School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles)

by Scott K. Andrews

  “Kate,” says Cooper, panting with sudden exertion. “You are endlessly surprising.” He turns to address the soldier in the doorway. “Report.”

  “We got them, Sir. Two lorries of kids. Armed to the fucking teeth. We’ve got their leaders downstairs now.”

  Cooper nods, arranging his clothes, making himself presentable. “Good. Keep Miss Booker here until I return.”

  He leans forward and picks up the knife. As he does so he notices the guns and wags his finger like a teacher remonstrating with a naughty pupil. He holds out his hands and I pass him the firearms. He shoves the handgun in his trouser pocket.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” he says, then he strides from the room, closing the door behind him as he goes. I throw myself upon the bed, furious at myself for wasting such a golden opportunity.

  I sit and stew for twenty minutes, trying to come up with a plan. Now that Tariq’s forces are captured, Jack’s diversion is the whole of our attack. It’s not going to be enough.

  If I do manage to slip away when Jack makes his move, I need to know where to go.

  Twenty minutes later Cooper returns, smelling of gunpowder.

  “What have you done with the children?” I ask the second he enters.

  “They’re safe, don’t worry. They’ll be held until the snow clears then we’ll just ship them straight back to Heathrow. I must say, your friends are a resourceful bunch. Their plan was a good one, and it almost worked. But my men are better.”

  He sits on the edge of the bed and throws the handgun onto a dressing table. I see the top slide is retracted, indicating it’s been fired. He follows my gaze.

  “You really should have told that Iraqi not to be such a smartass,” he says by way of explanation.

  Oh no. Tariq.

  He nods in response to the look on my face, and he taps the spot between his eyes.

  I fly at him, fists swinging, teeth bared, but he bats me away as if I were a kitten. I tumble to the floor, my foot burning with agony.

  “You know, Kate, I think I made a mistake with you. I thought perhaps we could be friends. I see now that I was naïve.”

  I spit in his face.

  He wipes it away with a sneer. “Your friends are no use to me. The kids I can use. But the adults…” He shrugs. “I think it’s time to end this.”

  He reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet. “Follow me,” he says and walks out of the rom. I hobble after him. I have to buy some time for Jack.

  “What are you going to do?” I shout after him.

  “A ten gun salute, I think,” he says over his shoulder.

  He hurries down the staircase to the front door. I limp in pursuit.

  “Why kill them? They’re no threat to you now.” I know that sounds lame, but even if he pauses for a second to argue with me, it’ll be a second gained. He sweeps out the front door, passing a guard from whom he grabs a fresh sidearm.

  I trail after him, beginning to beg. He ignores me. He turns a corner and I hear him declaim: “Lovely day for a shooting!”

  I follow him outside into the stark white dawn. I see Lee, Green and a Ranger lined up against the fence, a group of armed soldiers opposite them. Oh god, it’s a firing squad. My knees momentarily go weak with fear.

  “Cooper, please,” I say, choking back tears. “I’m begging you, don’t do this.”

  He slaps me, Lee protests and a soldier opens fire. For a sickening moment I think he’s shot Lee, but it was just a warning shot.

  I’m crying now, pleading with Cooper, barely even conscious of what I’m saying. I step forward and come on to him. I’m sick at myself as I stroke his chest, all the time driven by the voice at the back of my head saying ‘just play for time, just play for time’.

  Cooper shouts an order then shoots one of his men, and the next thing I know I’m being dragged across to the fence and stood up next to Lee. I reach out and grab his hand.

  I lean towards him and whisper: “be ready to run” but my voice is drowned out by Big Ben’s insistent chime.

  The men line up. Cooper joins them. They raise their guns as the clock counts down the final seconds of our lives.

  Where the fuck is Jack?

  I turn to Lee and we embrace.

  Dear God, I may actually die here.

  He whispers something to me, but I can’t make it out.

  Then my senses explode in fire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AS THE FINAL chime pealed I heard a deafening burst of machine gun fire. I braced for the impact, but there was none.

  My ears rang as the shooting got louder. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Put the woman down and fucking run!” yelled Wilkes above the cacophony.

  I opened my eyes, totally confused. Jane was already pulling away, dragging me along the edge of the fence to a stone alcove in the far wall where we could shelter.

  I tried to make sense of what was happening. Cooper and his men were ranged along the far edge of the fence, backs to the river, engaged in a fierce firefight with a group of young women who were shooting at them from the covered stone walkway down which we’d been marched minutes earlier.

  I glanced ahead and saw a figure beckoning us to a doorway. I thought my mind must be playing tricks on me, because it looked like Jack. Jane pulled me sideways as a stream of bullets whipped past us, cutting a straight line in the old stonework. We scurried through the doorway and behind a stone wall, under cover. Green was already there, gun in hand, raining fire on the pinned down firing squad. Wilkes hurried in after us.

  Jack shoved a gun in my hand and smiled at me.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I shouted above the din.

  “I landed in the dinghy,” he shouted back. “I had the bag. Jane got me back in. Voila.” He indicated the groups of armed women and beamed.

  It takes a minute for the penny to drop. Somehow Jack has pulled it off and completed our mission — he’s got the kit bag of guns to the women held captive in the Lords and turned them loose.

  Jane turned, popped her head above the parapet and sent a burst of fire towards the bad guys. Then she ducked back under cover, leaned over to me and kissed me long and deep.

  We only broke apart when there was a huge explosion from behind us. I peered over into the yard to see the last of Cooper’s men pouring through a gap in the wall. They must have blown it open with a handful of grenades so they’d have somewhere to retreat. The snow-covered grass was littered with corpses and red with blood.

  I turned to the group that ranged along the walkway.

  “Jane, do you know where the kids are being held?”

  She shook her head. “One of the committee rooms is all I know.”

  “We need to find them as fast as we can,” I said. “There aren’t enough of us to win this, and we’re too concentrated. Can you lead us there?” Jane shook her head.

  “I know where they are,” shouted one of the women Jack had released from the Lords. I waved her over to me. She was gaunt and thin, pretty but tiny and undernourished. She had fire in her eyes, though, and she held the gun firmly and with confidence.

  “And you are?”

  “Jools,” she said. “I heard some noise from one of the rooms we passed on our way here. I reckon the kids are in there.”

  “Get them out, get them armed,” I said.

  She nodded and smiled a grim smile that promised horrible death to anyone who got in her way. I decided I liked her.

  “Come on girls,” she yelled, and she took off at a run. The women streamed after her, free and armed and hungry for vengeance.

  Jane pulled herself upright and hobbled into the snow to check the bodies. As she did so I turned to Wilkes and Green.

  “Wilkes,” I said, “you should find Ferguson, okay? I don’t know where they took him, and he’s likely to be in a bad way, but they may decide to just finish him off, and we could use him.” I noticed he didn’t have a gun, so I took one from Jack and handed
it to him. He looked at it suspiciously, then nodded to the weapon.

  “Fine,” he said. “Just don’t tell the boss about this, right?”

  “Promise,” I said, remembering Hood’s feelings about firearms.

  He took off after the women into the Palace complex.

  “You two, with me,” I said, then I followed Jane into the snow. Green and Jack followed behind.

  “Is Cooper here?” I asked.

  Jane shook her head.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re going after them, through that hole in the wall. Green and I will take point, Jack you follow close behind and take care of Jane.”

  “I don’t need taking care of, Lee,” she said, momentarily indignant.

  I stepped forward and kissed her nose. “Don’t be daft. You’ve got a fucking hole in your foot.”

  I raised my gun to my shoulder and moved to one side of the hole in the wall. Green came up close behind me.

  “You ready for this, mate?” I said, still unaccustomed to seeing him with a gun in his hand.

  “Fuck yes,” he said resolutely, which was good enough for me.

  I lifted my hand and counted down from three then slipped sideways through the wall into the House of Commons Library tower, gun high, ready for anything.

  CAROLINE HEARD THE shooting and the explosions and became frantic. The attack was going ahead after all. They were supposed to be part of it, trapping the bad guys between two pincers and bottling them in. If there was only one wave of attackers, the soldiers would be able to dig in, fight back or escape. There’d be no-one to outflank them.

  She began banging on the committee room door and yelling: “We’re in here!”

  A boy grabbed her shoulder from behind. “What are you doing? Are you trying to get us all killed?”

  She swatted him away and kept banging on the door.

  “Shut the fuck up!” came a yell from outside. That must be the guard.

  “Come in here and make me, dipshit!” she yelled back. Then she turned to the assembled throng behind her and said: “When he opens the door we charge him. There are way too many of us for him to hold off, okay?”

  A few children began fighting their way to the back of the crowd, scared now that things had come to a head. But the majority stood ready, nodding and squaring up, ready to run.

  Caroline kept yelling until she was cut off by a burst of machine gun fire right outside the door. Something hard slammed into the door and she heard it fall to the ground. Was that the guard?

  Moments later the key turned in the lock. Caroline held up her hand to hold the children back, telling them to wait for the right moment.

  The door swung open and there, standing over the guard’s corpse, were fifteen young women carrying machine guns.

  “You lot ready to fight?” asked the woman at the front.

  There was a brief pause then the children yelled en masse and poured out of the room looking for something, anything — anyone — to destroy.

  The riot had begun.

  WILKES ACTED ON instinct. He had no clue where they might have stashed Ferguson, but he figured it would be somewhere underground. He didn’t know why, exactly, it just seemed appropriate; you didn’t torture people in daylight, it was a dark, subterranean activity.

  So he ran through the building, hearing gunfights all around him and a huge screaming furore to his right that sounded like the scariest borstal in the world at playtime, until he found a staircase to run down.

  The gun felt odd in his hand. The boss had strict rules about firearms and even though he knew that he would be mad to toss it aside, it felt wrong to be carrying it. Just before he found the staircase he ran past a huge glass case mounted on the wall and stopped to gaze in wonder. Ranged within the display case were five beautiful shiny swords. The plaque underneath read ‘Lieutenancy swords’. They must have been used for ceremonial events, like the opening of Parliament. He doubted they were sharp, but he smashed the glass with his elbow and reverently lifted down the big central blade. Its hilt fitted his hand like a glove and the elaborate silver designs that protected the swordsman’s hand glittered in the light. He knew the names of each individual metal curlicue like a litany — contre-guard, anneau, pas d’ane, quillon, écusson. He smiled as he felt the weight of the sword against his palm.

  He shoved the gun into his pocket — no point throwing it away just yet — grabbed a second sword, and ran down the stairs, a blade in each hand. Cold steel, he decided, felt much better than a firearm.

  The cellars were a maze of tiny winding passageways, and Wilkes checked each door, finding pokey offices, store rooms, and finally a bar. The door opened from the inside just as he was reaching for the handle, so he stepped back and raised the blades. One of Cooper’s men stood in the doorway, weapon raised, but the sight of a man with two swords took him by surprise. That instant of confusion was all Wilkes needed. He lunged forward, both swords level, and felt both the steel blades slide through the man’s clothing and body smoothly and with little resistance.

  So they were sharp after all.

  The guard went rigid and the machine gun fell from his hands. The two swords were the only thing keeping him upright as blood poured from his mouth and his eyes rolled back in head.

  Wilkes executed a perfectly poised fencing retreat, withdrawing the swords in one fluid motion, letting his skewered opponent crash to the floor, then he leapt over the body into the bar.

  Here he found Ferguson tied to a chair, his face a mass of bruise and blood, stripped of his shirt, his chest a dot-to-dot of cigarette burns.

  He cut through the plastic ties on the ruined Ranger’s hands and knelt down so they were face to face, hoping against hope that his friend had not been broken by his ordeal.

  Ferguson looked up, swollen eyes full of fury. He asked for water, his voice a faint whisper. Wilkes found a pitcher of water on the bar and gave it to him. Ferguson gulped it down then stood, a trifle unsteadily. He held out his hand and Wilkes passed him his shirt and hoodie. Ferguson dressed himself carefully then looked down at the dead body of his tormentor, machine gun laying beside him ready for use.

  Ferguson looked up and held out his hand.

  “Sword,” he said.

  GREEN AND I advanced through the wreckage of the Commons Library. Jane and Jack hobbled after us, covering our rear and sides.

  “Remember,” I said quietly as we picked our way across the rubble, “his core team were SAS. They know more about close quarter combat than all of us put together. Our only hope is to contain them, pen them in, give them nowhere to run. If this turns into a running fight, they’ll pick us off easy.”

  The explosion had set fires in the old wooden building. Already flames were licking at the bookcases that lined the walls. Huge, heavy, leather bound copies of Hansard began to smoulder.

  “This place,” said Green, “is going to go up like a candle. We don’t need to follow them in there, Lee. We can just stay outside and wait. The fire will force them out.”

  I looked down the long corridor ahead of me — a shooting gallery if ever I saw one — then back to the burning room. He was right.

  “Back outside, now,” I yelled, and we retreated to Speaker’s Green. Burning pages began to rain down from the walls as we backtracked.

  “We need to think this through,” I said, turning to Jane. “Do you think he’ll stand and fight or run for it?”

  “Fight,” she said firmly.

  “Good, then what we have to do…”

  My voice was drowned out by a roar somewhere off to our left. I glanced at the others in confusion then ran through the snow, underneath Big Ben and into the yard. A tide of children was pouring up out of the underground car park. At their head ran Caroline, a machine gun in her hands. The women from the Lords brought up the rear, yelping and whooping and firing in the air.

  I tried to wave them down, to prevent them hurtling headlong into the Palace, but there was no stopping them. This wasn’t an army
, this was a mob and God help anyone who got in their way.

  Caroline ran over to me as the mob streamed into the building, screaming and yelling and tearing the place apart, every one of them carrying a club, chain or gun.

  “Not quite how we planned it,” she said to me, panting and excited. “They left all our weapons in a pile in the car park, so we just collected them.”

  “We need to come up with a strategy for this, some plan…”

  Caroline cut me off with a derisive laugh. “Forget it,” she said. “Genie’s out of the bottle, Lee.”

  I stood there, frustrated at the way the situation had slipped out of our hands so quickly.

  “Fuck it,” said Jack. “Let’s follow them.” He didn’t wait for my assent, he just stomped off. Caroline went with him, Green shrugged as if to say ‘what can you do?’ and followed suit. I turned to Jane, who was looking anything but excited by this turn of events.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  Her face clouded. “I don’t want anyone getting to him before I do. Cooper’s mine,” she said. Then she too limped after the others.

  I watched her walk awkwardly until she reached the door to the building — ripped off and smashed to pieces.

  “I see what you like about her,” said the voice in my head. “She’s feisty.”

  Jane stopped and turned to look at me.

  “Are you fucking coming, or what?” she shouted.

  I WALK THROUGH the Palace of Westminster with Lee at my side, trailing in the wake of the mob.

  My foot pounds agonisingly as we shamble through the corridors of power. Everything has been ripped apart. Shattered wood panels litter the carpet, paintings and murals have been smashed and shattered.

  The Commons is a scene of total devastation. The plush green leather benches have been slashed and the stuffing lies everywhere, mirroring the snow outside. The Speaker’s Chair lies broken next to the upturned debating table. Centuries of tradition reduced to firewood in a few minutes.

  A soldier lies sprawled in the middle of the floor. His head has been bashed in with a dispatch box that lies next to him, its lid snapped off. There are two dead children on the stairs that lead up to the back benches. I hurry over and kneel beside them, but they are shot to pieces and beyond help. One, a young girl, is a stranger to me, but I recognise the boy from St Mark’s. I close their sightless eyes and stand, gripping my gun tightly, eager for retribution.