Stephen Leather: Nightshade

The teacher staggered backwards and he tripped over a desk and fell to the floor before scrambling on all fours and hiding behind his desk.

The children sitting at Ruth’s table stared at McBride in horror but the rest of the pupils ran to the back of the room. McBride raised the shotgun to his shoulder again, sighted on another girl and pulled the trigger. The girl’s name was Emily Smith and she died clutching the invitation that Ruth had given her just minutes earlier. McBride walked out of the classroom, ejecting the two spent cartridges. He slotted in two fresh ones as he walked to the next classroom.

Phillippa Pritchard had heard the first shot but it had been in the playground and she’d assumed that it had been a car backfiring. The second shot had been closer but she still hadn’t realised what it was until the screaming had started. The third and fourth shots followed in quick succession and the thirty-four children in her class all looked at her fearfully, waiting to be told what to do. The problem was, Phillippa had absolutely no idea what to tell them. She had been a teacher for almost twenty years, but nothing had prepared her for the sound of gunshots and the screaming of terrified children.

There was only one way out of the classroom and that was through the door that led to the corridor. Phillippa looked at the windows. They led out to the playing fields at the rear of the school. ‘Everyone over to the windows, quickly!’ she said. The children looked at her, too shocked to move. She clapped her hands. ‘Come on, this is a fire drill. Let’s pretend that the corridor is filled with smoke and that we have to escape through the windows.’ She walked quickly over to the nearest window. It was the sash type with a catch. She took a chair from one of the boys and stood on it. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach the catch and it was stiff but she pushed hard and forced it to the side. She stepped down off the chair and pushed the lower pane up. ‘Right, come on!’ she said, pushing a table close to the window. ‘Onto the chair and then onto the table and through the window. Come on, quickly!’

She heard a metallic click in the corridor and her stomach lurched as she realised what it was. The shotgun had been reloaded.

‘Come on everybody, let’s do this as quickly as possible!’ shouted Phillippa, fighting to keep the fear out of her voice. The first pupil was on the table, looking nervously out of the window. It was Jacob Gray, a timid boy who had a tendency to blush when spoken to. ‘Jeremy, jump, go on.’

‘It’s too high, miss,’ he said, his voice trembling.

‘Just do it, Jacob, you’re holding everyone up.’ The door handle turned slowly. Phillippa turned to look at the door, her heart in her mouth. The door opened and she saw the twin barrels of a shotgun followed by a green Wellington boot.

‘Miss, I’m scared,’ said Jacob.

‘Just jump, now!’ shouted Phillippa.

Phillippa gasped as the middle-aged man stepped into the classroom and raised the shotgun. He was grey-haired and ruddy-cheeked, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. It was his eyes that chilled Phillippa. They were blank, almost lifeless. There was no tension in the man, no anger, no emotion at all. He just stood in the doorway looking slowly around the room, his finger on the trigger.

Phillippa took a step towards the man. She was more terrified than she’d ever been in her whole life but she knew that she had to protect the children. She put up her hands the way she’d try to calm a spooked horse and tried to maintain eye contact. ‘You need to leave,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘You need to go now. You’re frightening the children.’

The man didn’t look at her. He continued to scan the room, the twin barrels of his shotgun matching his gaze.

‘You have to go,’ said Phillippa, more forcibly this time, but still the man paid her no attention.

Jacob fell through the open window and yelped as he hit the ground outside. Phillippa took a quick look over her shoulder. Two girls were on the table and a third stood on the chair, looking anxiously at the man with the gun. Phillippa made a shooing motion with her hand then turned to look at the gunman.

He had raised his shotgun to his shoulder and Phillippa gasped as she saw his finger tighten on the trigger. He was aiming it at Paul Tomkinson, one of her favourite pupils, always eager to please and one of the first to put up his hand, no matter what the question being asked. She opened her mouth to scream but before the sound could leave her lips there was a deafening bang and the shotgun kicked in his hand. The children screamed and scattered like sheep to the back of the classroom. Phillippa realised that there was a child lying on the ground, what was left of his head touching the wall. Blood and gobs of brain were dripping down the wall.

Phillippa covered her mouth with trembling hands. The two girls on the table threw themselves through the window, screaming.

The man swung the shotgun in Phillippa’s direction and her stomach turned liquid. She felt her bladder open and a warm wetness spread around her groin but she was barely aware of it. Her legs began to shake uncontrollably and she mentally began to run through the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father, who art in Heaven, and then the shotgun swung away from her and roared again. A girl fell, her chest and face a bloody mess. Phillippa realised it was Brianna Foster, one of the quietest girls in the class, so passive that Phillippa had to constantly keep an eye on her to make sure that she wasn’t being bullied.

Brianna lay on the floor like a broken doll as blood pooled around her. The gunman turned back to look at Phillippa and for the first time they had eye contact. He broke the shotgun and ejected the two cartridges. They flew through the air and clattered onto the floor.

The man groped in his haversack with his right hand, slotted in two fresh cartridges and snapped the weapon closed, all the time keeping his eyes fixed on Phillippa. He brought the shotgun up so that it was pointing at her chest and the breath caught in her throat. She was sure that she was going to die there in the classroom, in front of her pupils. Time seemed to freeze and all she could think of was that she would never see her husband again. Her dear darling Clive. She’d kissed him on the cheek when he’d left the house that morning and she’d said that she loved him and it gave her a small feeling of satisfaction that if they were her last words to him then at least he would know that he was loved. For the first time she saw something approaching emotion in his eyes. Not anger, not hatred, not contempt, but something approaching regret. She saw him swallow and then he turned around and walked out of the classroom.

The first Armed Response Vehicle pulled up in front of the school with a squeal of brakes. A Firearms Officer piled out of the BMW while the driver unlocked the gun cabinet and pulled out two G36 carbines. Both men were wearing black uniforms and bulletproof vests and had Glock pistols holstered on their hips.

There were more than a hundred pupils gathered in front of the railings. ‘What the bloody hell are they gawping at?’ asked Sergeant Mickey Rawlings, though the question was rhetorical. There were a dozen adults among the crowd, presumably the teachers. Rawlings walked over and raised his hand. ‘Who’s in charge?’ he shouted.

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket with black leather patches on the elbows walked over. ‘The head is off today and her deputy is …’ He grimaced and pointed to a body in the playground, about fifty feet away.

‘What happened here?’ asked Rawlings.

‘There’s a man in the school with a shotgun. He shot Mr Etchells and he’s walking through the school shooting children.’