School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles)

by Scott K. Andrews

It felt as if the whole school were in a kind of shock, perhaps from the children’s realisation of their own savagery during the battle of Parliament, or perhaps from the loss of so many friends and teachers.

  Caroline felt it too. St Mark’s was holding its breath, unable to relax, waiting for something to happen.

  The winter had been unbelievably long, harsh and fractious. The fireplaces burnt twenty-four hours a day and the snow seemed never ending. They’d had little contact with the other communities they’d befriended. Travel was arduous in those conditions, so they became isolated. The whole school suffered from cabin fever. Tempers were short and food was scarce. There were so many new mouths to feed that the supplies they had laid in were inadequate, so they ended up slaughtering more of their livestock than they could afford. Caroline knew that by the time spring arrived they would have depleted all their meagre resources. They would have to work hard all summer — and pray God it was a good harvest — to lay in enough to see them through another winter.

  The rumour had spread that the world was entering a nuclear winter caused by some distant cataclysm; another Chernobyl or a nuclear skirmish. But even as the winter entered its sixth bitter month Caroline was sure spring would come again; the snow would melt, the blossom would appear, the flowers would bloom. They had to.

  On one of the very few times the school had been visited by traders from Hildenborough, they heard that the Abbot had made his final broadcast, murdered on air by a Brit. The Church had been defeated at home and abroad. They were safe again.

  Even in the cold darkness, some children were congregating on the landing as Caroline hurried to the birthing room, woken by the screams, emerging to see what was going on. She ushered them back to their beds.

  She paused of the threshold of the room, disturbed by the noises coming from within.

  Ever since she’d arrived here, Caroline had spent at least an hour a day in this room, sitting beside the bed, reading out loud. Mostly Jane Austen, keeping it light. Sometimes, less often, she had just sat and talked. Once she had confessed to the murder of John Keegan and broken down in tears. As she’d cried into the eiderdown she’d felt a hand on her hair, stroking it softly. It was the only sign of understanding she’d had in all that time.

  Matron hadn’t spoken a word since that day in Westminster.

  Now Caroline stood outside Matron’s room and heard her screaming her way through labour. It felt odd to hear any noise coming from that mouth.

  She stepped inside. Matron was sitting up in the bed, legs splayed, face red, breathing hard. She reached out her hand when she saw Caroline enter, so she stepped forward and held out her hand in turn. Matron grasped it tight and pulled the girl to her side. They stayed like that, hands locked firm, as Mrs Atkins oversaw the birth.

  All the noises that Matron vocalised were primal. They were roars and cries and groans and screams. Not one word passed her lips — no fucks or shits or Jesus holy motherfucking Christs.

  It was an animal birth.

  The baby was born as the first light of dawn crept in the window.

  Caroline held the child as Mrs Atkins cut the cord. She gasped in wonder at the tiny, blue screaming thing in her hands. So light and so angry at being removed from the nice warm place that was all it had ever known.

  She laid the newborn on Matron’s naked chest and pulled the sheets up to protect it from the cold. It fell silent immediately, eyes open, comforted by the warmth of its mother’s skin and sound of her heartbeat.

  “It’s a boy,” said Caroline.

  Matron looked up at Caroline and smiled through her tears.

  “I know,” she said. “His name’s Lee.”

  Later, Caroline walked out of the room into the half-lit hallway and told the lingering children the good news before ushering them back to bed.

  She walked down the stairs and out the front door to watch the sun creep over the snow covered tree-line. Despite all the losses of the last few years, all the terrible things she had done and had done to her, the hardship of their lives and the endless winter that had enshrouded them for so long, she knew, with absolute certainty, that she was where she belonged, safe and loved.

  As her eyes filled with tears, she caught the first faint hint of spring on the air.

  THE END

  BONUS MATERIAL #1

  SCHOOL’S OUT: THE PITCH

  Author’s Note: For a brief time prior to launch, Abaddon Books circulated their shared-world bibles widely and encouraged submissions from anyone who wanted to pitch. I sent in three one-page outlines; two for Pax Britannia (now the sole domain of the estimable Jon Green) and one for The Afterblight Chronicles. Here’s the outline for School’s Out.

  SCHOOL’S OUT

  “When the plague had finally burned itself out and the dying stopped, the surviving boys and staff gradually drifted, one by one, back to the school. After all, where else was there for us to go?”

  AUTUMN TERM: POWER STRUGGLES

  At St Bart’s College, an exclusive boys-only boarding school in an old stately home in the Pennines, only two teachers and the Matron survive to take care of the remaining pupils. Mr Bates, the PE master, was head of the school’s Army Cadet Force, and he takes control, forming the boys into a military unit, mounting a raid on the local TA armoury, running drills and exercises. Bates is a tin pot fascist, and constantly butts heads with Mr Gibbs, the art master, whom he summarily executes one day at breakfast for questioning an order. The sixth form prefects are the ‘officers’ but they are loyal to MacKillick, a sadistic bully who makes the junior boys’ lives a misery. Bates interrupts MacKillick and some of his cohorts engaged in the gang rape of Matron, who had unwisely attempted to discipline him. Bates attempts to intervene, but the boys first disarm and then crucify him, thereby taking control. MacKillick’s regime is brutal and punishing, and the junior boys are constantly humiliated and mistreated. Matron is kept locked away for the use of MacKillick’s loyal lieutenants. When one boy is sentenced to death by firing squad the fifth formers begin plans to oust him and his cronies from power.

  SPRING TERM: THE BLOOD MOAT

  MacKillick organises regular scouting parties to hunt and scavenge supplies from surrounding villages and towns. They begin to find evidence that nearby settlements of survivors are being attacked and plundered, but no bodies are ever found. Eventually they encounter another hunting party, smeared from head to toe in blood, hunting for human prey. Two boys are captured, the rest barely escape alive. Sensing the opportunity for a good fight, MacKillick leads a team to track down the culprits. They track the party back to their HQ, an ancient moated manor house. The moat is red with blood — the blood hunters believe that by surrounding themselves with a circle of human blood they will protect themselves from the plague. They have been harvesting the area, draining their captives’ blood into the moat, and then eating the remains. MacKillick is forced to stage his first major military campaign — the infiltration of the enemy camp, the extraction of his comrades and perhaps, if he can pull it off, the destruction of the enemy’s capacity to retaliate. Unfortunately he reckons without the treachery of his subordinates, and during the rescue attempt they contrive to leave him behind, unarmed, in a cell in the enemy camp.

  SUMMER TERM: SIEGE

  Having rescued their comrades, though not without cost, the battle weary boys return to the school and attempt to set up a model society run along democratic lines. Fifth former Phil Norton is elected leader, crops are planted and their position is fortified. After a month of relative calm they find themselves besieged by the blood hunters now led by a vengeful, and clearly psychotic, MacKillick, who has slaughtered his way to the head of the tribe. One panicked junior attempts to sneak out at night, but is captured and executed in front of the school when the boys refuse to open the doors. Co-ordinating with a scouting party caught outside the school, Norton organizes simultaneous counter-attacks from within and without, but the fight goes badly and order breaks down, leading to vicio
us, prolonged, room to room fighting throughout the school. Casualties are heavy, but eventually the schoolboys gain the upper hand, and Norton and MacKillick fight it out man to man in the main school hall. MacKillick wins, breaking Norton’s neck, but no sooner has he bellowed his triumph than he is shot dead by the now fully recovered Matron, who assumes control and proves herself to be a far scarier badass than anyone could have expected. Unfortunately, the fighting has started fires, and the school burns to the ground. The remaining boys, led by Matron, set out to find a new home.

  BONUS MATERIAL #2

  SCHOOL’S OUT: DELETED PROLOGUE

  Author’s Note: The initial synopses were well received, and I was asked to provide a more detailed breakdown and a sample chapter for two of them, one of which made the cut. The following extract was part of the pitch for School’s Out, and it stayed in the book ’til very late in the day, but I eventually decided to cut it. Jon, the editor, was a bit wary of that, but I convinced him. It was fun to write, and helped me establish the tone, but it was the only part of the book not written in the first person by Lee, so it felt out of place. I felt the eventual opening was much stronger because it established the ‘voice’ of Lee, his age, the setting of the book, and his attitude to authority all within the first few lines.

  PROLOGUE

  THREE MONTHS AGO

  WHEN THE ANTI-PSYCHOTICS finally ran out, Alex began to wonder if rescuing his brother from the asylum had been the wisest move. After all, delusional psychopaths with messiah complexes do not make for the easiest of flat mates. By the time the knife made an appearance, he was pretty confident that he had made a serious mistake.

  ‘Dave, what’s the knife for, mate?’

  No response. Just the scary eyes, the fixed stare and the knife.

  ‘Dave? Do you, um, want to talk about it?’

  Eyes. Stare. Very big knife.

  Alex considered his options. He’d seen his brother in the grip of an episode only once, years ago, before he’d been sectioned. It hadn’t been pretty.

  Since the murders, Dave had been resident at a secure facility just up the road. There, on a daily diet of drugs and group therapy, he’d reverted to the good-natured older brother Alex had always worshipped. He’d seemed so normal again that it had been easy to write the episode off as an isolated incident, just one very bad day from which Dave had long since recovered.

  As long as Alex didn’t think about the dead girls, then he could pretend everything was fine.

  So when the world began to die and Alex realised that Dave would be left alone and helpless, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to go and rescue him from the chaotic, corpse-strewn asylum. He’d plundered the medical facility for the necessary drugs, and supplemented his stock by scavenging local hospitals and chemists. But the supply had run out three days ago, and only then had he paused to consider what he’d do if Dave had a relapse.

  Now, confronted by the knife, he finally realised the scale of his error, and he began, ever so slightly at first, to panic.

  Dave stood silent in the kitchen, eyes wide, knuckles white as he gripped the carving knife handle tightly, staring at his brother with his head cocked slightly to one side like a curious puppy. There was no expression on his face, no chilling psychopath smile, no deranged leer or snarl of fury. This lack of expression was what scared Alex most of all.

  ‘Dave? Are you all right, mate? Is everything okay?’

  No response.

  Alex had two choices. He could unload the bags of scavenged food on the kitchen table and make small talk as if nothing was happening, hoping that normal behaviour would snap Dave out of his reverie, or he could bolt and hope that Dave didn’t come after him. Neither option appealed.

  Dave mumbled something.

  ‘Sorry Dave, what was that?’

  Dave mumbled again, and Alex craned forward, trying to make out the words.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  Slowly, menacingly, ever so carefully enunciating his words, Dave replied: ‘I said, how was the Shopkeeper’s fez?’

  Alex bolted.

  He dropped the bags to the floor, spun in the doorway and sprinted down the hall to the front door. He reckoned he had about a three-metre lead on Dave. Thank God he’d left the front door open. He sped out the door and turned left down the covered walkway that ran along the front of this floor of the block of flats, heading for the stairs. He reached the top of the stairwell before he realised Dave wasn’t behind him.

  He stopped to catch his breath, bent over, hands on his knees, gaze fixed on the front door to their flat, hanging open halfway along the walkway. Maybe Dave wouldn’t come after him. Maybe he’d misread the situation. Maybe…

  Dave walked slowly out of the door and turned to face his brother. The knife was still in his hand. They stood there, staring at each other for what felt like an eternity. And then Dave started running.

  Alex pelted down the stairs three at a time, but he knew he was in big trouble. He didn’t fancy his chances of making it to the street. Dave had always been the leaner of the two, faster, more agile.

  Dave caught up with Alex as he reached the second floor. Alex felt his brother barrel into him from behind and what felt like a fist punching him hard in the kidneys. Before he could even register what was happening he was over the railings, weightless and falling.

  The impact knocked all the breath out of him, but somehow it felt soft, as if he’d jumped onto a feather bed rather than fallen twenty feet onto a hard concrete forecourt. He lay there, immobile, knowing that his death was imminent, but too concussed to really care.

  He saw his brother emerge from the stairwell and walk slowly over to him.

  He saw his brother crouch down beside him, felt him stroking his hair.

  He saw his brother reach down and dabble his hand in the pooling blood and smear it across his face.

  As his vision faded away, the last thing Alex heard was his beloved, blood-soaked brother mumbling to himself, over and over.

  ‘Safe now. Safe now. Safe now.’

  BONUS MATERIAL #3

  PORNOKITSCH INTERVIEWS

  Author’s Note: The wonderful people at Pornokitsch.com, now increasingly known for organising the Kitschies awards, interviewed me twice in 2010 for the School’s Out trilogy: once in January, to talk about School’s Out and Operation Motherland, and once again in June, when Children’s Crusade had come out. Children’s Crusade was later nominated for a Kitschie.

  The following are reproduced with their kind permission.

  FIRST INTERVIEW

  JANUARY 14, 2010

  Previously in the Afterblight series, readers had been exposed to the Big, Apocalyptic Picture. But, in School’s Out, you chose to drill down to the disaster’s impact on an isolated — essentially inconsequential — location. What lead you to focus like this?

  Partly the old dictum of ‘write what you know,’ partly an deep affection for the original BBC series Survivors.

  I know about boarding schools and all their little madnesses, as I’ve suffered in them as both student and teacher — there’s an awful lot of autobiography in School’s Out and a lot of therapeutic bloodletting as I took great pleasure in killing people from my youth!

  Also, the thing that worked for me about Survivors was that these were people who were not directly involved in events — they didn’t know anything about the plague, they weren’t special, they were just ordinary folks trying to deal with the consequences of somebody else’s fuck up. That appealed to me. That sense of trying to live through a huge event but not having any sense of the big picture, of what the hell is really going on.

  The big question, of course… why kids?

  Because they’re far more vicious than adults. Crueller, nastier, less predictable and more morally flexible. Just watch kids bullying each other in the playground. It’s horrific the way they gang up, scent weakness and strike. I think adults can become monstrous under pressure, but mostly they’ve had the r
ough edges smoothed off by experience and it takes a bit more for them to revert. But kids are not fully formed personalities yet, they’re still pushing the boundaries of social conventions and trying to define themselves, so they do the most awful things sometimes. And the most wonderful, of course.

  Over and above his young age, Lee seems to frequently have bouts of consciousness over his evolution into a killer. This runs contrary to genre conventions, in which a character’s progress to lethal competence is generally seen as “advancement.” Why can’t Lee just accept that he’s a badass and run with it?

  Because I don’t believe those characters. Hardened killers with no conscience are either psychopaths or sociopaths. Guys who kill while being in sound mind and for the ‘right’ reasons are either very damaged by it, or they wrestle with their conscience a hell of a lot. Even Jack Bauer stops and has a good old cry every now and then.

  I read an interview with a British Army sniper last week — a cold, calculating, methodical killer, but definitely one of the good guys. And he’s killed many, many very bad men. He seemed to be okay with it, but at the end of the interview he revealed that he hadn’t kept score and he didn’t actually know how many men he’d killed. And I thought that refusal to keep a tally said a lot about the psychological pressure he must be under. You can’t tell me he hasn’t had some long, dark nights of the soul.

  Lee is, I suppose, like me in so far as I think I would have it in me to kill in those circumstances, but I know that I’d be a bloody wreck before, during and after the act. It just seemed more believable somehow. By the third book, which I’m writing now, the people around him are actually scared of what he might do in a fight, because they reckon his PTSD is so bad he might either flip out and go psycho or, worse, get them all killed. So the better he’s getting at killing, the more fucked up he’s becoming. That has to come to a head at some point.