Silence fell. Everyone in the room was transfixed, waiting to see what Mac would do. If he went for this then we had a chance
I walked up to Mac, who still stood with his gun aimed at Norton. I whispered in his ear.
"All this time you've been pointing out to me the ways in which I'm a failure. The things I can't do that a leader needs to. Not forgetting the rules of challenge and succession you keep banging on about. You want to do this right, yeah? According to the rules? Then here's your chance. Follow your own logic, Mac. Fight the man I delegate to represent me. Prove you're better than the best I can field."
"And what if I delegate too? What if I ask Gareth to fight for me?" He indicated one of David's giant guards.
"Brother Sean, I think you're forgetting who's in charge here," said David, with steel in his voice. "I do the delegating, not you. I'm indulging your whim. Take care that my indulgence doesn't run out. The young man's logic is sound. I suggest you accept the challenge. Otherwise I may decide you're not the man you profess to be. I might decide you're cattle."
Mac looked rattled. But he had no option now. He'd engineered this situation, he'd have to see it through.
"Fine," he snarled as he let the gun fall from his grip, and charged.
Before Norton could react Mac took him in the midriff and barrelled forward, propelling him off the stage. They sailed through the air, crashing five feet to the floor of the main hall. Norton fell flat on his back, with all Mac's weight on top of him. There was a dreadful crack of bone as his spine hit the hard wood floor, then a hollow thump as his skull bounced. Lying on top of Norton, Mac reached his one good arm up, grabbed Norton's hair and slammed the back of his head onto the floor. Once, twice, three times. Then he leaned back, folded his arm and brought the sharp end of his elbow smashing down with all his might on Norton's throat. There was an awful soft crunch as his windpipe collapsed.
The whole fight had lasted about five seconds.
Mac rolled off and got to his feet. Norton lay there, clutching at his collapsed throat, gasping for air. The assembled Blood Hunters roared in triumph.
It's a measure of how used to this kind of thing I'd become that while everyone was watching my best friend die, I took the chance to get to Mac's discarded gun. I dived forward, landing on my broken arm, reaching for the gun with my semi-good hand. Yep, the drugs were wearing off. That hurt.
Gareth the guard stepped forward and kicked me under the chin before I could reach the weapon. I was flung backwards off the stage. I fell hard and lay on the hall floor, winded, next to Norton. We looked into each other's eyes. I could see all the fear and panic and horror in his, as they widened, dilated, and died. The crowd kept cheering.
Mac's leering zombie face appeared over mine.
"Well done," he said, shouting over the din. "One more corpse for the cause. Hope you're proud."
At that moment I finally accepted it. We were finished. We'd lost. I had no clever plan to fall back on, no trap to spring, no argument to put forward. I felt the darkest, blackest despair. I was beyond weeping or begging for mercy. There were no more sarcastic comebacks or flippant put downs. My friends were dead or captured. I was a broken wreck. Everything I'd tried to achieve had been destroyed. I'd failed my friends, my father, myself. All I had to look forward to was a creatively stage-managed death. And I was okay with that. It'd be kind of a relief.
I got my breath back and slowly rose to my feet. Mac faced me across Norton's cooling body, one mad eye gleaming with triumph. I spat in it. He just laughed.
I looked over his shoulder at the kneeling captives. Rowles' face a mask of cold fury, Green weeping, Mrs Atkins staring blankly into space. I wanted to tell them how sorry I was, but it wouldn't have meant a damn.
"Loser," said Mac, taunting me. I didn't reply.
David called for silence and the noise died away. The cult leader rose to his feet and addressed us.
"Brother Sean has brought great credit to our crusade. He led us out of our hermitage and set us on the true path. And now, brothers and sisters, he has brought us to a place of refuge and sanctuary, where the chosen can abide in peace through the Tribulation. This place, once a school, will become a beacon of hope for all the world. Children will study here under our guidance, learning of the one true faith. Here we shall train acolytes and pilgrims, preachers and reapers. The good word shall spill from this hallowed place like a flood and it shall sweep away all the cattle from our lands and make us safe. Hallelujah!"
The Blood Hunters howled their hallelujahs in response. David pointed at me. "Bring that child to me." I didn't wait to be grabbed and herded. I walked to the steps and mounted the stage again.
"No!" shouted Mac. "You promised me! You said I could do it!"
David silenced Mac with a look before turning to me.
"Young man," said David. "You were given an opportunity to join us, but you rejected it. Instead you tried to silence my holy voice. This cannot go unpunished." He gestured to the men in the wings. "Fetch rope," he said. They didn't even have to move, they just reached out and grabbed a rope that dangled from the gods. One of the guards walked out onto the stage holding the rope, which came easily, because it was only anchored to a wheeled pulley way up high. David took the rope and bent down, tying it around my feet.
He motioned to the guard, who walked back into the wings and unlaced the other end of the rope from the metal peg that secured it. Then he hauled on it, and my feet went out from under me. I crashed to the stage, face first. I felt one of my front teeth shatter. I was pulled upwards until I dangled in the air, suspended so my head was level with David's.
I could see Mac in the crowd. He looked agitated.
Slowly, meticulously, David stripped naked. Then he took a knife from one of the guards and walked centre stage. He spread his arms and addressed the crowd.
"In the fountain of life I shall be reborn," he intoned.
The Blood Hunters replied: "Make us safe."
"With the blood of the lamb I wash myself clean."
"Make us safe."
"From the source of pestilence comes our salvation."
"Make us safe."
"Life for life. Blood for blood."
"Make us safe."
He turned towards me, cradled my head and moved to kiss me.
"I'll bite your fucking lips off," I growled. He backed away.
"I thank you for your gift," he said.
Then, suddenly, the right side of his head wasn't there anymore. He reached up to feel his face, as if he were confused at what was trickling down his cheek. Someone in the crowd started to scream. David's hand came away from the gaping wound and he held the bloodied fingers up in front of his face, trying to focus on them. He emitted a bark of laughter and said: "As if by magic!" Then he collapsed in a heap.
Mac stood on the right side of the stage, smoking pistol in his hand.
"You promised!" he shouted at David's crumpled form. "You fucking promised! He's mine. I told you that and you promised."
The fallen cult leader craned his head to look at Mac. He gave a sick, gargling laugh and blood bubbled up out of his mouth. "Safe now," he gasped. And then his head fell backwards, lifeless.
While all this was going on my eye caught a flash of movement as the door to the balcony swung open. I couldn't see anybody emerge. It didn't swing shut, but it was pushed further open, as if someone else was entering. Then again and again it swung a little shut but was pushed back open. There were people crawling onto the walkway overlooking the hall, hidden from view by the waist-high wooden guard rail. Who the hell was up there?
The crack of David's head on the wood jolted the guards out of their shock and they ran at Mac, machetes raised. He gunned them down. While they were still falling, he turned to the screaming crowd and fired over their heads. "Shut the fuck up!" he yelled. Silence fell. "I'm in charge now, right? You!" He pointed at one of the Blood Hunters in the wings. "Cut him down." The Blood Hunter didn't move. Mac waved t
he gun at him. "Now!" Still he didn't move. Mac paused, seemingly unsure what to do in the face of this refusal to comply.
It was as if his head suddenly cleared and he realised the position his unthinking rage had placed him in. He'd just killed the religious leader of a group of insane cannibals, all of whom were armed. And they were all looking at him.
"Nice one, Mac," I said. "Good move."
There was a collective roar, a guttural explosion of fury from every Blood Hunter in the hall. Then they rushed him. They could have shot him, but I guess there was something about wanting to inflict the pain personally, needing to feel the kicks and punches landing. Some of them even threw their guns aside as they ran. Like a tide, the cultists swept left and right to the stairs and streamed up them onto the stage. I was ignored, forgotten. Mac fired, mowing some of them down as they approached, but it was no use. They fell upon him and he screamed as he vanished beneath a flurry of fists.
Two things happened at once. The boys and men who'd been held prisoner ran forward and grabbed all the discarded weapons they could; and an army of girls appeared on the balcony above us.
Matron stood directly opposite and above me on the balcony, machine gun pointed down. To her left and right, flanking the room on all three sides, were fifteen young girls, all similarly armed.
I saw Rowles look up in astonishment. Then he looked at the stage and he smiled broadly.
"Fire!" he yelled.
All the girls opened up at once, pouring fire down into the throng of Blood Hunters. Those boys and men who'd grabbed discarded guns did the same.
The Blood Hunters didn't stand a chance. It was a massacre. Some of them realised what had happened and tried to bring their weapons to bear, but the onslaught was too fierce, the fire too concentrated. The gunfire seemed to go on forever, a cacophony of stuttering weapons with a staccato accompaniment of spent cartridges hitting the floor. The noise reached a crescendo and then gradually died away as magazine after magazine clicked empty and the guns fell silent. As the smoke rose, and the smell of cordite swamped everything, silence fell.
The stage was piled head-high with twitching, bleeding Blood Hunters; dead, dying and wounded. And me, upside down, swinging gently above the slaughter, splashed with blood and gore, laughing hysterically.
Matron was appalled at what had occurred, but she took control with assured, businesslike calm. She sorted out the youngest children, both boys and girls, and sent them outside to collect weapons from the battlefield. The men and older boys set to work pulling the Blood Hunters off the stage and sorting them into three piles: dead, mortally wounded, and those who could perhaps be saved. Matron co-ordinated the triage.
There was a brief argument between Rowles and Matron, with Rowles arguing that they should all be shot in the head. Matron wouldn't hear of it. Rowles surprised me by accepting her authority.
After I was cut down I sat at the far end of the hall and nursed my wounds, unable to believe that I was still alive. After a while Matron came and sat next to me, resting her hand on my knee.
"You all right?" she asked. I didn't need to answer that. "No, of course you're not. Sorry. Stupid question."
I smiled to indicate I didn't mind and she grimaced. "Ouch," she said, as she leant forward, took hold of my jaw and opened my mouth to reveal my missing front tooth. It had snapped in two, leaving a jagged, serrated edge that I couldn't stop probing with my tongue. "That must really hurt."
"Not yet," I lisped. "Your drugs are still taking the edge off. But I wouldn't mind another hit before you pull the root out."
"No problem. Hold still." She took hold of my re-broken nose and wrenched it into place again, making me yell. "You need a splint on that. I'm not sure it'll set quite right, though."
"Great," I laughed. "I'm a limping, lisping, gap-toothed scarface with a broken nose. What a catch."
She placed her hand on my cheek. "Oh, I don't know." She flashed me a cheeky, girlish grin that made me feel all sorts of interesting things. I actually blushed.
"Are all the girls okay?" I asked, changing the subject.
She nodded. "David kept his side of the bargain. They didn't touch them. Which isn't to say they enjoyed being locked in a caravan for so long." She surveyed the makeshift morgue in front of her. "I was hoping they wouldn't have to open fire; that just the threat would be enough to get the Blood Hunters to disarm. It seems that these days everyone has to end up killing somebody."
I looked at her and suddenly I realised where we'd gone wrong, all those months ago.
"It should have been you," I said to her.
"Sorry?"
"In charge. It should have been you, not Bates."
"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed.
"Think about it. Every time things went wrong you were the one who did the right thing. You stood up to that woman on the drive; you stood up to Bates and Mac when Hammond was killed. While I was making plots, pretending to be something I wasn't, you were always the honest one. Of all the lessons Mac was trying to teach me about leadership, that's the one he never understood: you can only be a proper leader if you're willing to stand up for what you believe in and be counted when it matters. I never was. You always were. It should have been you, Jane. Not Bates, not Mac, not me. You. Maybe then none of this would have happened."
"Oh fuck off, Nine Lives" said a voice from the stage. There was Mac, fished out from the very bottom of the pile of bodies. He was covered in cuts and bruises, but not a single bullet had made its way through the crowd to him, curled up on the floor at the epicentre of the lynch mob. "The last thing we need right now is a fucking moral, yeah? Spare us, please."
Two of the boys who'd been sorting through the bodies stood beside him, keeping him covered. I stood up and walked towards him across the hall floor, skirting the wounded and dying.
"What does it take to kill you, eh?" I said, incredulous. "I mean, I shot you, I blew you up, you just got beaten and shot at. What does it fucking take to get rid of you?"
"Back at you, Nine Lives," he replied, with a sneer.
I reached the stage and leant on it, resting my arms on the footlights and looking up at him. I sniffed and shook my head. I didn't understand it, but I was almost glad to see him. "Shooting David wasn't the cleverest thing you've ever done, was it?"
He shrugged, then he limped over to the front of the stage and sat down, dangling his legs over the side next to me.
"Fair point." He chuckled. "Snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory there, didn't I?"
"Kind of, yeah. You do realise you're insane. Really, genuinely psychopathic."
"Probably," he replied. He paused and then said: "I blame society."
I couldn't help it; that made me laugh. After a second he joined in and before I knew it we were holding our sides, tears streaming down our faces, in the grips of the most terrible giggles. When they subsided I reached down and picked up a discarded Browning. I checked it was loaded and chambered a round.
"Still," I said. "I'm going to have to kill you now, Sean. I hope you understand that."
He looked at me and nodded.
"It's what I'd do," he said evenly.
"I just want you to know, it's completely personal. I really hate your guts and I want you to die."
"I understand," he said.
I took a step back, raised the gun and aimed at his heart. I looked straight into his face, at his one remaining eye, as I squeezed the trigger to the biting point.
"Lee, put it down," said Matron, behind me.
I didn't move a muscle.
"Lee, please, put it down. Enough now. You don't need to kill him. I worked too bloody hard to put him back together."
Mac held my gaze. His face gave nothing away. He seemed more curious than scared, interested to see which way I'd jump. Was I finally the cold blooded killer he'd always told me I needed to be? The answer was yes, and I was going to prove it. I wanted to kill him. I was sure it was the right and necessary thing to do.
I turned my head to look at her. Somehow I'd not noticed before now, but she'd washed her face clean of blood. I could really see her for the first time in months. Her eyes held such compassion and warmth. My stomach felt hollow and empty, but I couldn't be sure whether it was because of the drugs wearing off, the sight of her face, or the certain knowledge that I was going to pull the trigger whatever she said.
"Sorry, Jane. But I'm a killer now." I turned back to face Mac. "It's what he made me." I steadied my arm to fire. I would have done it too, but Mac wasn't looking at me any more. He was looking over my shoulder. He smiled. "Finally," he said. "Someone with balls."
The first bullet took him in the jaw, ripping away half his face. The second got him right between the eyes. The third and fourth hit him in the right shoulder. The sixth ripped open his throat. The seventh and eight took away his nose and one remaining eye. The ninth, tenth and eleventh hit his chest, exploding his heart and lungs. Then the hammer hit metal. Mac fell backwards, a dead weight.
Green, by this point standing beside me, dropped the smoking gun to the floor, wiped his eyes, and walked away without a word.
EPILOGUE
I remember the first time I met Lee. He was fourteen and it was my first day as Matron at St Mark's, my first day as Jane Crowther. I wasn't sure if it was an identity I'd be comfortable with. I'd trained to be a doctor, not nursemaid to a bunch of spoiled upper-class brats. I was nervous and uncertain.
The police had taken care of all the details, and Inspector Cooper assured me that my cover was absolutely water tight. A few years hidden away in this anonymous little school and then maybe I could resume my medical studies somewhere else. Somewhere they'd never find me.
The last words Cooper said to me were: "I promise you, Kate, it's over. You'll never have to pick up a gun again."
School's Out Page 24
