“Down!” Matron.
She pushed me forwards and I sprawled back onto the grass. I landed on my broken arm and passed out.
When I came round I was moving again, staggering forward with Matron holding me up. I could hear the sounds of battle but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Were we in the thick of the fighting or had we left it behind? Then I felt canvas on my face as we pushed through the flap into the tent. My vision started to clear slightly, and I could make out vague shapes and colours.
“Sit here,” she said as she lowered me onto a chair.
My vision and hearing continued to improve. There was a hell of a battle going on outside. Matron came running up with a medical kit.
“You’re holding your arm, is it broken?” She was breathless, and kept glancing over her shoulder at the tent door.
“Think so.”
“This is going to hurt,” she warned, and then she took hold of the arm and wiggled it a bit, trying to find the break and set the bone.
I passed out again.
When my senses returned my arm was in a sling, bound tight across my chest. I looked up and saw Matron struggling with an attacker. My vision was still blurred, and I couldn’t make out the details, but I could see she was being overpowered. I looked around for a weapon and saw the med kit case lying at my feet. I leant down and picked it up with my good right arm. I tried to stand but my legs were like jelly. I managed to rise off the chair and then I toppled sideways and crashed to the ground. Luckily I fell onto my good arm this time.
Deep breaths. Focus. Things to do.
This time I managed to get upright and I lurched towards the struggling couple. I brought the corner of the med kit case down as hard as I could on the head of the man who had his hands around Matron’s throat. He grunted and slumped to the ground. Hang on, he wasn’t a Blood Hunter. Fuck.
Matron greedily sucked in some air with a hoarse yelp.
“Thank you,” she gasped.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Our guys are going to think you’re the enemy, and any Blood Hunters who see you helping me will cut you down. You need to go.”
“I know. Need to find the girls. One last thing, though.”
She grabbed the med kit, opened it, pulled out a syringe and bottle. She filled the syringe and jabbed it into my good arm before I had a chance to ask what she was doing.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“Home brew,” she said. “Should help you stay on your feet for a bit. Take this.” She pressed a machine gun into my good hand. Then she leaned forward and kissed me hard on the lips. “Good luck!” And she was gone, machine gun held ready, out the rear tent flap.
The spot where she’d injected me felt red hot. The heat spread out from my arm, creeping through my veins until my entire body felt like it was full of lava.
It felt fantastic!
A stream of bullets ripped through the tent fabric right in front of me, cutting a horizontal line. I dived for cover. The bullets stopped for an instant, hitting something between shooter and tent, and then continued. A body slammed into the canvas, and slid down to the grass. Then a Blood Hunter backed into the tent, firing wildly. Once inside he turned and made to run for the other exit, but he saw me. He screamed furiously and raised his gun. I was quicker. Two bullets to the chest took care of him.
The man lying beside me groaned and rubbed his head, coming around. I vaguely recognised him as one of the men from Hildenborough.
“Wake up,” I yelled at him. He looked up at me, shaking his head to clear his vision.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Will be. You?” He nodded.
We got to our feet.
“Come on then,” I said. And we ran out of the tent into the battle.
I’d never seen anything like it. It was a free for all. Everywhere I looked there were people fighting hand-to-hand; everywhere the glint of sunlight on machete blades, the smell of blood and cordite. People were being stabbed and shot, strangled and beaten. It was a mêlée and it was impossible to get a sense of who was winning. The force we had brought from Hildenborough was only forty strong, so they were hopelessly outnumbered.
I raised my gun and took a few potshots, killing two Blood Hunters outright and wounding at least one more. I was shooting one-handed, from the hip, with my other arm useless on my chest, but I was still shooting better than I’d ever done before. All my senses felt crystal clear. Whatever it was Matron had injected me with, it made me feel invincible.
The guy next to me staggered backwards as his head exploded in two, cleaved by a machete. I spun, firing, and the stream of bullets ripped into a Blood Hunter who jerked backwards and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Suddenly I was in the thick of the fighting.
People crashed into me, locked in life and death struggles. Bullets whistled past my head. One Blood Hunter came for me, machete raised. I tried to bring my gun to bear, but it was grabbed by another Blood Hunter. I wrestled for control of the weapon, saw the raised machete out of the corner of my eye and let go of the gun. The Blood Hunter who’d grabbed it fell backwards with a shout of surprise and let off a burst of bullets, which cut down the one with the blade. As he fell I grabbed the blade and whipped around, throwing it as accurately as I could. It found its mark in the chest of the man who’d shot its owner. I grabbed my gun back from the lifeless hands of the Blood Hunter and tried to get some sense of what was going on around me. I couldn’t see any boys. Where the hell was Norton?
Through the mass of fighting I caught a glimpse of the sandbagged machine gun nest at the gate. Inside, a Blood Hunter was firing the GPMG down the drive towards the school. A group of Blood Hunters were kneeling next to him, firing back into the mêlée, picking off Hildenborough fighters. If nothing changed it was only a matter of time before the Blood Hunters got the upper hand. We had to shut that gun down, allow Norton to bring reinforcements. Someone crashed into me from behind, knocking me to my knees. I turned to find a young blood-daubed woman staring at me, a neat hole above her left eye. She fell sideways revealing Rowles, smoking pistol in one hand, machete dripping blood in the other.
“Orders, sir?” he shouted above the din.
“We need to...” He raised his gun and I ducked. A bullet whipped over my head and I heard a strangled cry. I looked up at him again.
Definitely the scariest ten year-old I’ve ever met. I was glad he was on my side.
“GPMG!” I shouted, pointing towards the gate. He leant down and helped me to my feet. I was only halfway up when I had to shoot through his legs, kneecapping a woman who was coming at him with a machete. He turned and finished her off with a single shot.
Once I was upright I took the lead. We shoved our way through the fight, firing and hacking our way to the edge of the scrum. Then we skirted around the outside, collecting two Hildenborough men on the way. We found a clear space near the wall, and Rowles said “Let me, sir.” He raised his gun and took careful aim.
As he took shots at the men behind the sandbags we stood guard around him, picking off any Blood Hunters we could get a clear shot at. The man next to me took a bullet to the thigh and then, as he bent down to put pressure on the wound, another round took him in the top of the head. He collapsed in a heap, instantly dead.
Rowles took a step forward each time he fired and the remaining man and I paced him, keeping him covered. He’d picked two of them off before they worked out who was shooting at them. By that point we were within a couple of metres of the sandbags. Rowles’ gun clicked empty and he tossed it aside without a second’s hesitation. I dropped to my knees and sprayed the sandbags with bullets as he ran towards them, machete raised, shouting some sort of battle cry. My bullets took one Blood Hunter across the chest and he fell backwards out of sight. The other fired wildly at Rowles but somehow the bullets kept missing, and soon the shooter was missing his left arm.
I heard a fleshy impact above me and the head of the
man who’d been fighting beside me dropped at my feet. I dived forward and spun so I landed on my back, firing as I did so. But the gun didn’t fire. Empty.
I rolled sideways to avoid the blade that curved down towards my head. In doing so I rolled over my broken arm. Didn’t hurt a bit. The blade slammed into the grass next to my ear. I reached across with my good arm, grabbing the Blood Hunter’s wrist, but it was drenched in fresh blood from the battle, and my hand slid off as he pulled the blade free of the ground. He raised the machete again as I lay there on the ground, nowhere to go. Then a blur above my head as someone literally dived over the top of me, their shoulder hitting the Blood Hunter in the stomach and taking him down. Haycox.
Even over the din of battle I heard the dreadful crunch as they hit the ground. Haycox sprang backwards, his opponent’s neck snapped. He turned and reached down to offer me a hand up. But before I could take it his head snapped sideways as it shattered in a spray of blood and brain matter. Bullet to the head. He fell, stone dead. I scrambled backwards and tried to get to my feet. I was spending far too much of this fight flat on my bloody back. I saw two Blood Hunters come running towards me, lowering their guns as they came. Then they lurched backwards as an arc of heavy GPMG rounds picked them up and flung them, lifeless, to the grass. I looked across at the sandbags and there was Rowles, God love him, unleashing the GPMG at any Blood Hunter foolish enough to offer him a target.
I got to my feet and ran, crouching as I weaved through the fight, to the sandbags. I dived over them, landing smack on the fresh corpse of one of Rowles’ victims. I pulled his gun free and took my place at Rowles’ side, sheltering behind the wall of sandbags, picking off Blood Hunters.
A quick glance to my right revealed a stream of armed boys, running down the drive towards us; Norton and reinforcements. But looking at the scene in front of me I realised that it was already too late. The Blood Hunters were overwhelming the opposition. We were losing.
The heavy machine gun next to me chattered once more and then fell silent.
“All gone,” said Rowles simply. “What now?”
“Back to Castle. Run!”
As Rowles legged it down the drive, waving for Norton and his troops to fall back, I stood and yelled into the mêlée as loud as I could: “Retreat! Back to the school! Retreat!”
Bullets from a host of Blood Hunters smacked into the sandbags, and I dived for cover again. This time I crawled across corpses and flung myself behind the school wall, out of the line of fire. Then I got up and ran for Castle as fast as I possibly could.
I could hear the sounds of pursuit behind me, cries and crashes and weapon fire. Running is bloody difficult with only one arm; you get unbalanced and wobble all over the place. I got halfway to the school, with bullets whistling past me all the way, and then my torso somehow outpaced my legs. I ploughed, head-first, into the grass. I tried to roll with it, and get back up on my feet, but my useless arm threw me again and I ended up in a heap.
I regained my feet and chanced a look behind me. Twenty or so Hildenborough men, Green, and a few of his surviving actors, were racing towards me, a horde of screaming Blood Hunters in their wake. Mac was leading the pursuit. He was bellowing encouragement to his cohorts, waving a bloodied machete above his head.
As the human tide caught up with me I turned and was swept along with them. Ahead of us I could see Norton lining the boys up into ranks. They shouldered arms and took careful aim right at us. What the bloody hell was he doing?
When we were within ten metres of him he shouted: “Get down!”
We didn’t need telling twice. All of us dived to the ground. There was the most tremendous noise as all the boys fired at once, sending a wall of lead into the massed Blood Hunters.
“Positions!” yelled Norton.
We scrambled to our feet and ran forward. Then Norton shouted: “Down!” We dived again. A second volley thundered over our heads.
“Inside!”
We leapt up and piled in through the large double doors. As I stood at the doorway, herding people inside, I could see the results of Norton’s volleys. They had wiped out the first rank of approaching Blood Hunters, maybe thirty or more, who lay twitching and groaning on the blood-soaked grass. Once those behind them had realised no third volley was likely, they’d kept running, trampling their dead and wounded underfoot in their eagerness to slice us open. They were nearly upon us. I couldn’t see Mac. Had he fallen?
I ushered the last man through the doors and then followed him inside. Norton was there amongst the boys, manhandling an enormous barricade. Constructed from bookcases and table tops, it sat on two wheeled trolleys. They pushed this up against the flimsy main doors. A group of boys at each side took the strain, the trolleys were whipped away, and then the edifice was lowered to the floor. It was buttressed with thick wooden beams at 45 degrees, and once it was down it covered the main doors entirely. Almost the instant it hit the ground a huge body of men slammed into the doors and began pushing. The barricade didn’t move an inch.
“Positions!” yelled Norton. Two groups of boys ran left and right out of the entrance hall and into the rooms that faced the lawn on the ground floor. These each boasted huge windows through which the Blood Hunters could pour. But each had thick wooden shutters inside, with metal crossbars to secure them. Through the doors I could see that these were all closed, and had been buttressed and reinforced with anything the boys could lay their hands on. Norton had done his job well. Another group ran upstairs to take up sniping positions at the windows on the first floor. A few moments later I heard the first shots from above as they rained fire down on the attackers. The final group ran backwards to take up defensive positions at the rear of the house.
The group of men and boys who’d survived the battle at the gate milled around, tending their wounds and catching their breath. Mrs Atkins moved amongst them, selecting those who needed the most urgent care.
Norton came running up to me and pressed a Browning into my hand.
“What happened?” he asked
“The wild card got creative,” I replied. “Are all the defences in place as discussed?”
“Yeah, we’re ready for them.”
I turned and shouted at the people in the hall with us. “All those of you too wounded to fight make your way to the top floor. We’ve collected all the medicines and stuff in a dorm up there. Go patch yourselves up.”
Mrs Atkins led about ten wounded men and boys up the stairs.
Green was standing right in front of me. He had a nasty gash across his forehead and his hair was matted with blood. He was gripping his machine gun tightly, but his lower lip was trembling. He looked like he was about to curl up in a ball and start weeping.
“Green, take these guys to the armoury and issue them with new weapons and ammunition.”
He nodded wordlessly, and ran back into Castle, towards the cellar. The others followed.
Suddenly the banging on the door stopped, and the Blood Hunters’ guns fell silent. Norton and I exchanged worried looks and ran up the stairs and into one of the rooms overlooking the lawn.
“What’s going on?” I shouted.
“Dunno sir,” replied one of the boys who’d been shooting down at them. “They all just ran around the side of the building.”
At that moment there was a terrible scream in the distance.
“That came from the back,” said Norton, and we ran out of the room and across the landing. We pushed through the double doors and ran across the main hall balcony to the rear stairs. Norton was in the lead as we crashed through the door and jumped down the stairs three at a time. We came out next to the cellar entrance, and found ourselves in the middle of a pitched battle. Green and the men he’d been arming were fighting hand-to-hand with a group of about ten Blood Hunters, but I could see more pouring into the courtyard outside.
How the hell had they gotten in?
Norton and I opened fire from the stairs. I could see Green, both hands raised,
trying to slow the descent of a machete that a big, muscled Blood Hunter was forcing down towards his head. The Blood Hunter was grinning as his biceps flexed and the blade inched down. I couldn’t get a clear shot through the crowd, so I lowered my head and shoulder charged the fighting men, barrelling through them until I was next to Green. I shoved my pistol into the Blood Hunter’s perfectly sculpted six pack and squeezed the trigger twice. The man staggered back and slid down the wall, clutching his guts.
Green fell backwards too, into a corner. He curled up, buried his head in his hands and began to sob. I couldn’t worry about him now. Someone banged into my left side and sent me staggering against a door. Which was open. I tottered for a moment in the doorway but I couldn’t regain my balance. I reached out with my left arm to steady myself. But my left arm was in a sling. I fell headfirst down the hard stone steps into the musty cellar.
While I sprawled on the damp brick I heard someone slam the door against the wall and come running down the stairs behind me. Still on the ground I turned and saw a Blood Hunter woman charging towards me. I shot her twice but her momentum carried her forward and she collapsed on top of me. Her lolling head cracked into mine and the force smashed the back of my skull against the brick floor.
Bright spots danced in front of my eyes, and felt myself starting to pass out. I closed my eyes, steadied my breathing and tried to focus, but it was hard. God knows how many blows to the head I’d taken in the last twenty minutes. I was pretty sure the only thing keeping me conscious was Matron’s home brew. I wasn’t looking forward to the comedown.
School's Out Forever (The Afterblight Chronicles: The St Mark's Books) Page 23