Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

Green beckons the boy forward. “Come to the front, Stone.”

The boy rises and walks down the aisle to the front of the classroom, the other children gently laughing at his discomfort. Green hands the boy a book.

“Turn to page thirteen and read Vindici’s speech.” The boy begins to read, stumbling over the archaic language at first, but gradually gets the hang of it. I sit, transfixed, until he cries: “Whoe’er knew murder unpaid? Faith, give revenge her due!” and I notice a momentary grimace that flashes across Green’s face as the knowledge of his act of vengeance twists in his guts.

I quietly rise from my seat, nod encouragingly at Green, and sneak out of the classroom.

When I was at school, plays like The Revenger’s Tragedy seemed ancient and irrelevant, hard to understand and full of abstract moral question that meant nothing to us. But these kids? This generation of children who saw everyone they’ve ever known and loved die slow, painful deaths and then had to survive in a world without law, authority or consequence get that play on a level I never could, and Green — twenty-one now and no longer the uncomfortable, persecuted teenager I first met — has turned into a fine drama teacher; impassioned, encouraging, good with kids. He’s also a pacifist now, and refuses to touch a gun under any circumstances.

I’m oddly proud of him. Which, given our personal history, is quite something.

I stand in the hallway and listen to the babble of voices drifting out of the four classrooms that stand adjacent to it. It’s a good sound, a hopeful, productive noise. It’s learning and debate, friendship and community. And it’s rare these days. So very rare.

I glance up at the clock on the wall. 10:36. Of course GMT no longer exists, so the world has reverted to local time — the clocks at St Mark’s take their time from the sundial in the garden. I wonder if time, like morality, is absolute. Does GMT still exist somewhere, like those echoes of the big bang that astronomers and physicists were always trying to catch hint of, waiting to be rediscovered and re-established? And if the clock that set GMT is lost, and we someday recreate standard time, what if we’re a millisecond out? How would we ever know? I linger in the hallway, surrounded by the murmur of learning, and daydream of a world in which everyone is always a millisecond late.

That’s what the security and community of St Mark’s allows me, allows all of us — the chance to daydream about the future. I can’t imagine that any of the survivors who are stuck out in the cold, scavenging off the scraps of a dead civilisation, ever daydream about anything but the past.

Morning break’s at quarter-to, so I decide to swing by the kitchen and grab a cuppa before the place is overrun.

I head deeper into the old house, following the smell of baking to Mrs Atkins’ domain. Sourcing ingredients to feed seventy-three children and sixteen adults would have been a pain even before Sainsbury’s was looted to extinction, but now it’s a full time job for Justin, ample Mrs Atkins’ very own Jack Spratt.

He finds it, grows it or barters for it; she cooks it. We’ve got a thriving market garden that the kids help him maintain, plus a field each of cows, sheep and pigs, not to mention the herds of deer that roam the area. We don’t have any vegetarians here. This year we’re experimenting with grain crops and corn, but it’s early days yet. There’s a working windmill in a nearby village but demand is high so we only get a sack every now and then, which makes biscuits and bread a special treat. Our carpentry teacher, Eddie, is working on designs for a windmill of our own, but it’s still on the drawing board.

Jamie Oliver would approve of our kitchens — everything’s fresh and seasonal, and there isn’t a turkey twizzler in sight. But there is a pan of fresh biscuits lying cooling on the sideboard as I walk in, so I snatch one and take a bite before our formidable dinner lady can slap my hand away or hit me over the head with the big brass ladle she’s currently using to stir the mutton stew she’s preparing for dinner.

“Oi! Make your own, cheeky,” says Mrs Atkins as she glares at the crumbs around my mouth.

“Any chance of a cuppa?” I plead. “I fancy dunking. I haven’t dunked a biscuit in ages.”

“There’s the kettle, the Aga’s hot, but there’s no water.”

I grab a bucket from the cupboard, head out to the courtyard and draw some water from the well. It’s crystal clear and ice cold. Back in the kitchen I fill the kettle and place it on top of the wood burning stove, which radiates a fierce heat.

“Why so serious?” asks the dinner lady as I warm myself, deep in thought.

“I don’t want to lose this,” I reply. She looks at me curiously, but I don’t elaborate and she takes the hint and returns to her stew.

I make myself a cup of tea and grab another biscuit before heading back to the entrance hall and then up the main stairs.

I push open a door marked No Entry and enter the Ops Room. Most schools have Staff Rooms, but St Mark’s is not most schools. Instead of pigeon holes and a coffee area, this room has a map of the British Isles covered in pins, and a notice board thick with accounts of missing children.

I am the first to arrive, so I pull up a chair and sit down, stretch my legs out in front of me and take a sip of my nettle tea. I wince involuntarily. I’d kill for a mug of Typhoo, but we’ve long since depleted our stocks of tea bags. Now if I want a hot drink my only option is home made herbal infusions. I tut. The Cull has turned us all into new age hippies.

I dunk my biscuit and consider the map.

It is not a standard Ordnance Survey map; it does not show motorways, cities and county boundaries. Instead, it is hand drawn, with huge areas left blank and small handwritten notes that chart the limits of our knowledge. This is a map of the world left behind, a chart of rumours and hearsay, overheard whispers at market day, tales of powerful rulers and legends reborn. It is incomplete and surely inaccurate, but it represents the best intelligence we can gather.

Where a pre-Cull map would have read Salisbury Plain, this one has a small drawing of a mushroom cloud and the word FALLOUT written beneath it in red felt-tip. The areas which used to be called Scotland and Wales now have big question marks over them because although we know there are power struggles going on there, we’ve no idea who’s winning; the area around Nottingham shows a bow and arrow with ‘The Hooded Man’ written next to it. There are other, smaller pictures and names dotted about — Cleaner Town, Daily Mailonia, The New Republic of the Reborn Briton, Kingdom of Steamies — these are the major players, the mini-empires springing up across the land as alpha males assert their dominance and begin building tribes with which to subjugate, or protect, the survivors.

Beyond the shores of Britain some wag has written ‘Here be monsters’, but I reckon there are more than enough monsters already ashore.

I cast my glance down to Kent and the big red pin that marks the Fairlawne Estate, new home of St Mark’s. There are no major players in this neck of the woods. A spattering of green circles mark the regular markets that have sprung up in the area. Unlike other parts of the country, the home counties have mostly reverted to self-sufficient communities, living off the land, trading with neighbouring villages, literally minding their own beeswax.

The alpha males who tried to set up camp in this neck of the woods were dealt with long ago, leaving room for looser, more organic development.

My eyes track north, to a big black question mark. London. We steer clear of it and, so far as we have been able to ascertain, so does everybody else we have regular contact with. Even the army, back before they were destroyed, were biding their time before wading into that particular cess pit. I think of it as a boil that sooner or later will burst and shower the rest of the country with whichever vile infection it’s currently incubating. It disturbs me to be living so close to such a mystery, and I know that sooner or later I’m going to have to lead a team inside the M25. I don’t relish the prospect.