Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

Upon arrival, however, he’d discovered the school under siege by a ferocious band of naked, blood-daubed nutters led by some weirdo in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat. He’d stayed out of sight and let the siege play out to its inevitable conclusion — the complete destruction of the school and everyone in it. He was pretty sure there’d been cannibalism involved, but he’d avoided looking too closely once the gates were breached and the real savagery began.

Now, as he looked at the smouldering ruins of Harrow School, Arthur had difficulty deciding what to do.

If the boy king had made it to the school, he had almost certainly died in the massacre. But what if he’d been waylaid en route? What if he’d never made it here? There were too many variables, and Arthur had to be sure. He couldn’t have a pretender turning up and causing trouble once he’d taken the throne.

Then a dreadful thought occurred to him: perhaps the boy had converted — he was pretty sure one or two of the boys had joined the cultists. Blimey, he hoped he wouldn’t have to wade into that particular hornet’s nest.

No, there was nothing else for it; he’d simply have to rummage around in the debris and entrails in search of identification. He might get lucky.

With a weary sigh, Arthur collapsed the binoculars, put them in the pocket of his coat, and stood up. He felt a slight nervous tingle as he broke cover and walked towards the wreckage. He might already be king, and he might find proof of that fact within the next hour. He could embrace his destiny by lunchtime. He felt lightheaded at the thought of it, and lengthened his stride.

TWO HOURS LATER Arthur sat on a blood-soaked bench feeling deflated and nauseous.

Rifling through the pockets of half burnt — and in some cases half eaten — child corpses was not the best way to spend a morning. But, he told himself, if he was going to be king he had to earn the right, and facing up to difficult realities and making hard decisions was part of the job. Kings needed to be made of stern stuff. He was proud that he hadn’t flinched in the face of such horror; he’d only thrown up twice.

But he’d found no proof of identity. A couple of bodies had been identifiable by library cards — held on to for what reason, he wondered? Habit? Some kind of totemic article of faith that one day there would once again be fines for overdue books? — but the majority of the bodies were anonymous.

This was not acceptable. He’d managed to find and eliminate ten obstacles with no doubt at all, but now, at the final hurdle, he was going to have to make a leap of faith. The boy was almost certainly dead but Arthur knew that scintilla of possibility, that maggot of doubt, would gnaw away at him for the duration of his reign. He’d never feel entirely secure upon his throne, he’d always be waiting for the day when the miraculously resurrected boy king, now grown up and riding at the head of an army, would rise up to challenge his rule and topple him from the throne.

Unconsciously, his hand rose to his throat as he contemplated Charles I’s fate. Then he clenched as he recalled Edward II’s.

No, he had to be sure. There was nothing else for it — he had to find the cultists. If he could talk to the boys who had converted they’d be able to tell him the boy king’s fate. It was his final test, the last thing he must do to prove that he was worthy of his own destiny. He understood that.

But it really was going to be a pain in the neck.

THE KING OF England, Jack Bedford, picked his way through the wreckage of his school.

Coming back to school had seemed like such a good idea when the world died. After all, if any school was going to survive The Cull, it would be Harrow, wouldn’t it? As it turned out, only a few children thought of returning to school, so the community never had time to reach critical mass before their first big challenge.

When the Blood Hunters had turned up to kill and eat anyone who wouldn’t convert to their mad creed, Jack and one of his classmates had escaped the slaughter by sheltering in a huge brick ice house deep in the woods that made up a large part of the school grounds. They’d heard nothing in two days now, so Jack had emerged to scout the area.

He was shocked to see the school reduced to a pile of smouldering embers and a half collapsed stone shell. This was Harrow, for God’s sake. Was nothing sacred?

The Old Schools, chosen for a last stand in the event of attack, was still smoking, but he approached anyway. There had been twenty-three other children and one teacher — the Head of English, who had proclaimed himself Headmaster — here when the cultists had arrived. Jack didn’t hold out much hope of finding any of them alive, but he could at least bury any remains. There were no bodies here, though; everyone had been taken elsewhere during the bloodletting. Jack scrambled away from the still hot embers, ashamed at the relief he felt.

As he approached the dormitories he caught a whiff of cooking meat and a thick smoky stench of chemicals. He paused, thinking again. The sick feeling in his stomach hardened into a knot of fury and fear. He wanted to run as far as he could from this awful place, but at the same time he wanted to find a gun or a knife or a club, pursue the Blood Hunters and massacre the whole bloody lot of them.

He shook his head and sank to the grass, sitting down and wrapping his arms around his legs, resting his chin on his knees and staring blankly at the smouldering wreckage. Who was he kidding? He was fifteen, his arms were too long for his body and he kept bumping into things. Always the last to be chosen for rugby, Jack was not sporty or physically confident; he was gangly, awkward and beanpole thin. Give him a gun and he’d probably just blow his own foot off. He wasn’t going to be massacring anybody, let alone a gang of heavily armed psychotic cannibals.

He sniffed and stuck his lower lip out.

Where could he go now? His family were dead, his school destroyed, the only friend he had left was that interloper Ben, who had remained in the ice house, asleep and unconcerned.

Jack sat there, disconsolate. He had no real friends, no family, no home, and nowhere to go. He was unwashed, hungry, tired and simultaneously terrified and furious.

He realise the simple truth of his life — he was prey, and that was all. A tasty morsel to be eaten up by whichever cult, gang or death squad ran him to ground. The best he could hope for was a squalid few months scratching a life in the wreckage and then a brutal and pointless death.

He felt tears welling up in his eyes.

Then he froze as he heard a noise. He held his breath and willed his heart to slow. There it was again. Sounded like someone behind him and to his left. He heard the faint sound of shifting bricks; someone was walking through the rubble of the Old Schools.

Instinctively realising that he had not been seen, Jack slowly raised his head and turned to look over his shoulder. A freestanding wall blocked the other person from view. He rose to his feet and moved away as quietly as he could, taking cover in the ruins of a classroom, peering out through the hole where a window used to be. He glanced down and noticed that his hands were shaking.

There was a sound of shifting stone and Jack saw the freestanding wall wobble dangerously. The unseen man must have destabilised it by accident. Jack heard him scrabbling to escape, but he misjudged it, because the wall toppled away from Jack with a slow, clumsy grace, and there was a loud cry of alarm and pain mixed in with the sound of crashing brickwork.

Unsure what to do, Jack stood there, stunned, watching the wreckage settled. After the sudden noise, silence fell again, for a moment.

“Oh… bother!” came a voice from inside the rising dust cloud. “Damn and blast and buggeration!”