Scott Andrews - School's Out Forever

The exit led on to a metal staircase in a dim courtyard. So dim, that the figure standing outside was just a silhouette. I held my fire, unsure, but Caroline panicked and squeezed off two rounds. I yelled at her to hold her fire but it was too late.

The figure grunted, staggered back against the metal railing and toppled backwards into space. We heard him hit the concrete below with an awful thud.

“Dammit Caroline,” I yelled. “We have no idea who that was.”

“But…”

I ushered her and Rowles out of the door and they clattered down the fire escape. As I turned to pull the door closed behind me I caught a flash of yellow on the landing and fired through the plasterboard walls at where I thought the cleaner was standing. I didn’t wait to see if I’d hit him.

I pelted down the loud metal steps and found Rowles and Caroline standing, appalled, over the body of Patel, the squaddie Sanders had taken with him. Caroline had got him clean in the chest. He was stone dead.

In the dank concrete-floored courtyard, with the interior walls of buildings rising all around us, their small staircase windows looking out on this joyless scene, I could see her face was ashen white. Rowles was holding her hand tightly.

“He must have been coming to help us,” she said softly.

“No time,” I barked as I reached down and grabbed Patel’s machine gun.

Then there was a loud clang. And another, and another, as something metal bounced down the fire escape behind us.

At the same time we heard the distant echo of gunfire from the main street. That had to be Sanders.

I threw my arms wide and herded the children towards a small brick alley that led beneath one of the buildings and out of the courtyard. As they ran I turned, slipped the safety off the machine gun, and sprayed the fire escape with bullets, hoping to discourage pursuit. Then I ran after the kids as I heard the loud hiss of escaping gas behind me.

We emerged into a car park littered with wrecked vehicles and shopping trolleys. But no cleaners, thank God. I strained to hear the gunfire and tried to identify where it was coming from. As soon as I was sure that it was coming from our left I turned and ran right, urging the children ahead of me as we ran behind the row of buildings.

“I think we’re parallel to the main street,” I explained as we ran. “If we can get to the opposite end of the street to Sanders we might be able to trap the cleaners in a crossfire.”

The buildings ended at the car park entrance road, which turned right to rejoin the main street. I flattened my back against the wall and indicated for the kids to do the same, then I risked a quick glimpse around the corner. Nothing but a burned-out bus.

I turned to the children.

“Rowles, you stay here and make sure we aren’t followed. Caroline, with me.”

Why did I do that? I’ve asked myself a hundred times since then. Why didn’t I take Rowles? But at that instant I was sure that it was safer to come with me, to approach the cleaners from behind with the element of surprise. I was certain that Rowles would be in more danger than she would be, and I knew he could cope with that.

So I ran around the corner, waving the traumatised girl along behind me. Guns raised, we moved slowly along the side of what had once been a small branch of Boots. There were sporadic bursts of gunfire ahead and to our right, so it sounded as if Sanders was still in the fight at the far end of the street.

I reached the next corner and again flattened my back against the wall and glanced around. The trucks were about thirty metres away. The gas had cleared and the bodies of the dead soldiers lay on the pavement and in the road.

Beyond the trucks were three cleaners, crouched behind available cover — a car, a brick flower bed, a phone booth. All were now armed with machine guns taken from the squaddies. They leaned out, took their shots, and then ducked back under cover, obviously involved in a firefight. But none of them spared a glance behind them.

I turned to Caroline.

“Okay,” I said. “We go quickly and quietly. Move from car to car, stay in cover as much as possible. When we’re close I’ll give the signal and you take out the one on the right. I’ve got the machine gun, so I’ll take the other two. OK?”

She nodded but I could tell she was having to work very hard to keep herself under control.

“It wasn’t your fault, Caroline,” I said gently. “But we can talk about it later. Right now I need you to focus on what we have to do. Can you do that?”

She nodded. “Yes, Miss.”

I put my arm around her shoulder squeezed. “Good girl. Now come on.”

We moved out of cover and ran into the road. It took us only a minute or so to get close to the cleaners. They were so preoccupied, and the noise of gunfire was so loud, that they had no idea they were being stalked. Both Caroline and I, on opposite sides of the road, took up firing positions behind cars.

I was just about to give the signal when it all went wrong.

There was a burst of gunfire from behind us and to our right. I ducked instinctively before I realised it was echoing across from the car park. A cleaner must have bumped into Rowles. One of the men in front of us heard the exchange of fire and turned to look back. He saw Caroline. I turned to the girl and yelled at her to get down and as I did so I saw, over her shoulder, another cleaner emerging from the bank.

And then there were bullets everywhere. The one in the bank doorway raised his shotgun as the man in front of us turned and raised his machine gun. Caroline, unaware of the cleaner to her right, opened fire as I dived sideways and shot around Caroline at the man in the bank.

Caroline hit her man. He missed her and fell backwards, shot in the arm. I hit the man with the shotgun and his arms flew up as his gun went off. This saved Caroline’s life; only the edge of the shotgun’s pellet spray hit her, and those pellets were slowed by the glass in the car behind which she was standing.

But it was enough. She fell, screaming.

I continued firing and the cleaner in the bank disappeared back into the gloom, full of bullets.

The two remaining cleaners turned to see what was going on. One of them foolishly allowed his head to pop ever so slightly out of cover. A single shot from Sanders, still out of sight down the street, took the top of his skull off. I rolled on to my back, brought the gun up to my tummy and turned the middle cleaner’s chest into mincemeat before he could get a shot off.

That left the wounded one. I stood to see where he was, but he was out of it — the bullet had hit an artery and he was lying in a widening pool of blood, not long to live, no threat to anyone.

I ran to Caroline. She was lying in the road, breathing hard, teeth gritted, whimpering.

Before I could bend down I heard pounding boots approaching and I spun, gun at the ready. A yellow suit passed in front of my eyes but the helmet was hanging down. It was Sanders. He casually put a bullet in the wounded cleaner’s head as he ran past, without even slowing down.

“Easy, Kate, easy.”

I lowered my weapon.

“First aid kit?” I asked.

“Truck,” he replied, and ran to get it while I knelt down to tend to Caroline.

She was barely conscious.

She had been lucky. When I rolled her over I could see that pellets had hit her from the waist up, including five that were embedded in her right cheek, one that looked like it had damaged her right eye socket, and a couple above the hairline. If I could treat her quickly, and if I could prevent any of the wounds from becoming infected, she should survive.

“Hold on, sweetheart,” I said, grasping her hand tightly. “Hold on.”

WE SET UP camp in a house near the centre of town. It had been lived in until very recently so it was clean and had everything we needed. I set up a workspace in the living room and did my best to patch Caroline up. Once I’d finished, I went into the kitchen and gratefully accepted the mug of hot tea that Sanders offered me. The kitchen had been installed some time in the seventies and had escaped renovation. The table had a chipped Formica top, like a greasy spoon café, and the chair was cheap moulded plastic.