School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles)

by Scott K. Andrews

  When I got to the top I collapsed in a heap, crying in agony, unable to make myself take another step. But I had to. I gritted my teeth and breathed short and fast, hyperventilating to help ease the pain — after all, the world was already spinning, a little extra lightheadedness couldn’t make much difference, could it? Then I pulled myself up and staggered on. I approached the American jeep from behind and saw, to my relief, that there was nobody in the driver’s compartment.

  With no gun, I would have to get very close in order to put this guy out of commission. There was no point walking up to the jeep, he’d shoot me down. I couldn’t vault up on to the flatbed and struggle with him — I wasn’t capable. I had to get him down somehow, and I needed a weapon. I cast around until I found a large piece of jagged flint which I grasped in my hand tightly. Then I just improvised.

  “Help,” I muttered, shuffling towards the jeep with my hands to my head. “Someone help me, please!” I didn’t look up at the gunman. Instead I gazed vacantly left and right, as if blind. “I can’t… I can’t see. Oh God, someone please help me.”

  It didn’t need much acting to sell the guy; I was barely functional. I made sure not to look straight at him, but as I gazed around, pretending to be sightless and confused, I saw him get down from the jeep and walk towards me, machine gun levelled. If he decided to shoot me, there was nothing I could do. As he got within a few metres of me I slipped and fell. I wish I could say that was part of my plan, but I genuinely lost my footing and went sprawling on the stony track, crying out as I hit the ground. I lay there and cried. “Oh, God, please help me, someone, please, God.” But I kept hold of my stone.

  The gunman, completely convinced by my impression of a concussed, bleeding wreck who could barely stand, did the damnedest thing. He took pity on me. He swung his gun over his shoulder so it rested with the muzzle pointed skywards and he reached down to help me up.

  “Take my hand, ma’am,” he said.

  I reached up with my left hand. “Oh, thank you, thank you. Who’s that? Where am I?”

  He grabbed my hand and kneeled down to put his arm round my chest and lift me up. As he did so I swung my right hand as hard as I could and smashed the rock into the side of his head. He grunted and fell sideways, dragging me with him. We splashed down into a puddle in a tumbling heap. I was weak, though, and the blow didn’t knock him out, it merely stunned him. He tried to crawl away from me but I held on to his belt and pulled myself up his body, each movement causing awful pains in my chest. He tried to roll over and fight back, but he was too badly hurt. After what seemed like an age but was probably mere seconds, I managed to get myself into a position where I could grab his head. I pushed hard on the buzz cut hair, pressed his face into the puddle, and then collapsed on top of him, holding his face under the water with the weight of my whole body as he writhed and bucked and struggled to throw me off. But I just lay on top of him, crying with pain and anger and horror at what I was doing, until his struggles weakened and, eventually, stopped. I lay there for another minute, just to be sure, and then I rolled off him, lying flat on my back in the mud, breathing hard.

  There was no time for rest, though. I bent double, levered myself upright and walked to the jeep. I couldn’t climb into the flatbed, I was just too weak, so I flopped on to it and then lifted one leg over the edge and dragged myself on to the hard metal surface. Then I used the machine gun’s column to pull myself upright, and I looked down the ridge. Sanders was still kneeling, and Jack was lying beside him. I could see his chest rise and fall, so I knew he wasn’t dead, but he was unconscious. The two soldiers were still standing over them. Which certainly made things easier from my perspective.

  The gun was not unlike the GPMGs we had at St Mark’s, so I checked that the safety was off, sighted carefully, held my breath, tried not to worry about the fact that I was starting to see double, squeezed the trigger and held on for dear life. It took a few seconds for the vibrations of the gun to throw me off; I was so weak I couldn’t cope with the recoil. I collapsed to the floor.

  If that hadn’t done it, then so be it. I had nothing left in me.

  I heard shouting, the crack of small-arms fire, but it was distant and not my concern. I felt as if I was falling into cotton wool. The world stopped spinning, which was nice. Then Sanders’ face appeared above mine. His mouth moved but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  Then he faded away, and I was warm and safe and gone.

  THE NEXT THING I became aware of was a distant voice. It was deep and rich, male, unfamiliar. American. It was saying my name.

  “Miss Crowther. Jane. Wake up, Miss Crowther.”

  I struggled to open my eyes and, when I did, I immediately scrunched them shut again. The light hurt. My hands felt soft cotton sheets beneath me and everything was soft and warm. I was lying in a bed.

  “Welcome back,” said the voice. “You’ve been away for quite a while.”

  The ache in my limbs was gone, my chest felt sore but not agonising, and my head was fuzzy and muddled, but not painful. I knew this feeling; I had been drugged.

  I opened my eyes again and winced. Things slowly came into focus through the glare. The first thing I saw was the man sitting beside my bed. He was African-American, with a lined faced and short grey hair. He wore an army uniform. The room swam into view and I saw familiar cream walls. I was at Groombridge. This was my sick bay. I was home. I tried to speak, to ask him what was going on, but I couldn’t form the words.

  “Don’t,” he said. “You’ve been drugged for some time. You took quite a knock and there was severe swelling of the brain. My medics put you in a drug-induced coma and nursed you back to health. But you’ve had three lots of surgery, you died on the table twice and I’m sorry to say you don’t have any hair right now.”

  I felt my scalp, shocked by the smoothness of it.

  “They tell me you’re going to be okay,” the general said. “They called me this morning and I flew down so I could be here when they woke you.”

  It took all my effort and concentration to croak: “How long?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Who…?”

  “General Jonas Blythe, at your service, ma’am. I command the US forces here. I gave the order to attack the British Army on Salisbury Plain, and I gave the order to take control of your school. Sit her up.”

  I heard someone walk across the wooden floor in heavy boots and felt strong arms lift me into a sitting position. I was propped up on some pillows so that I could see out of the window. It was a bright, sunny day, cold but clear. Next to the window stood a TV set with a camcorder plugged into it. The general nodded to the soldier who’d propped me up, and the young man went to the camcorder and fiddled with it until it began playing. The screen crackled with white noise and then solidified into a picture.

  Lee. Bruised, bloodstained and terrified, sitting tied to a chair in front of a blue sheet with Arabic writing on it. A man in a black hood stood behind him holding a sharp knife. I gasped in horror. I knew what this video was. Everyone did.

  The sound kicked in and there was Lee. Kind, lonely, brave, broken Lee, sobbing into the lens. “My name is Lee Keegan. It’s my sixteenth birthday today, and I’m English. I flew here to find my dad, a Sergeant in the British Army, but my plane crashed and these guys found me. If anyone sees this, please let Jane Crowther know what happened to me. You can find her at Groombridge Place, in Kent, southern England. It’s a school now. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  And the screen went blank. Tears streamed down my face and my stomach felt empty and hollow. Oh God, Lee. Poor, sweet Lee.

  “He’s dead, Miss Crowther,” said the general.

  Now I found my voice. Dry throated, I croaked between sobs: “How did you get this?”

  “Recovered it from an insurgent hideout in Basra about a month ago.”

  “Did they…?” I couldn’t say it.

  “Not them. Believe it or not your boy made friends with them. They let him go.”


  “I don’t understand.”

  “He joined them, Miss Crowther. To fight me.”

  I stared at him. “You killed Lee?”

  The general nodded. I screamed and tried to fling myself at him, reaching out to scratch his eyes and bite his face. I wanted to pull him apart. But I was too weak, and my limbs wouldn’t obey the instructions I was sending them. I just fell forwards and slid off the bed on to the floor, collapsing in a heap at his feet, a pathetic, tear-stained, wailing, wreck.

  The young soldier lifted me up. I tried to shake him off, but I was helpless. Instead of placing me back in the bed, he sat me in a wheelchair and pushed me so I was face to face with the general. I stared into his pitiless eyes, summoning all the defiance and fury I could muster.

  “Why are you so important?” he asked. “What is it about this school?”

  I didn’t understand what he meant, but my face betrayed nothing but anger.

  “A young soldier from this school flies to Iraq and almost succeeds in destroying my operations,” he explained. “The one name he gives us is yours. Then, when we attack British Army HQ you’re there in the thick of it, with your very own SAS bodyguard, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to ensure your safety and bring you here. Why? Why are you so important? What’s your game, Miss Crowther?”

  Sanders had brought me here. So where was he? And what had become of Jack?

  “Shall I tell you what I think?” continued the general. “I think you’re a spook. MI5 or 6, back before The Cull. I think this school is a front for all that remains of your British Secret Service.”

  I started to laugh silently. It hurt my healing ribs but I couldn’t help it. I held my sides and laughed and laughed till more tears flowed.

  “You fool,” I said. “You stupid, pathetic, paranoid fuckwit. I’m not a spy. I’m just a boarding school matron.” I could hear the hysterical edge to my laughter but I couldn’t stop. “If you want spies, you’re barking up the wrong tree, General. All I’ve got is TCP and sticking plasters.”

  He sat there and let me laugh for a while, then he stood, grasped the handles of my wheelchair and pushed me to the window.

  “Let me show you what I do to people who waste my time, Miss Crowther,” he said quietly.

  I looked out of the window at the lawn below. It seemed like only yesterday that I’d lain on that grass with Barker, feeling the Earth move beneath me. Now, in the exact spot where I’d passed that quiet moment of contemplation, was one of the most awful things I’ve ever seen. It was Sanders — strong, gentle, musclebrained Sanders, my sometime lover. He lay facing the sky, impaled on a huge wooden stake which jutted, bloodied and obscene, from his shattered chest. A crow pecked hungrily at a gaping eye socket and then flapped away, as if ashamed of being seen.

  Had I anything in my stomach, I would have been sick.

  “Now, Miss Crowther,” said the soft, menacing voice behind me. “Let’s start again, shall we?”

  PART THREE

  LEE AND JANE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LEE

  “DOES THIS THING have a loo?” I asked eventually.

  “No,” said Dad.

  “Well, I’m sorry guys,” I said, “but I really, really have to pee and unless you want to sit in here and breathe ammonia all the way home, I’m going to have to get out to do it.”

  “Don’t we have a bottle or something?” asked Tariq.

  “All full of water, which we’ll need,” replied Dad. “Lee, you can’t hold it any more?”

  “You remember when I was little and we went on that road trip to Rhyll? How much did it cost to get the car seats cleaned?”

  Dad didn’t need any more information than that. “Should be all right. Just go quietly, okay?”

  I nodded, then reached up and turned the wheel to open the hatch. I pushed up and peeked outside. The noise of the engines was deafening, and there was hardly any light.

  “All clear. Back in a sec,” I said. I put my right foot on the back of the main bench seat and pushed myself up and out, on to the roof of the LAV III Stryker Engineer Squad Vehicle. Designed for minesweeping and road clearance, it was squat, solid, armour plated and boasted a mean looking set of guns on the roof; this was state of the art kit. It also had nice comfy couches, which is why we’d chosen to stow away in it for the flight back to England.

  The fuselage was literally freezing; the US Army obviously hadn’t considered the health and wellbeing of stowaways when they designed the in-flight heating system for the C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane. I clambered down on to the metal floor. The only light came from the small round window in the door to my left. I walked across to it and peered out, careful not to trip on the numerous metal tracks that ran the length of the fuselage. We were above the clouds, and the full moon cast a brilliant, cold light. Our vehicle was at the very back of the plane, its rear hanging just above the ramp, which would be lowered to allow it to drive out when we landed in England. Other vehicles and pallets of supplies and ordnance were queued up behind it in the dark and cold.

  I walked up the body of the plane a little bit and unzipped my fly, letting rip against the side of a pallet full of bags of flour. Little bit of flavour for your bread, you bastards. I sighed in relief and smiled as I did the zip back up again. Better.

  I turned to walk back to the others and then something hit me in the face and I was flat on my back, seeing stars. Before I could get my bearings I felt someone sit on me, straddling my chest, wrapping their hands around my throat and holding my head against the metal. I looked up to see who had attacked me. All I could see were the whites of his eyes. Dressed entirely in black, and with shoe polish on his face, this guy was practically invisible.

  “Is this the way to Business Class?” I asked.

  He hit me again and my head made a clanging noise against the floor.

  “You’re that Limey kid,” said the man.

  “Limey?” I said, playing for time. “Do people really say Limey? Isn’t that a bit out of date now?”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Others?” Suddenly there was a knife at my throat.

  “We were given orders not to kill you,” said the man in black. “The general wants that pleasure himself. But hey, he’s not here so if I drop you out the back no-one will ever know.”

  In the confusion of embarkation there was every chance that he wouldn’t have heard about any skirmishes that took place, so I said: “No others. Just me. They didn’t make it.”

  “Right,” he replied mockingly. “Hey Joe, check around. He must’ve come out of one of the vehicles.”

  I couldn’t see who he was talking to. It was impossible to know how many of them there were. I wondered what they could have been doing lounging around the unheated fuselage of a cargo plane full of vehicles and supplies, then I registered that his black clothing was a jump suit.

  “So you’re, like, American parachute ninjas or something?” I asked.

  “Or something.”

  There was a loud thud and a groan from the end of the plane then a floodlight came on, momentarily blinding me. The man atop me rolled sideways and ducked behind a pallet, seamless and silent.

  I blinked at the light and realised it was the spot on the top of the Stryker.

  “Come on, Lee,” shouted my dad. I pulled myself upright and ran for the vehicle, past the stunned body of another man in black. I vaulted up on to the Stryker, where Dad was standing behind the spotlight and mounted gun emplacement, his eye pressed up against the huge sighting lens. “Get inside.”

  I slid down into the belly of the vehicle, where Tariq was waiting, gun at the ready.

  “You couldn’t fucking hold it?” he said, witheringly.

  “The sights on this thing are great,” said Dad loudly. “I mean, I can only see your right foot, but if I…” There was a loud report as he squeezed the trigger, then he ducked back down to join us. “They’ll be considering their next move for a min
ute or two. Lee, how many are there?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I only saw two. I think they’re parachutists, and they’re blacked up, so I reckon they’re dropping from this plane before we land. Advance guard, maybe.”

  “And we thought it was only kit in here. Bloody hell,” said Tariq.

  “We don’t want to get into a firefight,” said Dad. “Pressurised cabin, all sorts of bad things happen.”

  “But you just shot at him!” I said.

  “Calculated risk. Just to make a point. Let’s hope he doesn’t call my bluff, or things will go wrong very quickly.”

  A voice echoed down the plane, barely audible above the roar of the engines.

  “Hey, Limeys!”

  Dad popped his head back up and shouted: “Yeah?”

  “Hold on!”

  There was a clunk and a whirr of machinery.

  “Oh shit,” shouted Dad and he ducked back inside the vehicle, pulling the hatch closed behind him. He looked white as a sheet.

  “What?” asked Tariq and I, in unison.

  But Dad wasn’t listening, instead he scrambled past us and into the driver’s seat, where he started pressing buttons frantically. Tariq and I followed, taking up positions either side of him, looking down at the various touchscreens which were illuminating one by one as the vehicle powered up.

  “What are you doing?” I asked again.

  “Got to initialise the CBRN, it’s our only chance,” he muttered. Tariq and I looked at each other and shrugged. Suddenly the plane lurched to one side and began to descend. The noise from outside the vehicle began to get a lot louder.

  “Oh fuck me, no,” I whispered as I realised what was happening. The look on Tariq’s face told me that he’d worked it out too.