Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

The man was blue by now, but she was calm and efficient as she took his pulse, massaged his chest and administered CPR.

“Call 999, this man’s having a heart attack,” she said. The attendant hurried away.

As she worked, the colour gradually returned to the man’s face and he seemed to stabilise. By the time the ambulance arrived it looked like he was going to be okay. The doctor kept working on him until he was stretchered away. And then, when they were gone, she was just a bedraggled middle-aged woman standing by a grotty pool in soggy, see-through undies.

But she was the coolest, most heroic person Kate ever seen.

April sniggered and said: “Her tits are all saggy.”

“I want to be just like her,” Kate said. Then she turned her back on April and swam away.

“HE’S HAVING A heart attack,” I shouted, dropping the scalpel on to the table.

The squaddie snarled at me through gritted teeth: “Fix it or the boy dies.”

He was serious, but Rowles didn’t look worried as he knelt there with a gun to his head, waiting to die. He just looked bored.

“I need help,” I said desperately.

“Get him to do it,” replied the squaddie, gesturing to Green, who sat beside the captain, auto transfusing to try and maintain his blood pressure.

“If I disconnect him, the captain will die. Now come here!” My tone of command worked.

Stressed and panicky, the soldier stepped to the opposite side of the table and laid his gun alongside his stricken C.O.

“All right, what do I do?”

Over his shoulder I saw Rowles, handcuffed to a radiator, miming to Green that he should tackle our captor. But Green just shook his head and stayed where he was. Rowles cast his eyes skywards, looked at me and shrugged. Green also looked at me, apologetically.

Green was a gentle boy, sensitive and artistic, but during MacKillick’s reign at the school he had been forced to do the most awful things. In the end he’d snapped and shot his tormentor to death, emptying an entire clip into him. Since then he’d been passive and withdrawn, totally refusing to take part in any of the patrols that defended the school. He looked at the gun on the table, within easy reach, but I knew he’d never make a grab for it.

So it was down to me.

But the soldier was on the opposite side of the table.

I started to massage the captain’s chest, pushing down rhythmically, one two three, making it look good. I considered the young man in the uniform. He couldn’t be more than twenty, so he’d probably only just joined the army when The Cull hit. His manner didn’t exactly scream high intellect. He was an uneducated, inexperienced, scared young man. Just the kind of person my school was intended to help. But he had a gun, a twitchy trigger finger and he was threatening my children. I didn’t think I could talk him down or overpower him. Which didn’t leave me many options.

“We need to shock him,” I gasped.

“With what?”

“I dunno, Sherlock. Improvise!”

“But there’s no fucking power, is there!” He looked around the room, frantic.

I pointed at a large battery-powered torch on the sideboard. “Get that,” I said.

He reached over and got it. If only it had been a little further away I’d have made a grab for the gun, but there wasn’t time.

“Now smash the bulb,” I instructed, “switch it on and when I say so, shove it into his chest.”

“But it’ll cut him.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I yelled, “do you want him to die or not?”

“Okay, okay.”

He cracked the glass on the table side and stood there, poised, with the torch in his hands, ready to save his captain’s life.

“No,” I said, leaning across the table and moving his hands so that the torch was over the captains’s left breast. “There.”

He nodded as I leant back over to my side of the table.

It took him a second to realise that I’d stopped working on the captain. Another half a second to notice the sticky wetness at his throat. Then he saw the scalpel in my hand.

“Torches don’t work like that,” I said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“But…”

“You left me no choice.”

He stepped back and dropped the torch to the floor.

“But…”

“He’s already dead, I’m afraid.”

The young soldier reached up to his throat and his hands came away covered in blood.

“Benefits of medical training,” I said sadly. “It only takes the tiniest cut in the right place.”

He looked confused and upset, as if I’d said something that had really hurt his feelings. His face crumpled.

“I couldn’t let you hurt my children,” I explained.

His legs gave way and he crashed to the floor.

I walked around the table, knelt down, lifted his head and cradled it in my lap, stroking his hair.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Everything’s ok now. Don’t be afraid. You’re fine.”

“Really?” He sounded hopeful and relieved. “That’s good.”

His eyes glazed over, he wheezed, and he was gone.

There I was in my surgery, the place where I was supposed to mend broken people, with blood on my hands for all the wrong reasons.

And I wasn’t finished yet.

I STEPPED INTO the courtyard with my hands in my pockets.

It sits on the west, with the house on one side, stables on another, mews buildings on the third, and a wall with large wooden gates on the fourth. The floor was cobbled and muddy. In the centre of the courtyard stood all the children and staff of my school, lined up and standing to attention with their hands on their heads, watched over by two soldiers who kept their machine guns trained on them at all times.

There was Mrs Atkins, the dinner lady. With her florid face, ample bosom and floury apron she looked like a character from a Carry On film, but she was cunning and determined when she needed to be. The boys adored her unconditionally.

Beside her stood her husband Justin, a tall, stick-thin man with thick grey hair and a hawk-like nose. Quiet and soft spoken, I didn’t know much about him except that he used to be a customer service manager for BT, had lost a wife and two children in The Cull, and he made Mrs Atkins’ hair curl (her words).

Then there was Caroline, Rowles’ partner in crime. I’d never seen them hold hands or kiss, so I wasn’t sure if they were what you’d call boyfriend and girlfriend, but they were inseparable and she was almost as scary as he was. Almost.

There were also twenty-one surviving boys from the original St Mark’s, fifteen girls who’d joined me when I’d been hiding from MacKillick, the strays we’d rescued that morning, plus three teaching staff who’d joined us from the nearby community of Hildenborough.

These were my people, my responsibility, my family. I’d killed to protect them before and I’d do it again.

The two soldiers guarding them were young — a man about the same age as the one lying dead on the surgery floor, and an older woman, about twenty-five. I’d describe them, but in their uniforms and helmets, in that gloomy brick-lined square, I’m ashamed to say that nothing leapt out at me. They were just soldiers, that’s all.

Maybe I deliberately didn’t look too closely.

Mrs Atkins smiled at me as I entered, but her smile quickly faded when she saw how much blood had soaked into my clothes.

The female soldier saw me then and brought her gun to bear. She was to my left, about eight or nine metres away, at eleven o’clock. Her male colleague was hidden behind the hostages but I knew he was to my right at about one o’clock, in the far corner.

“Don’t move,” yelled the woman.

I stopped moving.

“Where’s Rich?” she asked.

“Do you mean the young man who took charge?”