Scott Andrews - School_s Out

I levered myself off the bed and hopped across to the medicine cabinet. My leg was so bad now that even hopping was almost unbearable. But what did my pain compare with that of the man outside screaming into the face of inevitable death? I opened the cabinet and sorted through the little bottles until I found the right one. I grabbed a syringe, filled it, and jammed it straight into my wound. For a moment there were two men screaming, but then the sweet morphine did its work and my leg felt warm and clumsy and twice its normal size. But at least it bore my weight. I had no idea how long it would take for the drug to affect my senses, but I knew I had to be fast. I limped to the door and checked the corridor. Empty. Thank heaven for small blessings. My rifle stood against the wall in one of the corners, untouched since I'd put it there when I was brought into the San wounded, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

I picked it up and limped to the back stairwell. Again, no-one around. I hit the stairs and climbed. I was starting to get dizzy. I held tight to the railing as I made my way up to the locked door that gave out onto the roof. Two hard blows from my rifle butt took care of the lock, and I was out, underneath the low grey clouds.

I made my way to the edge of the roof, which felt springy underneath me, like I was walking on a duvet. The sky above me began to spin and I felt a hot flush rise up my body and face, like a cartoon character who's just eaten a hot chilli. I walked right to the edge and looked down, swayed unsteadily and leapt back. Carefully.

I lay down, assumed firing position and sighted my rifle on the chest of the man so far below me, who screamed and screamed and screamed.

I tried to focus on my task but the roof felt as if it was swallowing me up, engulfing me like quicksand. My head felt tight, my vision swam, my hands shook.

I grasped the rifle tight and closed my eyes. I steadied my breathing and opened them again. The madness scampered around the periphery of my vision, but I found that I had, for a moment at least, clarity.

Maybe it was the recklessness of drugged-up mania, or perhaps I was simply so far gone that I had ceased to worry about the consequences of my actions; whichever it was, I didn't hesitate for an instant. In a heartbeat I did the one thing I had been trying so hard to avoid these long months since The Cull had made each man, woman and child the sole guardian of their own morality; the one thing I had feared the most because of what it would say about where my choices had brought me and what I was truly capable of.

I squeezed the trigger and ended a man's life.

Finally, I was a killer.

Before The Cull, back when St Mark's was just another boy's school and I was just a fourth-former trying to pass my exams, I got on the wrong side of Mac once.

It was Friday lunchtime and I had cycled into town to buy myself a bag of chips and pick up a magazine. Popping out at lunchtime wasn't forbidden but it was tight, time-wise, and if you dawdled you ran the risk of missing the start of afternoon lessons.

That day I bumped into a girl from the high school who I had met at one of the formal social events that the two schools collaborated on every now and then. I was awkward around girls. I had been in single-sex education since I was barely able to walk, and I didn't have sisters. It wasn't that I didn't know what to talk to girls about; I didn't know how to talk to them at all.

So while I was browsing the shelves in the newsagents this girl came up, said "hi" and we chatted for a few minutes. Her name was Michelle and I liked her. I can't really remember what I said; it's a bit of a blur. I was just concentrating on not spitting, swearing or belching. But it seemed to go off okay and she smiled as she said goodbye. She was pretty, I was blushing beetroot red, and I dawdled and daydreamed all the way back to school where I cycled straight into Mac, lying in wait at the school gates for waifs and strays.

"What the fuck time do you call this?" he asked.

"Sorry, I just, um…" Nope, no way out, caught bang to rights.

He grabbed the magazine.

"Hey, hey, what's this? SEX?"

"Um, no, it's SFX. It just looks like that 'cause the picture's covering the bottom of the F."

"So you say. But all I can see is a magazine with a woman in a bikini on the cover and SEX written across the top of it."

"It's Princess Leia."

He rolled up the magazine and whacked me round the head with it as hard as he could.

"I don't care if it's Princess bloody Diana, it's confiscated."

There was no point protesting.

"So you a geek then, eh? Little spoddy sci-fi fan? Wank off over pictures of Daleks do you?"

So many cutting responses came to mind but I wasn't stupid enough to deliver any of them. I just stood there, head down, silent.

His punishment was typically creative. I had to stand in a corridor and hold the magazine against the wall with my nose. Simple enough, you might think. But he made me keep my feet a metre away from the wall, with my hands behind my back. I was leaning forward at an angle of about 45 degrees, and all my weight was pushed down onto my nose. Within a minute the pain was excruciating. He made me stand like that for half an hour. I never crossed him again, and he soon forgot who I was.

I was still in junior school when I learnt the secret to dealing with bullies: hit them as hard as you possibly can and make their noses bleed. Always worked for me. But when the bullies were officially sanctioned, when they were prefects (or teachers, come to think of it), then the more you protested, challenged them, fought back, or answered their rhetorical questions, the worse things got. They had authority on their side and any argument, reason or excuse you offered could just be ignored.

So I learned to swallow my pride, to bite back the retorts, to clench my fists but not let them fly. Keep your head down, don't draw attention to yourself, fly under the radar. Secret to a quiet life; secret to survival.

That instinct was deep ingrained in me by the time The Cull came around. I suppose that's why I didn't challenge Mac at the start, why I motioned to Norton to keep quiet when Hammond needed our help, why I decided to try and bring Mac down by infiltration and subterfuge. A lifetime of learning how to survive institutional bullying had taught me how to be sneaky, but I no longer understood the rules of open confrontation.

Mac still had the authority, although now it came from the muzzle of a gun and a cadre of lackeys rather than a fancy blue blazer braid, and I was still locked into the role of submissive victim, seething with resentment but staying silent, fighting the injustice indirectly, with plots and schemes.

But I still remembered the satisfaction of bloodying a bully's nose, and longed to feel Mac's cartilage crack beneath my fists.

My mouth felt dry and sandy, my eyes were gummed shut, and my leg was just a distant ache. I could hear someone moving around in the room, but I couldn't speak or move for a minute or so. Eventually I was able to manage a croak, and I heard a squeal and what sounded like a glass hitting the floor. I'd made somebody jump.

Then the sound of someone filling a glass of water from a jug, and a hand behind my head lifting it and putting the glass to my lips. I gulped down the liquid gratefully.

"Thanks," I rasped.

"You're welcome." The Dinner Lady.

"What's… where…"

"Don't try and speak, just rest your head a minute."

I heard her dabbing something in water and then a cool flannel wiped my eyes clear of sleep and I cracked them open, wincing at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows. I was still in the San.