Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

“Shut up you stupid cow, we’re being rescued.” It was the guard from Hildenborough, Mr Cheshire Cheese. He looked up at me, desperate. “We are being rescued, right?”

“Yeah,” said Mac. “Just taking care of a little unfinished business. Nothing for you to worry about.”

There was a sad, feeble gasp from Mac’s feet as Williams breathed his last.

Norton found my gaze and held it. I saw his jaw clench and his eyes widen. His knuckles went white on the grip of his knife.

Now?

Oh, how I wanted to shoot Mac there and then. But there were too many people around; the plan was going too well. It could derail everything and get us killed if I took him out now.

I gave a single, almost imperceptible shake of the head.

Not yet.

Cheshire Cheese stood up, electing himself spokesman for the prisoners.

“You’re from the school right?” he said to me. “I remember you.”

“I should hope so,” I replied. “My execution was the big draw, after all.”

“I suppose I should be grateful you survived, then, huh.”

“I suppose you should.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Mac took his small waterproof backpack off, opened it up and started handing out the guns.

While the ten most capable prisoners were selected and armed, Norton got to work on the locked door. That’s when things started to go wrong.

“ONCE WE’VE ARMED the prisoners, we get through the locked door, go through one more room, and all we’ve got to do then is walk out across the east bridge. Then, once we’re clear, we blow the bridges, trap the fuckers in their little moated manor house, and burn the place to the ground. Take care of these blood suckers once and for all. Piece of cake.”

PLAN A — FORCING the lock — didn’t work.

“I can’t pick it. This lock is ancient.”

Plan B — shoulder charging it — didn’t work.

“It’s no use, it’s too solid, even three of us charging at once can’t budge it.”

Plan C — shooting out the lock — didn’t work.

“Fuck it, they might have heard that. Time to move.”

Plan D — blowing the thing open with a grenade and running like hell before the Blood Hunters had time to mobilise — was abandoned when it was pointed out that the crypt was tiny and the explosion would deafen those it didn’t kill.

We’d lost five minutes by now, and time was running out.

“Okay, fuck! We’ll have to go out across the west bridge,” said Mac. “The east bridge is inaccessible. That means we go back the way we came, through the pantry and across the courtyard. We’ll be exposed to the chapel, and the top of the tower, so wherever they are by now they’ll see us or hear us, but if everyone runs like fuck then we should make it across the courtyard before they can open fire. Once you’re across the bridge just run for the tree-line. We’ve got boys there and you’ll get covering fire. Everyone clear?”

People nodded and mumbled nervously.

“Okay, Petts you take point,” said Mac, and he opened the door we’d entered through.

Petts went first with Norton, Mac and I ushered the prisoners out after him as swiftly as we could. Not all the prisoners were out of the crypt before we heard gunfire from the courtyard.

Fuck, they weren’t wasting any time.

We didn’t let the remaining prisoners hesitate, though, we kept pushing them out until the crypt was empty, and then we followed.

About half the prisoners had made it across the courtyard, under the tower and across the bridge. We could see them through the gate, hurrying into the trees. Patel and Speight were stood underneath the tower, at the entrance to the bridge, firing up at the chapel windows directly above us. The Blood Hunters were returning fire.

We stood in the pantry with about twenty terrified people and looked out across the twenty-metre space. There were two people lying dead on the cobbles.

One of them was Petts.

“They’ll be fanning out across the building,” I shouted. “If we don’t move now we’ll be caught in a crossfire. So run!” I shoved the prisoners as hard as I could and they stumbled out into the courtyard and ran, heads down, for safety. Mac and Norton helped me shove, as did Cheshire Cheese, and eventually they all made the dash across the exposed space. Two more were shot, the rest made it out.

We four followed hard on the heels of the last man out, but the second we set foot outside, the man in front of us shook and jerked under the impact of a stream of bullets from the billiard room door in the corner on the ground floor. The Blood Hunters had cut us off. We’d never make it to the bridge alive.

We were trapped.

“NOW IF THINGS go tits up and we get stuck in there I want the fucking ninth cavalry to come storming in and sort it out. You’ll be split into two teams and you’ll wait under cover by the bridges. If we yell for help you are to come pelting across those bridges and shoot anything that moves. Got it?”

“WE’RE TRAPPED! MOVE in!” shouted Mac at Speight and Patel. But they turned and ran across the bridge to safety.

“Oi!” called Mac, but they kept running.

We had no choice but to turn and run back the way we’d come. We heard a huge explosion behind us as we ran. They’d blown the bridge.

“Bastards! This way,” yelled Mac, and we hared back through the pantry to the doorway of the crypt. Mac yanked a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin and rolled it to the far door. He closed the door in front of us, waited for the crump of the explosion, then ran back into the crypt and through the splintered oak door on the far side. As soon as we ran out of the crypt, bullets began smashing into the thick oak-panelled walls around us. In the time it would have taken us to cross the stairwell we’d have been cut to pieces, so instead of dodging right, past the stairs and into the room that housed the door to the east bridge, we rode our momentum up the flight of stairs that lay directly in front of us.

This was the worst possible thing we could have done. The east bridge was our only possible escape route now, plus the enemy were mostly upstairs — we were being herded right towards them. We made it to the first floor without being cut to pieces, but as we gathered on the landing we heard a shout from our left. I ducked behind the balustrade, Cheshire and Norton took cover in the doorway to the left of the stairs, and Mac crouched down on the bottom of a small flight of stairs that led up to the second floor. Almost as one, we opened fire at a gang of men and women who came running towards us. Two of them fell straight away but the remaining three took cover and returned fire.

When you’re fighting outside you can hide behind walls, cars, trees and things, all of which will easily stop a bullet. But wattle and daub walls with a bit of lime plaster, doorframes and balustrades made up of wooden struts with great big gaps between them, don’t provide the best cover.

The sound was deafening. Bullets were flying everywhere and splinters of wood and chunks of plaster smacked into my face and head. The smoke and dust soon filled the hallway with a fog that made accurate shooting impossible. Everyone was firing blind.

Then I heard a yell from behind me and I turned to find Cheshire and Norton struggling with a pair of men. I grabbed my machete and rose to my feet, heedless of the ordnance whizzing past me. One attacker had Cheshire by the throat and was throttling him. I hacked at the man’s head and felt a sickening crunch as the blade embedded itself in his cranium. He fell backwards. Norton bucked and rolled and his attacker was suddenly on the floor. Norton shot him in the face and then twisted in the air as a bullet smashed into his right shoulder. He spun straight into Cheshire’s arms.