Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

I hear the bell ringing for morning break and then there’s a cacophony of running feet, shouting, laughing and slamming doors as the kids race to the kitchen for biscuits.

The door behind me swings open. I can tell who it is by the lopsided footsteps.

“Hey Jack,” I say, taking another sip of tea, hopeful that if I keep drinking I’ll develop a taste for it in the end.

The King of England, Jack Bedford, drags a chair from the side of the room and sits down next to me, heavily. Without a word he leans forward, rolls up his left trouser leg and begins undoing the straps that secure his prosthesis.

“Still chafing?” I ask.

He grunts a confirmation, detaching the fibreglass extension that completes his leg and laying it on the floor. He begins massaging the stump.

“It’s not so bad,” he says eventually. “But I’ve been reffing the footie. So, you know, sore.”

“Come see me afterwards, I’ll give you some balm.”

“Thanks.”

What he really needs is a custom-made prosthesis, properly calibrated. But the tech is beyond our reach. We scoured every hospital still standing and were lucky to find such a good match. I have no idea what we’ll do if it ever breaks.

I like Jack. He’s sixteen years old, his face ravaged by acne and his hair thick with grease that no shampoo seems able to shift. He keeps himself to himself, and has watchful eyes and an air of secrecy that I’m not sure anybody else has noticed. Only a select few of us know that he is the hereditary monarch, and we have no intention of telling anybody. Jack seems grateful for the anonymity. Nonetheless he has become part of the inner circle at the school, one of those boys that we adults treat as an equal. He’s proven himself brave, loyal and capable.

“Anything new?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I reply. “But we’ll wait ’til the others get here.”

“Fair enough.”

The door opens again and Lee and his father, John, enter.

“I don’t reckon it’s likely,” Lee is saying, but his father disagrees.

“Think about it,” says John. “We know he likes the ladies, and he’s got a violent temper.”

“But we’ve no evidence he ever even knew Lilly,” says Lee, taking a seat on my other side.

“Lee, she was his son’s girlfriend.”

Lee shakes his head. “No, I still reckon it’s Weevil.”

“Dream on,” says John, with a laugh.

Neither Jack nor I have to ask what they’re discussing. Our DVD nights have been dominated by season one of Veronica Mars for the last two weeks and the whole school is trying to solve the Lilly Kane murder. With the internet consigned to history, no-one can hit Wikipedia and spoil it for everyone else, and I keep the discs locked in the safe so no-one can sneak down at night and skip to the end.

“You’ll find out in two episodes time, guys,” says Jack with a smile.

“May be a while though,” I say. “We’re nearly out of petrol for the generator. Can’t have any more telly ’til we refuel.”

Lee makes a pained face. “You’re fucking kidding me. Really?”

I let him squirm for a second then smile. “Nah, telly as usual tonight, eight o’clock for the big finish.”

“Bitch,” he says, smiling, then he leans forward and kisses me. His jaw gives a little click as he does so, a reminder of the damage he sustained two years ago in the Salisbury explosion. He still has two metal rods holding the bottom of his face together. I kiss him right back.

Lee has just turned eighteen. I am ten years his senior. We’ve been lovers for six months and he makes me feel like a schoolgirl.

Jack rolls his eyes. “Get a room,” he says.

When we break apart I catch John’s eye, but his face is a mask, giving nothing away. I am still unsure how he feels about my cradle-snatching antics. Part of me couldn’t give a damn whether he approves or not, but he’s a colleague and an ally, not to mention my boyfriend’s dad, so another part of me craves his approval. He’s a hard man to get to know, John Keegan. A hardened veteran of numerous wars, he’s seen and done some terrible things. He’s undemonstrative but never rude; friendly but never familiar. He’s fiercely devoted to his son, and Lee to him, but while they get along well and spend lots of time together fishing, playing football and running, there’s a slight reserve to their relationship.

I know that Lee killed his mother — put her out of her misery when the virus was putting her through hell. He still hasn’t told John this. I think John suspects and wants to talk to his son about it but has never been able to broach the subject. The secret hovers between them, poisoning the air.

“Where’s Tariq?” asks Lee.

“Late as usual,” I reply.

The door opens and Tariq strides in, chest out, confident, with a hint of swagger. The Iraqi is twenty years old, with hawkish features, thick black hair, eyes that seem to be permanently amused and a vicious hook where his left hand should be. The first person he makes eye contact with is John, and they share a nod of greeting. Before The Cull Tariq was a young lad in Basra, blogging about corruption and running from the militias. Afterwards, he and John led the resistance to the US occupation. John treats Tariq like another son, and Tariq does anything John asks of him, without question.

Lee and Tariq exchange greetings, but with more reserve. They are friends, and they’ve saved each other’s lives countless times under fire, but Tariq doesn’t entirely trust Lee. He thinks he has a death wish that could get everyone killed. I’m worried that he may be right.

Tariq pulls up a chair and sits beside John. The gang’s all here.

I take another sip of tea. “Nope,” I curse. “No matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise, this is rank.” I spit the tea back into the mug and put it down on the floor.

“Okay,” I say. “John?”

John gets up, steps to the front of the room and sits on the desk facing us.

“Couple of things,” he says briskly in his thick Black Country accent. “We’ve had a response from the Hooded Man. He’s invited an envoy to visit and discuss possible co-operation in the future.”

“Do we have any idea who he is yet?” asks Tariq.

John shakes his head. “Haven’t even got a name. My guess is that he’s ex-military, but I don’t know for sure. I did find out one thing though, and you’ll like this — the man he deposed, who by all accounts was a vicious son of a bitch, was a Frenchman called De Falaise.”

Tariq and Lee are agog. “No fucking way,” says Lee, eventually. John just nods.

“Anyone care to fill me in?” asks Jack.

“We had a run in with him on the way back from Iraq. He’s the reason I don’t hear in stereo any more,” says Lee. “Is he dead?” John nods again. “Then this Prince of Thieves guy’s fine with me. Even if he does wear tights. Is there word on that, by the way?” John smiles and shakes his head.

“He’s building an army of sorts,” John continues. “Calls them Rangers. They’re a kind of paramilitary police force and so far they seem to be doing a good job of keeping the peace. But it’s still a power base, so there’s every chance Hood could turn out to be just as bad as the man he kicked out, just more subtle.”

“You still think we should send someone?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, but whoever you send should keep their eyes and ears open. If he’s going to be a threat, we need to know. So far he doesn’t know our exact location, and I’d like to keep it that way, at least for now.”

I turn to the king. “Jack, you fancy a trip?”

He frowns. “Wasn’t Robin Hood always fighting the king?”

“First off, he won’t know you’re the king,” says Lee. “And second, no, he was fighting the king’s brother. He was loyal to Richard. Did they teach you nothing at King School?”