Scott Andrews - School_s Out

"So I'm your second-in-command. I can give orders to the officers, and my job is to back you up and let you know when I think you're going too far. And I'm doing this because a strong ruthless leader is our best chance of survival in a tribal world. That about right?"

"Yeah."

I made a show of considering my response and then I leaned forward and held out my hand.

"All right, I'm in."

But as he took my hand in his all I could think about was what he'd done to Matron and Bates, and how badly I could make him suffer before I ended him.

The guard looked us up and down with an expression of distaste.

"What do you want?"

Petts held out a battered Sainsbury's bag.

"We've got vegetables, cheese and milk to trade at the market," he said.

The guard peered into the bag.

"Got any Cheshire?"

"Um, no, sorry. It's just home made stuff. It's kind of soft, like Philadelphia."

The guard sniffed. "Filthy stuff. My wife used to eat that. Shame," he said wistfully. "I did love a bit of Cheshire."

We stood there looking expectant as he drifted away into a soft, crumbly reverie. Williams cleared his throat.

"What? Oh yeah, well, you'd better come in then. Bill will pat you down." He nodded to his colleague, who stepped forward and searched us for weapons. When he was done he pushed the barbed wire and wood barrier aside and nodded for us to go through.

"Curfew's at seven," said Bill. "If you plan on staying you'd best find yourself a bolthole before then. There's rooms at the pub, if you can pay."

Petts, Williams and I walked through the barricade and into Hildenborough.

As far as Mac was concerned this small town, three miles down the road from the school, was our first problem. It was these guys he was preparing us to fight.

To borrow Mac's terminology, their strong tribal leader was George Baker, local magistrate. The man who'd so ruthlessly hanged McCulloch and Fleming was a zero tolerance kind of guy who, like Mac, believed in public demonstrations of authority.

Petts and Williams visited Hildenborough once a week to attend a market at which they would trade the vegetables, meat and cheese they produced. Petts hadn't managed to convince anyone to eat the snails he collected, though.

Markets are a good place for gossip, and Hildenborough boasted what must have been the only working pub for a hundred miles, so it was good place to gather intelligence. The plan was for the others to trade as usual – for some reason Williams was desperate to find a good homebrew kit – while I mingled and got the lie of the land.

The town was well defended. Although it is ringed by open country on three sides, it kind of bleeds into Tonbridge on the fourth, making this the hardest front to defend against attack. To address this they had bulldozed a whole tranche of houses to create an exposed approach, then erected a bloody great fence and put in impressive gun towers. All it needed was a few spotlights and some German Shepherds and it would have been Berlin in the fifties.

Consequently the sides facing open country, where the guards were mostly posted on obvious routes like pathways and roads, were slightly more exposed and would be easier to infiltrate, especially after dark. Knowing this, Baker had imposed a strict curfew. Petts had discovered that the guards patrolled in pairs, with torches, and all wore high visibility jackets to prevent friendly fire incidents.

Before The Cull this part of Kent used to resound with the noise of shotguns blasting away at birds, so the Hildenborough survivors had no shortage of guns and ammunition. But our armoury was far more impressive, so if it came to a shooting match we'd have the advantage. In terms of numbers, Williams thought there were about forty men who acted as guards, and about two hundred residents in total.

Mac wanted me to establish some details about Baker himself, and find out whether he was likely to try and expand his territory.

Petts, Williams and I, all dressed in mufti so as not to attract attention, made our way through town to the market, which was held in front of the large stately home that Baker had adopted as his HQ. It was strange to see streets free of debris and burnt cars. As we approached the big house the cottages increasingly showed signs of occupation; the gardens were well tended, the curtains neatly draped. One thing about the new reality was that everyone who was still alive, no matter what they did before The Cull, got to live in the very best houses in the nicest parts of town. It seemed that in Hildenborough they were proud to show off their newly acquired properties.

Williams told me that the big house used to be some sort of medical centre before The Cull. It had impressive dormitory buildings in the grounds and a big swimming pool. The market, such as it was, was held on the forecourt. A collection of trestle tables had been erected and people were milling about trying to exchange jams, batteries, useless technology, clothes and so forth. There was a barbecue selling burgers and sausages, if you could provide the chef with something he wanted. There was even music from a folkie band, and the pub had laid on a tent and a few barrels of local brew.

The whole thing felt more like a village fete than a post-apocalyptic shambles. A little old lady sat knitting behind a pile of jars containing bramble jam, while a vicar stood proprietorially next to a table piled high with old books. There was an old wooden message board by the entrance to the beer tent and a handwritten note stated that the tug of war would start at two sharp, after the bail tossing and the egg and spoon race, but before the Main Event, whatever that was.

The world may have ended in plague and horror, but Middle England was doing very nicely, thanks for asking, would you like a bun Vicar?

And what could be more Middle England, more 'Outraged of Tunbridge Wells', than stringing people up? Off to one side, clearly visible but mercifully unused at the moment, stood a gallows. I shuddered as I imagined how McCulloch and Fleming must have felt in their final moments, as they stood on the trapdoor waiting for the lever to be pulled.

I let the other two go about their business and made a beeline for the beer tent. I don't like beer much, I'm more a whisky and coke kid, but I had a bagful of leeks to trade so I figured I could swig a few pints and make small talk with some locals. Infiltrate and inebriate, that was the plan.

In the end I didn't need to, because Baker himself was in the tent, jug of beer in hand, holding forth to an appreciative audience. I swapped a handful of leeks for a mug of mild, sat down on a bendy white plastic garden seat, and got an earful of the man himself.

He was tall but round, early fifties, dressed in 'Countryside Alliance' tweeds. His eyebrows were bushy, his cheeks were ruddy and his eyes were piercing blue. His jowls wobbled as he spoke.

"What you've got to understand, John," he said, "is that expansion is our only option."

Wow, ten seconds, job done. I can go home now, thanks. I never knew being a spy was this easy! At least I wouldn't have to drink any more of this foul brew; one sip was more than enough.

"But that doesn't have to mean confrontation," he continued.

Really?

"I see Hildenborough as the centre of an alliance. Some kind of loose affiliation of trading partners. Tribes, villages, maybe even city states, who knows. But we've got a safe, secure position here. We've got all the food we can use thanks to our farming programme, we're well armed and crime is virtually zero."

Interesting.

"Virtually," laughed one of his fellow drinkers. "It'll be zero after you hang that bastard later on." The group of men shared a convivial chuckle. You'd have thought he'd just told a joke about golf or something. That confirmed what the main event was.