Free.
THE END
THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT BE KING
ARTHUR ST JOHN Smith sat at a desk in a bland air-conditioned office, pressed the return key on his keyboard and wondered where it had all gone wrong.
When the viral apocalypse wiped the world clean, he had been kind of excited. The terror, the wet beds and the months of self-imposed quarantine in his pokey flat living off cat food and, eventually, the cat, were a bummer, but he eventually came to see his survival as a grand opportunity to turn things around.
All his life he’d been in search of a calling. He was pretty sure that Data Entry Clerk (Croydon (South) Council) wasn’t it, but he didn’t know what was.
Maybe his new job as Survivor (End of the World) would lead him to his destiny.
His first foray into the devastated world beyond his front door was the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to him. He pulled on his gloves, stuffed his belt with kitchen knives, and bound his face and head with torn sheets, leaving just a slit for his eyes. Once he worked out that his glasses wouldn’t balance on a cloth-swathed nose, he sellotaped them to his bindings and strode from the house, ready to do battle. In his head it was a grand narrative — meek suburban wage-slave reborn as survivalist hunter-gatherer, stalking the ravaged landscape, calm and ruthless, ready to fight looters and feral dogs.
Maybe there was a damsel in distress somewhere, in need of rescuing. He reasoned that such a maiden may have been even more reluctant to emerge than he, so he checked every house on his street, hoping to find a lissom beauty cowering in terror, just waiting for him to hold out his marigold-gloved hand and tell her everything would be all right.
He especially held out hope for number 34, where that mousey woman from the library lived. She had smiled at him once, a year ago, on the tram. It had been a Monday. But in her house, it was the cats that had done the eating. So he struck out into the wider world.
His big mistake, he now knew, had been stealing the car.
Before The Cull, he had walked past the showroom on his way to work and every day, without deviation, he would glance at the car as he walked past. He’d never stop and stare at it, that would be ridiculous, but he snatched glimpses of it out of the corner of his eye and nurtured a hard covetous knot in his stomach at the thought of it.
Once he was sure his road was empty of life, his first thought had been for the car. He strolled down the familiar streets, retracing his old route to work, marvelling at the changes in the landscape.
There was Mr Singh’s corner shop where he used to buy his wine gums — two packs every Monday morning, enough to last him a week. The shop had been looted and set on fire; a charred corpse dangled out of the upstairs window.
There was the bus stop where the hoodies congregated. They’d jeered at him once as he walked past. Arthur pictured them dying horribly. He wasn’t imaginative enough to conjure anything really gruesome, but the thought of them dying of the plague was satisfying. He chuckled. Served the vicious little bastards right.
There was the primary school. He ignored it; he’d never liked kids.
Finally, there was the showroom. His spirits sank when he saw that the windows were smashed and the cars were all gone. His brogued feet crunched over the glass-strewn tarmac as he explored the wreckage. Nothing there. Out the back, however, he saw a garage locked up with a heavy chain. He paused. Should he?
His colleagues would have described him as bland. Not timid, but not dangerous. But with no-one to tell him off, no social disapprobation to keep him meek and mild, he felt a sudden rush of reckless freedom. Licking his lips in anticipation, he scoured the garages for a crowbar, then returned and jemmied the lock away, opening the garage doors to reveal his heart’s desire.
A Lamborghini Murciélago, abandoned with the keys still in the ignition. The dealer must have thought to hide it when he realised things were going to hell.
Half full of petrol, untouched, jet black bonnet gleaming in the sunshine, the car invited him to take it for a spin. It was like some magic gift, so improbable it had to be intended. He looked left and right before he got inside, instinctively wary of discovery. But nobody yelled at him, or took a shot at him. The seat moulded itself to his saggy rear, allowing him to recline in the low slung vehicle. It felt right; it felt like a throne. This car was his now and why not? Didn’t he deserve it?
He closed the door and gently, almost reverently, turned the key. The car purred into life. He placed his hands on the steering wheel, considered taking off his rubber gloves so he could feel the real leather, but decided to play it safe, pressed his foot on the clutch and then gently depressed the accelerator, revving the engine. The car growled, roared, came alive around him.
In that plush seat, enveloped in that purring, eager metal beast, he felt a rush of something new and strange.
Power.
He was free and alive and it felt good. He released the handbrake and let her rip, tearing down the Queensway towards Croydon town centre, weaving in between ruined and burnt out wrecks. This must be what it felt like to be a rock star, he thought. Like Chris de Burgh going smooth at ninety, feeling good to be alive; or Chris Rea, on the road to hell.
His drive lasted for thirty seconds, and now, two months later, as he scrolled down the spreadsheet preparing for another dreary morning of data entry, he looked back on that glorious half-minute and thought that probably it would be the most dramatic thing that had ever happened to him.
Because the men in the yellow hazmat suits had been searching the town for survivors, and he’d ploughed straight into a group of them outside Morrisons.
The ones he didn’t kill were not happy with him.
He heard the office door behind him swing open, but he didn’t turn to see who it was. No point; he knew already.
“You finished yet, Smith?”
“Ha ha, only just started, Mr Jolly.” The fake laugh, perfected years before in the accounts payable department of Croydon (South) Council, came easily to him. It was his defence mechanism, a way of signalling that he wasn’t a threat. If he were a pack dog, he’d be bowing his head, lowering his tail and whining.
Jolly was his supervisor, a whinging Wandsworth solicitor who’d landed himself a cushy little number running the bureaucracy in the main refugee camp for Kent. Supercilious, patronising and grey, he was identical in almost every respect to Arthur’s boss at the Council.
“Be sure you’re done by lunchtime,” said Jolly. “The camp commander wants that list pronto.”
“No problem, sir, be done in a jiffy.”
Arthur’s supervisor gave an oleaginous moan of assent and retreated. Arthur sniggered. Camp commander; that sounded gay.
He reminded himself to be grateful. The collectors could have killed him there and then, as he’d sprawled out of the Lamborghini, tearing at his bindings so he could empty the vomit from his mouth.
Instead, they’d thrown him into their van, with the corpses, and driven him here, to the camp. They’d been a bit rough with him at processing, but he was so terrified that he’d offered no resistance at all. Identified as a low level clerical worker, grade 5F, he’d been set to work in the offices, away from the barracks and the experimental wings, where all sorts of unpleasantness was visited on the survivors.
They were trying to find a cure, and they didn’t care what it took, or who they hurt in the process. Who they thought they were going to cure, he didn’t know and he didn’t ask.
Barrett, the man who brought round the tea urn, reckoned that the government and royal family were all holed up in a bunker underneath Buck House, waiting for a cure so they could emerge and lord it over what was left. Arthur didn’t really believe that.
Then he noticed the name of the next worksheet: Royal lineage.
He clicked it open and saw a list of all the people in line to the throne. It went through the obvious ones — the princes and princesses, the dukes and duchesses, but then it went further, into minor aristo
cracy and illegitimate offspring. The first column contained their names, the second their dates of birth, the third their last known addresses. And the fourth contained their blood type.
But when he scrolled all the way down to line 346 he gasped in shock. His hand shook and he felt momentarily dizzy.
Because it was his name. According to this, he was 346th in line to the throne of England. The fourth column contained a note: “Illegitimate offspring; unaware; unsuitable”.
In a flash he remembered a snide comment his father had made to his mother over Sunday dinner, years before. Something about dallying with upper class twits. She had blushed.
Gosh.
He scrolled back up and started counting.
There were only eleven O-Neg royals in the list above him.
He sat for a while, jaw hanging open, thinking through the implications of his extraordinary discovery. Then he came to a conclusion, sent the document to the printer, and stood to leave.
Finally, destiny was calling.
THE KING OF England, John Parkinson-Keyes, knew damn well he was in line to the throne, and didn’t care who knew it. It was why the boys at his private school had christened him Kinky — a bastardisation of King Keyes.
Not that he minded. He really was kinky and he didn’t care who knew that either. Hell, it was practically a prerequisite for the job.
“Prince Andrew,” he was fond of confiding to credulous hangers-on, tapping his nose as he did so, “has an entire wardrobe full of gimp suits. And Sophie’s a furry!”
He’d nod in the face of their astonishment and then glance knowingly at his empty glass, which they would invariably scurry off and refill for him.
He didn’t have hangers-on now, of course. Not after The Cull. Now he had the real thing: slaves. And he didn’t need to invent tall tales to get them do what he wanted.
“Where’s my bloody dinner?” he yelled at the top of his voice, which echoed around the vaulted wooden ceiling of the huge dining room. There was no response. He drummed his fingers on the table impatiently, then cursed and reached for his shotgun. He’d teach these bloody proles to keep him waiting. He cracked the gun open, checked that it was loaded, then snapped it shut and took casual aim at the door.
“Oi!” he shouted. “Don’t make me come and find you.”
Again, no reply.
Christ, this was annoying. He was hungry. Resolving to teach that tempting young serving lad a hard, rough lesson in master and servant protocols, he rose from his chair and swaggered in the direction of the kitchens, gun slung over his shoulder.
“Parkin, you little wretch, where are you?” he bellowed as he pushed open the kitchen door.
He never even saw the sword that sliced his head off. Well, not until his head was on the floor, and he blinked up at his toppling, decapitated corpse.
The last thing he saw as his vision went red at the edges was a chubby little man in a grey sweater leaning down and wiggling his fingers in a cheery wave.
“Sorry,” said his assassin. “Nothing personal.”
King Keyes tried to call for his mummy, but he had no breath with which to cry.
The last thing he thought he heard was the portly swordsman saying: “Three down, eight to go.”
THE QUEEN OF England, Barbara Wolfing-Gusset, hungrily scooped cold beans from a can with a silver spoon. The juice dribbled down her chin, but she didn’t bother to wipe it off, so it dripped onto the dried blood and vomit that caked her best satin party dress.
She’d been wearing the garish pink frock for two months now, ever since the night of her 19th birthday party. Her parents had suggested that maybe a large gathering of people during a plague pandemic was not the best idea, but she’d silenced them with a particularly haughty glance, and invited practically everyone she’d ever met.
Turnout had been low, but that just meant more champagne for everyone else. Plus, that hatchet-faced cow Tasmin hadn’t been around, so Barbara had a clear run at Tommy Bond.
It wasn’t fair; it had all been going so well.
Yes, Tommy was looking a little green about the gills, but Barbara had assumed that was the champers, and she’d dragged him away from the ballroom for a quick shagette in the scullery. And quick it was. What a disappointment. Tommy came in about ten seconds flat and, as he did so, his eyes rolled back in his head, he began to spasm, and then he vomited blood all over her, fell to the floor — withdrawing in the process — thrashed about until he cracked his head on the stone step and twitched his last.
Ungrateful bastard.
Barbara finished the beans and tossed the tin into the corner. She swung down from the table she’d been sitting on and headed for the door, aiming a kick at the dog, which was still gnawing on Tommy’s straggly bones; she didn’t want it to have all the meat, she was still planning on making a stew of her beau when she had a mo.
For now, though, her priority was the next chapter of In the Fifth at Mallory Towers and the resolution of the poison pen mystery!
Kicking her way through the remains of her fabulous party — mostly disarticulated bones and dresses stained with bodily fluids now, but still the occasional scrap of discarded wrapping paper and tinsel — Barbara went to the drawing room, humming to herself.
She stopped and stared, her mouth hanging open, when she saw the man silhouetted in the French doors.
“Barbara Wolfing-Gusset?” said the man in a bland Croydon accent.
She nodded.
“Baroness?”
She nodded again.
The man raised his arms and Barbara saw he was holding a shotgun.
As the pellets thudded into her she realised two things. First, that no dry cleaners in the world was going to be able to salvage her best party frock; and second, that she’d never find out who’d written Moira those beastly letters.
The man walked across the room and stood over her as she gasped for air.
“Sorry,” he said. Then he turned and walked away.
Barbara pulled herself out of the drawing room, leaving a thick, slick trail behind her. It was agony, but she fought her way back through the hall and into the scullery. After tremendous effort, she reached Tommy’s rotting skeleton and rested her head on his ribcage. She closed her eyes and prepared for death.
Then she opened them again and shoved the dog away.
For now.
THE SMOKE CURLED upwards from the embers of the Old Schools. No-one left alive in there, then.
Arthur panned the binoculars left and surveyed the wider ruins. The cultists — at least that’s what he assumed they were — had done their job thoroughly, but had made his infinitely more difficult.
The message painted on the wall of the (latest, only recently ascended, blissfully unaware) King’s house had directed anyone who was looking for him to his school. He’d obviously felt that it would provide a refuge. Arthur supposed it was a sensible idea; if the boy were safely ensconced in a stable community environment, it would make him far harder for Arthur to pick off. For that reason alone it showed common sense. And anyway, where else was there for the boy to go?
On his way to the school, Arthur had decided he would masquerade as a teacher from a similar institution. Computer Science; useless now, so unlikely to have to prove his credentials. If he could convince whatever passed for staff that he was legitimate — and damn, wouldn’t you know it, he’d not got a copy of his Criminal Record Bureau check on him right now and it was going to be hard to get a replacement wasn’t it, ha ha — then he could infiltrate the school, identify the boy and wait for an opportune moment to make his move.
Upon arrival, however, he’d discovered the school under siege by a ferocious band of naked, blood-daubed nutters led by some weirdo in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat. He’d stayed out of sight and let the siege play out to its inevitable conclusion — the complete destruction of the school and everyone in it. He was pretty sure there’d been cannibalism involved, but he’d avoided looking too closely once the
gates were breached and the real savagery began.
Now, as he looked at the smouldering ruins of Harrow School, Arthur had difficulty deciding what to do.
If the boy king had made it to the school, he had almost certainly died in the massacre. But what if he’d been waylaid en route? What if he’d never made it here? There were too many variables, and Arthur had to be sure. He couldn’t have a pretender turning up and causing trouble once he’d taken the throne.
Then a dreadful thought occurred to him: perhaps the boy had converted — he was pretty sure one or two of the boys had joined the cultists. Blimey, he hoped he wouldn’t have to wade into that particular hornet’s nest.
No, there was nothing else for it; he’d simply have to rummage around in the debris and entrails in search of identification. He might get lucky.
With a weary sigh, Arthur collapsed the binoculars, put them in the pocket of his coat, and stood up. He felt a slight nervous tingle as he broke cover and walked towards the wreckage. He might already be king, and he might find proof of that fact within the next hour. He could embrace his destiny by lunchtime. He felt lightheaded at the thought of it, and lengthened his stride.
TWO HOURS LATER Arthur sat on a blood-soaked bench feeling deflated and nauseous.
Rifling through the pockets of half burnt — and in some cases half eaten — child corpses was not the best way to spend a morning. But, he told himself, if he was going to be king he had to earn the right, and facing up to difficult realities and making hard decisions was part of the job. Kings needed to be made of stern stuff. He was proud that he hadn’t flinched in the face of such horror; he’d only thrown up twice.
But he’d found no proof of identity. A couple of bodies had been identifiable by library cards — held on to for what reason, he wondered? Habit? Some kind of totemic article of faith that one day there would once again be fines for overdue books? — but the majority of the bodies were anonymous.
This was not acceptable. He’d managed to find and eliminate ten obstacles with no doubt at all, but now, at the final hurdle, he was going to have to make a leap of faith. The boy was almost certainly dead but Arthur knew that scintilla of possibility, that maggot of doubt, would gnaw away at him for the duration of his reign. He’d never feel entirely secure upon his throne, he’d always be waiting for the day when the miraculously resurrected boy king, now grown up and riding at the head of an army, would rise up to challenge his rule and topple him from the throne.
School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles) Page 51