Scott Andrews - School_s Out

"I have never been so bloody scared in my entire life," said Norton. "There were bullets everywhere, the windows were exploding, the minibus blew up. I just closed my eyes and fired blind. Fat lot of use I was. Give me hand to hand and I know what I'm doing, but this was mental. Just fucking mental. And what I don't understand, right, is why they picked a fight with us in the first place? I mean, what've we done?"

"They were watching us," I said. "They saw Bates' crucifixion, thought we were a threat. You can see their point, I suppose."

"Still, couldn't they have just, y'know, knocked on the door and said 'hi, we're the neighbours, we baked you a cake?' I mean, there was no reason to come in guns blazing, no reason at all."

"Look where it got them."

"Look where it got Guerrier, Belcher, Griffiths and Zayn."

I had no answer to that.

"I don't want to die like that," he said eventually.

"If it's choice of being shot or being bled and eaten, then I'll take a bullet every time, thanks. After all, been there, done that."

"Yeah, yeah, stop boasting," he teased, sarcastically. "By my reckoning you've been shot, stabbed, strangled, hanged and savaged by a mad dog since you came back to school, three of those in the last twenty-four hours."

"I also shat myself."

"All right. You win. You are both vastly harder and far more pathetic than any of us."

"And don't you forget it."

"So, oh great unkillable smelly one, do you want to know how I've been doing?"

I nodded eagerly.

"Things in the ranks are confused. Some boys are really pumped up about the fight, gung-ho, ready for more. They reckon Mac's leadership saved our bacon and they're willing to fight for him now."

"Mac's fucking leadership provoked the bloody attack in the first place."

"But they don't know that."

"Which boys are we talking about?"

"Most of the fourth and fifth formers. They're the ones who cop it least from the officers, so they've got a less highly developed sense of grievance. But I've had a quiet natter with Haycox, the horsey one, and filled him in on what happened to Matron, and he's with us. He's trying to spread the word, subtle like."

"And the juniors?"

"They're more interesting. Rowles is a sneaky little sod when he's not sniffling, and he's got pretty much all of them on side. They loved Matron and Bates, and they fucking hate Mac. Plus the officers pick on them all the time and they're feeling pretty pissed off."

"So we've got basically all the seniors led by Mac, against all the juniors, led by us," I said, morosely. "Not going to be much of a fight is it."

"Do we have a better plan?"

I shook my head. "We'll just have to choose our moment carefully, won't we?" I said.

After breakfast the next morning – a surprisingly good Kedgeree made with fish from the river – everyone gathered in the briefing room. Without explicitly detailing the situation, Mac told the boys that there was a new threat abroad and that we were going to be searching for their HQ. A group of five search teams was assembled, each comprising one officer and two other boys, and they were allocated specific targets to recce. The rest of us were to concentrate on repairing the damage of yesterday's attack and bolstering our defence perimeter.

As walking wounded I was excused any actual work. Instead I spent a quiet day with three boys who had been wounded in the fight. The youngest of these, Jenkins, had been shot in his left hand, which was shattered and unlikely to be fully useable ever again. He was only eleven but he had already made it to grade six on piano; he was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he'd never make grade seven. Vaughan had a nasty head wound, although this was from crashing into a table as he dived for cover. He was a bit concussed but he'd be fine. Feschuk had taken a splinter of glass to his left eye, and it was likely that depth perception was a thing of the past for him. We spent the day rummaging through the dusty library for any useful books and sharing stories of life before The Cull.

I casually manoeuvred the conversation around to the subject of Mac and was horrified to learn that, despite the wounds, despite what his actions had cost them, despite how he'd treated Bates and Matron, they were starting to like the bastard.

"If it weren't for him we'd have been captured and hung yesterday," said Feschuk. He related how Mac had taken his place in the defences when he'd been hit and had rallied the boys in the heat of battle to regroup and ambush the attackers inside Castle itself.

"The officers are a pain, but at least we're safe here," said Jenkins. His best mate Griffiths had died in the fight but he seemed detached and unconcerned by this. In shock or just accustomed to losing people?

"I never liked Matron anyways," said Vaughan. Who was a prick.

The next morning I swapped dusty books for damp leaves and beetles, as I crawled through mulchy undergrowth on a reconnaissance mission. My side stung every time I moved, but the stitches held and the painkillers I was taking helped a bit. When I reached the edge of the forest I brought out my binoculars and looked down a long sweeping lawn at the headquarters of the Blood Hunters.

"I don't fancy trying to storm that," said Mac, who was lying beside me.

Neither did I.

Ightham Mote was a solid wood and stone 14^th century manor house that sat in the middle of a deep wide moat. This house was specifically designed to withstand siege and attack. The main entrance was a stone bridge that led underneath a tower flanked by stone buildings. The other three sides of the house comprised a half-timbered upper storey sitting on a solid stone lower level. There was another, smaller stone bridge at the rear. There were sandbagged gun emplacements on both bridges. There used to be a wooden bridge on one side, but that had obviously been pulled down by the building's new occupants; the National Trust would have had a fit.

One of the teachers used to take junior boys on trips to Ightham and had produced photocopied floor plans for the lessons he gave before the trip. Earlier we had turned Castle upside down and found a pile of these sheets in a store cupboard. The building was a maze, not somewhere you wanted to get involved in close quarters combat.

"This is suicide," I said. "There is no way we are getting in and out of there without getting shot to pieces."

"What this? Nine Lives Keegan walking away from a fight?"

That was his new nickname for me, Nine Lives. Funny guy.

"Yes," I replied. "Always. Whenever humanly possible I walk away from a fight. I don't like fights. They hurt."

"Petts is in there. He's one of our boys. We never leave one of our boys behind."

Grief, he was starting to speak 'Tabloid'.

"Mac, mate, we're schoolboys not Royal Marines. He's probably already dead. And I know it's callous, but chances are some, if not all of us, will die getting him out. Surely one dead, however regrettable, is better than twenty?"

Mac favoured me with a look of total disgust.

"You'd really leave him in there?"

"Considering the odds, yes."

"Then you're not the man I thought you were."

Hang on, I wanted to say, since when did the murdering rapist have any claim to the moral high ground?

"Look," I said. "I agree with you in principle, of course I do. But for fuck's sake, look at that place. What good does it do anyone getting ourselves slaughtered?"

He just ignored me and crawled away. Clearly I was beneath his contempt.

The more I thought about attacking that place the less I liked it. I could see Mac's point about rescuing Petts, it was the only honourable sentiment I'd ever heard him utter, but it was going to get us killed. The power base that Norton was trying to build for a coup was just not strong enough yet, so there was no way of seizing power before the attack. And Mac was riding a wave of post-victory loyalty, so even our progress so far was looking wobbly. The boys had seen Mac's strategy win them a battle, and he'd been in the thick of the fighting, leading from the front. He'd proved himself both clever and brave. Which is, let's face it, what you want in a leader.