Before I had time to move again Jonah tried a different tack, lunging for my left leg and worrying it savagely. This time I screamed. Cycling shorts don’t give the best protection, and his teeth sank deep into my calf, giving the animal its first taste of my blood. I leaned forward and rained punches down on his head. I realised that I’d made a fatal mistake about a tenth of a second after Jonah did, but that was enough. He released my leg and sprang upwards towards my exposed throat, ready to deliver the killing bite. I didn’t even have time to push myself backwards before a loud report deafened me.
When my hearing faded back in all I could hear was the soft whimpering of Jonah the dog, as he lay dying at my feet. I looked towards the door and there, silhouetted in the light, was the figure of a woman holding a smoking rifle.
“Never did like that bloody animal,” she said, as she stepped forward into the room. Grimacing, she lowered the rifle, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger again, putting the beast out of its misery. She paused there for a moment, eyes closed, shoulders hunched. She looked like the loneliest woman in the whole world. Then she looked up at me and smiled a beautiful, weary smile.
“Hello Lee,” said Matron.
I WINCED AS Matron dabbed the bite wound with antiseptic. The sanatorium was just the same as it had been before I left – the shelves a bit emptier and the medicine cabinet more sparsely stocked, but otherwise little had changed. It still smelt of TCP, which I found oddly comforting. Matron had changed though. The white uniform was gone, replaced by combat trousers, t-shirt and jacket. Her hair was unkempt and make-up was a distant memory. There were dark rings under her eyes and she looked bone tired.
“The head turned up here about a month ago and tried to take control,” explained Matron. “He started laying down the law, giving orders, bossing around dying children, if you can believe that.”
I could.
“He tried to institute quarantine, though it was far too late for that, and burial details made up of boys who were already sick. He seemed quite normal until one day, out of nowhere, he just snapped. No build up, no warning signs. He told Peter... Mr James, to help bury one of the boys, but he was already too ill to leave his bed, and refused. I thought the head was going to hit him. Then he just started crying and couldn’t seem to stop. He went and locked himself in his rooms and wouldn’t come out. I tried, a few times, to coax him out, but all I ever heard was sobbing. Then, after a few days, not even that. I didn’t have the time to see to him, there were boys dying every day and the head was O-neg so I just figured I’d deal with him when it was all over. But when I tried the door all I heard was the dog growling and I, well, I just couldn’t be bothered. Plus, really, I didn’t want to have to bury a half-eaten corpse. Still can’t believe the dog left him alone. Weird.
“Stupid pointless bastard,” she added. “What a waste.”
I didn’t think it was much of a loss, but I didn’t say so.
“Did you dig all those graves yourself, then?” I asked.
“No. Mr James helped. At first.”
“But you can’t have been the only one who survived. Some of the boys must have made it.”
I didn’t want to ask about Jon. He’d been my best friend since we both started here seven years earlier, and he’d stayed behind when his parents couldn’t be located. Mother had offered to take him with us, but the head had forbidden it – what if his parents came looking for him?
“Of the twenty who stayed behind there are three left: Green, Rowles and Norton.”
Jon’s surname had been Swift. Dead then.
“Oh, and Mr Bates, of course.”
“Eh? I thought he’d left?”
“He did.” Matron placed a gauze dressing over the wound and reached for the bandage. “But he came back about a week ago. I haven’t asked but I assume his wife and children are dead. He’s a bit... fragile at the moment.”
Bates was our history master. A big, brawny, blokey bloke, all rugby shirts and curry stains; fragile was the last word you’d use to describe him. He was well liked by sporty kids but he had little time for bookish types, and his version of history was all battles and beheadings. He was also the head of the army section of the school’s Combined Cadet Force, and he loved bellowing on the parade ground, covering himself in boot polish for night exercises and being pally with the Territorial Army guys they trained with every other month.
My dad didn’t think schools had any business dressing fourteen-year-old boys up in army gear, teaching them how to use guns, making war seem like the best possible fun you could have. He had made sure I knew the reality of soldiering – blood, death, squalor. “Don’t be like me, son,” he’d told me. “Don’t be a killer. Don’t let your life be all about death. Study hard, pass your exams, get yourself a proper job.”
So much for that.
I remember one Friday afternoon Dad stood at the side of the concrete playground we used for parade and watched Bates bluster his way through drill practice. At one point Bates yelled “RIGHT FACE!” especially loud, holding the ‘I’ for ages and modulating his voice so he sounded like a caricature sergeant from a Carry On film. Dad laughed out loud and everyone heard. Bates went red in the face and glared at him until I thought his head was going to explode. Dad just stared him down, a big grin on his face, until Bates dismissed us and stomped off to the staff room.
Anyway, Dad didn’t approve of the CCF, but Community Service for three hours every Friday afternoon sounded really dull – helping old ladies with their shopping might be character building but, well, old people smell – so I joined the RAF section. There was a lot less drill and shouting in the RAF section.
My special area of responsibility was weapons training – I taught the fourth-formers how to strip, clean and reassemble the Lee-Enfield .303 rifles that were kept in the weapons store next to the tuck shop; Matron’s rifle stood in the corner as she taped up the bandage on my leg, so Bates had obviously opened up the armoury. Made sense. I’d had a few close calls with gangs and vigilante groups on my journey back to school.
“There, all done,” said Matron. “You’ll be limping for a while, and I want you back here once a day so I can check for infection and change the dressing. Now, you should report for duty! Bates will want to see you. We’ve all moved into the staff accommodation block, easier to defend, so he reckons.” She noticed my curious expression and added, “He’s gone a bit... military. Overcompensating a bit. You should go see for yourself while I clean up here. Just remember to call him sir and salute and stuff. Don’t worry though, he’s harmless enough, I think. He’s been very good with young Rowles.”
“Okay.” I got up, winced again, and sat back down.
“Sorry,” said Matron. “No painkillers left. They’re on the shopping list for the next expedition, but ’til then I’m afraid you’ll just have to grit your teeth. I may be able to rustle up some vodka later, if you’re good.” She winked and grinned, then handed me a crutch. I hobbled away. Jesus, my leg hurt.
As I was turning the corner at the end of the corridor she popped her head out of the sickbay and called after me.
“Oh, and Lee?”
“Yes?”
“It really is very good to see you. We could use some level heads around here.”
Trying not to let my level head swell to the size of a football, I blushed and mumbled some thanks.
THE STAFF ACCOMMODATION was situated in the west wing of the main school building, an old stately home from the 1800s that was turned into a school about a hundred years ago. It was imaginatively referred to as Castle – not The Castle, or Castle House, just Castle. The two towers on either side of the main entrance made it kind of look like a castle, with mock battlements on the roof, but inside it was wood panelling, creaky floorboards and draughty casement windows.
The central heating in our dormitories was provided by huge, old metal radiators that wheezed, groaned and dripped all winter. The paint on them, layers thick, would crack and peel ev
ery summer, exposing the scalding hot metal underneath. Some prefects’ favourite method of torturing junior boys was to hold their ears to an exposed bit of radiator metal. It’d hurt like hell for days afterwards. MacKillick liked this technique, although he had allegedly once used a softer and more sensitive part of one boy’s anatomy, and I don’t even want to think about how badly that must’ve hurt. The radiators were cold now, and the air was chilly and damp.
The school was eerily quiet. I paused in the main assembly hall, breathing in the smell of floor polish and dust. At one end stood the stage, curtains closed. The sixth-formers had performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream there last term, God knew when it’d see use again. Halfway up the wall, around three sides of the hall, a gallery walkway joined one set of classrooms to the library and staff areas. I limped up the stairs and used it to make my way through into the wing normally reserved for teachers.
I found Bates in the staff room, giving what appeared to be a briefing to the three remaining boys, all in their school uniforms, as if attending a lesson. Bates was stood by a whiteboard, drawing a simple map with arrows showing directions of approach. The central building on the map was labelled ‘Tesco’.
The door was open, so I knocked and entered, making Bates jump and reach for his rifle before he recognised me, clocked the crutch, and came over to help me to a seat.
“Kevin isn’t it?”
I sighed. “No sir. It’s Keegan, sir. Lee Keegan.”
“Keegan, right. Well, welcome back Keegan. Been in the wars?”
I’ve buried my mother, cycled halfway across the county, been attacked three times on the way, eaten ripe roadkill badger for breakfast and then been savaged by the hound of the bloody Baskervilles. I’m covered in mud, blood, bruises and bandages, and I am on crutches. Of course I’ve been in the damn wars. You prick.
“Little bit, sir.”
He had the good grace to look sympathetic for about two seconds.
“Good to have another senior boy back. RAF, weren’t you?” He said RAF with a hint of distaste, as if referring to an embarrassing medical complaint.
“Yes sir. Junior Corporal.”
“Oh well. You can still fire one of these, though, eh?” He brandished his .303.
“Yes sir.”
“Good, good. We’ll get you sorted out with one at the billet later. I was just outlining the plan of attack for tomorrow. Take a seat.”
Bates looked weird. His hair was slicked back with gel (or grease?) and he was dressed in full army gear. His boots shone but he hadn’t shaved in days, his eyes were deep set and bloodshot. His manner was different, too. The blokey jokiness was gone and instead he was acting the brisk military man. Grief, did he really think he was a soldier now? I bet he’d even started using the 24-hour clock. He resumed his briefing.
“We assemble by the minibus at oh-six-hundred.” Knew it. “The primary objective is the tinned goods aisle at Tesco, but matches, cleaning fluids, firelighters and so forth would come in handy. Yes Green?”
The sixth-former had raised his hand.
“Sir, we’ve already visited... sorry, raided... Sainsbury’s, Asda and Waitrose. They were all empty. Morrisons wasn’t even there any more. Why should Tesco be any different?”
For the briefest of instants a look of despair flickered across Bates’ face. It was gone in a moment, replaced by a patronising smile. God, he really was in a bad way. It’d been hard enough for me to bury my mother but it was, after all, the natural way of things – children mourn their parents. I couldn’t begin to imagine what burying his wife and children had done to him; he seemed broken.
“Got to be thorough, Green. A good commander leaves nothing to chance. Nothing!”
“Right sir!” The boy shot me a glance and rolled his eyes. I grimaced back. I knew Green reasonably well. He was in the year above me, but was in my house and had helped organise our annual drama show last term. He was a high achiever in exams, and always put himself front and centre in any play or performance, but get him near a sports field and he looked like he wanted to run and hide under a bush; smart, but a wimp. Exactly the kind of boy Bates wanted nothing to do with. He was tall and lean, with dark hair and brown eyes, and the lucky bastard had avoided acne completely. No such luck for me.
I had been in the Lower Fifth before The Cull. Rowles was a second-former and Norton, sat next to Green, was Upper Fifth.
I barely knew Rowles. He was so much younger than me I’d never had anything to do with him. Even for his age he was small, and his wide eyes and freckled cheeks made him look like one of those cutesy kids from a Disney film, the kind who contrive to get their divorced parents back together just by being awfully, grotesquely, vomit-inducingly sweet. He was looking up at Bates, eyes full of hero worship. Poor kid. Bad enough losing your parents, but to latch onto Bates as your role model, now that was really unfortunate. I realised he was young enough that the world pre-Cull would soon come to seem like a dream to him, some fantasy childhood too idealised to have really occurred.
Norton, on the other hand, was all swagger, but not in a bad way. He was confident and self assured, a posh kid who affected that sort of loping Liam Gallagher strut. Well into martial arts, he had the confidence of someone who knew he could look after himself, and spent most break times smoking in the backroom of the café over the road, chatting up any girls from the high school who bought his bad boy act. Although he fitted the profile, he wasn’t a bully or a bastard, and I was pleased to see him; things could be fun with Norton around.
What a gang to see out the apocalypse with – an aspiring luvvie, a wideboy hardarse and an annoying mascot child, overseen by a world weary nurse and a damaged history master who thought he was Sgt Rock. Still, it could be worse – the head could be alive and MacKillick could be here.
Just as that thought flickered through my brain I heard someone behind me clear their throat. I cursed myself for tempting fate and turned around knowing exactly which particular son of a bitch would be standing behind me.
“Hi, sir,” said Sean MacKillick. “Need a hand?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Rowles.
CHAPTER TWO
SEAN MACKILLICK WAS Bates’ golden boy, and the highest ranking boy in the army section of the CCF. He was Deputy Head Boy and captain of the rugby team – three successive county trophies. He was also a Grade A, platinum-plated bastard.
Because of his sporting achievements the school authorities thought the sun shone out of Mac’s jock-strapped arse, but when the teachers weren’t around he was the worst kind of bully – sadistic, vicious and totally random. Jon always said it was because he was so short. Even now, at nineteen, he was shorter than everyone in the room, even Rowles, but he was built like a brick shitter and his head was so square it had corners. His thighs were meaty and his legs so stumpy that he kind of waddled – some of the juniors had christened him Donald Duck – but there was no mistaking the raw, squat power of the man.
His eyes were piercing blue under close-cropped blonde hair, and his face was heavily freckled, but there was cruelty in the curl of his mouth, and his eyes were all cold calculation.
Mac was a posh kid. His father was in the House of Lords until they did away with hereditary peers, but he had adopted the persona of an East End gangster. Born into the aristocracy but he acted like Ray Winstone. Pathetic, really.
Most of his classmates worshipped him, but beyond that he’d been almost universally hated, especially in the CCF. He saw the uniform as a licence to do whatever he pleased, and although he was a bully on school grounds, that was nothing to how he behaved when the army section was away on camp or manoeuvres. Army summer camp last year had reportedly turned into an endless round of forced marches, press ups and endurance tests, all overseen by Mac and ignored by Bates, who seemed to think it was just good, clean fun.
At the last camp, an outward bound week in Wales doing orienteering and stuff, he actually threw a boy into a river and then held his head under the water
until he lost consciousness. When they fished him out and revived him Mac made him finish the exercise with them, sodden and disorientated. This was winter, halfway up a mountain, so by the time they made it back to the rendezvous he was literally blue; ended up in hospital with hypothermia. Too scared to tell, he pretended he’d slipped and fallen in. The other boys in the squad kept quiet too – Mac had a little gang of hangers-on and if you didn’t want to end up black and blue, you didn’t mess.
He and his lackeys would strut (well, they’d strut, he’d waddle) around the school laying down the law, but whenever a teacher appeared Mac would smile and fawn. The head loved him. He was only relegated to Deputy Head Boy because the Head Boy’s dad had just donated a new chemistry lab. Matron loathed him. She was always cleaning up the wounds he inflicted, but the head waved away her complaints muttering platitudes about youthful high spirits. Wanker.
There were dark rumours of a death too, a long time ago, back when Mac was a junior. But as far as I knew that’s all they were – rumours.
Mac had left school the term before The Cull started, won some big prize on speech day for being king of the brown-nosers, and Jon had keyed his car during the ceremony. Jon who was now dead. We were so relieved to see the back of Mac, so sure he was gone forever.
Basically, Sean MacKillick was the last person on the earth you wanted looking after a group of vulnerable kids in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Bates gave an exclamation of joy and – God help us – hugged the bastard.
“Welcome back, Mac,” he said. “Now we can really get started.”
OVER THE NEXT few weeks we had a steady influx of people taking up residence. There had been over a thousand boys in the school and at 7% survival rate that left about seventy alive. Of these about forty turned up in the weeks following my return. Some brought brothers or sisters, mothers, grandparents, uncles, aunts and friends. Only one boy arrived with his father, but the man died the next day of pneumonia. Bates was especially good with the boy – Thackeray, his name was – and I saw a whole other side to him. He was caring, kind and thoughtful; surprising. All in all we were forty-six by the end of the month and it felt like life was returning to the old buildings.
School's Out Forever (The Afterblight Chronicles: The St Mark's Books) Page 2