Above the bed was a collage of photographs, blu-tacked to the wall. There must have been a hundred pictures. Most were of his family, but some were of friends, and there was one corner reserved for pictures of a pretty blonde girl I didn’t recognise. It’d never occurred to me that he’d had a girlfriend.
I didn’t want to linger here, to look at his pictures and see his crumpled bed sheets. I didn’t want these things making me think of him as an ordinary person, giving my imagination any more details to torture me with. But it was already too late for that. I knew that somewhere in my nightmares that blonde girl would appear, accusing me of murder, weeping over Mac’s chargrilled corpse.
Angrily I flung open every drawer and cupboard I could find. I rummaged through underwear and socks, spot cream, CDs, books and t-shirts until I found what I was looking for: the spare set of keys to the cellar. I left that room as quickly as I could and slammed the door behind me. I didn’t look back.
Rowles was already waiting for me when I got to the armoury. The small door that led down to the cellar was underneath the rear staircase in what had originally been the servants’ quarters. Mac had kept it padlocked and guarded at all times; I didn’t think we needed the guard.
I opened the door and switched on the light. The cellar smelt damp and musty. We went down the stone steps and found ourselves in a corridor with vaulted rooms lying off it to the left and right. There were six chambers down here; all but two were full of guns, ammunition and explosives.
Without being asked, Rowles selected a rifle for himself, picked up a magazine, and snapped it into place. He seemed completely at ease, as if operating a semi-automatic machine gun was the most normal thing in the world. I reminded myself that he was only ten and wondered if I’d be able to restrict guns to older boys. Would that weaken our defences too much? One more thing to worry about.
I was appalled by how comfortable I’d become with guns, how naturally the Browning nestled into my palm like an extension of my hand, as it was designed to. I didn’t want to be someone who always carried a weapon. I worried that I would come to rely on it to solve all my problems. After all, as Mac had pointed out, there was no-one to haul me off to prison for murder. The only thing stopping me ruling at the muzzle of a gun was my own determination not to let it happen.
But we were riding out of the school into unknown territory. Who knew what we’d encounter? Reluctantly I picked up the cold metal pistol and checked that it was loaded.
I promised myself that I’d return it to the cellar as soon as I got back.
WE SAW THE smoke long before we saw the farm.
Rowles, Haycox and I approached on horseback from the west, but we tethered the horses to a fence and made our final approach more stealthily. At first I thought it was probably a domestic fire, maybe someone burning rubbish or leaves, but as we got closer I could see that it was the dying embers of a much larger blaze.
Panicking, I started to run. My reluctance to carry a gun was forgotten as I drew my weapon, but I knew before I arrived at the farmhouse that there was nobody to shoot or save. This place was abandoned.
The main building was a shell. It could have been smouldering for days. There was a discarded petrol canister on the grass in front of the house. Someone had deliberately burnt this place down. Dispatching the others to check the outbuildings and oast houses, I peered in through the front door.
The floorboards had been burnt through and all that remained of the crossbeams were thin charcoal sticks. The ground floor was gone and the cellar was exposed to the sunlight for the first time in two hundred years. There was no way in here. I circled the building, looking in through the empty, warped window frames. All I could see was blackened furniture and collapsed walls. I didn’t see any bodies.
Rowles reported that the oast houses were empty, but we heard Haycox yell and we hurried to the stables. When I first saw the body of the young boy lying there, half his chest blown away by a shotgun, I didn’t realise the significance of it; after all, there was a lot of blood. It told me was that there’d been a fight, and the body was long cold. I reckoned he’d been dead about three or four days, which must have been when the farm was attacked. But then my stomach lurched as I saw that his hair was matted with blood. It wasn’t his own.
Matron and the girls had been taken by the Blood Hunters.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WE HAD RIDDEN to the farm at a gentle canter, but we left galloping as fast as our horses could carry us. I felt the stitches in my side split. I ignored it.
Rowles rode back to the school to let Norton know what was happening. Haycox and I made straight for Ightham. The farm had been attacked three days ago, which meant the Blood Hunters had taken Matron and the girls captive before we’d stormed their HQ. My imagination started finding new ways to torture me. Perhaps they’d been held prisoner in a different part of the building and they’d burnt to death as a result of our attack.
I remembered the screams of the morning sacrifice. I’d been so grateful for the respite that had offered us. But maybe it had been Matron hanging from those battlements bleeding out in the moat. Maybe I’d swum to safety through her diluted blood.
I kicked the horse hard. Faster. Must go faster.
It took about an hour to reach Ightham. My horse and I were exhausted by that point. Haycox looked like he’d enjoyed the ride. We couldn’t just go storming in; the surviving Blood Hunters could still be here. We tethered the horses in the woods and approached through the trees, weapons drawn, on the lookout for sentries or stragglers. There was nobody around.
The building was still on fire. All the wooden parts of the house had collapsed into the stone ground floor, where they were burning up all the remaining fuel. The house was a shell, completely abandoned, but there were about twenty bodies in the moat. I really didn’t want to do this, but I had to be sure, so I found the wheel that controlled the level of water and turned it all the way. The water slowly began to drain away through the sluice gate. When it was down to knee height we jumped in and began to work our way around the building, turning over the bodies. Most were badly burnt. It was a tiring and grisly task, one of the most distressing things I’ve ever had to do. None of the dead were Mac or David, but the final body I turned over was Unwin’s little sister.
So they’d been here all the time we were rescuing the people from Hildenborough. I looked up at the burning building. They might still be inside, charred and lifeless. I could be directly responsible for their deaths. There was no way of knowing.
Haycox and I climbed out of the moat and searched the grounds for evidence of escape. The canvas-covered trucks I’d seen them driving at Hildenborough were nowhere to be found, but there were fresh tyre tracks in the gravel of the car park. At least some of them had escaped the fire and moved on.
They could be miles away by now.
But had they retired to lick their wounds and start again somewhere else, or were they planning their revenge?
When we got back to the school we were met by guards at the gate. Norton had beefed up security upon Rowles’ return. I left Haycox to tend to our exhausted steeds and I went straight to the store cupboard and flung open the door. Our captured Blood Hunter was curled up into a little ball, rocking back and forth muttering in the dark. I grabbed him and hauled him out.
“The other prisoners,” I yelled. “Why didn’t you tell us about the other prisoners?” I shook him and kicked him, slapped him round the head and yelled into his face but I could get no reaction. He was oblivious.
An hour later, after we’d given him some food and something to drink, he started to talk.
“But you only asked about the prisoners from Hildenborough,” he said. And there was that urge again, the one I was trying to resist. The urge to shoot someone in the head.
When the girls and Matron had been captured the crypt had been full so they’d been imprisoned in the library, on the south side of the house. As far as he knew they were still there when
we attacked. There was nothing more he could tell us, so we escorted him to the main gate and turned him loose.
Then I went to find Unwin. I had to tell him that his sister was dead.
IN THE MONTHS that followed we searched far and wide. We collected six more horses, Haycox trained all the boys in riding, and we sent out three-man search parties every day. After a month we’d searched everywhere within a day’s ride and we had to start sending out teams that slept under canvas. Two-day searches gradually evolved into three-day searches, and still no sign of the Blood Hunters.
Eventually we had to abandon the hunt. It was likely that Matron and the girls were dead, that David died in the explosion, and that the trucks were taken by the remnants of a leaderless cult which had now scattered far and wide. We were probably searching for a group that no longer even existed. It was a hard reality to accept but eventually we had to move on.
As spring turned into summer the school slowly started to become what it should always have been. We cultivated a huge vegetable garden, and erected a couple of polytunnels for fruit and salad. The herds of sheep, pigs and cows grew steadily, and all the boys helped when it was time for lambing and calving. Heathcote’s careful husbandry made sure we never went without meat, milk, butter or cheese. The river gave us plenty of fish, and the re-established Hildenborough market grew to the point where we could trade for sauces, jams and cakes.
Hildenborough elected Bob as their new leader. We developed close ties with them, and even played them at cricket once a month. A few of their adults came to live with us, mostly those with surviving children. I made it clear to the parents that I was in charge and any adults were here strictly by the permission of the children.
One market day Mrs Atkins came back to school with a tubby, red faced, middle-aged man, and she moved him into her room without ceremony or hesitation. His name was Justin, and the two of them made the kitchen into the hub of the school. They were always in there cooking something up, and all the boys loved to hang out there. It felt homely, which was something none of us had felt for a long, long time.
Our searches had found no trace of the Blood Hunters, but they had allowed us to compile a very good map of the area’s settlements and farms. We made contact with as many as would allow us to approach, and although it was early days I could sense the beginning of a trading network.
Once I was sure that the school was secure and running smoothly, we began to look for new recruits. There were plenty of orphaned kids in the area, running in packs, or living with surrogate families. Seventeen new children joined us, ten of whom were girls. A few tentative romances blossomed. Two women from Hildenborough volunteered to teach classes, and so each morning for two hours there were lessons. We didn’t have a curriculum to follow, so they just taught whatever took their fancy. Both of them were naturals, so although attendance wasn’t compulsory they always had a full house.
Green’s theatre troupe was a roaring success, too. They abandoned Our Town in the end, and produced a revue that they took to Hildenborough and some other nearby settlements. They were our finest ambassadors.
In spite of the sunshine and goodwill we didn’t neglect the military side of things. We maintained a strict defence plan, with patrols and guard posts, and every Friday we did weapons training and exercises. I devised a series of defensive postures for possible attacks, and we drilled the boys thoroughly in all the permutations; if someone came looking for a fight they’d find us ready and waiting.
Every now and then we’d catch a whiff of something happening in the wider world, rumours of television broadcasts and an Abbot performing miracles, but our fuel was long gone so we couldn’t tune in. Whatever was brewing in the cities couldn’t reach us out here in the countryside. Not yet, anyway. So we carried on building our little haven and prepared for the day when either madness or order would come knocking on our door again.
I flatter myself that I was a pretty good leader. The boys would come and talk to me when things were bothering them, and I did my best to resolve disputes and sort out any issues. I think I was approachable and fair. You could hear laughter in the corridors of Castle again, something I never heard when Mac was in charge. I relied on Norton and Rowles to let me know when and if I got things wrong, and they weren’t shy about knocking me down a peg or two when necessary.
As my wounds healed I continued exercising my leg and found that my limp became much less marked. My cheek did scar slightly from Baker’s ring, and Norton joked that it made me look like an Action Man. Within a couple of months I felt as fit and healthy as I’d ever done.
None of this stopped the nightly visitations of the dead keeping me awake, of course.
And there was still no sign of my dad.
I WENT THREE whole months without picking up a gun.
Felt good.
Couldn’t last.
THE WOODHAMS FARM was about two miles south-west of the school. A collection of outbuildings and oast houses around a Georgian farmhouse, it was inhabited by ten people who’d moved down from London after The Cull. They’d found the place empty, moved in and started running the farm, which boasted a huge orchard and fields devoted to fruit production, including grapes and strawberries. Mrs Atkins met them at Hildenborough market and they’d extended an invitation for Green and the theatre group to visit their farm for the weekend. The boys would put on their show and in return they would put the boys up, feed them, and let them bring back some fruit for the rest of us. Lovely. What could possibly go wrong?
Jones was one of our new recruits. His parents were dead but he’d been living in Hildenborough ever since The Cull. He was a good pianist, so Green had recruited him for the revue, and he’d fitted in well. Green’s troupe had left for the Woodhams place in a horse-drawn cart, so when Jones came staggering through the front gate after midnight the duty guards raised the alarm.
“I’d just played the opening chords of After Fallout when there was a knock on the door,” he told us. “Ben Woodhams got up to answer it, we heard a struggle at the door and then a gang of men burst in wearing balaclavas and waving guns around. Green put up a fight and he got hurt pretty badly. I managed to slip out in the confusion and I’ve been running ever since. It’s about two hours or so now. You need to hurry!”
Me, Norton, Jones, Rowles, Haycox and a new kid called Neate, who fancied himself a soldier boy, were dressed, armed and saddled up within ten minutes. There was no moon and we rode blind to the edge of the farm, but we could see flickering candle light around the edges of the curtains.
“There are seven boys and ten adults in there,” I said. “Jones reckons there were four or five gunmen, that right Jones?”
He nodded.
“We’ve got no idea what’s going on in there,” I continued. “They might just be looting the place, they might have decided they like the look of it and want to move in, they might be doing any number of things. Our advantage is that they don’t know we’re coming, so we should have surprise on our side. The hostiles are dressed all in black and had balaclavas on.”
“Why?” asked Norton.
“What?”
“Why were they wearing balaclavas? Were they afraid of CCTV or what? Doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know. Probably just for effect.”
Norton didn’t look convinced.
“Haycox and Neate, you cover the front door,” I said. “I don’t want you to shoot any of the hostiles unless necessary. If they make a run for it let them go. But if they try to leave with hostages I want you to fire off some warning shots and force them back indoors. We need to try and contain them.
“The rest of you are coming with me. Everyone was in the living room when they were attacked, and that’s at the front of the house so we’re going in the kitchen door at the back. We go in quietly and cleanly, and we keep an eye out for sentries. We use knives until such time as they become aware of us, after that you can fire at will. Don’t take any chances, but only kill if you have
to. Jones knows the house so he and I will take point. Questions?”
“Just... be careful everyone, all right?” said Norton. “I don’t like this at all. Something doesn’t feel right to me.”
I smirked. “Corny line!”
“I’m serious.”
We left the horses a safe distance away and approached on foot, knives drawn. There were candles burning in the kitchen but there was no-one inside. The door wasn’t locked and it didn’t creak. So far so good. The room still smelt of roast beef. I looked greedily at the pile of dirty plates as I tiptoed around the large wooden table. The interior door was open a crack. It led into a corridor that ran to the front door. A number of rooms opened out of it to the left and right, and at the far end there was a staircase on the left.
I couldn’t hear any voices and I couldn’t see anyone. Gesturing for the others to stay in the kitchen I pushed the door gently and got lucky again: no creak. The hallway was carpeted so I took a chance and walked to the living room door, which was ajar. I leaned in and listened. Total silence. I was just about to try the other doors when I heard a small cough from inside and then someone shushing the cougher.
They were in a remote farmhouse, after dark, no-one expected or likely to arrive. Why would they be trying to keep so quiet?
I heard a small creak behind me and to the left. There was someone on the stairs. Suddenly I felt the world shift around me and I realised that I wasn’t the hunter at all. I was the prey.
This was a trap.
There was a slim chance whoever was waiting on the stairs hadn’t seen me. Without looking up at them I backed away towards the kitchen as slowly and quietly as I could.
And then another noise, this time behind me. Someone opened a door between me and the kitchen and stepped out into the hallway. I spun to see a black-clad man looking straight at me. He was wearing a balaclava and carrying a sawn-off shotgun.
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