Scott Andrews - School_s Out

He started to speak more loudly now, passionately pleading with us to understand his choices and failures.

"Do you know what it's like to try and help someone who doesn't want to be helped? Do you? To try and persuade them that you know best? It's impossible. But it was my job, my duty, I couldn't just give up, could I? I had to make them see. I had to keep them safe. 'Arm ourselves', I said. 'The school will be safe', I said. 'Sanctuary', I said. But they wouldn't believe me. Wouldn't do things my way. Had to challenge me, always had to challenge me. Undermine, countermand, mock and ignore. All I wanted, all I ever wanted, was to be a hero, their hero."

Mac started to giggle. A man was falling to pieces in front of him and the sick bastard actually thought it was funny.

"And now I never will be, will I?" Bates looked up at Mac again, suddenly clear-eyed and focused. "Because you're going to kill me, aren't you, Mac?"

Mac met his gaze, but said nothing.

"Yeah, of course you are," said Bates. "You've been building up to this from the moment you arrived. Just biding your time, waiting for me to make a mistake. Well, good for you. Good for you. Made it easy for you really, didn't I? Got it wrong every step of the way and you just let me get deeper and deeper into the shit until it was time to make your move. And now you've got your lackeys and your weapons and your army. But what are you going to do with it all? What's the point of all the power? Do you even have a point, or is it just for its own sake, just because you can? You don't care for these boys, you don't care for their wellbeing or safety. You just want to be in control of them. And now you are. My fault, again. My fault."

He took a deep breath and calmed the final sobs that had interspersed his little speech. He raised his bound hands and wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve, sat upright and stared straight ahead, trying to find some final shreds of dignity.

"Before you pass sentence I want to make a final request." He turned his gaze to me. "I don't know why you're allying yourself with this bastard, Keegan, but I've been watching you and I think you're better than this." Oh shit, thanks. Blow my cover, why don't you? "I want you to do something for me, if you can."

"What's that then?" I tried to sound casual and unconcerned. Mustn't let Mac know how much I was hating this.

"I want you to find my sons and tell them what's happened."

"What?" I couldn't keep the surprise out of my voice. "They're alive?"

"Oh yes, they're alive. What, you thought I'd buried them? No, they were both O-neg. But they weren't mine. Carol and I adopted. Pure chance they had the same blood type. All I ever wanted… sorry. Anyway, find them. Apologise for me. They're with their mother at a farm just north of Leeds. Ranmore Farm, it's on the maps."

"So why did you come back here? What happened?" asked Mac, intrigued, in spite of himself.

"They left me." He gave a bitter laugh. "I was the luckiest man in the world, you see. Only child, so no brothers or sisters to lose. Both my parents already dead. My wife and kids all immune. My whole family, everyone I loved, survived The Cull. Luckiest man in the world. But then… they just left me. No reason left to pretend, she said. Not our real dad anyway, they said. And gone. All I ever wanted was to make them safe, be a hero to them, to my boys. But they hated me. All that love and now… just… nothing."

Suddenly Bates was transformed, suddenly he made sense. I felt desperately, achingly sorry for him.

"Wow," laughed Mac. "You're an even bigger loser than I thought!"

"Yes," said Bates, thoroughly broken. "I suppose I am."

"Well, the sentence is death, obviously. But I need a bit of time to consider how, so we'll just bung you back in a locked room for a bit while I work it out, yeah?"

While Bates languished under lock and key and Mac worked out which form of painful death most took his fancy, the day proceeded as normal. Norton wheeled me back to the San where I was still sleeping, despite Matron's incarceration.

"She's in one of the rooms upstairs," Norton said. He'd been snooping around for me, trying to find out where she was being kept. "Mac's old room, actually. The door's not locked as far as I can tell, but he's got Wolf-Barry on guard outside."

"Has she… has anything…" I couldn't quite bring myself to put my fears into words.

"I only found out where she was this morning, and as far as I know no-one's been in to see her since. But I don't know about last night, Lee."

I didn't want to think about what Mac might have done to her. I recalled the mysterious bruise on Mac's cheek.

Norton handed me the two Brownings that he'd hidden for me and I pocketed them both.

"Right, we need to get Wolf-Barry away from that door. I need to get in there."

"I might have an idea how we can do that," said Norton. "You might even call it a plot. But how are you going to manage? You can barely walk."

I lifted my good leg off the wheelchair rest and placed it on the floor, levering myself upright. I gingerly put my bad leg down and allowed it to take the tiniest fraction of my weight. Not so bad. A bit more. Bearable. I tried a step and it was like someone had shoved a hot metal bar straight through my calf. I grunted in pain and clenched my jaw. But I could do it. I had to.

Norton looked at me doubtfully.

"Piece of cake," I lied.

With the arrival of winter the school had become bitterly cold, and fires were kept burning in most grates throughout the day. Norton snuck into the dorm along the corridor from where Matron was being kept and nudged one of the logs out of the grate and onto the floor where it began to smoulder on the old waxed floorboard. The dorm door was open so we were counting on Wolf-Barry smelling the fire and raising the alarm before it really took hold. Last thing we wanted was to burn the school down.

Norton wafted the fumes towards the door then nipped out the dorm's back door and down the fire escape. It didn't take long for Wolf-Barry to cotton on, and he ran off shouting. I had managed to hop my way up the back stairs and as soon as he was out of sight I pushed open the stairwell door and hopped to Matron's room. I tried to ignore the blood that was beginning to trickle down my wounded leg, and the spots that were appearing at the edge of my vision.

I pushed the door – not locked, thank Christ – and lurched into the room. It was only my unsteady footing that saved me from receiving a floorboard to the face.

"Hey, hey, it's me, Lee," I whispered urgently.

Matron was stood just inside the door holding her improvised weapon. Her face was one big bruise. One eye was swollen shut, her lips were blue and bulbous. There was blood underneath her nose, which bulged where I think it had been broken. Her clothes were torn, too. She was breathing hard and her teeth were bared and bloody.

"What kept you, Lee? Come to take your turn?"

No time to dwell on what that implies. Focus. Concentrate. Things to do.

"Matron, we need to get you out of here now."

"And why should I trust you? They told me, you're his loyal second-in-command now!" She was fighting back tears, her words coming out in a furious mix of anger and pain.

There was no time to explain myself. The corridor would be swarming in seconds. I pulled one of the handguns from my pocket and held it out to her.

"Take it."

She looked down at it, confused.

"Take it!"

She dropped the floorboard, grabbed the gun and then looked up at me. I couldn't read the expression on her wrecked face.

"Now come on!" I grabbed her hand and turned, gently pushing the door open as I did so. But we'd lingered too long. There was already a crowd of boys arguing over which colour of fire extinguisher they should use. Norton was nearest the door, bathed in a dim orange light, trying to take control but also keeping an eye out for our escape. Not only was he providing a distraction for us, he wanted to be closest to the danger, didn't want anyone else getting burnt because of his actions. My admiration for him grew hugely.