; I just dragged him through the mud until he regained his footing and staggered after me. I imagined his collar was really chafing by now.

  The courtyard ahead of me was deserted. I knew there were at least three guards behind me at the gates, but I didn’t turn to see if there were more. The main farmhouse stood at the far end, three storeys high. Tattered curtains hung from dusty windows, some of which were shattered. The kitchen door was open and I got an impression of movement inside. To my left was a large derelict barn, its roof fallen in; to my right stood a row of brick stables. A large truck was parked awkwardly in the far left corner, its engine idling, the exhaust fumes misting in the chill morning air. That was a statement in itself — who had enough fuel to waste it warming up a lorry cab, even on a morning this cold? I knew exactly what its cargo would be, but after long weeks of investigation I still had no idea where it was going.

  I thought about knocking but decided I’d make an entrance, so I walked into the stable, dragging the children behind me. The man behind the desk jumped slightly and reached for the pistol that lay in front of him, but relaxed when he saw that it was only me. He leaned back in his chair, his great blubbery weight threatening to topple him backwards at any second. This was Olly.

  “What bloody kept you?” he asked as he returned his attention to the thick rare steak he was eating, held in a piece of old newspaper.

  “Ask your guards. More interested in flirting than doing business.” I looped the chain and the rope around a hook on the wall, and shoved the two children to the floor. I sat in the chair facing Olly and put my feet u
p on his desk.

  Careful, I thought. Don’t overdo it.

  “The reason I want to do business with you, Olly, is ’cause you’re such a class act,” I said.

  It took him a moment to realise what I meant, and then he laughed, his thick lips parting in a strangled wheeze, revealing half-chewed raw meat. He thrust the steak towards me.

  “Want some?” he offered. “Fresh kill.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. Talking of fresh meat, what do we have here?” He levered himself out of his chair and waddled around the desk towards Rowles and Caroline. Both of them cowered against the wall, a pathetic sight in their tattered, muddy rags.

  “The boy’s eleven, been living rough,” I said. “Girl’s twelve. Untouched, if you can believe that. They’re a bit scrawny but they’re healthy as far as I can tell.”

  Rowles put his arm around Caroline’s shoulder as Olly leered at them.

  “Don’t worry, C,” Rowles whispered. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  Olly leaned down and grabbed Rowles’ chin in his greasy fingers. He got very close indeed and hissed into the boy’s face: “Of course I’m not going to hurt her. I’m most gentle, me. Break her in all carefully, I will. You too, if you’re good.”

  Rowles spat in Olly’s eye as Caroline sobbed and buried her face in his shoulder. Olly snarled and raised his ugly paw, ready to strike the boy, but I leapt up and grabbed the man’s wrist. It was so thick I couldn’t even get my fingers around it.

  “You don’t lay a finger on either of them till I get my payment, fat man,” I said.

  He turned to me, teeth bared. But his raw meat snarl changed into a grin, he wheezed his laugh again and lowered his hand.

  “There’s no hurry, is there?” He looked down at the pair. “I’ll have plenty of quality time with these two when you’ve gone, won’t I? No need to rush.”

  I let go of his arm and he moved back to his side of the desk and sat down again. I followed suit. He took another bite of steak, tearing the flesh off and chewing sloppily.

  “Price is fixed, as discussed,” he said. “Go see Jonny in the big house, he’ll sort you out. If you make a habit of bringing me good stock like this I’ll make it worth your while. Any more where these came from?”