We were on a landing with four doors leading off it, so we opened the first door and ran inside. We found ourselves in a living room; plush sofas, deep pile carpet, old TV in the corner. There were three mullioned windows along the far wall and Cheshire dumped Norton on the floor and ran to open one of them. Mac and I pushed the sofa across one door and a sideboard across another. We heard the clatter of pursuit up the stairs and the sound of bullets hitting the door.
"Those doors are solid oak," I said. "Bullet-proof unless they've got a heavy machine gun. They won't blow them either, 'cause this floor is all wood and they won't risk burning the place down."
"Great," said Mac. "So they can't get in, but we can't get out."
"Oi!" Cheshire was shouting out the window, across the moat. "We could use some help here."
Mac and I ran to join him. We could just make out a group of boys and prisoners in the trees, milling around. There seemed to be an argument going on but we couldn't hear. A burst of gunfire came from the floor below us, and they ducked. That obviously made their minds up, because a few seconds later the East Bridge, below us and to the left, exploded in a shower of stone and mortar.
"We are so fucked," said Norton, who had joined us at the window, his shoulder a bloody mess and his face white as a sheet.
He was right, we were fucked. And it was all Mac's fault.
I stood and looked at the man who'd led us to this place. I thought about Matron and Bates; I remembered the twitching corpses of the TA guys, Dave, Derek and the one whose name I'd never know; I saw Williams clutching his gushing throat.
I felt the weight of the gun in my hand.
On the morning of March 24th 1918, James B. Grant was part of a group of men leading an assault on a copse somewhere in Belgium. There was a German machine gun emplacement in this small group of trees and it was holding up some advance or other. Grant and his men were instructed to remove this obstacle.
Although Grant was a Lieutenant he was not in charge of that particular assault. A new officer, William Snead, fresh from Oxford and Sandhurst, was in command. It was his first week at the front and he was eager to prove himself a hero, keen to win his first medal. His naiveté and reckless enthusiasm made him dangerous.
Grant had been serving with that group of men for years. They had seen terrible things; survived the battle of the Somme, lost friends and comrades by the score, trudged through mud and blood 'til they were more exhausted than I can imagine. But they trusted each other, even loved each other, in the way that men who've risked their lives together do.
So when Snead ordered them to make a frontal assault on an entrenched machine gun nest, a strategy that offered both the greatest chance of glory and the near certainty of pointless death, Grant tried to talk him out of it. They should circle around the gun, he said, approach under cover of darkness, and lob a grenade in. Simple, effective, risk-free.
Snead was having none of it. He accused Grant of cowardice. A shouting match ensued, the privates got involved and Snead, suddenly fearful, drew his Webley revolver and threatened to execute Grant on the spot for desertion in the face of the enemy. Confronted by the muzzle of an officer's gun, Grant backed down. He apologised, prepared to mount the assault as ordered.
And then, as the men readied themselves to attack, Grant shot Snead in the back.
The German position was taken and Snead was listed as the only casualty of the engagement. Grant had saved the lives of his men in the only way available to him. It was an act of heroism in the face of leadership so stupid that it beggared belief.
But Grant couldn't live with himself and the knowledge of what he'd done. He surrendered to his commanding officer, made a full confession, and was executed at dawn the next morning.
As was the custom for cowards and traitors, Grant's name was left off the roll of honour. He was only added to the list of war dead in St Mark's main hall after one of Grant's surviving men pleaded his case with the headmaster of the time.
I wonder how many other St Mark's boys died in the war whose names were not listed. How many were shot at dawn for cowardice as they twitched and shuddered from shell shock; how many were gunned down where they stood because they refused to go over the top to certain, pointless death; how many were executed for refusing to take orders from upper class idiots who were trying to fight entrenched armies with machine guns as if they were Zulus with spears.
Hammond had tried to commemorate those boys who had died in The Cull, but who would paint and hang a roll of honour for those who had survived? Who would paint Petts' name onto black board, or Belcher's, or Williams', or the rest of those boys killed in yet another pointless war they had little choice but to fight?
Who would paint Mac's name?
Who would paint mine?
As I raised my gun and brought it to bear on the man who had appointed himself my leader, I knew exactly how Grant had felt, nearly a century before me. I knew the anger and resentment of someone forced to follow orders that are cruel, cowardly and wrong. I felt the righteous hatred of a man who believed in justice and honour slaved to a ruler who cared only for power. I felt the despair of a man who longed for peace forced to resort to violence because of the madness of others.
I realised that my days of following orders were done.
So I pulled the trigger and shot the bastard.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He didn't fall down. The bullet hit him in the left forearm. Not where I was aiming, but my hands were shaking so much it's lucky I hit him at all. Why couldn't I be like Grant; cool under pressure, calmly ruthless?
We looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to do next. The hole in his arm started to leak. He raised his gun to fire back so I shot him again. I hit him in the right shoulder. This time he fell down.
"Drop it!" shouted Cheshire, raising his gun to cover me.
I stood there, staring at Mac, who had fallen backwards and was sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa. He'd dropped his gun and was trying to put pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding, but neither of his arms was working properly.
Norton walked over to Cheshire, reached out and gently pushed the gun down.
"Leave him," he said.
I'd killed three people in the last few months. One I could justify to myself as a mercy killing. The other was kill or be killed. The third had been in the heat of battle. But shooting Mac without warning, without any immediate threat to myself, in cold blood... that was different. I wasn't sure of my own motives any more. Had I shot him to save the school? Was I taking revenge for Matron and Bates? Or was I punishing him for what he'd done to me, what he'd made me into?
I looked down at the smoking Browning in my right hand. I couldn't work out what it was doing there. I used to hate guns, I thought. How is it that this thing feels so natural? When did I become someone who always carries a gun? I relaxed my fingers and it fell to the floor.
Mac was fumbling, trying to find some way of repairing the damage. His arms flapped and spasmed uselessly.
I crouched down so I was on the same level as Mac.
"It doesn't hurt yet, but it will," I said. "At the moment you've got so much adrenalin going through you that your body's not letting you feel the pain. I don't know for sure, but I suppose that if you die you might never feel it. It's only if you survive and heal that it hurts."
He looked up at me. If I was expecting confusion or fear I was disappointed. There was only fury.
"You fucking coward," he said. "You pathetic, weak, stupid fucking coward."
The noise from outside had stopped the instant I'd pulled the trigger. I could hear people running back down the stairs. They must have left a guard on the door, but for now they'd stopped trying to get in.
"What is going on here?" demanded Cheshire.
"Call it a coup," said Norton as he sat down in an armchair. "Can you pass me that tablecloth, please."
Cheshire pulled the cloth off the table and began helping Norton to dre
ss his wound.
"Why now?" asked Mac. "Why wait until we're alone and trapped and probably going to die anyway? What is the fucking point of doing it now?"
I didn't have an answer to that.
"I'll tell you, shall I," he went on. "I reckon..." he broke off as a violent coughing fit seized him. "I reckon you were hoping they'd do your job for you."
"Perhaps," I conceded.
"Coward," he said again. "I told you the rules. I explained how this works. You want me out the way you fucking challenge me like a man."
"Like you challenged Bates?"
"Bates was weak. He didn't understand, didn't deserve the respect. I thought you understood. I thought you got it."
"I get it, I just don't accept it. If I played it your way, by your rules I'd be buying into your bullshit, accepting this strong tribal leader bollocks," I said. "If I challenged you and proved myself the harder bastard then all I'd be doing was extending an invitation to some other hard fucker to come along and knock me off."
"That's how it works."
"I don't accept that. And you know what, the rest of the boys don't either. You might not have noticed, but they've left us - you - here to die. First chance they got, they cut you loose."
"So what's your alternative, eh?" he sneered. "You gonna run the school as a democracy? Student councils? Tea and scones and cricket on the green? Fucking fantasist."
His face was white as chalk. His ruined shoulder made an awful grinding sound as he tried to lever himself into a more comfortable sitting position.
"I don't know what it'll be like, but it's got to be better than rapes and crucifixions. There won't be executions. Boys won't be bullied and tormented."
"And my officers? You gonna deal with them?"
"If I need to."
He laughed bitterly. "Brilliant. Lee Keegan's brave new world kicks off with a group execution. You fucking hypocrite."
He was right. I knew that. But I was in no mood to argue any more.
"Your problem," I said, "is that you thought you were only vulnerable to someone stronger than you. But you never thought you might be vulnerable to someone smarter."
He gave a bitter laugh, which turned into another fit of coughing. His left sleeve was soaked with blood. It ran down his fingers and soaked into the carpet.
"The smart thing to do would have been to shoot me before we even attacked."
There was that tone of contempt again. I thought of James B. Grant and I knew that Mac was right.
Norton tried to interrupt but I waved for silence.
"I know that," I said. "But unlike you I try to avoid killing people."
He laughed again. "Tell that to the guy at the foot of the stairs with half a head. You're a killer, kid. Stone cold. You just don't want to admit it. Your problem, Nine Lives, is that you never want to do anything. You wanted to leave Petts here to die..."
"He's dead anyway."
"Not the fucking point and you know it," he shouted. "You want me out of the way but you can't pluck up the courage to challenge me like a man so you wait for someone else to take me out of the picture. And when that doesn't happen you figure, screw it, what've I got to lose, and you just fucking shoot me. And then, to add insult to fucking injury, you shoot me in the bloody arms! What's the matter, bullet to the head too fucking easy?"
"Don't tempt me."
"Oh piss off. Like you've got the guts to finish me off." He leaned forward. "Come on then," he whispered. "Pick up the gun. It's right there. Still loaded. One bullet and it's all over. Come on. Finish what you started. Show me you've got the backbone to be leader. Prove it to me. Come on. Look me in the eye when you pull the trigger. Come on!"
Without thinking about it I reached behind me, picked up the gun and pressed the muzzle against his forehead. I pressed hard. God, I wanted to kill him. I mean really, really wanted to kill him. I wanted to watch him die screaming. I wanted to laugh in his dying eyes and spit on his corpse. I actually smiled as I began to squeeze the trigger.
And then I saw the look of triumph in his eyes.
"Maybe you're right," I said. "Maybe I am a coward, maybe I was afraid. But I wasn't afraid of you, Mac. Not really. I was afraid of becoming like you."
I threw the gun aside. Mac laughed in my face, soundlessly.
"Face it Lee, you'll never be like me. You haven't got the balls."
I heard a tiny metallic ping.
"Lee!" shouted Norton in alarm.
I felt something pressing itself against my stomach. I looked down and saw Mac's left hand holding a grenade. The pin was on the floor beside us.
I looked up. Mac was smiling.
"I'm holding down the lever, Lee. When I let go the chemical fuse starts and then nothing can stop it exploding seven seconds later. Reckon you can wrestle the grenade off me and throw it out the window in that time?"
I stared into his eyes as I reached down and wrapped my hand around his. There was little strength in his fingers; his shattered shoulder saw to that. As long as I kept squeezing he couldn't release the lever. We were at an impasse.
"You don't have to die here, you know," I said. "We can still get out of this, take you back to school, try and patch you up."
"And then what?"
"You leave. Just go."
Again with the laughing.
"Spineless wanker. You shot me in cold blood and there's no fixing that. At least have the integrity to live with it. I'm never leaving this room and you know it. But I can make sure you never do either."
I don't know how long we'd have sat there if Cheshire hadn't intervened.
He walked over to us, casual as can be, and then rammed his rifle butt into Mac's shoulder wound. He screamed and jerked in agony, and I slipped the grenade from his grasp. I picked up the pin and re-inserted it.
I think I'd been hyperventilating because I had a huge head rush as I stood up. Cheshire reached out to steady me until the world stopped spinning.
When Mac stopped screaming he looked up at me and sneered.
"What did I ever do to you, Nine Lives? What do you hate me so fucking much?"
"You made me a killer, Mac."
"Oh, I see. So basically, I shot myself, yeah?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Jesus, you are fucked in the head."
"Can we focus, please," said Norton, who had tied his arm tight into a sling and appeared to have stopped the bleeding. "Does anyone actually have a plan to get us out of here?"
"Maybe," I replied. "But the silence is bothering me. What can you see out the window?
Cheshire poked his head outside and leapt backwards as bullets ripped into the glass.
"Missed!" he shouted. He turned to me. "They're covering the window from the tower."
I walked to the door and knocked on it.
"Anyone out there?" I asked.
There was a pause.
"Um, yeah. Hi," came the tentative reply. It was a young man's voice.
Norton sniggered and started me giggling. Borderline hysteria.
"Hi yourself. So, you guarding this door to stop us escaping then, yeah?"
"There's three of us and we've got guns."
"Good to know. The others gone off to the morning sacrifice have they?"
"Got to purify the moat."
"Great." I turned back to Norton and Cheshire. "They're all going to be on the tower for a while, so we've got some time to prepare."
"Any chance of a cuppa while I'm waiting to die?" said Mac, witheringly.
The morning sacrifice was one of the Blood Hunters' more disturbing rituals. The selected victim was brought to morning worship and blessed by David, then everybody processed up to the tower. David then slit the victim's throat and two acolytes dangled the poor sod over the battlements so they bled into the moat. Fresh blood in the water every morning kept them safe, they reckoned.
Serenaded by singing and screams from the tower I opened Mac's backpack and we got to work. It took about ten minutes or so, but by the time the ritual
was finished we were ready. Cheshire had picked Mac up and put him on the sofa. He was still conscious.
"You haven't got a cat in hell's chance," he said.
I ignored him.
"Hey, Norton," he went on. "How long you been planning this little takeover?"
"Since day one."
"Traitor."
"What you gonna do, slit my throat, like you did to Williams?"
"Come over here and I'll show you."
"Enough, already," I said. "Does everyone know what they're doing?"
Norton and Cheshire nodded.
"What shall I do, Nine Lives?" gasped Mac, sarcastically.
"Fuck off and die."
We heard footsteps on the stairs. A group of people coming to talk. Then a voice I recognised.
"Hello in there." It was their leader, David.
"Morning," I replied, cheerily. "Lovely day for a blood sacrifice."
"Are any of you hurt?"
"Why do you care?"
"We have first class medical facilities. If you open the door I give you my word your wounded will be given the proper treatment."
"What, no bleeding?"
He laughed. "Of course there'll be bleeding. Got to be made safe. But we need fresh, clean, healthy blood. So we'll make you better first. While there's life there's hope, isn't that what they say?"
"I've got a better idea. We want to convert. We want you to make us safe."
"Sorry. No initiations today."
"They've got a bomb," yelled Mac. I punched him in the face as hard as I could. I felt the cartilage in his nose shatter. Felt good.
"One more word and I'll finish you now," I hissed.
"Like you've got the guts," he replied, and spat in my face.
So I took my Browning and I smashed him over the back of the head, knocking him out.
"Everything all right in there?"
"Fine. We're just, um, conferring."
I gathered up the strings we had taken from the window blinds and backed towards the open windows, where Norton and Cheshire were already waiting.
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