Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

Mac was fumbling, trying to find some way of repairing the damage. His arms flapped and spasmed uselessly.

I crouched down so I was on the same level as Mac.

“It doesn’t hurt yet, but it will,” I said. “At the moment you’ve got so much adrenaline going through you that your body’s not letting you feel the pain. I don’t know for sure, but I suppose that if you die you might never feel it. It’s only if you survive and heal that it hurts.”

He looked up at me. If I was expecting confusion or fear I was disappointed. There was only fury.

“You fucking coward,” he said. “You pathetic, weak, stupid fucking coward.”

The noise from outside had stopped the instant I’d pulled the trigger. I could hear people running back down the stairs. They must have left a guard on the door, but for now they’d stopped trying to get in.

“What is going on here?” demanded Cheshire.

“Call it a coup,” said Norton as he sat down in an armchair. “Can you pass me that tablecloth, please.”

Cheshire pulled the cloth off the table and began helping Norton to dress his wound.

“Why now?” asked Mac. “Why wait until we’re alone and trapped and probably going to die anyway? What is the fucking point of doing it now?”

I didn’t have an answer to that.

“I’ll tell you, shall I,” he went on. “I reckon…” he broke off as a violent coughing fit seized him. “I reckon you were hoping they’d do your job for you.”

“Perhaps,” I conceded.

“Coward,” he said again. “I told you the rules. I explained how this works. You want me out the way you fucking challenge me like a man.”

“Like you challenged Bates?”

“Bates was weak. He didn’t understand, didn’t deserve the respect. I thought you understood. I thought you got it.”

“I get it, I just don’t accept it. If I played it your way, by your rules I’d be buying into your bullshit, accepting this strong tribal leader bollocks,” I said. “If I challenged you and proved myself the harder bastard then all I’d be doing was extending an invitation to some other hard fucker to come along and knock me off.”

“That’s how it works.”

“I don’t accept that. And you know what, the rest of the boys don’t either. You might not have noticed, but they’ve left us — you — here to die. First chance they got, they cut you loose.”

“So what’s your alternative, eh?” he sneered. “You gonna run the school as a democracy? Student councils? Tea and scones and cricket on the green? Fucking fantasist.”

His face was white as chalk. His ruined shoulder made an awful grinding sound as he tried to lever himself into a more comfortable sitting position.

“I don’t know what it’ll be like, but it’s got to be better than rapes and crucifixions. There won’t be executions. Boys won’t be bullied and tormented.”

“And my officers? You gonna deal with them?”

“If I need to.”

He laughed bitterly. “Brilliant. Lee Keegan’s brave new world kicks off with a group execution. You fucking hypocrite.”

He was right. I knew that. But I was in no mood to argue any more.

“Your problem,” I said, “is that you thought you were only vulnerable to someone stronger than you. But you never thought you might be vulnerable to someone smarter.”

He gave a bitter laugh, which turned into another fit of coughing. His left sleeve was soaked with blood. It ran down his fingers and soaked into the carpet.

“The smart thing to do would have been to shoot me before we even attacked.”

There was that tone of contempt again. I thought of James B. Grant and I knew that Mac was right.

Norton tried to interrupt but I waved for silence.

“I know that,” I said. “But unlike you I try to avoid killing people.”

He laughed again. “Tell that to the guy at the foot of the stairs with half a head. You’re a killer, kid. Stone cold. You just don’t want to admit it. Your problem, Nine Lives, is that you never want to do anything. You wanted to leave Petts here to die…”

“He’s dead anyway.”

“Not the fucking point and you know it,” he shouted. “You want me out of the way but you can’t pluck up the courage to challenge me like a man so you wait for someone else to take me out of the picture. And when that doesn’t happen you figure, screw it, what’ve I got to lose, and you just fucking shoot me. And then, to add insult to fucking injury, you shoot me in the bloody arms! What’s the matter, bullet to the head too fucking easy?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Oh, piss off. Like you’ve got the guts to finish me off.” He leaned forward. “Come on then,” he whispered. “Pick up the gun. It’s right there. Still loaded. One bullet and it’s all over. Come on. Finish what you started. Show me you’ve got the backbone to be leader. Prove it to me. Come on. Look me in the eye when you pull the trigger. Come on!”

Without thinking about it I reached behind me, picked up the gun and pressed the muzzle against his forehead. I pressed hard. God, I wanted to kill him. I mean really, really wanted to kill him. I wanted to watch him die screaming. I wanted to laugh in his dying eyes and spit on his corpse. I actually smiled as I began to squeeze the trigger.

And then I saw the look of triumph in his eyes.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe I am a coward, maybe I was afraid. But I wasn’t afraid of you, Mac. Not really. I was afraid of becoming like you.”

I threw the gun aside. Mac laughed in my face, soundlessly.

“Face it Lee, you’ll never be like me. You haven’t got the balls.”

I heard a tiny metallic ping.

“Lee!” shouted Norton in alarm.

I felt something pressing itself against my stomach. I looked down and saw Mac’s left hand holding a grenade. The pin was on the floor beside us.

I looked up. Mac was smiling.

“I’m holding down the lever, Lee. When I let go the chemical fuse starts and then nothing can stop it exploding seven seconds later. Reckon you can wrestle the grenade off me and throw it out the window in that time?”

I stared into his eyes as I reached down and wrapped my hand around his. There was little strength in his fingers; his shattered shoulder saw to that. As long as I kept squeezing he couldn’t release the lever. We were at an impasse.

“You don’t have to die here, you know,” I said. “We can still get out of this, take you back to school, try and patch you up.”

“And then what?”

“You leave. Just go.”

Again with the laughing.

“Spineless wanker. You shot me in cold blood and there’s no fixing that. At least have the integrity to live with it. I’m never leaving this room and you know it. But I can make sure you never do either.”

I don’t know how long we’d have sat there if Cheshire hadn’t intervened.

He walked over to us, casual as can be, and then rammed his rifle butt into Mac’s shoulder wound. He screamed and jerked in agony, and I slipped the grenade from his grasp. I picked up the pin and re-inserted it.

I think I’d been hyperventilating because I had a huge head rush as I stood up. Cheshire reached out to steady me until the world stopped spinning.

When Mac stopped screaming he looked up at me and sneered.

“What did I ever do to you, Nine Lives? What do you hate me so fucking much?”

“You made me a killer, Mac.”

“Oh, I see. So basically, I shot myself, yeah?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus, you are fucked in the head.”

“Can we focus, please,” said Norton, who had tied his arm tight into a sling and appeared to have stopped the bleeding. “Does anyone actually have a plan to get us out of here?”