I saw Caroline out of the corner of my eye, moving to get up and come to my aid. I shouted at her to stay where she was as I suddenly stopped blocking the knife and instead pushed left with all my strength, shoving the knife aside for a split second and bringing the soldier’s head and shoulders closer. Then I sat bolt upright and smashed my forehead into the bridge of her nose. There was a sharp crack and a crunch then she reeled backwards, blood spurting everywhere, still with her knees keeping me on the ground.
I let go of her wrist and hit her as hard as I could, pushing her broken nose into her face with the heel of my hand, releasing a small explosion of blood and making her scream.
Before I could press my advantage her left elbow slammed into the side of my head and then I felt something swipe past my face. The knife. As it swung out on its arc, trailing blood from my cheek, I brought both arms to my chest and shoved up and forwards with all my strength, knocking her backwards. Then I pulled my legs in, toppling her on to the cobbles.
There was a shot and I felt something tug my shirt. My attacker grunted as Rowles’ bullet hit the ground an inch from her head.
“That nearly hit me!” I yelled.
“Sorry,” he shouted back from the roof of the main building where he was lying safely at the roof’s edge. “Just trying to help.”
“Do me a favour and don’t.”
But the distraction had enabled the soldier to regain her footing as well.
The shining blade formed the centre of a circle as we sidled around each other looking for an opening. Then she took me by surprise, darting sideways to grab a girl by the hair, pushing the point of the knife into her throat.
The girl’s name was Lucy. She was ten and had long red hair and freckles. She wore thick specs and had buck teeth, but she sang like an angel and was nobody’s fool. She went rigid with fear as the soldier threatened to slit her throat.
“Up,” said the soldier. Nervously, Lucy rose to her feet. The soldier wrapped herself around the girl, keeping her as a human shield between herself and Rowles.
“Anybody follows us, the girl dies,” she snarled.
I nodded.
“Barker, get your gun, we’re leaving,” she said.
The male soldier slowly took his hands off his head.
“Don’t move, Barker,” I said. He stopped, unsure which way to jump.
The woman pressed the knife just a bit harder and Lucy yelped.
“I fucking mean it, bitch,” growled the woman.
“The second she dies my boy on the roof will end you,” I said, then I walked, as casually as I could given that I was shaking like a leaf, over to Barker the squaddie. Our eyes locked as I reached out and removed his sidearm. The look on my face must have been convincing, because he didn’t resist. I felt the cold metal thing nestle itself into my hand as I turned back to face the girl I’d sworn to protect, and the woman who was threatening her life.
I was through with talking.
Without even thinking I raised the gun and fired a single shot, taking the soldier right between the eyes and spraying her brains all over Mrs Atkins’ best floral pinny.
The soldier’s legs crumpled and she fell in a heap on the floor as Lucy screamed and screamed and screamed.
It was the first time in my life I’d ever killed someone and enjoyed it. I felt a glow of satisfaction. It felt good.
The vomiting quickly put an end to that.
When I’d finished spraying my lunch all over the cobbles I turned and walked back to Barker, wiping my mouth with my sleeve and noticing that it came away covered in blood from the gash on my cheek.
“On your fucking knees,” I said.
Barker knelt down and begged for his life.
He fell silent when I pressed the gun barrel into his forehead.
“It’s in the best interests of everyone here for me to shoot you. You know that, right?”
NEXT MORNING, I sat in front of the school and waited.
It was so silent. All the kids had left, the staff too. I lay on a glorious lawn, in the warm spring sunshine, listening to the birds and the first crickets. There were rabbits nibbling the grass not twenty metres from where I sat, and sometimes the breeze carried the distant cry of a peacock from the gardens behind the house.
I lay back on the grass and closed my eyes, rested my hands on the cool ground. I tried to visualise how fast I was moving — around the sun, around the Earth’s core. It sounds strange but it’s the closest I’ve ever come to meditation. Lying on grass and trying to feel the Earth move calms me down.
I needed a lot of calming down.
I thought back on my decision and I knew in my heart that I’d done the right thing. With everyone relocated and in hiding, all the blame for the slaughter would fall on me. It was the only way to make sure everyone was safe. The buck stopped here, and that was only fair. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared to death.
So as I lay there, a row of bodies draped in sheets beside me, waiting for the rumble of army vehicles, I felt okay with my choice. I was ready to accept the consequences.
My thoughts went back to that day at the swimming pool, all the ideals Kate had when she’d started medical training. The Hippocratic Oath seemed like a sick joke to me now. I wondered what the woman at the swimming pool would have thought of me, lying here surrounded by bodies. The thought caused a sharp pang of loss.
“Your cheek looks a lot better. I don’t think it’s going to be a bad scar,” said the man sitting to my right. “You stitched it really well.”
“Thanks, Barker,” I said. “But I don’t really think I’m going to have to worry about my good looks much longer, do you?”
He didn’t answer and I didn’t open my eyes to see the look on his face.
“I’ll tell them what really happened,” he said.
“But you weren’t there, were you? Not in the cellar, not in the surgery. I appreciate the thought, but your word’s not going to carry much weight when you stack it up against all these corpses.”
He didn’t say anything else, so we sat and listened to the birds.
“Do you ever think things will get back to normal?” he asked eventually. “I mean, telly and buses and elections and stuff?”
“Not in our lifetimes,” I said.
“The king says it will.”
“The what?”
But before he could answer I heard the sound of tyres on gravel.
“You’re on,” I said.
I heard him get to his feet and begin walking away, towards the fellow soldiers he’d radioed yesterday. I just lay there, eyes closed. I caught snatches of conversation, and the sound of boots on gravel, then someone walking towards me.
I sighed. Time to face the music.
“Miss Jane Crowther?” The man’s voice was deep and strong, the voice of someone accustomed to being listened to and obeyed. I’d tried to develop a voice like that over the last few months, but my efforts in the courtyard suggested I’d probably failed.
The voice was also oddly familiar.
“That’s me,” I said, and I opened my eyes. The soldier was standing over me, and the sun behind his head made a halo and shadowed his face. I winced at the brightness.
“No, it’s not.” The voice had changed. It was softer, surprised, almost friendly. And definitely familiar.
“Pardon?” I said, as I sat up. I rested my weight on one arm and raised a hand to shield my eyes so I could get a look at the man who’d come to serve justice on me. It took a second for my eyes to adjust.
“Hello, Miss Booker,” he said. “What have you got yourself into this time?”
CHAPTER TEN
KATHERINE LUCY BOOKER — Kit to her family, Kate to everyone else — died five years ago in a warehouse on Moss Side.
Then she gave herself a bit of a makeover. She dyed her hair, got that nose ring she’d always secretly craved, dumped the Jigsaw wardrobe and went a bit more casual. She even started listening to different kinds of music
— out with Kylie, in with Dresden Dolls — and stopped watching thrillers and horror films altogether, preferring inoffensive romcoms and bodice rippers. She walked differently too, but only because she stopped wearing heels.
Her sleep patterns altered. She used to sleep like a log for eight hours straight, preferring early nights and cosy jim jams. Now she was more likely to crawl to bed in the early hours in her knickers and t-shirt, cuddling a bottle of chianti, before waking, sweating and alarmed after four hours fitful rest.
She moved to a different part of the country, broke contact with all her friends and family, abandoned her career as a doctor and became a far less illustrious type of medic, ministering to spotty boys and institutionalised teachers with bad breath and nicotine fingers.
Kate Booker became Jane Crowther.
Then, one day, lying on the grass surrounded by corpses, Jane was visited by the ghost of Kate.
And I couldn’t think what to say to her.
“I’M SORRY, DO I… do I know you?” I stuttered as the ground, which had been so solid beneath me only a moment ago, began to spin.
“Lieutenant Sanders, Miss,” he said cheerily. “I was part of the team that oversaw your training.”
I wracked my brains. Sanders? I didn’t remember any Sanders.
He reached down a great paw. I took it and he pulled me up without the slightest effort. The man radiated strength.
Once I was upright the spinning was even more pronounced and I stumbled a bit. He caught me in his arms like I was some kind of swooning schoolgirl. I blushed red with embarrassment. This, of course, made it even worse. I shook him off firmly and regained my composure with a brisk cough.
“It’s been a long time since a man’s made me dizzy, Lieutenant,” I joked.
He laughed awkwardly as I took a closer look at him. He had the tanned skin of a man who spends time outdoors; thick black eyebrows topped deep-set brown eyes that sat either side of a classic Roman nose. His large chin jutted out slightly, making him look like a weird mixture of toff and bruiser. It was a striking face rather than a handsome one.
“Wait a minute,” I said, as realisation dawned. “I do remember you! You were one of the soldiers Cooper took me to train with out in Hereford. You were the judo guy, weren’t you? Spent a whole day throwing me round a gym like I was a, oh, I don’t know what.”
“That’s me, Miss. I was part of the assault team at the warehouse as well. Nasty business. I’m sorry about… you know.”
“Yeah, right. Wow. It’s, um, it’s been a really long time since anyone’s called me Miss Booker. You threw me there for a minute.”
He nodded. “What exactly is the reason for the name change, Miss?” The shift from friendly reminiscence to polite officialdom almost went past me. Almost.
“Witness protection,” I replied. “They made me into a boarding school matron, would you believe. I was only supposed to be here ’til they caught up with The Spider, but I never heard anything. And then, The Cull, obviously.”
“Kept the name though.”
“Kate’s a distant memory now. It’s Jane who looks after the kids. I’m not sure Kate would have been up to this kind of thing.”
He was looking at me oddly, trying to suss out whether I was delusional or just weird.
“I know,” I said. “It just helps me if I keep them separate in my mind, lets me focus on the here and now. And it would only confuse the kids if I introduced them to Kate after everything we’ve been through. They trust Jane, they might not be so sure about Kate.”
He nodded again. “I’ve been undercover, Miss, I get it. So, Lance Corporal Barker says you’ve evacuated the school and he doesn’t know where they’ve gone. That right?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the row of bodies and his cheeriness faded. Our surprising reunion lost its novelty and the reality of his job re-asserted itself.
“It was just an awful misunderstanding,” I said.
He regarded me coolly. “I’m sure it was, Miss. But it’s not me you’ve got to convince, it’s Major General Kennet.”
More soldiers had arrived now, and Sanders set them to carrying the bodies into one of the three trucks they’d brought, expecting to have to transport all the children and staff to safety.
“What’s he like?” I asked as we walked away.
“I’ve served under worse,” he replied.
“But you’ve served under better?”
“Oh, yes.”
We reached the first truck and he took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.
“I don’t want to cuff you, Miss,” he said. “So if you promise that…”
“I promise.”
“And I’ll keep an eye on her, Lieutenant,” added Barker, who was already sitting on one of the hard wooden benches that lined the metal-bottomed, canvas-topped transit vehicle.
“All right then,” said Sanders briskly. “We’ve got a long journey ahead of us. A lot of the road has been cleared but not all, and there are some unswept areas on the way. We took some fire on our trip here, but nothing too serious. Of course they could be waiting for us on the return journey, but we’ll vary our route, just in case. If we do run into trouble, then Barker, your job is to look after Kate here. I spent a lot of effort keeping her alive once upon a time. I’d hate all that work to be wasted.”
“Sir,” replied Barker, resting his rifle on his lap.
“What do you mean, unswept areas?” I asked.
“I’ll let the C.O. answer that, Miss,” replied Sanders. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
Sanders left and I could see him poring over a map with the three drivers, plotting a route.
“Where are you lot based, Barker?”
“Operation Motherland HQ is at Salisbury Plain,” he replied.
“Operation Motherland? What’s that?” I asked.
“Top secret,” he replied, tapping the side of his nose. “Look, I was expecting you to get some pretty rough treatment, but the Lieutenant was all pally. You got really lucky, knowing him, otherwise you’d be on the floor, in shackles with a sack over your head.”
“I know. I can’t quite believe it myself.”
“My point is that it isn’t always going to be like this. The C.O. is not a very flexible boss, if you know what I mean. Me and the Lieutenant speaking up for you might not make a lot of difference.”
And with that happy thought, the engine sputtered into life and we rumbled away.
I looked out the back of the truck at my beloved school. I’d worked so hard to build something special, to make it a safe, happy place. It was my home and the people who lived there were my family.
I wondered if I’d ever see it again. Probably not. I shed a tear as it receded into the distance. Not for myself, but for the loss of a dream. Nowadays it seemed like every good, clean thing had to end up covered in blood.
As we slowed to turn the corner at the end of the drive I saw two small figures burst from the bushes by the side of the road and leap quickly over the duckboard of the third and final truck.
I didn’t know whether to curse or smile. It seemed like I still had two psychotic guardian angels looking after me.
IN THE EIGHTEEN months since The Cull had burned itself out I’d not moved outside a twenty mile radius. With one notable exception, who was now God knew where, people just stayed put. The days of travelling long distances for work or pleasure were long gone. This was a parochial world of small, paranoid communities. Apart from some mad American religious broadcasts, which I wouldn’t allow anyone at school to watch, there was no TV, no newspapers to keep people up to date with events taking place outside their immediate circle of family, friends and neighbours. Horizons had narrowed, and life had focused on the local and familiar. So it felt weird to pass a battered metal sign at the side of the road which read ‘You are now leaving Kent’.
It might as well have said ‘Here Be Monsters!’
We moved down quiet country roads, deserted for th
e most part, until we came to the A272. Barker told me this had been cleared about a month ago, which was why the soldiers had only just shown up at my school. Their sphere of influence was expanding along reclaimed A-roads and motorways. But this road still ran through large unswept areas, which I took to mean places not yet brought under military control. This, it turned out, was not entirely correct.
The A272 had once been a nice wide road, but now there was only a narrow path through the thousands of abandoned vehicles. Londoners had fled the capital as The Cull took hold, hoping to hide away in the country until things calmed down. Soon all the main roads and motorways were gridlocked. Of course many of those fleeing were already infected, and they began dying in their cars. It soon became clear that the traffic was never going to move again, so those still alive just got out of their cars, vans and trucks, and walked away.
The path through the debris, which Barker told me had been cleared by huge diggers salvaged from a quarry, was wide enough that we could get up to a reasonable speed, but with so much raw material available for use as obstacles, the risk of ambush was great.
We travelled this graveyard highway for about an hour until we pulled off the road and into a small market town, empty and forgotten, slowly decaying. The convoy stopped in the middle of the narrow high street, littered with abandoned cars, and Sanders gathered everyone together at the bonnet of the lead truck.
“Change of orders,” he told us. “Since we’ve got more room than expected, the Colonel wants us to recce a site near here and sweep it if possible.”
Barker sighed softly and shook his head, but when I tried to ask him why he just rolled his eyes.
“The site is half a mile south-east of here,” continued Sanders. “I’m going to take Patel here and we’ll scout around. The rest of you stay here and stay alert. If we’re not back by oh-two-hundred hours, I want you to radio for support and then come looking for us.”
School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles) Page 38
