Children's Crusade

by Scott Andrews

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As the final chime pealed I heard a deafening burst of machine gun fire. I braced for the impact, but there was none.

  My ears rang as the shooting got louder. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  "Put the woman down and fucking run!" yelled Wilkes above the cacophony.

  I opened my eyes, totally confused. Jane was already pulling away, dragging me along the edge of the fence to a stone alcove in the far wall where we could shelter.

  I tried to make sense of what was happening. Cooper and his men were ranged along the far edge of the fence, backs to the river, engaged in a fierce firefight with a group of young women who were shooting at them from the covered stone walkway down which we'd been marched minutes earlier.

  I glanced ahead and saw a figure beckoning us to a doorway. I thought my mind must be playing tricks on me, because it looked like Jack. Jane pulled me sideways as a stream of bullets whipped past us cutting a straight line in the old stonework. We scurried through the doorway and behind a stone wall, under cover. Green was already there, gun in hand, raining fire on the pinned down firing squad. Wilkes hurried in after us.

  Jack shoved a gun in my hand and smiled at me.

  "What the fuck is going on?" I shouted above the din.

  "I landed in the dinghy," he shouted back. "I had the bag. Jane got me back in. Voila." He indicated the groups of armed women and beamed.

  It takes a minute for the penny to drop. Somehow Jack has pulled it off and completed our mission - he's got the kitbag of guns to the women held captive in the Lords and turned them loose.

  Jane turned, popped her head above the parapet and sent a burst of fire towards the bad guys. Then she ducked back under cover leaned over to me and kissed me long and deep.

  We only broke apart when there was a huge explosion from behind us. I peered over into the yard to see the last of Cooper's men pouring through a gap in the wall. They must have blown it open with a handful of grenades so they'd have somewhere to retreat. The snow-covered grass was littered with corpses and red with blood.

  I turned to the group that ranged along the walkway.

  "Jane, do you know where the kids are being held?"

  She shook her head. "One of the committee rooms is all I know."

  "We need to find them as fast as we can," I said. "There aren't enough of us to win this, and we're too concentrated. Can you lead us there?" Jane shook her head.

  "I know where they are," shouted one of the women Jack had released from the Lords. I waved her over to me. She was gaunt and thin, pretty but tiny and undernourished. She had fire in her eyes, though, and she held the gun firmly and with confidence.

  "And you are?"

  "Jools," she said. "I heard some noise from one of the rooms we passed on our way here. I reckon the kids are in there."

  "Get them out, get them armed," I said.

  She nodded and smiled a grim smile that promised horrible death to anyone who got in her way. I decided I liked her.

  "Come on girls," she yelled, and she took off at a run. The women streamed after her, free and armed and hungry for vengeance.

  Jane pulled herself upright and hobbled into the snow to check the bodies. As she did so I turned to Wilkes and Green.

  "Wilkes," I said, "you should find Ferguson, okay? I don't know where they took him, and he's likely to be in a bad way, but they may decide to just finish him off, and we could use him." I noticed he didn't have a gun, so I took one from Jack and handed it to him. He looked at it suspiciously, then nodded to the weapon.

  "Fine," he said. "Just don't tell the boss about this, right?"

  "Promise," I said, remembering Hood's feelings about firearms.

  He took off after the women into the Palace complex.

  "You two, with me," I said, then I followed Jane into the snow. Green and Jack followed behind.

  "Is Cooper here?" I asked.

  Jane shook her head.

  "Okay," I said. "We're going after them, through that hole in the wall. Green and I will take point, Jack you follow close behind and take care of Jane."

  "I don't need taking care of, Lee," she said, momentarily indignant.

  I stepped forward and kissed her nose. "Don't be daft. You've got a fucking hole in your foot."

  I raised my gun to my shoulder and moved to one side of the hole in the wall. Green came up close behind me.

  "You ready for this, mate?" I said, still unaccustomed to seeing him with a gun in his hand.

  "Fuck yes," he said resolutely, which was good enough for me.

  I lifted my hand and counted down from three then slipped sideways through the wall into the House of Commons Library tower, gun high, ready for anything.

  Caroline heard the shooting and the explosions and became frantic. The attack was going ahead after all. They were supposed to be part of it, trapping the bad guys between two pincers and bottling them in. If there was only one wave of attackers, the soldiers would be able to dig in, fight back or escape. There'd be no-one to outflank them.

  She began banging on the committee room door and yelling: "We're in here!"

  A boy grabbed her shoulder from behind. "What are you doing? Are you trying to get us all killed?"

  She swatted him away and kept banging on the door.

  "Shut the fuck up!" came a yell from outside. That must be the guard.

  "Come in here and make me, dipshit!" she yelled back. Then she turned to the assembled throng behind her and said: "When he opens the door we charge him. There are way too many of us for him to hold off, okay?"

  A few children began fighting their way to the back of the crowd, scared now that things had come to a head. But the majority stood ready, nodding and squaring up, ready to run.

  Caroline kept yelling until she was cut off by a burst of machine gun fire right outside the door. Something hard slammed into the door and she heard it fall to the ground. Was that the guard?

  Moments later the key turned in the lock. Caroline held up her hand to hold the children back, telling them to wait for the right moment.

  The door swung open and there, standing over the guard's corpse, were fifteen young women carrying machine guns.

  "You lot ready to fight?" asked the woman at the front.

  There was a brief pause then the children yelled en masse and poured out of the room looking for something, anything - anyone - to destroy.

  The riot had begun.

  Wilkes acted on instinct. He had no clue where they might have stashed Ferguson, but he figured it would somewhere underground. He didn't know why, exactly, it just seemed appropriate; you didn't torture people in daylight, it was a dark, subterranean activity.

  So he ran through the building, hearing gunfights all around him and a huge screaming furore to his right that sounded like the scariest borstal in the world at playtime, until he found a staircase to run down.

  The gun felt odd in his hand. The boss had strict rules about firearms and even though he knew that he would be mad to toss it aside, it felt wrong to be carrying it. Just before he found the staircase he ran past a huge glass case mounted on the wall and stopped to gaze in wonder. Ranged within the display case were five beautiful shiny swords. The plaque underneath read 'Lieutenancy swords'. They must have been used for ceremonial events, like the opening of Parliament. He doubted they were sharp, but he smashed the glass with his elbow and reverently lifted down the big central blade. Its hilt fitted his hand like a glove and the elaborate silver designs that protected the swordsman's hand glittered in the light. He knew the names of each individual metal curlicue like a litany - contre-guard, anneau, pas d'ane, quillon, écusson. He smiled as he felt the weight of the sword against his palm.

  He shoved the gun into his pocket - no point throwing it away just yet - grabbed a second sword, and ran down the stairs, a blade in each hand. Cold steel, he decided, felt much better than a firearm.

  The cellars were a maze of tiny winding passageways, and Wil
kes checked each door, finding pokey offices, store rooms, and finally a bar. The door opened from the inside just as he was reaching for the handle, so he stepped back and raised the blades. One of Cooper's men stood in the doorway, weapon raised, but the sight of a man with two swords took him by surprise. That instant of confusion was all Wilkes needed. He lunged forward, both swords level, and felt both the steel blades slide through the man's clothing and body smoothly and with little resistance.

  So they were sharp after all.

  The guard went rigid and the machine gun fell from his hands. The two swords were the only thing keeping him upright as blood poured from his mouth and his eyes rolled back in head.

  Wilkes executed a perfectly poised fencing retreat, withdrawing the swords in one fluid motion, letting his skewered opponent crash to the floor, then he leapt over the body into the bar.

  Here he found Ferguson tied to a chair, his face a mass of bruise and blood, stripped of his shirt, his chest a dot-to-dot of cigarette burns.

  He cut through the plastic ties on the ruined Ranger's hands and knelt down so they were face to face, hoping against hope that his friend had not been broken by his ordeal.

  Ferguson looked up, swollen eyes full of fury. He asked for water, his voice a faint whisper. Wilkes found a pitcher of water on the bar and gave it to him. Ferguson gulped it down then stood, a trifle unsteadily. He held out his hand and Wilkes passed him his shirt and hoodie. Ferguson dressed himself carefully then looked down at the dead body of his tormentor, machine gun laying beside him ready for use.

  Ferguson looked up and held out his hand.

  "Sword," he said.

  Green and I advanced through the wreckage of the Commons Library. Jane and Jack hobbled after us, covering our rear and sides.

  "Remember," I said quietly as we picked our way across the rubble, "his core team were SAS. They know more about close quarter combat than all of us put together. Our only hope is to contain them, pen them in, give them nowhere to run. If this turns into a running fight, they'll pick us off easy."

  The explosion had set fires in the old wooden building. Already flames were licking at the bookcases that lined the walls. Huge, heavy, leather bound copies of Hansard began to smoulder.

  "This place," said Green, "is going to go up like a candle. We don't need to follow them in there, Lee. We can just stay outside and wait. The fire will force them out."

  I looked down the long corridor ahead of me - a shooting gallery if ever I saw one - then back to the burning room. He was right.

  "Back outside, now," I yelled, and we retreated to Speaker's Green. Burning pages began to rain down from the walls as we backtracked.

  "We need to think this through," I said, turning to Jane. "Do you think he'll stand and fight or run for it?"

  "Fight," she said firmly.

  "Good, then what we have to do..."

  My voice was drowned out by a roar somewhere off to our left. I glanced at the others in confusion then ran through the snow, underneath Big Ben and into the yard. A tide of children was pouring up out of the underground car park. At their head ran Caroline, a machine gun in her hands. The women from the Lords brought up the rear, yelping and whooping and firing in the air.

  I tried to wave them down, to prevent them hurtling headlong into the Palace, but there was no stopping them. This wasn't an army, this was a mob and God help anyone who got in their way.

  Caroline ran over to me as the mob streamed into the building, screaming and yelling and tearing the place apart, every one of them carrying a club, chain or gun.

  "Not quite how we planned it," she said to me, panting and excited. "They left all our weapons in a pile in the car park, so we just collected them."

  "We need to come up with a strategy for this, some plan..."

  Caroline cut me off with a derisive laugh. "Forget it," she said. "Genie's out of the bottle, Lee."

  I stood there, frustrated at the way the situation had slipped out of our hands so quickly.

  "Fuck it," said Jack. "Let's follow them." He didn't wait for my assent, he just stomped off. Caroline went with him, Green shrugged as if to say 'what can you do?' and followed suit. I turned to Jane, who was looking anything but excited by this turn of events.

  "Problem?" I asked.

  He face clouded. "I don't want anyone getting to him before I do. Cooper's mine," she said. Then she too limped after the others.

  I watched her walk awkwardly until she reached the door to the building - ripped off and smashed to pieces.

  "I see what you like about her," said the voice in my head. "She's feisty."

  Jane stopped and turned to look at me.

  "Are you fucking coming, or what?" she shouted.

  I walk through the Palace of Westminster with Lee at my side, trailing in the wake of the mob.

  My foot pounds agonisingly as we shamble through the corridors of power. Everything has been ripped apart. Shattered wood panels litter the carpet, paintings and murals have been smashed and shattered.

  The Commons is a scene of total devastation. The plush green leather benches have been slashed and the stuffing lies everywhere, mirroring the snow outside. The Speaker's Chair lies broken next to the upturned debating table. Centuries of tradition reduced to firewood in a few minutes.

  A soldier lies sprawled in the middle of the floor. His head has been bashed in with a dispatch box that lies next to him, its lid snapped off. There are two dead children on the stairs that lead up to the back benches. I hurry over and kneel beside them, but they are shot to pieces and beyond help. One, a young girl, is a stranger to me, but I recognise the boy from St Mark's. I close their sightless eyes and stand, gripping my gun tightly, eager for retribution.

  The row of grimy windows at the top of the chamber to our left begins to flicker orange as the fire sweeps parallel to us. It won't be long before it reaches this chamber.

  We emerge into the Member's Lobby. Marble figures lie on the ground, arms broken, heads smashed off. We pass a group of four kids toppling a statue of some long forgotten administrator, his outstretched finger hectoring and stern; it snaps off as the figure crashes to the tiles.

  Ahead there is gunfire and shouting, explosions and screams, and the constant angry roar of children on the rampage.

  There are a series of loud reports down the corridor to my right. I spin to see a soldier backing away, firing a handgun as he goes. Then it clicks uselessly, the ammunition exhausted. He throws the weapon at whoever is advancing towards him, then turns to run in my direction. I raise my gun to cut him down but before I can fire a tall figure bursts into the corridor in a flurry of limbs and steel. The soldier raises his arms to protect himself, but the swordsman brings his blade down in a sweeping arc and cleanly severs the man's head from his body. It rolls towards me, the cadaver toppling to the floor behind it. The swordsman stands upright and walks towards us, dripping blade at his side. His face is a mass of bruises.

  "Ferguson, is that you?" says Lee.

  The figure nods as he reaches us. One of the four kids, finished with the statue now, runs forward and kicks the soldier's severed head as if taking a penalty. It soars into the air and narrowly misses a second sword-bearing Ranger who emerges from the corridor and ducks in alarm as the head flies past, breaking the window on its way out.

  "Fucking hell!" swears the Ranger. He turns and shouts at Ferguson. "We're supposed to disable when possible, Ferguson. You know the boss doesn't like us killing if we don't have to."

  Ferguson turns and stares at Wilkes who immediately puts his hands up.

  "But, you know, do what you feel, pal," he says sheepishly.

  The kids laugh and high five the head kicker, then they take off towards the Lords, following the sounds of the fight.

  Lee, the two Rangers and I follow on behind.

  As we walked through that corridor something strange happened to me. I felt my pulse racing, faster than it had even when I was lined up in front of the firing squad. My
hand started spastically clenching and unclenching on the stock of my gun and Mac began to shout at me.

  "Come on Nine Lives, what are you doing straggling at the back?" he bellowed. "Fucking get in there. Crack some skulls. Come on, for fuck's sake."

  I tried to ignore him but he was too loud, too insistent. The desire to kill grew so strong that I could barely hold myself in check.

  "Stay with her," I said to Wilkes. Then I looked at Ferguson as if to say 'you coming?' He nodded once, and we ran ahead, into the fray. I heard Jane shouting at me to be careful, but it barely registered.

  We came to the Lords and found the doors smashed open. The noise from inside was indescribable. As we entered we found the mob of children, nearly all of them, I reckon, formed into a circle. Some were standing on the red leather benches to get a better view of the makeshift arena they'd constructed on the floor of the house. They were literally baying for blood, chanting, cheering, jeering and yelling. I fought my way through the crowd to the front edge and found two of Cooper's soldiers - big, burly men in black combats, shaven headed and scary - standing with their backs to each other, circling around and around waiting for the crowd to surge forward and tear them to pieces. They were bleeding, desperate and cornered.

  The men were unarmed, and the children had enough weapons between them to gun them down a hundred times, but it seemed the crowd was eager for a more primitive spectacle. They were hurling anything and everything they could find at the men - books, computer equipment, chairs, heavy wooden boxes. The men were, I realised, being stoned to death. I felt a surge of excited bloodlust and ran out into the lobby where I had passed some more shattered statues. I grabbed a heavy, sharp piece of marble and ran back, fighting my way through the crowd to the front again, cradling it in my hands.

  The men were batting away the objects hat were flying at them, but they couldn't get them all. A gold finial smashed into the face of one of them and he reeled backwards. The children cheered as blood began to pump from his nose. He stopped for a moment and bowed his head, wiping the blood onto his sleeve. I smiled as I stepped forward, raised the heavy stone block, and brought it crashing down on the man's head, feeling his skull crack and crumble beneath it.