Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

“And the way he said that, so you knew that he meant ‘and he was just a bloody guttersnipe’.”

“Never liked you much, did he?”

“Oh, he was all right I s’pose. He could have been a lot worse, believe me. It’s just, well, he was a bloody General and he thought his little girl married beneath her. She should have married an officer, but he ended up with a Black Country grunt for a son-in-law and he didn’t really know how to talk to me. He had this idea that if you joined up you’d go straight to Sandhurst and the Officer’s Club, and at least the next generation would sort of get things back on track. He could pull some strings, make sure you’d never end up a squaddie. Not like me.”

“You used to get so angry when he started banging on about me joining the army, especially when Mum didn’t tell him to stop.”

“I never wanted you to become a soldier,” said Dad, seriously.

“Well, look at me. That’s what I am now, Dad. Sorry. At least Grandad would be proud of me.”

He started, looked surprised, made to say something, but I cut him off.

“He died early,” I said. “Him and Gran. First wave.”

“I know, your Mum told me on the phone.”

There was an awkward silence, then he said: “About your mother.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“But it must have been…”

“It was what it was.”

I avoided his eyes as he searched my face for clues. Eventually he nodded, accepting my refusal to talk about her death. I was grateful for that.

“So the school was destroyed and you just, what, stole a plane and flew here on your own?”

I nodded. He whistled through his teeth.

“Nowhere else for me to go,” I said.

“You could have stayed there. Gone with them to the new place. They’re your friends, surely you’d have been welcome?”

I didn’t feel like explaining myself any more, so I just shrugged.

He gestured to the cell walls. “And how…?”

“I surrendered. Thought they’d know where you were. Which, as it turns out, they did.”

“Oh Lee, you shouldn’t have come here. You really shouldn’t.”

“Why are you a prisoner?” I asked.

But I knew damn well why.

THERE WERE SKELETONS everywhere, picked clean by predators and bleached by the sun. Charred, tattered clothing still hung off most of them.

The low stands of the rickety football stadium were mostly free of bodies. A few people who’d tried to escape were sprawled across the wooden benches, but the majority of the dead lay in piles on the pitch itself. They were grouped in tens and twenties, as if neighbours and families had huddled together when the shooting started.

“The adults tried to protect the children,” said Tariq, following my gaze. “Used their bodies to shield them from the bullets. Told them to play dead. Didn’t work. The soldiers went through the bodies, finishing off survivors. Then they poured petrol over them and set them alight. One man had been missed by the sweep but he ran, screaming and burning out of the bodies and was shot. That’s him, there.” He pointed to a small heap of disarticulated bones.

In the face of such a sight all I could manage was the obvious question.

“Why?”

“Orders. Secure the town, evict the survivors, kill anyone who wouldn’t leave willingly. All these people wanted was to be left alone, to rebuild their town.”

But in spite of the evidence I still couldn’t believe that the Americans had done this. Dad used to call them cowboys, insisted their army wasn’t as well disciplined or trained as ours, but they were still the good guys. No matter how bad things got I couldn’t believe that the American army would do such a thing. A few loose cannons losing the plot at a checkpoint and killing some civilians, yes. But cold-bloodedly massacring a hundred people? Surely not.

Then I remembered something Grandad told me once: “An army is only as good as the orders it receives.”

So who was giving the orders?

“IT WAS A SAM that brought us down,” said Dad. God knows who fired it. We never found out. There were about seventy of us on board. I’ve never been so certain I was going to die. But somehow I walked away. I was sitting right at the back, just got lucky. I wasn’t the only one, mind. There were two others, Jonno and Jim. Good lads. Quite a double act, they were.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“They’re dead now. It took us two days to get back to HQ. We figured it was the safest place. But when we got here we found the Yanks had moved in. I tell you, I’d never been so happy to see a white star in my life. So we come rolling up to them, waving and smiling, and they welcome us with open arms. Then they throw us in here and start interrogating us.”

“About what?”

“About home. England. The army. Something called Operation Motherland.”

“What’s that?”

He shrugged. “Search me. I know it’s what we were supposed to be doing when we got back to England. But no-one briefed us before we left. And fuck knows why the Yanks here are so bothered what we’re doing back home. Makes no sense.”

I started to ask Dad how he got free but I was just able to stop myself. I remembered what Tariq had told me; the Yanks would be listening to us and they mustn’t know I’d had contact with them. Which meant I had to mislead Dad as well, at least for now.

“So how did you… cope with being tortured then? I mean, you must have been locked up for, what, eight or nine months?”

It was lame. My hesitation was too obvious, the substituted question too stupid. Dad looked at me askance for a second but I just about carried it off. I hoped whoever was listening to us was as easily fooled.

“Nah, we broke out,” he said. “Well, we were helped. The guy in charge here, General Blythe, he started doing some strange things; running the survivors out of town, harassing the ones who wanted to stay. Quite a lot of the lads here started to get antsy about the orders he was giving. So they decided to do a bunk. And they broke us out on the way. There was a fight, Jonno didn’t make it, but Jim and I did, and eight Yank kids. And we were on our own then.”

“What did you do?”

Now it was Dad’s turn to play his cards close to his chest. He knew we were being overheard as well.

“Met some locals, formed a resistance movement, did a bit of asymmetric warfare.”

“What’s that?”

“We blew stuff up a lot.”

“Oh.”

“And then I got captured again a few days back.”

“What happened?”

“WE WERE BETRAYED.” Tariq shrugged. “Blythe wanted your father. Badly. It was only when he took charge of us that we became a proper resistance. A little army. Your dad is a good soldier, he led us well. You should be proud of him.

“There were more of them, and they had better equipment; night goggles, heat sensors, helicopters. And they hunted us. But we know this town, where to hide, how to move unseen. We fought well. Killed many of them. But we could not prevent what happened at the football ground. And after that we were more visible. There were no local people to shelter us, no market crowds for us to hide in. Things became more difficult. And there was nobody left for us to fight for. So we decided to leave, find somewhere else to go. I thought maybe I would like to grow vegetables and tend goats. Something simple, you know? I mean, there’s no-one left to read my blog even if there was an Internet to post it on!

“But then they attacked us at night, as we slept. Only six of us escaped and they captured the rest. Fifteen of them.”

It took me a minute to realise, and then I gasped.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “The people on stakes.”