School's Out Forever

by Scott K. Andrews

  “Did he...?”

  “Oh yes,” she says matter of factly. “But, you know, could have been worse.” She registers my look of horror and dismisses it with a scowl. “I’m still alive,” she snaps, irritably.

  “Okay,” I say, eager to move on. “And then?”

  “He traded me to a trafficker for a pallet of Pot Noodles and a bag of firelighters.”

  I stare intently at the floor, unable to meet her gaze. “I should have looked after you better,” I say. “I’m so sorry. This is all on me.”

  I feel her hand on mine and I look up. She’s not smiling, but she’s not scowling either. “Not your fault. Move on,” is all she says. But I’m worried for her. Caroline and Rowles were inseparable for a while. Kindred spirits. Bonnie and Clyde. But while she was brave, strong and ruthless to a fault, she didn’t have the emotional detachment of her younger partner in crime. I remember the look on her face, the utter horror, when she accidentally shot a soldier who was trying to help us. Rowles would have shrugged and made some comment about tough luck; Caroline was devastated.

  Yet here she is leading an army, battle scarred and hardened and not yet sixteen. I wonder if that vulnerable core has been entirely burnt away.

  “I thought you’d died in the nuke,” I explain. “It wasn’t ’til much later that we discovered you weren’t there. We searched high and low for you, I swear.”

  “I believe you. But once the traffickers had me, I was shipped straight to London.”

  “You escaped, though. I mean, look at this place. Why not come find me?”

  “I was... busy for a year or so. And when I did manage to get away, I didn’t escape alone. I had this lot to look after. And a war to fight.”

  “Against who? Who are these bastards?”

  She regards me coolly for a moment then says: “Come with me.”

  As we walk out into the main street and down to the centre of town, we talk more, filling in the blanks. I tell her how I ended up in the van, about the snatchers and how they killed Lee, John and Tariq; she relates stories of all the times the church have tried to track them down or infiltrate them. There’s a streak of ruthlessness to Caroline’s tale – moles identified and shot no matter how young they may have been, lethal traps laid at freshly abandoned living spaces. She’s been fighting a guerrilla war and she’s been fighting dirty. I don’t have the right to disapprove – she’s kept these kids safe in the face of overwhelming odds – but there’s a disquieting element to her stories. I can’t decide whether her precautions and her summary justice were always justified or whether she’s succumbed to paranoia. I remember how Lee was after the siege of St Mark’s; reckless, too quick to fight when a calmer head could have avoided the need. I see a lot of that in Caroline. The sooner I get her back to the school, the better.

  It’s so long since I’ve been in a city that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be surrounded by concrete. Everywhere I look is evidence of The Culling Year. Burnt-out cars and buildings, skeletons in the street, a wrecked van, turned on its side. Someone’s gone mad with an aerosol too – up and down the high street, in big red letters it reads “whoops apocalypse J” over and over again.

  With no council maintenance teams to trim them, the trees are taking over. Tough grass is starting to force its way through the moss-covered tarmac, and foxes stroll blithely down the road eyeing us more with hunger than fear, as if calculating the odds of successfully bring us down and making us their next meal.

  As we walk and talk, Caroline notices me watching the foxes. “Keep clear of them and they’ll keep clear of you. Otherwise they tend to go for the throat. And if you hear a dog barking, go the other way. Don’t let them get your scent. We’ve managed to trap and eat most of the local packs, but there are still a couple of nasty ones left. We lost a girl to one of them only last week. Seven, she was. Poor love wandered off and tried to play fetch with a Rottweiller.”

  We cross what would once have been a busy traffic junction and suddenly I realise that we’re not alone. I become aware of shadows flitting underneath the overpass, and catch a snatch of raucous laughter somewhere up ahead, echoing through a deserted shopping mall. There are people here, all moving in the same direction as we are. Then we turn a corner and I see our destination: The Hammersmith Apollo. The sign above the entrance still reads “Oct 24/5 Britain’s Got Talent Roadshow!”

  There’s a small market outside, a pathetic collection of scavengers trying to barter remnants and relics for food. But there’s precious little of that, just an improvised spit on which rotate a couple of thin looking pigeons. The smell isn’t exactly appetising.

  Caroline notices my disgust. “I know. You’ve probably got a big old vegetable garden and a field of sheep, huh?”

  I nod.

  “I dream about mashed potato,” she says wistfully.

  “Then why are you still here?”

  “Because of him,” she says, pointing.

  I look up and see a huge mural painted onto the theatre wall. It stretches the entire height of the building and depicts a withered old man in glowing white robes. His balding head is ringed by a red circular halo and his hands are stretched out towards us in a gesture of welcome. Blood drips from his fingers. I suppose it’s intended to be beatific, religious, holy. But to me it just looks fucking creepy, because standing around him, gazing up at him in awe and wonder, are a gaggle of children.

  “The Abbot,” says Caroline. “Come on, it’s nearly time for the miracle.” She leads me through the market and into the theatre.

  Inside is a small wiry man with a little stall selling bags of KP peanuts. I gawp. “I know,” says Caroline, registering my amazement. “He’s here every time, and no-one knows where he gets them. People have tried following him back to wherever he’s got his stockpile, but he’s too slippery.”

  “Hey, thin man,” she says cheerily. “Can I get a freebie for my guest here?”

  The peanut seller smiles broadly and tosses a packet to me. “Anything for you, sweetheart,” he says. Caroline blows him a kiss and we walk through the doors into the auditorium as I pull open the packet and inhale the salty aroma. Yum.

  “We rescued his daughter – well, he says she’s his daughter – from the snatchers six months back,” she offers as explanation.

  There’s a big screen on the stage and a projector in front of it. A relatively large crowd – fifty or so people – has gathered in front of the stage. I hear the cough and splutter of a generator starting up and settling into its rhythm before the projector comes alive and beams snowstorm static for our amusement.

  “So what are we going to see?” I ask through a mouthful of honey roasted heaven.

  “Wait and see. It happens at the same time every fortnight,” she says, as we take our positions at the edge of the crowd.

  The television signal kicks in and we see a graphic of a red circle against a light blue background, and then the show begins. The miracle.

  The broadcast is by a group who call themselves the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn and they’re – wouldn’t you know it – American. Their leader is the creepy guy from the mural. An ancient, wizened old vampire who’s survived the plague despite being – he claims – AB Positive. He provides a demonstration, mixing his blood with O-Neg taken from two acolytes who sport the dead-eyed grins of happy cultists, then holding it up to the camera as it clumps.

  The crowd in the studio Ooh and Aah, gasp and clap, then they start singing some bollocking awful gospel shit. The crowd here, though, aren’t quite so sold. I get the impression they’re just basking in the glow of the television, reminding themselves of moving pictures and cathode ray tubes. The programme is irrelevant, but watching it evokes families gathered around the national fireplace watching Big Brother or Doctor Who. Happier, simpler times.

  When the song has finished, the Abbot gives a little sermon. About children. It takes a few minutes for the penny to drop, and then I remember what the snatcher had
said back in the school, about saving the children’s immortal souls.

  “Dear God,” I whisper, my peanuts momentarily forgotten. “They’re shipping them to America.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “AMERICA? YOU HAVE to be shitting me.”

  “No, honest, man. They got planes flying out of Heathrow and everything.”

  “But why?”

  “New beginning. That’s what the churchies say. We’re rescuing the kids so they can go out to America and find the Promised Land or something. They’ve got it easy over there, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, still got electricity and supermarkets and all that stuff. So I heard.”

  “And the nukes?”

  “Wiped out the political elite. Left a power vacuum that these Neo-Clergy have filled. And they’ve got everything just fucking sorted, man. Peace, love, charity, all that jazz.”

  Tariq looked at me over the top of our prisoner’s head and rolled his eyes.

  “Listen, pal, I don’t know where you’re getting your information but I know for a fact that America’s political elite is alive and kicking.”

  “Yeah, ’course you do.”

  “Saw the president himself two years back, on a live... oh. Oh, holy shit!”

  “What?” asked Dad.

  “What his aide said about children. Do you remember Tariq?”

  “I was bit busy being shot, old chap.”

  “He said, now let me get this right... ‘spied her rounding up the children’. It was the first thing I heard when I came round in Blythe’s office.”

  “Well, that’s our boss, isn’t it?” said our captive. “Spider. The big man.”

  “Spider? I thought he was talking about Jane. Spied her. Fuck, I’m an idiot.”

  “What are you thinking, Lee?”

  “Don’t you get it? That wasn’t the bloody president. That was this Abbot guy pretending to be the president. He had Blythe running round at his beck and call, trying to take control of the UK so he could use the army to round up all the children and ship them out to the States.”

  “And he must have already had a guy on the ground starting the job,” says Tariq. “This Spider bloke.”

  “Who’s assumed control this end now that we’ve taken the army out of the equation. The president’s aide told Blythe there was a bigger picture.”

  “This isn’t a new mess at all, then,” said Dad. “It’s the same old mess.”

  “But with less impaling this time around. I hope.”

  “Yeah,” said our captive cheerily. “The big man prefers crucifixion.”

  I clipped his ear.

  “Um... I didn’t follow half of that,” said the guy who’d assumed control of the Rangers. “Can you start at the beginning?”

  “Later,” snapped Dad. “First of all, this little sod’s going to give us chapter and verse on his boss’s operation. Aren’t you?”

  “You betcha.”

  “Smart lad.”

  AN HOUR LATER we were gathered in front of a classroom whiteboard as Dad talked us through a map of London that he’d put together during the interrogation.

  “These guys are well armed, very organised and disciplined,” he told us. “They’ve got a whole bunch of ex-special forces types running their operation, and they maintain a clear and functional command structure. The good news for us is that they mainly concern themselves with keeping order in London. The snatchers who operate outside the M25 are basically contractors. They’re scavengers and lowlifes who work in teams to assemble kids in a number of compounds like this one, spread around the country. Then they’re collected regularly by convoys, each of which is run by one overseer from central command who keeps them in line.

  “They don’t have complete control of London. South of the river their control is pretty much absolute. There are communities there who are actually giving their kids to these bastards willingly. It’s an area of hard core zealots and converts. Pretty much entirely hostile territory.

  “North of the river the picture’s less clear. It seems the population there is mostly controlled by fear and intimidation, although the battle for hearts and minds is ongoing. There’s one major pocket of resistance around Hammersmith where – Lee, you’ll like this – a gang of kids who escaped from a transport have set up a liberation army.”

  I smiled. “Nice.”

  “But according to our man here, there’s a major crackdown planned for next week. They’ve tried to lure them out into traps or get someone on the inside, but it’s never worked. They’re going to go in hard and wipe them out.”

  “Not so nice,” murmured Tariq.

  “What about their command?” asked one of the Rangers.

  “This is where it gets tricky. They’ve set up home in the Palace of Westminster and turned it into a fortress. Concrete barricades, electric fences, gun towers, searchlights. They’ve even got a minefield. And this is where their boss lives. Spider.”

  “What do we know about him?” I asked.

  “He holds court from the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Commons, but apart from that, nothing. No one except the very top echelon get to see him. But he’s got a reputation for being utterly ruthless.”

  “There’s a surprise,” I said.

  “And he keeps his men happy with a brothel he’s set up in – get this – the main chamber of the House of Lords.”

  “Brothel?”

  “Rape camp, really, I guess. A whole bunch of young girls who are at the men’s disposal 24/7. He’s got huge stockpiles of food and booze too. If you work for him, you eat and drink your fill and fuck any time you feel like it.”

  “Shit, where do I sign up?” laughed one of the Rangers until his mates gave him death stares. He muttered: “Only joking, geez.”

  “Twat,” said one of his colleagues.

  Silence fell as we considered the size of the task before us.

  “So,” said Tariq eventually. “We invade London, fight our way past a city full of brainwashed religious cultists, take on a private army, storm a massively fortified castle that’s defended by highly motivated special forces, and kill this Spider fucker. Then we take a plane, fly to America, rescue all the kids and take down a church that effectively rules a continent.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” said Dad.

  Tariq sniffed dismissively. “That’s the problem with life these days. So few real challenges.”

  “So here’s what we’re going to do,” Dad continued. “Tariq, you’re going back to St Mark’s. There’s a chance that Jane might tell them where the school is.”

  “No fucking way,” I shouted. “She’d die first.”

  “They might not let her, Lee.”

  “She’d never talk.”

  “We can’t take that chance.” He stared me down and after a long moment, I nodded. He was right. “Tariq, you go back to the school and put them on a war footing. We’ve rehearsed it often enough, so you know what to do. But be ready to mobilise, too. We might need you.”

  “No worries, boss,” said Tariq.

  “Lee, you’re going with our Ranger friends here. Meet up with Jack in Nottingham see if you can persuade the Hooded Man to lend us some troops. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

  “He’ll want to talk to you about our dead men, too, I reckon,” said one of them, threateningly. Dad was instantly right in his face.

  “If anything happens to my boy, there will be a very bloody reckoning in Nottingham. Do I make myself completely clear?”

  The Ranger tried to stare him down, but failed. He looked away. “Whatever,” he said. But he looked away first. Message received.

  “And what about you?” I asked.

  “I’m going to Hammersmith,” he replied, stepping back. “If there really is an army of kids in there, they don’t know an attack is coming. I can warn them and either help get them to safety or, more likely, help them fight. It’s where my experience will be most useful. We need all
the allies we can get if we’re going to pull this off.”

  I WAS CHECKING the saddle on the spare horse the Rangers were letting me ride when Dad took me to one side.

  “What now?” I asked tersely.

  He looked at me hard, as father and commander fought it out. “It’s been two years since Iraq and Salisbury. You’ve not been in a fight since. You refuse to talk to anyone about anything that happened. And now, the first time we go into combat, you shoot six people – one potential ally and five irrelevances who didn’t need killing.”

  “I disagree. They really, really needed killing. But I’m sorry about earlier. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “I know. I’m sorry too. But I’m worried about you. You’re my son and I love you but to be totally honest you scare me a little bit right now. I think your judgement is off.”

  “That why you’re sending me on the diplomatic mission?”

  “No, you were the logical choice. But I can’t pretend I’m not glad of that.”

  “Can I have my weapon back?”

  He sighed and handed me the handgun. “Just don’t shoot Robin Hood, okay?”

  We both sniggered in spite of ourselves. “Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say,” he said, smiling.

  We both stepped forward and embraced, awkwardly. “Good luck in London,” I said. “I’ll be at the rendezvous, whether he sends help with me or not.”

  He hugged me hard then let me go and stepped back.

  “Be safe,” he said.

  I put my foot in the stirrup, swing myself onto the horse and trotted over to join Hood’s men.

  “We ride fast and we won’t be making any concessions. So keep up or get left behind,” said their leader.

  “Don’t you worry about me,” I said.

  “Oi!” It was Tariq, walking towards me, waving. I pulled the reins and steered my horse across to him.

  “You off, then?” he said.

  “Yup. See you at the rendezvous.”

  He nodded then looked up at me, his face for once entirely serious. “She’ll be fine, Lee.”