School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles)

by Scott K. Andrews

  “You think they might be having to fight their way out?” asked Jack.

  “Could be,” I replied.

  “So how long do we wait?”

  “We go at dawn, I reckon. If they’re besieged, they’ll need us.”

  “Oh, yeah, you eight guys are a hell of a rescue force.”

  I spun around, startled by this new voice. Tariq stepped into the firelight, gun in hand, smiling broadly.

  “Don’t move!” came a yell from the other side of the bonfire.

  “Relax,” I shouted as I got to my feet. “He’s with us.”

  “What happened?” asked Jack, as anxious as I was at seeing Tariq here. “Did they attack the school already?”

  Tariq shook his head, then indicated behind him with his hook. I stared into the darkness and realised that he was not alone. About forty children I recognised stepped forward into the orange light. They all wore their camo gear, their faces streaked with shoe polish, their hands full of hardware.

  “We decided,” said a boy I was shocked to realise was Green, “to bring the fight to them.”

  “THAT FUCKER SHOT me. Shove a knife in his throat, would you, Nine Lives?”

  I ignored the voice in my head as I approached Green, who sat on his own at the point where the fire’s warmth ceased to give protection against the frost that was settling on the hard ground.

  “Hi,” I said. “You mind?” I indicated that I’d like to join him, and he waved me forward. I sat down next to him, watching the crowd mingling around the fire.

  “You want to know what made me change my mind. Why I picked up a gun again and joined the team,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Honestly, I don’t know.” There was a long pause as he considered.

  “Partly it’s because I feel like a grown up now,” he said. “I know I’m strong enough that no-one could make me do the kind of things Mac made me do when I was part of his team.”

  “That was what you were afraid of?” I didn’t know whether to be insulted or not. Did he really think that Jane or I would ask him to do something he didn’t feel okay with?

  “You don’t know what it was like,” he said, staring off into the distance. “You always played things your way, but I liked being a follower. It made me feel safe. It’s attractive, you know? Allowing something else to make all the decisions, ceding your free will to someone else.”

  It wasn’t attractive to me. In fact it was baffling. But I’d seen enough cults and armies to know that what Green was describing was more than simply common.

  “If you do that,” he continued, “then the person who’s in control can make you do anything, anything at all, and you never think about the morality of it. You rationalise it away and say that it’s their fault. You’re just following orders. No blame attaches. It insulates you.”

  “But you did question it,” I pointed out. “You turned on Mac. You shot him dead, mate.”

  “Not soon enough.” He sighed. “But afterwards, when he and the school were gone and we’d relocated, I decided to treat it like a drug. I though I had to go cold turkey. No guns. No power to give orders. No clique or gang. I would be completely independent. That way no-one could ever get their hooks in me again. I couldn’t fall off the wagon, be seduced into letting someone else tell me what to do.”

  “So it wasn’t fighting you were afraid of, it was following orders?”

  He nodded.

  “And you don’t feel that way any more?”

  “No. I trust you and your Dad, and Jane and Tariq. You’re good people. Plus, I know now that it wasn’t a drug. I won’t have a relapse because I changed when I shot Mac. It’s taken me a while to realise it, but I’m a different person now. There’s nothing left of the boy I was. His vices aren’t mine. His weaknesses, either.”

  He turned his head and looked me in the eye. “Think back, Lee,” he said. “To who you were before The Cull. Is there anything about that person that you recognise when you look in the mirror?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Me neither. I’m a man now,” said Green, turning back to the fire. “I know my mind and I know I’m capable of choosing for myself. And right now, I choose to fight. I owe it to Matron, and to all the kids I teach.”

  “No, really, just stab him would you?” said the voice. “Pious little shit.”

  “Thank you,” I told Green, pretending I didn’t hear a dead man whispering in my ear. “I won’t betray your trust.”

  Green smiled into space. “You’d better not,” he said.

  EVENTUALLY EVERYONE ELSE left to spend the night in the beds at the nearby hospital. I stayed put and watched the fire burn. I knew I should try to sleep, that going into battle tired is suicide. But there was no point even closing my eyes. Ferguson hadn’t made contact, Dad was missing and Jane was captured.

  I didn’t know what to worry about most — my Dad fighting off a besieging army, Jane being tortured by a monster who treated people like dirt on his shoes, or our chances of getting cut to ribbons by landmines and gun towers sometime around teatime the next day. Whichever way I turned, things looked bleak.

  As the sun rose I heard the distant engine of a lorry. I grabbed my gun and ran to the main road, careful to stay out of sight as the noise grew louder. A minute or two later a removal lorry, huge and unwieldy, rolled down the road. As it passed I caught a glimpse of the driver and ran out, waving my arms and shouting. He must have seen me in the rear view mirror because the lorry pulled up and Ferguson jumped down from the cab.

  I ran to met him.

  “Is my Dad with you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I found the kids, though.”

  “The ones in Hammersmith?”

  He nodded. A girl jumped down from the other side of the cab. Short and stocky, with an eye patch and long red hair, there was something vaguely familiar about her.

  “Hi Lee,” she said as she walked to Ferguson’s side. My face must have betrayed my confusion, because she added: “Caroline.”

  “Bloody hell,” I said, astonished. “We looked for you everywhere.”

  “I know. Matron told me.”

  “What?”

  “Lee, did you get to Nottingham?” asked Ferguson.

  “Um, yeah, there are some of your mates in the hospital. Just down the road on the right.” He took off past me to compare notes with his colleagues. Caroline walked to the back doors of the lorry and opened them, revealing a small army of children huddled in the back.

  “Caroline,” I asked. “Have you seen Jane?”

  She nodded, and something about the way the blood drained from her face told me that she did not have good news for me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I MEANT TO ask,” says Cooper as we walk the corridors of power. “Were your people responsible for taking the plane at Heathrow last week?”

  “Someone took a plane?”

  He examines my face closely to see if my surprise is genuine. He decides it is, and he nods.

  “Yeah, a bloody 747, no less. A woman and a bloke killed a bunch of my guys and flew to New York, leaving me with four months’ worth of children backed up at the airport.”

  “I came here to kill you,” I suddenly blurt out, frustrated by small talk.

  “No, you came here to kill the man who killed your brother. Your surprise prevented you from killing me. And now I’ve answered all your questions, you have all the facts at your fingertips. So you have a choice.”

  “Which is?”

  “Join me or die,” he says slowly, rolling his eyes, as if explaining something very simple to an idiot.

  “But why offer me that choice? Why not just kill me? What makes you think I won’t pretend to join up in order to save my life until I can find a way to betray you?”

  He sighs and looks up at the ceiling, shaking his head at my obstinacy. “I like you, Kate. Always did. You’ve got, what do they call it? Pluck, spunk, guts.”

  “God, you really are a public school
boy, aren’t you.”

  “Plus, you know, you’re not bad-looking, all told.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I say, then a thought occurs to me. “Christ, you’re not saying you want to go steady?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’d wake up with a knife in my heart.”

  “Trust me, it wouldn’t get that far.”

  “Pity,” he says with a wink, as he walks away. I trail after him as he promenades through his echoing palace, confounded. I just can’t work out why I’m still alive.

  “This is the central lobby,” he says as we enter a huge chamber with four corridors running off it at each point of the compass. A massive chandelier hangs above our heads and statues regard us gnomically from the shadows. “Directly above us is a big tower and in it there’s this huge metal contraption, like an engine,” says Cooper. “No-one has any idea what it is. You see, when they were building this place they gave the contract for the central heating to a guy who said he had a revolutionary new system that he would install. Once he was done all they had to do was switch it on and voila, nice warm Palace. But when they opened it for use they switched it on and nothing happened. So they called for the guy to come explain and he’d gone. Legged it with the money! So no-one knows if this machine above is a real central heating system that turned out not to work, or a huge fake thingy put there to make the con look good!”

  As he talks I realise he’s enjoying himself, holding court, having an audience. And then it dawns on me that I haven’t seen him speak to anyone since I arrived. He’s barked orders, taken reports, had brief conversations about logistical issues, all with his fellow ex-SAS inner circle or the newly recruited chancers and religios. But I’ve picked up no sense of camaraderie, no friendship, just cold business.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I say as it hits. He turns to look at me.

  “What?” he asks.

  “You’re lonely. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s lonely at the top for the poor slave trader. You don’t have any friends, only subordinates and acolytes. You don’t want a girlfriend, necessarily. You just want someone to talk to.”

  He says nothing, but the smile has gone from his face, the mask has dropped and there’s a warning in his eyes. He doesn’t try to deny it, though.

  “So you think I’ll just hang out with you while you tell me top Parliament facts, and bitch about how hard it is pimping for a vampire? You think we’ll end up buddies? That I’ll gradually come to understand, to empathise and commiserate? And how do you see this ending, huh? Will I fall into your arms and soothe away your ennui, finally won over by your dignity and…”

  A single, shocking slap to the face silences me. But only for a moment.

  “You are fucking deluded, you know that? Look at where we are. Look at what you do. You’re the fucking king, Cooper. You don’t get to have friends. You get to have subjects. You don’t get understanding. If you’re lucky, at best you get loyalty, at worst obedience through fear and then betrayal. That’s the job, your majesty. Fucking live with it.”

  I fall silent, breathing hard, furious and defiant.

  He waits for a moment, although whether he’s waiting for me or him to calm down, I’m not sure.

  “You just demonstrated exactly why I want you around, Kate,” he says softly, his face full of something like admiration.

  “What, ’cause I think you’re pitiful?”

  “No. Because you kept talking even after I slapped you.” He turns on his heels and walks away briskly. “Try anything clever and you’ll be shot,” he says over his shoulder. “See you at seven sharp for dinner.”

  SO HERE I am, given the run of the Houses of Parliament. I’m not alone, though. I’ve got a shadow; a bored looking soldier who lurks around corners and watches from a distance in case I try and scale the barbed wire fences, stroll through the minefields or jump into the river… actually, that’s not a bad thought.

  I gaze out of a first floor window, considering the current of the Thames. I can see it swirl and roil beneath me, strong, tidal and deadly. Freezing cold, too. I dismiss the idea. It would be suicide. I glance at the ornate cornices that decorate the outside, wondering if maybe I could climb down at low tide. But no. Again, suicide.

  A rope perhaps? I file that thought away.

  I notice a sign directing me to the House of Lords and I figure I may as well take a look. I’m surprised to find a guard on the door. He sits on a chair staring into space, not enough wit even to read a book to pass the time. As I approach I wonder if he’s in some kind of coma, but he looks up as I reach for the doors.

  “You got the boss’s permission to go in there?” he says, his voice a low moan of thoughtless boredom.

  “No. Do I need it?”

  He purses his lips and shrugs. “Knock yourself out,” he says. “The one with the tattoos swings both ways. You clean up after yourself, though. If you damage anything, I mean. I’m not bloody doing it.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I push open the door and enter the second chamber.

  I’m greeted by a young black woman in a short black dress.

  I stare at her for a moment, in surprise. Then my gaze moves past her to take in the room beyond. There are about twenty women here, all dressed casually. The upper benches have been made into little nests, with blankets and pillows and piles of clothing. It only takes me a moment to work out what I’ve walked into.

  “Hey Jools, we got fresh blood!” yells the woman in front of me. A short Asian woman steps down from her nest and walks across the floor towards me. All eyes are on me.

  Jools stands in front of me, hands on hips, assessing me.

  “You a bit scrawny,” she says. “They’ll feed you up, though. You got a name?”

  “Jane. I’m, um, not… Are you the boss here?”

  A chorus of cackled laughter makes me blush. “Look behind you, sweetheart,” says Jools. I turn and there, written across the doors in white paint is the legend: “We are your lords now. Bow down before us.”

  “Only boss here is Spider,” she says. “But he visits me more than most, so I got his ear, like. You know?”

  A woman on the bench behind her laughs and says: “You got his cock, more like!” More laughter from the ranks.

  I can’t help but assess Cooper’s preferred concubine. My height, small hips and breasts but a pretty heart shaped face. A woman, but girlish. Tough though, streetwise.

  “So that makes you, what, top dog in the harem?” I ask.

  “Summat like that, yeah. So we’ll get you a bed sorted then you can tell us your story.”

  “No,” I say hurriedly. “I won’t be staying.”

  She cocks her head and narrows her eyes, all welcome swept away by sudden suspicion.

  “That so.”

  “I’m a doctor,” I say, as if that explains anything.

  “Shit, I was an MP,” comes a voice from somewhere to my left. “Don’t make no difference here.”

  “I mean,” I go on, “that I’m here to help. How many of you are there?”

  Jools doesn’t answer.

  “Are you all well? When did you last have a check up?”

  “We all clean, if that’s what you mean. If we weren’t, we’d be in the river.”

  “That’s not…” I’m too uncomfortable to know what to say. I’m out of my depth here.

  “How many of you are there?” I ask again.

  “Nineteen,” says Jools.

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll, um, I’ll see you around, I guess.”

  Jools steps forward and gets right in my face, chin up, eyes wide. “Not if I see you first,” she says.

  I can’t get out of there fast enough.

  Yet as I walk away from Cooper’s rape room, it occurs to me that there are nineteen women in that room, and the ones who haven’t gone all Stockholm will be very angry indeed.

  I have nineteen potential allies on the inside. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

  THERE IS A special quality behin
d the eyes which all the men who work for Cooper have. Something cold and dead and hidden. Every one of them has it. The guy following me around Parliament is the same. It makes sense, I suppose; to be the kind of person who treats other people as cattle you must either have to kill some part of you off, or be born without it in the first place.

  Whatever that part of a person it is — compassion, empathy, simple kindness — it dies easy. All it takes for it to wither away is peer pressure and time.

  “What did you do? I ask him as I open my bedroom door in the morning and find him standing outside, patient as stone. “Before.”

  He shakes his head, unwilling to discuss it. I don’t think he’s one of the original SAS team. I wonder who he was, and I wonder what changed him. School teacher who watched his pupils die, perhaps? Accountant who found comfort in ledgers and spreadsheets but feels cut adrift in a world without numerical order? Drug addict forced to go cold turkey? Or just a family man who held his wife and children as they bled out?

  He’s a pretty nondescript bloke. Not a muscled heavy or a lean military type. He’s in his early forties, slight spare tyre around the waist (which testifies to how well they eat here), receding hairline, pallid skin. The threat that he implies comes not from physical strength or bullish machismo; it comes from the way he looks at me as if I were a tiresome detail, a turd laid on new carpet by an eager puppy which has to be cleaned up. Just a bit of business.

  What would his pre-Cull self have done if he had known what he would become? Rub his hands in glee or put a rope around his neck and end it all?

  What would I have done, had I known who I would become?

  I’ve not slept a wink. All night I’ve lain in bed staring into the darkness, trying to work out a strategy but I’ve got nothing.

  No-one’s coming to rescue me. I guess the kids we brought with us to Thetford may have made it back to the school and told them what happened, but their standing orders are to fortify and defend. There’s no-one there with the authority or gumption to attempt a rescue. Anyway, it would be suicide.