“If I get away with this, I’ll stick with them until they reach wherever their base is, then I’ll try and sneak away, head back to Nottingham,” said Ferguson as he hastily pulled on a crusty pair of smelly combats. “You should join my men in the road and head there yourselves.”
“And if you don’t come back?” I asked peevishly. “If they rumble you the second you walk out of this room?”
“Then there’ll be plenty of guys to take my place.”
We heard a distant car horn.
“They’re wondering where he is,” said Tariq.
Ferguson pulled the hood over his head and headed for the door.
“Head North via Hemel Hempstead,” says Dad as Ferguson makes to leave. “Look for us there.”
“Will do,” he replies.
“Good luck,” I said as he turned the handle. He didn’t acknowledge me at all.
WE WAITED A minute, but we heard no shots and no commotion. Dad left the room and came back a moment later.
“All clear.”
I ran into the playground just in time to see the trucks turning the corner at the end of the road. The engines faded away and silence reigned. Jane was gone.
I stood there for a moment, then I began walking purposefully to the gate. I would find my sniper rifle and go after her. Anyone who got in my way would die. Simple as that.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stopped but didn’t turn around, afraid of what I might do.
“Lee.” It was Dad.
“I’m going after her.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Don’t try and stop me.”
“There’s a pile of bodies back there with bloody great holes in them.”
“So?”
“Was that you?”
“Yes.”
“And what threat did they pose to you? You shot them when we’d already left. They were irrelevant.”
“They were scumbags who had it coming.”
“So you’re judge, jury and executioner now?”
“When needs must.”
There was a long silence. “You’re not going after her and that’s final.”
I burst out laughing and turned to face him, bringing my gun up until it was pointing right between his eyes.
“Really, Dad? You think you can ground me? What am I, twelve?”
He looked at me with such sadness in his eyes that for a moment I felt a stirring of... panic? Conscience? I ignored it.
“No, you’re eighteen. But you’re out of control. Your judgment is shot and you’re a danger to yourself and to the people around you. I am your commanding officer and you will do as I say.”
“Like fuck I...”
His eyes gave no warning, and he moved so fast and with such control that I was disarmed and lying face down on the concrete with his knee in my back before I knew what was happening.
“If I let you run around with a gun, how many more people will die? How long ’til you decide that Tariq’s broken one of your rules and has to be taken out? Or me?”
“Not that long, at this rate,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but nobody was laughing.
“If she’s harmed in any way, because you stopped me going after her,” I said coldly, “I will kill you.”
He considered me for a moment and then turned away.
“The awful thing is,” he said softly, “I believe you.”
I got to my feet and held out my hand for my gun. He considered me for a moment then handed it back. I shoved it in my waistband and then walked back towards the school.
“You’d better come up with one hell of a rescue plan, Dad,” I said over my shoulder as I walked away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT’S COLD OUTSIDE, and there’s no heating in the lorry, but the huddle of children produces a foul-smelling warmth that at least stops us getting hypothermia. There’s no light either. Or seats. Five winters without maintenance have reduced Britain’s roads to a long trail of endless potholes through which we splash and spring. So we bounce along in the dark, getting bruised and beaten as we crash into each other, or momentarily lift off then slam to the floor on our bony, undernourished arses.
None of the snatchers got into the back with us, so we’re unguarded. But the heavy doors are securely locked from the outside, and even if we could get them open, we’re hardly going to jump from a moving vehicle, are we?
I expected a flood of eager questions once the doors closed and we were momentarily unwatched, but these children have been broken. They sit silent and scared, clutching their blankets around their shoulders as if they were some kind of armour. One small boy keeps being shoved against me by the movement of the lorry. I try to talk to him, but he ignores me. Eventually I put my arm around his shoulder and cuddle him in close. At least that way, I reason, we won’t bang into each other so much. But his response to my attempt at comforting him is to bite my forearm, hard. I yell and snatch it back. Little beast.
“Hello?” I hear a faint shout from deeper in the bowels of the lorry. “Hello, is that the woman who came to rescue us?” It’s a girl.
“Yes,” I shout back. “My name’s Jane. What’s yours?”
There’s no reply, but a few moments later I hear vague sounds of commotion and I realise someone is fighting their way through the crowd to get to me.
“Hello? Where are you?” she says again.
“Here,” I reply, and I steer her towards me in the darkness until I feel small hands grabbing at my coat. I grasp her hands tightly. I fight down my fears and put on an upbeat façade.
“And what might your name be, young lady?” I say cheerily.
“Jenni,” she says, and thrusts a gun into my hands. “They didn’t think to search us.”
For a moment I’m too surprised to speak, and then I remember Tariq giving her the weapon back in the school hall.
“Oh, Jenni,” I say eventually. “You are my kind of girl!”
“Where are they taking us?” she asks. I can hear her trying to be brave.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know anything.” But that’s a lie. I know Spider. I know what he’s capable of.
I shove the gun into my trousers and pull my jacket down over it. They searched me back at the school; they’ve no reason to do so again.
“Where are you from, Jenni?” I ask.
There’s a long silence, and I wonder if she heard me, then she says: “Ipswich.”
“And how old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“So you were eight when...”
“Everyone died.”
“And how have you lived since then? I mean, who’s been looking after you?”
“Mike,” she says, as if this explains everything. “But he’s dead now.” Her matter of factness stops me cold. I don’t ask any more questions. She lets me put my arm around her though, and she nestles into my chest. She soon falls asleep. I feel the slow rise and fall of her breathing as we rattle and bounce in the darkness. Eventually I rest my head on hers and I slip into a half-sleep. I have no idea how much times passes until the explosion.
In the enclosed space, the bang is deafening. It comes from the front, from the cab, and the lorry lurches violently to the left. We’re flung into each other like some mad rugby scrum and there are cries and screams as the lorry tilts past the tipping point and slams down on its side. The doors at the back buckle and a chink of light breaks in. The lorry is still moving forward, crippled now, and we’re bounced and jostled. Loud screams from the bottom of the human pile as children are crushed. The lorry jacknifes on its side and the cargo container sweeps in a wide arc then smashes into something solid. We come to a sudden halt and are all flung against the wall, compressed in an awful smashing of limbs. The doors crash open and children spill out of the container, tumbling helplessly onto tarmac.
There’s a moment of stillness as our ears ring and we get our balance, re-orientating ourselves. Then the screaming starts again and there are chi
ldren yelling for air, and for people to get off them, or just crying in pain as the inevitable broken bones grind against each other.
I’ve ended up at the top of the pile, so I scramble towards the doors as delicately as I can, but it’s impossible. The mass of children heaves and shifts beneath me and I’m thrown off balance, unable to escape.
I hear the crack of small-arms fire over the din. I can’t locate where it’s coming from, but it redoubles my determination and I ruthlessly scramble back to the top of the pile and out the doors, literally sliding out across the backs of children. I draw my gun as I do so. To my surprise I manage a relatively graceful landing as kids rain down around me, blinking in the sudden, bright afternoon light.
The gunfire is coming from my left. I spin and see the snatchers who’ve survived the crash, huddled behind the open cab door, firing up at concrete embankment. We’re on an A road, in the suburbs of London, at a guess. Beckenham, perhaps? I glance around the container and see that the first lorry is still upright, parked a few hundred metres down the road. It is coming under heavy attack, many rocks and a few bullets pinging off its bonnet and roof. Before I can react, they pull away, cutting their losses, abandoning us.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The kids are still tumbling out of the lorry, all walking wounded. I briefly search for Jenni, but can’t find her in the confusion.
Right, time to take control.
I have no idea who’s attacking the convoy. They could be good guys, but they could equally be a rival bunch of snatchers. Until I know, I can’t afford to start shooting. I look behind me. There’s a side street with a pub on the corner. It’s derelict and ruined, but it will have a cellar and that’s our best chance of shelter.
“Listen,” I shout. “Everyone into the pub. Quickly.”
But it’s no use. I have no authority here. These kids don’t trust me, and why should they? They scatter in all directions, in ones and twos, pure panic. Scurrying for cover or making a break for freedom. I see one duo blindly racing past the snatchers towards the enemy guns. One of them is hit in the crossfire and drops, but the other keeps running and disappears into a tower block.
I feel a hand tugging my coat and I turn to find Jenni pulling me towards the pub.
“Come on,” she says urgently. Then she shouts at the kids who are still pouring from the back of the ruined lorry. “Come on! This way!” Thankfully, some of them hear, and once they begin to follow us, the others fall in behind them. Jenni and I begin running towards the pub.
We’re about ten metres from the door when a man steps out of the doorway. He’s about my height, dressed in tracky pants and a thick, quilted coat topped by a beanie. His face is grimy and hard to make out. In his hands he holds a crowbar. He stands with his legs apart and starts smacking the crowbar into the palm of his left hand like a panto actor in Eastenders pretending to be a hard man. He doesn’t slow me down. I level my gun at him as I keep running.
Two more men step out of the shadowy pub interior. They’re also dressed in rag-tag looter chic, but while one of them dangles a bicycle chain from his right hand, the other has a gun aimed right back at me. Jenni and I skid to a halt, but the kids behind us are too panicked. They sweep past us and then veer right as they see the menacing figures before us.
Instead of heading into the pub the stampede takes off down the side street, leaderless, lost and running into the territory of god knows what kind of gang. I yell at them to stop, but nobody’s listening.
“Leave the kids alone, bitch,” shouts the man in the middle over the sound of pattering feet and, I realise, nothing else – the gunfire behind us has stopped.
“She’s not one of them,” shouts Jenni. “She was a prisoner, like us.”
“Then she can drop the gun,” replies the man.
I aim it at his head. “And let you take them instead? I don’t think so. Stay close Jenni.”
I notice that the tide of children is ebbing and that some of them have gathered around us. I glance down briefly and recognise a number of faces from the school. About five of the kids we tried to rescue have rallied to my defence.
“She’s telling the truth,” pipes up a boy so tiny he can only be about eight. “She tried to help us.” I make a mental note to hug the life out of him if we get out of this alive.
“Doesn’t matter,” comes a loud voice from behind us. “She’s still a fucking adult. You can’t trust them. Everybody step away from her. NOW.”
Such is the authority in this woman’s voice that four of the kids peel away and begin running to catch up with their fellow escapees. It’s only Jenni and the pipsqueak left.
I turn to face this new player.
In the distance I can see the snatchers lying dead in the road, and between us and them stands a group of ten children. And then I do a quick double take back at the pub doorway and realise that they’re not men – they’ve got the slightly out of proportion, weed-thin tallness of teenage boys.
I look back at the group in front of us. They’re all teenagers. Only two have guns, the rest brandish truncheons, chains and even pitchforks. One of the kids with a shotgun, a girl, steps out of the crowd and takes point. She’s wearing a brown fur coat tied around the waist with a leather belt; she’s got a grey hoodie on underneath the coat and she pulls the hood off, releasing a cascade of greasy red hair.
The sun is behind her so I still can’t quite make out her face.
I lower my gun. “I really was a prisoner. I’m not one of the snatchers.”
She doesn’t reply.
“Honestly, I’m trying to help these children,” I plead.
The girl steps forward and suddenly I can make out her face. It takes me a second, but then I gasp in shock.
“Well you took your fucking time,” says Caroline.
THE SCARS ON the right side of her face look like the worst case of acne I’ve ever seen. I remember the cleaner’s shotgun blast peppering her with shot, seeing her fall, working all evening to sterilise and dress her wounds. Failing to save her right eye.
I don’t know what it looks like under the eye patch she’s fashioned from elastic and felt, and I don’t ask permission to look.
She’s taller but still very solid. She’d be pretty if it weren’t for her injuries, and her hair is stunning. I spent so long looking for her; it’s hard to believe she’s actually standing in front of me.
The last time I saw her she was being taken into the hospital at the Operation Motherland base, Rowles at her side. I had assumed that was where she remained until the nuclear blast. But when Lee had recovered from his injuries enough to be able to communicate again, he told me that she wasn’t there. The Americans knew nothing about her. She had vanished from under their noses even as Sanders and I were escaping in the opposite direction.
I spread the word that I was looking for her to all our contacts, but I never heard so much as a whisper. Her trail had gone cold by the time I knew to start looking.
I look at the short, square, scarred pirate Jenny in front of me, gun in hand, defiant, leading an army of children, and I feel a strange sort of pride.
“That’s my girl,” I whisper.
She hands me a mug of hot milk, which I take thankfully, warming my frozen fingers.
“Fresh water’s hard to get here,” she explain. “But there’s a guy who comes to market with milk once a week, so...”
We’re awkward with each other. Not quite sure what to say. We slip into survivalist small talk – where do you get medicine, what do you use for fuel, do you have a generator?
We’re sitting on a ragged old sofa in the middle of a huge open plan office. Third floor, centre of the high street. The desks and chairs have been cleared away and the floor is a mad maze of old beds and sofas, with long clear runs where the younger kids race around, burning off the little energy they have.
It’s a headquarters, of sorts. There must be thirty or so kids living here; closer to a hundred now we�
�ve rounded up most of the escapees from the convoy. My hands ache from all the stitching and splinting I’ve been performing on the injured from the attack. Medical supplies are non-existent, so I’ve been using all sorts of dodgy unsterilised kit. The sooner I can get these kids out of here and back to the safety of St Mark’s, the better. We have enough supplies there to deal with the imminent avalanche of secondary infections. But for now, the last child has been mended and the majority of them are sleeping it off.
Caroline is the leader here, even though there are older, stronger kids in the mix. There are hulking great teenage boys who take orders from her without question.
It takes a while for me to ask the obvious question. “Where are we?”
“Hammersmith.”
“Jesus, that far in? I thought this was Bromley. What’s it like in the centre?”
“Church land. We don’t go there.”
“Church...? Never mind. Tell me later.” Small talk exhausted, I lean forward and ask the big question. “What happened, Caroline? Where did you go?”
She looks down for moment then, talking to her shoes, whispers: “Rowles?”
“He died, Caroline. I’m sorry.”
She nods once. She knew the answer to the question before she asked it.
“He saved us all,” I add. “Little madman took out the entire US army, if you can believe that.”
She looks up, amazed. “What?”
I nod, smiling. “Nuked them.”
Her mouth falls open in astonishment then she begins to laugh.
“He asked about you,” I continue, smiling in spite of myself. “Wanted us to find you, tell you he loved you.”
Gradually her laughter subsides and she wipes away a tear that could equally have been caused by hilarity as grief.
“He stayed behind so I could escape,” she says eventually. “The surgeon who operated on me came to get me during the attack. Spirited me away from right under their noses.”
“Where did he take you?”
“We spent a while in a house somewhere in Bristol, while I recovered. Just the two of us.”
School's Out Forever Page 60
