School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles) Read online

  “On the floor!”

  The sniper complied.

  “Green. Green!”

  “Um, yeah? Yeah? Lee? Lee, I’m shot, Lee. He shot me, Lee.”

  “I know, but you’re fine, doesn’t look too serious. You’re going to be fine.”

  “But he shot me, Lee. In my arm. He shot my arm. I’ve been shot. In the arm.”

  “He’s going into shock. Let me help,” said the sniper.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I barked. “Green, I need you to focus on me. Green. Green. Focus on me.” His eyes swam around in his head but eventually they locked onto mine. “I want you to go into the main building, head to the top floor and find the Colonel. He’s got a med kit. Tell him what’s happened. But Green, keep behind these prefabs and enter the main building from the rear, don’t expose yourself to the pillbox, understand? Understand?”

  He nodded listlessly.

  “Okay, off you go. Quickly now.”

  He lurched away like a zombie in a bad horror film.

  Once I was sure he’d gone the right way, I turned my attention back to my captive.

  “TA, right?”

  “Is this an interrogation?” He sounded amused. I kicked him. Bad idea. My wounded leg buckled underneath me. He was moving before I even realised I was falling. But he was fat and slow, and I was lucky. I fell in such a way that the rifle remained pointing at him, and as my back hit the wall I was left slumped but upright, with my gun pointing square at his chest. He was on his knees, one hand reaching for a holster on his hip, but he knew he’d never make it. He widened his arms, smiled, and shuffled backwards until he was leaning against the opposite wall. I rested my rifle on my good knee, finger still firm on the trigger.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Be my guest.”

  He reached slowly into a webbed pocket, took out a kit and began the rollup ritual. As he did so he considered me.

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Old enough.”

  “Fourteen, fifteen? What you doing running around playing soldiers, eh?”

  I was not in the mood to be interrogated.

  “I want you to very slowly take out the handguns and toss them over to me. Slowly.”

  He put the ciggie in his mouth, lit it, and then casually tossed me two shiny new Browning L9A1 sidearms.

  “Here, have the ammo as well. Call it a gift. Plenty more where that came from.” He threw me four clips of 13 rounds. I stashed the guns and ammunition in the big pockets on my trousers. No need for anyone else to know I had them. Insurance.

  “What’s that you’ve got, old .303? Where d’you get that then?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Let me guess. CCF, right? You’re from one of those posh schools where the kids play dress up. Listen son, I dunno who’s giving you orders but they’re fucked in the head if they think that storming a military facility is a job for teenagers. You should be holed up somewhere learning to rub sticks together to make fire, not creeping around the countryside shooting at adults.”

  “Maybe. But adults keep shooting at us and I feel a lot safer knowing I can shoot back.”

  He thought about this for a moment and then nodded. “Fair enough, I s’pose.”

  “And anyway, I’m the one holding the gun and it sounded to me like your pillbox got blown to pieces, so I wouldn’t underestimate us, mate. We’re not playing games here.”

  He grinned. “Again, fair point.”

  “So what’s Operation Motherland when it’s at home?” I asked.

  “Exactly what I want to fucking know,” said Mac.

  THE ARMOURY WAS a room in the main building’s basement, one end of which housed a huge vault door. The sniper and two other men were tied to chairs in front of the door. One of the captives from the pillbox had a nasty head wound and was only partially conscious. The other was covered in brick dust but looked fine.

  Mac himself was also covered in dust and had a large purple bruise on his forehead. He’d been knocked out by a piece of brick sent sky high by the explosion, but he’d come round first and pulled these two from the wreckage.

  “Pillboxes are fucking solid, right,” he’d explained. “So I had to use a lot of geli. I managed to lay the charge without them spotting me, but they clocked me as I was crawling away and I had to hit the detonator before I was fully clear otherwise they’d have killed me.”

  The rest of us were gathered around the door too, sitting on chairs or lounging on the cellar steps. Wolf-Barry was dressing Green’s wound, Zayn was seeing to mine. Bates, Zayn and Wolf-Barry’s faces were all covered in tiny cuts where the glass from the window had shrapnelled into them, but none had serious injuries. Apparently they’d still been sitting up there trying to formulate a plan when Mac blew the pillbox and all the shooting happened. Nice one Batesy, leading from the front.

  “Dave, I’m sorry about this,” said Bates, addressing the conscious man from the pillbox. “But we’ve got a situation and I need those weapons. Didn’t think there’d be anyone defending the place. Not my intention to have any shooting, but you shot first and my boys have a right to defend themselves. All you need to do is tell us how to open the vault and no-one else needs to get hurt.”

  The man didn’t even try to hide his contempt.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Bates? I mean, you always were a jumped up little tosser who thought he was a soldier, but seriously, what the fuck is this? Colonel? You’re a Colonel? Don’t make me laugh. All those times we let you come down the boozer with us after manoeuvres so you could tell us all about the SAS stories you used to read. We were laughing at you, you moron, not with you. Do you really, seriously think that…”

  He trailed off as a loud, sickening gurgle came from the semi-conscious man tied up next to him. All heads turned in time to see Mac pull his knife out of the man’s neck. Blood gushed out over his hands, and down the man’s jacket. We all sat there in stunned silence as the man shook and jerked in his bonds as he frothed, spluttered and wheezed. It took him a horribly long time to die, and none of us said a word.

  Again, the hollowness in my stomach and the deep, sick sense that everything was spiralling out of control. But I was weak from blood loss, light-headed and mildly in shock. My reactions were muted. I could do nothing but watch.

  “You’re next,” said Mac, simply. He then wiped the knife blade on his sleeve and sat back down, staring straight into Dave’s terrified eyes with something that looked awfully like lust.

  Zayn ran up the stairs. The sounds of him retching echoed back down to us.

  Bates was white as a sheet. He hadn’t ordered Mac to do that. Even through layers of shock I realised that if he let it go unremarked then Bates’ authority would be gone forever and it would only be a matter of time before Mac made his move. I willed Bates to shout at him, to demand his weapon, to dress him down and seize control. But he didn’t have it in him. Bates so desperately wanted to be a strong military leader but he was weak, indecisive and vulnerable. And with his next words he doomed all of us.

  “Well, Dave?” he whispered, unable to conceal his shock but trying to play along and follow Mac’s lead. “What’s it to be?”

  Dave held Mac’s gaze, his eyes full of disbelief and horror. And, I noticed with surprise, tears. He told us the combination.

  Mac smiled. “Thanks, mate,” he said. He looked up at Bates. “Want to do the honours, sir?”

  Bates seemed to be looking right through Mac at something terrible in the distance, but he nodded and mumbled “Yes, thank you Major.” Now he was thanking his subordinate for giving him permission to open a door.

  He stepped forward and entered the combination, swung the huge lever handle and pulled the heavy door open to reveal racks upon racks of armaments and stacked boxes of ammunition. Mac gave a low whistle of appreciation.

  “Lovely jubbly,” he said.

  WE BROUGHT THE minibuses up to the front door and started loading the weapons into the ba
ck. Green and I sat in the front seats watching the others do all the heavy lifting. There were about fifty SA80 Light Machine Guns, ten boxes of grenades, three more Browning sidearms and four 7.62mm General Purpose Machine Guns, the kind you would mount on a jeep or in a pillbox. There was also more ammunition than we could carry, so there would have to be a second trip. With this amount of firepower, properly used, we’d be a pretty formidable opposition.

  “We could even go on the offensive,” said Wolf-Barry. “Take the fight to those Hildenborough fuckers. Mac’ll see us right, he’ll make sure we do what’s necessary to protect ourselves.”

  In his mind Mac had replaced Bates already. I wondered how many of the others felt the same way. And I wondered how long it would be before Mac’s assumption of power became official. What would that would mean for poor usurped Mr Bates?

  When the buses were loaded Patel opened the driver’s door, excited. “You’re going to want to see this,” he said. “Mac’s doing an interrogation.”

  In fact this was pretty much the last thing I wanted to see, but somehow I felt I should. I was responsible for capturing the sniper, whatever happened to him would be, to some degree, on my conscience. I hopped out of the bus and continued hopping ’til I was back at the vault door.

  Mac had the two surviving TA men sitting facing each other, with himself circling around them.

  “…got what we came for,” he was saying. “But we want to be sure we haven’t missed anything, and the only thing more useful than guns is intel, right?”

  Neither man moved a muscle, but they were rigid with fear and determination.

  “So what I need to know, sorry, what we need to know,” he gestured at Bates, who was sitting on the steps, reduced to the role of bystander, “is what Operation Motherland is and what it could mean for my merry little band. So who wants to tell me? Dave? Derek?”

  So the sniper was called Derek. I almost wished I hadn’t known that.

  Neither said a word.

  Mac started twirling his hunting knife around in his right hand.

  “If no-one tells me then I’m going to have get a little cut happy. Now, I must admit, I’m looking forward to that, so I’d encourage you to hold out for a while. Been some time since I gave any fucker a really good cutting.”

  “Fuck you,” whispered Dave.

  “Oh, goody, here I come a-cutting,” said Mac, with the most malevolent grin I’d ever seen. He advanced towards the captive, knife raised.

  “All right, all right,” said Derek. “Just leave him alone, okay. There’s no need for any of this.”

  Mac stopped and turned to face Derek.

  “Says you,” he replied. He stood for a moment, considering, and then decided to give Derek a chance. “Okay then, spill.”

  But Derek had got the measure of the man, and he cocked his head to one side as he regarded his would-be torturer. I saw all hope go out of his eyes and resignation and defeat set in. He’d realised what I’d long ago worked out — Mac was never going to let him get out of here alive, no matter what he said. He stared into the face of the man who he knew would soon be his murderer and found a depth of resolve that no amount of threats could break.

  “Operation Motherland,” he said, “is your death, little man. It’s your big, hairy, motherfucking slaughter. It’s coming for you and you won’t even know it’s arrived until you’re dangling from a rope, kicking in the air and shitting yourself as your eyes pop out and your tongue turns black and you realise in your final moments that all you ever were was a sad, frightened child who wants his mummy. Operation Motherland is our justice and our justification and our vengeance. And that’s all you’re getting from either of us, cunt, so cut away.”

  Mac stood there staring at Derek, looking sort of impressed.

  “Oh, well,” he said. “It was worth a try.”

  And he pulled out a handgun and shot both men in the head.

  “Right then, back to Castle with the booty,” he said, and walked up the stairs past us, whistling, leaving behind the corpses of three more soldiers who’d never know how the story ended.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOBODY SPOKE MUCH on the drive home, all of us trying to process what had happened. I would soon come to learn that the lesson the others took from the day was as simple as it was stupid: Mac is the boss, he is hard and cool and if you stick by him you’ll be fine. That day Green, Zayn, Wolf-Barry, Patel and Speight all became, to a greater or lesser degree, Mac’s devoted disciples, his power base, and everybody else’s biggest problem.

  What lesson Bates took away with him I’ll never know, but it was a different man travelling back to school with us from the one who’d set out that morning. He’d appeared broken before, now he seemed to be a shadow.

  When we got back to the school I was ferried up to the sanatorium with Green, and Matron swabbed and stitched and bandaged us. Green was allowed to go, he only had a flesh wound, but my injury was sufficiently severe that I was confined to a bed in the San. Matron warned me that as it healed it would hurt much more, and that if I wanted to recover fully then I must at all costs avoid splitting the stitches. I was prescribed bed rest for a week and a wheelchair for a fortnight thereafter.

  It was my second day in the San when Mac came to visit.

  “I tried to buy you some grapes, but they’d sold out.” He laughed at his own joke, and I cracked a grin. He pulled a chair up next to my bed.

  “Listen, Lee, what you did back there — risking your life, getting shot, saving Green, capturing that bastard sniper — that was hardcore shit. I reckon you’re probably the hardest person here. Next to me, obviously. And you can really shoot.”

  Flattery now?

  “The rest of my lads are loyal and all that, but, y’know, they ain’t exactly Einsteins. If I’m to run this place…” and just like that he admitted he was planning to do away with Bates, “… then I need a lieutenant, a second-in-command, someone I can trust to watch my back when things get nasty. Someone with initiative. And I reckon that’s you, mate.”

  Bloody hellfire. Okay, careful, think this through. Mac’s not stupid. He knows to keep his enemies closest so maybe he realises I’m a threat and just wants to keep an eye on me. At the same time, I want to keep him close too, precisely because I am a threat. Then again, if I’m his trustworthy right hand man then it should make it easier for me to keep secrets from him, subvert him and bring him down. Easier and far more dangerous.

  My head hurt just trying to work out all the wheels within wheels this conversation was setting in motion. But really, I had no choice whatsoever.

  “Wow, Mac, I dunno what to say. I mean, I’m only a fifth year and the others are sixth-formers. I don’t think they’d like me lording it over them.”

  “Let me worry about them. They’ll do as I say.”

  “Okay, well, wow. Um, yeah, I’m flattered you think I’m the man for the job and I’ll try not to let you down.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  “Yeah, bring it on.” Just the right mix of reticence and gung-ho. I should be on the stage.

  Mac held out his hand and I shook it. I waited for the warning, the lean-in and hiss, the ‘but if you…’ It didn’t come. Maybe he was sincere. He smiled.

  “That’s that then. Now all we need is for you to get better and we can really start sorting this fucking place out.”

  “What you got in mind?”

  “Oh you’ll see, you’ll see.”

  Yeah, I thought. I’m sure I will.

  AFTER BEING IN the thick of things for a few days it was odd to be cocooned in the San while the school went about turning itself into an armed camp, and Mac and his newly acquired groupies started to swagger and strut around Castle like they owned the place. Which, given that they were the only ones allowed to carry guns at all times, they did. They soon started dishing out punishments for supposed transgressions — lines, canings, laps before breakfast. It wouldn’t be long before more inventive, sadistic punish
ments. The bullying was beginning.

  Norton visited me regularly and kept me up to date with what was going on, and I was able to pass him my handguns and ammo to be stashed somewhere safe. Through him I learned that a new armoury had been set up in the cellar of Castle, with an armed guard on duty at all times. Bates and Mac carried handguns, but the rest of the senior officers carried rifles.

  “Hammond’s started giving lessons, if you can believe that,” Norton told me. “Survivalist stuff, like water purification, how to trap and skin a rabbit, firemaking, that sort of thing. It’s like being in the bloody Boy Scouts again. Oh and he’s got these DVDs of this awful old telly show about survivors after a plague and he makes us watch it and ‘discuss the issues’.” He mock yawned.

  “But that’s not the best thing,” he went on. “He’s making a memorial. He won’t let any of us see it, but knowing him it’ll be some daft modern art sculpture. A ball with a hole it or something. Anyway, he’s planning a big ceremony to unveil it the day after tomorrow, so we’ll get you down in the wheelchair for that.”

  “I can hardly contain my excitement,” I said.

  I had told Norton all about events at the TA centre and he agreed with me that Mac was becoming a serious problem. If it had only been Mac then we might have used our guns to drive him out, or worse. But now he had a new gang of acolytes it was going to be much harder to unseat him. We would have to be cunning, bide our time, wait for the right moment, recruit other boys who would help us when the time came.

  “Wylie is the biggest problem right now,” said Norton. “He’s taken a fancy to Unwin’s little sister and he’s not taking no for an answer. There’ve been a few slanging matches, but so far he’s not threatened Unwin with his gun, but I reckon it’s only a matter of time.” He paused and looked at me worriedly. “She’s 13, Lee.”

  “And what’s Mac’s reaction to this?”

  “Seems to think it’s funny.”

  “Look, do you think you’d be comfortable carrying a gun yourself?”

  Norton looked surprised. “Me? Yeah, I suppose.”