Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

Through the mass of fighting I caught a glimpse of the sandbagged machine gun nest at the gate. Inside, a Blood Hunter was firing the GPMG down the drive towards the school. A group of Blood Hunters were kneeling next to him, firing back into the mêlée, picking off Hildenborough fighters. If nothing changed it was only a matter of time before the Blood Hunters got the upper hand. We had to shut that gun down, allow Norton to bring reinforcements. Someone crashed into me from behind, knocking me to my knees. I turned to find a young blood-daubed woman staring at me, a neat hole above her left eye. She fell sideways revealing Rowles, smoking pistol in one hand, machete dripping blood in the other.

“Orders, sir?” he shouted above the din.

“We need to…” He raised his gun and I ducked. A bullet whipped over my head and I heard a strangled cry. I looked up at him again.

Definitely the scariest ten year-old I’ve ever met. I was glad he was on my side.

“GPMG!” I shouted, pointing towards the gate. He leant down and helped me to my feet. I was only halfway up when I had to shoot through his legs, kneecapping a woman who was coming at him with a machete. He turned and finished her off with a single shot.

Once I was upright I took the lead. We shoved our way through the fight, firing and hacking our way to the edge of the scrum. Then we skirted around the outside, collecting two Hildenborough men on the way. We found a clear space near the wall, and Rowles said “Let me, sir.” He raised his gun and took careful aim.

As he took shots at the men behind the sandbags we stood guard around him, picking off any Blood Hunters we could get a clear shot at. The man next to me took a bullet to the thigh and then, as he bent down to put pressure on the wound, another round took him in the top of the head. He collapsed in a heap, instantly dead.

Rowles took a step forward each time he fired and the remaining man and I paced him, keeping him covered. He’d picked two of them off before they worked out who was shooting at them. By that point we were within a couple of metres of the sandbags. Rowles’ gun clicked empty and he tossed it aside without a second’s hesitation. I dropped to my knees and sprayed the sandbags with bullets as he ran towards them, machete raised, shouting some sort of battle cry. My bullets took one Blood Hunter across the chest and he fell backwards out of sight. The other fired wildly at Rowles but somehow the bullets kept missing, and soon the shooter was missing his left arm.

I heard a fleshy impact above me and the head of the man who’d been fighting beside me dropped at my feet. I dived forward and spun so I landed on my back, firing as I did so. But the gun didn’t fire. Empty.

I rolled sideways to avoid the blade that curved down towards my head. In doing so I rolled over my broken arm. Didn’t hurt a bit. The blade slammed into the grass next to my ear. I reached across with my good arm, grabbing the Blood Hunter’s wrist, but it was drenched in fresh blood from the battle, and my hand slid off as he pulled the blade free of the ground. He raised the machete again as I lay there on the ground, nowhere to go. Then a blur above my head as someone literally dived over the top of me, their shoulder hitting the Blood Hunter in the stomach and taking him down. Haycox.

Even over the din of battle I heard the dreadful crunch as they hit the ground. Haycox sprang backwards, his opponent’s neck snapped. He turned and reached down to offer me a hand up. But before I could take it his head snapped sideways as it shattered in a spray of blood and brain matter. Bullet to the head. He fell, stone dead. I scrambled backwards and tried to get to my feet. I was spending far too much of this fight flat on my bloody back. I saw two Blood Hunters come running towards me, lowering their guns as they came. Then they lurched backwards as an arc of heavy GPMG rounds picked them up and flung them, lifeless, to the grass. I looked across at the sandbags and there was Rowles, God love him, unleashing the GPMG at any Blood Hunter foolish enough to offer him a target.

I got to my feet and ran, crouching as I weaved through the fight, to the sandbags. I dived over them, landing smack on the fresh corpse of one of Rowles’ victims. I pulled his gun free and took my place at Rowles’ side, sheltering behind the wall of sandbags, picking off Blood Hunters.

A quick glance to my right revealed a stream of armed boys, running down the drive towards us; Norton and reinforcements. But looking at the scene in front of me I realised that it was already too late. The Blood Hunters were overwhelming the opposition. We were losing.

The heavy machine gun next to me chattered once more and then fell silent.

“All gone,” said Rowles simply. “What now?”

“Back to Castle. Run!”

As Rowles legged it down the drive, waving for Norton and his troops to fall back, I stood and yelled into the mêlée as loud as I could: “Retreat! Back to the school! Retreat!”

Bullets from a host of Blood Hunters smacked into the sandbags, and I dived for cover again. This time I crawled across corpses and flung myself behind the school wall, out of the line of fire. Then I got up and ran for Castle as fast as I possibly could.

I could hear the sounds of pursuit behind me, cries and crashes and weapon fire. Running is bloody difficult with only one arm; you get unbalanced and wobble all over the place. I got halfway to the school, with bullets whistling past me all the way, and then my torso somehow outpaced my legs. I ploughed, head-first, into the grass. I tried to roll with it, and get back up on my feet, but my useless arm threw me again and I ended up in a heap.

I regained my feet and chanced a look behind me. Twenty or so Hildenborough men, Green, and a few of his surviving actors, were racing towards me, a horde of screaming Blood Hunters in their wake. Mac was leading the pursuit. He was bellowing encouragement to his cohorts, waving a bloodied machete above his head.

As the human tide caught up with me I turned and was swept along with them. Ahead of us I could see Norton lining the boys up into ranks. They shouldered arms and took careful aim right at us. What the bloody hell was he doing?

When we were within ten metres of him he shouted: “Get down!”

We didn’t need telling twice. All of us dived to the ground. There was the most tremendous noise as all the boys fired at once, sending a wall of lead into the massed Blood Hunters.

“Positions!” yelled Norton.

We scrambled to our feet and ran forward. Then Norton shouted: “Down!” We dived again. A second volley thundered over our heads.

“Inside!”

We leapt up and piled in through the large double doors. As I stood at the doorway, herding people inside, I could see the results of Norton’s volleys. They had wiped out the first rank of approaching Blood Hunters, maybe thirty or more, who lay twitching and groaning on the blood-soaked grass. Once those behind them had realised no third volley was likely, they’d kept running, trampling their dead and wounded underfoot in their eagerness to slice us open. They were nearly upon us. I couldn’t see Mac. Had he fallen?

I ushered the last man through the doors and then followed him inside. Norton was there amongst the boys, manhandling an enormous barricade. Constructed from bookcases and table tops, it sat on two wheeled trolleys. They pushed this up against the flimsy main doors. A group of boys at each side took the strain, the trolleys were whipped away, and then the edifice was lowered to the floor. It was buttressed with thick wooden beams at 45 degrees, and once it was down it covered the main doors entirely. Almost the instant it hit the ground a huge body of men slammed into the doors and began pushing. The barricade didn’t move an inch.