He takes the gun away from Lee’s head for an instant and fires a single shot towards the far room. The gun is back at Lee’s temple before Jools’ lifeless corpse hits the ground. Jack cries out in alarm. There are shouts and screams both ahead and behind me.
Lee’s looking left and right, starting to focus, starting to get a sense of his situation.
His eyes focus on the far wall and he seems to study the painting that dominates it. I glance right to see what he’s looking at and realise it’s a huge representation of the death of Nelson, who lies cradled in Hardy’s arms much as Lee lies slumped in Cooper’s.
He smiles, and blood bubbles from his lips. Then he turns and looks at me.
For a moment I’m back in Manchester, staring into the eyes of my brother, seeing the realisation of his own death so clear.
Lee mouths words, trying to tell me something, but I can’t make out what it is.
I cry out. “No!”
But his awful sad smile widens.
Then he lifts his right hand, grabs Cooper’s gun, still tight against his skull, slips his finger inside the trigger guard and pulls.
There is a single shot.
Then many.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THEY COUNTED TWENTY-THREE dead soldiers, forty-six dead children and three young women in their final sweep of the Palace of Westminster. Plus Lee, of course.
Some of the soldiers’ bodies had been horribly mutilated. One had been literally torn apart. Green chose to believe it was the women from the lords who did that, not the children.
He organised teams to recover all of the bodies from the building – all their dead, that is. They left the snatchers to burn, and buried their dead in Parliament Square.
When the mob finally burnt itself out they gathered in the road outside, dazed by what they’d done, slowly coming down like clubbers after a great night out. Green addressed the crowd, telling them about the school, offering a home to all those who wanted to come with him. Anyone who wanted to return to the communities they were snatched from could come back with them too, he promised to arrange safe transport home.
A bunch of the comfort women elected to come with them, but a group of nine children refused to come along, insisting that they could look after themselves, distrustful of all adults even still. He let them go.
The fire spread more slowly than expected, but the entire Parliament complex was ablaze by the time they loaded the remaining children back into the lorries and set off for St Mark’s through the snow.
As they reached the edge of the city two of them parted company with the main convoy. Jack led a small team to Heathrow where they spent three busy days siphoning off aircraft fuel, laying charges, planning the biggest explosion since Salisbury. When they pulled out of the airport, they left a huge conflagration behind them. All the planes burned, the runways a mass of unusable craters. Nobody would be flying children to the US from there ever again, and neither could the American Church land and start again. In the week that followed, they took care of Gatwick and Luton before returning to St Mark’s.
Wilkes and Ferguson, who had taken off back to Nottingham once the battle of Westminster was over, had promised the Rangers would take similar steps at Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds airports. Obviously there were still local and military airfields the church could use, but they agreed this sent a strong message and was worth the effort.
Jane took no part in any of this. She sat silent, comatose, her eyes fixed on some distant point. She let herself be led into one of the lorries, compliant, like a puppet or a doll.
When they got back to the school she took to her bed and stayed there. She would eat when she was fed, sleep when the candle was blown out, wake when they opened her curtains.
But that was all.
It was as if she wasn’t even in there anymore.
EPILOGUE
CAROLINE OPENED HER good eye and winced. It was hard to divorce the pounding in her head from the pounding on the door of her small room. The walls glowed orange, lit by the dying embers of the fire that kept ice from forming on the inside of the windows on these long, cold nights.
Even through her hangover, Caroline knew instantly what was occurring.
Someone was having a baby.
“Okay,” she shouted wearily. “I’m coming.” The hammering stopped and she heard footsteps scurry off down the corridor outside.
She rubbed her head and reached for the glass of water that she always kept on her bedside cabinet. She gulped it all down, wishing there were still such things as aspirin or Nurofen.
“What’s going on?” murmured Jack, rolling over and nuzzling into her neck.
“The baby’s coming,” she whispered. “You go back to sleep.”
He mumbled something and rolled back again, pulling the blankets tight to his neck. Within moments he was snoring softly.
Caroline reached across and stroked his hair tenderly before bracing herself and swinging her legs out of the warm cocoon of the bed into the freezing night air. The rug protected her feet from the worst of the cold as she pulled her jeans and sweater on. Her breath misted the air in front of her face as she added central heating to the list of things she would wish for if she ever found a lamp with a genie in it.
She sat back on the edge of the bed, pulled on her slippers, then hurried to the door and emerged into the first floor landing of Fairlawne, the new home of St Mark’s.
The school she had returned to six months previously was very different to the one she had left two years before that.
It wasn’t just that they were in a different building now; the sudden influx of new children had shifted the balance of the place. The easy camaraderie she remembered from their time at Groombridge was gone. There were new cliques and new gangs, new classes, new troublemakers and new favourites.
New names on the memorial wall, too.
With so many of the adults dead, they had too few staff to deal with the new intake. Although a bunch of the women who had been kept prisoner in Westminster turned out to be naturals, they couldn’t replace what the school had lost. Green seemed to be in twenty places at once – breaking up fights, teaching classes, organising the repatriation of rescued kids, tending to the wounded and damaged. He was magnificent, holding the school together almost single-handed.
It felt as if the whole school were in a kind of shock, perhaps from the children’s realisation of their own savagery during the battle of Parliament, or perhaps from the loss of so many friends and teachers.
Caroline felt it too. St Mark’s was holding its breath, unable to relax, waiting for something to happen.
The winter had been unbelievably long, harsh and fractious. The fireplaces burnt twenty-four hours a day and the snow seemed never ending. They’d had little contact with the other communities they’d befriended. Travel was arduous in those conditions, so they became isolated. The whole school suffered from cabin fever. Tempers were short and food was scarce. There were so many new mouths to feed that the supplies they had laid in were inadequate, so they ended up slaughtering more of their livestock than they could afford. Caroline knew that by the time spring arrived they would have depleted all their meagre resources. They would have to work hard all summer – and pray God it was a good harvest – to lay in enough to see them through another winter.
The rumour had spread that the world was entering a nuclear winter caused by some distant cataclysm; another Chernobyl or a nuclear skirmish. But even as the winter entered its sixth bitter month Caroline was sure spring would come again; the snow would melt, the blossom would appear, the flowers would bloom. They had to.
On one of the very few times the school had been visited by traders from Hildenborough, they heard that the Abbot had made his final broadcast, murdered on air by a Brit. The Church had been defeated at home and abroad. They were safe again.
Even in the cold darkness, some children were congregating on the landing as Caroline hurried to the birthing room, wo
ken by the screams, emerging to see what was going on. She ushered them back to their beds.
She paused of the threshold of the room, disturbed by the noises coming from within.
Ever since she’d arrived here, Caroline had spent at least an hour a day in this room, sitting beside the bed, reading out loud. Mostly Jane Austen, keeping it light. Sometimes, less often, she had just sat and talked. Once she had confessed to the murder of John Keegan and broken down in tears. As she’d cried into the eiderdown she’d felt a hand on her hair, stroking it softly. It was the only sign of understanding she’d had in all that time.
Matron hadn’t spoken a word since that day in Westminster.
Now Caroline stood outside Matron’s room and heard her screaming her way through labour. It felt odd to hear any noise coming from that mouth.
She stepped inside. Matron was sitting up in the bed, legs splayed, face red, breathing hard. She reached out her hand when she saw Caroline enter, so she stepped forward and held out her hand in turn. Matron grasped it tight and pulled the girl to her side. They stayed like that, hands locked firm, as Mrs Atkins oversaw the birth.
All the noises that Matron vocalised were primal. They were roars and cries and groans and screams. Not one word passed her lips – no fucks or shits or Jesus holy motherfucking Christs.
It was an animal birth.
The baby was born as the first light of dawn crept in the window.
Caroline held the child as Mrs Atkins cut the cord. She gasped in wonder at the tiny, blue screaming thing in her hands. So light and so angry at being removed from the nice warm place that was all it had ever known.
She laid the newborn on Matron’s naked chest and pulled the sheets up to protect it from the cold. It fell silent immediately, eyes open, comforted by the warmth of its mother’s skin and sound of her heartbeat.
“It’s a boy,” said Caroline.
Matron looked up at Caroline and smiled through her tears.
“I know,” she said. “His name’s Lee.”
Later, Caroline walked out of the room into the half-lit hallway and told the lingering children the good news before ushering them back to bed.
She walked down the stairs and out the front door to watch the sun creep over the snow covered tree-line. Despite all the losses of the last few years, all the terrible things she had done and had done to her, the hardship of their lives and the endless winter that had enshrouded them for so long, she knew, with absolute certainty, that she was where she belonged, safe and loved.
As her eyes filled with tears, she caught the first faint hint of spring on the air.
THE END
BONUS MATERIAL
SCHOOL’S OUT: THE PITCH
Author’s Note: For a brief time prior to launch, Abaddon Books circulated their shared-world bibles widely and encouraged submissions from anyone who wanted to pitch. I sent in three one-page outlines; two for Pax Britannia (now the sole domain of the estimable Jon Green) and one for The Afterblight Chronicles. Here’s the outline for School’s Out.
SCHOOL'S OUT
“When the plague had finally burned itself out and the dying stopped, the surviving boys and staff gradually drifted, one by one, back to the school. After all, where else was there for us to go?”
AUTUMN TERM: POWER STRUGGLES
At St Bart’s College, an exclusive boys-only boarding school in an old stately home in the Pennines, only two teachers and the Matron survive to take care of the remaining pupils. Mr Bates, the PE master, was head of the school’s Army Cadet Force, and he takes control, forming the boys into a military unit, mounting a raid on the local TA armoury, running drills and exercises. Bates is a tin pot fascist, and constantly butts heads with Mr Gibbs, the art master, whom he summarily executes one day at breakfast for questioning an order. The sixth form prefects are the ‘officers’ but they are loyal to MacKillick, a sadistic bully who makes the junior boys’ lives a misery. Bates interrupts MacKillick and some of his cohorts engaged in the gang rape of Matron, who had unwisely attempted to discipline him. Bates attempts to intervene, but the boys first disarm and then crucify him, thereby taking control. MacKillick’s regime is brutal and punishing, and the junior boys are constantly humiliated and mistreated. Matron is kept locked away for the use of MacKillick’s loyal lieutenants. When one boy is sentenced to death by firing squad the fifth formers begin plans to oust him and his cronies from power.
SPRING TERM: THE BLOOD MOAT
MacKillick organises regular scouting parties to hunt and scavenge supplies from surrounding villages and towns. They begin to find evidence that nearby settlements of survivors are being attacked and plundered, but no bodies are ever found. Eventually they encounter another hunting party, smeared from head to toe in blood, hunting for human prey. Two boys are captured, the rest barely escape alive. Sensing the opportunity for a good fight, MacKillick leads a team to track down the culprits. They track the party back to their HQ, an ancient moated manor house. The moat is red with blood - the blood hunters believe that by surrounding themselves with a circle of human blood they will protect themselves from the plague. They have been harvesting the area, draining their captives’ blood into the moat, and then eating the remains. MacKillick is forced to stage his first major military campaign – the infiltration of the enemy camp, the extraction of his comrades and perhaps, if he can pull it off, the destruction of the enemy’s capacity to retaliate. Unfortunately he reckons without the treachery of his subordinates, and during the rescue attempt they contrive to leave him behind, unarmed, in a cell in the enemy camp.
SUMMER TERM: SIEGE
Having rescued their comrades, though not without cost, the battle weary boys return to the school and attempt to set up a model society run along democratic lines. Fifth former Phil Norton is elected leader, crops are planted and their position is fortified. After a month of relative calm they find themselves besieged by the blood hunters now led by a vengeful, and clearly psychotic, MacKillick, who has slaughtered his way to the head of the tribe. One panicked junior attempts to sneak out at night, but is captured and executed in front of the school when the boys refuse to open the doors. Co-ordinating with a scouting party caught outside the school, Norton organizes simultaneous counter-attacks from within and without, but the fight goes badly and order breaks down, leading to vicious, prolonged, room to room fighting throughout the school. Casualties are heavy, but eventually the schoolboys gain the upper hand, and Norton and MacKillick fight it out man to man in the main school hall. MacKillick wins, breaking Norton’s neck, but no sooner has he bellowed his triumph than he is shot dead by the now fully recovered Matron, who assumes control and proves herself to be a far scarier badass than anyone could have expected. Unfortunately, the fighting has started fires, and the school burns to the ground. The remaining boys, led by Matron, set out to find a new home.
BONUS MATERIAL
SCHOOL’S OUT: DELETED PROLOGUE
Author’s Note: The initial synopses were well received, and I was asked to provide a more detailed breakdown and a sample chapter for two of them, one of which made the cut. The following extract was part of the pitch for School’s Out, and it stayed in the book ’til very late in the day, but I eventually decided to cut it. Jon, the editor, was a bit wary of that, but I convinced him. It was fun to write, and helped me establish the tone, but it was the only part of the book not written in the first person by Lee, so it felt out of place. I felt the eventual opening was much stronger because it established the ‘voice’ of Lee, his age, the setting of the book, and his attitude to authority all within the first few lines.
PROLOGUE
THREE MONTHS AGO
WHEN THE ANTI-PSYCHOTICS finally ran out, Alex began to wonder if rescuing his brother from the asylum had been the wisest move. After all, delusional psychopaths with messiah complexes do not make for the easiest of flat mates. By the time the knife made an appearance, he was pretty confident that he had made a serious mistake.
�
��Dave, what’s the knife for, mate?’
No response. Just the scary eyes, the fixed stare and the knife.
‘Dave? Do you, um, want to talk about it?’
Eyes. Stare. Very big knife.
Alex considered his options. He’d seen his brother in the grip of an episode only once, years ago, before he’d been sectioned. It hadn’t been pretty.
Since the murders, Dave had been resident at a secure facility just up the road. There, on a daily diet of drugs and group therapy, he’d reverted to the good-natured older brother Alex had always worshipped. He’d seemed so normal again that it had been easy to write the episode off as an isolated incident, just one very bad day from which Dave had long since recovered.
As long as Alex didn’t think about the dead girls, then he could pretend everything was fine.
So when the world began to die and Alex realised that Dave would be left alone and helpless, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to go and rescue him from the chaotic, corpse-strewn asylum. He’d plundered the medical facility for the necessary drugs, and supplemented his stock by scavenging local hospitals and chemists. But the supply had run out three days ago, and only then had he paused to consider what he’d do if Dave had a relapse.
Now, confronted by the knife, he finally realised the scale of his error, and he began, ever so slightly at first, to panic.
Dave stood silent in the kitchen, eyes wide, knuckles white as he gripped the carving knife handle tightly, staring at his brother with his head cocked slightly to one side like a curious puppy. There was no expression on his face, no chilling psychopath smile, no deranged leer or snarl of fury. This lack of expression was what scared Alex most of all.
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