Scott Andrews - School_s Out

"How long?"

"You've been unconscious for a week. We weren't sure you were going to survive, to be honest. Your leg was pretty bad. But your fever broke last night, and the infection seems to have burnt itself out. You are a very, very lucky boy."

I squinted up at her. My head felt like it was full of rocks.

The San door opened and Green poked his head inside.

"He awake?" he asked.

"Just about."

"Great, I'll go get Mac." He closed the door and I heard him walk off down the corridor.

The Dinner Lady leaned in closer, conspiratorially.

"Now listen, before he gets here, I've got a message for you from Matron."

She saw my agitation and shushed me.

"I stayed behind deliberately that night. What, you thought she'd left me behind? Someone needs to be here to keep an eye on you boys and I thought it might as well be me. But we've got a little system and we leave notes for each other. I'm not telling you where; she trusts you but I'm not so sure. Anyway, she's been telling me what drugs to give you, so it's thanks to her that you're still breathing. She wants you to know that she and the girls are all right. They're not too far away but the place they're hiding has already been searched by one of Mac's hunting parties, and they didn't find them. They're unlikely to search it again so we think they're safe for now."

I breathed a sigh of relief, which probably sounded more like the gasp of a dying man, because she offered me more water. I drank thirstily.

"Mac? Bates?"

She hesitated and looked at me with deep suspicion.

"Mr Bates is dead and buried, God rest his soul. Mac's spent most of the time searching the area for the girls, and training the boys in drill. He's had an assault course built down by the river and he makes them do it every day for an hour. You should see the way he treats them. Scandalous. Says he's preparing them for war. Mad fool will get us all killed, mark my words.

"He's been very interested in you, though. Thinks highly of you, he does. Wants you fighting fit. Says he doesn't want to start a fight without you there. So you just take your time getting better. The longer you laze around here feeling sorry for yourself the better off we are."

She fell silent as we heard Mac and Green arriving outside.

"All right, thank you Limpdick, stay on guard, there's a good boy," said Mac, as he entered. He dismissed Mrs Atkins with a glance. She made her exit and Mac took her vacated seat.

"Hi," I said weakly.

"Hi yourself." He sniffed and considered my leg. "How's it feel?"

"Throbbing."

He nodded.

"Well, I'm told you're a lucky laddie and you're gonna be fine. You rest up 'til you're fit, but don't take too long coz I'm gonna need you."

"Why, what's been going on?" I was barely conscious, disorientated, croaking like a frog, and I was being bombarded with information my brain wasn't quite ready to process. But I needed to know how things stood.

"We've got a traitor. Some fucker shot Batesy. Put him out of his misery and spoiled all our fun. I would've had you down for it, but you was semi-conscious and raving here in the San when I came to see where you were. So don't worry, we know it wasn't you. But we dunno who it was and that makes me… jumpy. Either one of my officers is going behind my back, or some junior's got a gun hidden away that we don't know about. I don't like either of those possibilities.

"Anyway, the fat lady'll get you some nosh and we can start sorting you out. I'll fill you in on my plans when you're more with it."

I was grateful; I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.

"You rest up, mate," said Mac. But I was already half asleep.

During my convalescence I had plenty of time to assess the situation.

The school was now a fortified camp. There were patrols of the perimeter twenty-four hours a day, and permanent manned guard posts at the main gate and the school's front door. As a rule there was one officer in each patrol or guard detail, to keep the boys in line.

The day began with parade and inspection at 8am, followed by breakfast, then drill and exercises all morning. The afternoons were taken up with sports and scavenging hunts. Mac had kept the evening movies going for as long as there was fuel, but it was all gone now, so we had to live without electricity. The only technological toys we had left were battery-powered stereos and torches; we'd scavenged enough batteries to keep us going for a while, so we could at least listen to music. When Mac wasn't running a night exercise the evenings were free time. Boys played board games; Green organized a theatre group and started rehearsing a production of Our Town; a third-former called Lill started up a band.

Heathcote and Williams had expanded their farm and we now had a few fields of livestock. Petts' market garden was coming along well. Everywhere there was business, activity and purpose.

But there was no disguising the tension that hung in the air at all times. The officers, united by their shared crime, had become a coherent unit, a tight, loyal gang who held absolute power and weren't afraid to use it. We were lucky that only one of them, Wylie, was an outright bastard. The others bossed and bullied and threw their weight around but things never threatened to get as violent as I had feared they would. Mac seemed to be restraining himself a bit, and I didn't know why. I had expected that by now he'd be using thumbscrews on a daily basis, but he mostly just shouted and threw the occasional punch. His punishment of choice was getting miscreants to run laps of the pitches before breakfast.

I think maybe he'd shocked even himself with how he'd behaved towards Bates.

He had stopped searching for Matron and the girls. With all the fuel gone our minibuses were now useless and so our search area was limited to a few miles in every direction. Horses were collected when and wherever they could be found, and a Haycox was running riding classes for the officers. I could already ride but it was not until very late in my healing that I could bear the pain of being bounced up and down on top of a galloping quadraped.

All Mac's efforts seemed to be going into securing our position and training the boys. But training them for what? I asked him and all the cryptic bastard would say was "You'll see". I was supposed to be his second-in-command but he wasn't taking me into his confidence.

And as he made his plans and preparations, so I made mine.

Norton's attitude towards me changed after I shot Bates. Although he was still jokey and conspiratorial I could sense a wariness about him. He didn't quite know what to make of me any more. I think my actions had surprised him almost as much as they'd surprised me. I didn't blame him. I was wary of myself.

My father used to wake screaming at night sometimes. I know something awful happened to him during a tour of duty in Bosnia, but he would never tell me what it was. Now I too was waking up sweating and shouting. In my nightmares Bates would scream into my face from his crucifix and Mac would stand by, applauding, as I carved our old teacher into tiny pieces, all of which grew mouths and joined the chorus of agony.

I had never had nightmares before. All the horror and death I had witnessed during The Cull, all the violence that had been done to me physically and psychologically, had never caused me a single night's sleeplessness. But the violence I had visited upon others was tormenting me. I had always believed that something awful had been done to my father; now I knew it was something awful that he had done to someone else. I realised that I hardly knew my father at all, or what he was capable of.

I was starting to realise what I was capable of, though. And it terrified me.

Nonetheless I remained focused on my objectives – gain Mac's trust, find an opportunity to betray him, find Matron and the girls, make the school the sanctuary it should always have been. I was willing to do almost anything to achieve my goals, but I couldn't do it alone.