Scott Andrews - Children's Crusade

"Tease me again and I'll shoot you in both legs," I snapped. "See how you like horse riding then."

He patted his steed on the flank and it trotted off to graze alongside its fellows.

The sun was setting. It had been a cold, rain-drenched ride and although the downpour had finally ended, the evening temperature was dropping fast.

"Is it open?" I asked, indicating the double doors that led into the main college building.

Jack nodded.

"We'll sweep it first. Just in case." This was Wilkes, leader of the six Rangers that Hood had gifted us.

Tall and solid, he was a no-nonsense Yorkshireman with ruddy cheeks and jet black hair. He'd hardly spoken to me since we'd been introduced, except to make clear that he and his men were here to help, but they'd do so on their terms and wouldn't be taking any orders from me. I didn't argue. I figured once they met Dad they'd fall into line, recognising the value of having a trained soldier in command.

The five men with him talked and joked amongst themselves, but gave me a wide berth. At least they weren't openly resentful, like the ones who'd ridden with me up from Thetford, so I supposed that was progress of a sort.

I stepped back and let them enter first, with swords drawn. Jack and I stood outside feeling foolish and cold. Five minutes later the door swung open again and one of them ushered us inside.

The college had been trashed, but there was still plenty of wooden furniture for us to chop up for firewood. Within the hour we had a big bonfire in the car park. We gathered round it for warmth and shoved foil-wrapped potatoes into the flames to roast.

No one came to investigate the fire. If there were people still living in the vicinity, they stayed away.

"I thought they'd be here by now," I said as I watched the flames consume a pile of old lab tables. "The snatchers were due to attack the kids in Hammersmith yesterday. If Dad got them out in time, they should be here."

"You think they might be having to fight their way out?" asked Jack.

"Could be," I replied.

"So how long do we wait?"

"We go at dawn, I reckon. If they're besieged, they'll need us."

"Oh yeah, you eight guys are a hell of a rescue force."

I span around, startled by this new voice. Tariq stepped into the firelight, gun in hand, smiling broadly.

"Don't move!" came a yell from the other side of the bonfire.

"Relax," I shouted as I got to my feet. "He's with us."

"What happened?" asked Jack, as anxious as I was at seeing Tariq here. "Did they attack the school already?"

Tariq shook his head, then indicated behind him with his hook. I stared into the darkness and realised that he was not alone. About forty children I recognised stepped forward into the orange light. They all wore their camo gear, their faces streaked with shoe polish, their hands full of hardware.

"We decided," said a boy I was shocked to realise was Green, "to bring the fight to them."

"That fucker shot me. Shove a knife in his throat would you, Nine Lives?"

I ignored the voice in my head as I approached Green, who sat on his own at the point where the fire's warmth ceased to give protection against the frost that was settling on the hard ground.

"Hi," I said. "You mind?" I indicated that I'd like to join him, and he waved me forward. I sat down next to him, watching the crowd mingling around the fire.

"You want to know what made me change my mind. Why I picked up a gun again and joined the team," he said. It wasn't a question. "Honestly, I don't know." There was a long pause as he considered.

"Partly it's because I feel like a grown up now," he said. "I know I'm strong enough that no-one could make me do the kind of things Mac made me do when I was part of his team."

"That was what you were afraid of?" I didn't know whether to be insulted or not. Did he really think that Jane or I would ask him to do something he didn't feel okay with?

"You don't know what it was like," he said, staring off into the distance. "You always played things your way, but I liked being a follower. It made me feel safe. It's attractive, you know? Allowing something else to make all the decisions, ceding your free will to someone else."

It wasn't attractive to me. In fact it was baffling. But I'd seen enough cults and armies to know that what Green was describing was more than simply common.

"If you do that," he continued, "then the person who's in control can make you do anything, anything at all, and you never think about the morality of it. You rationalise it away and say that it's their fault. You're just following orders. No blames attaches. It insulates you."

"But you did question it," I pointed out. "You turned on Mac. You shot him dead, mate."

"Not soon enough." He sighed. "But afterwards, when he and the school were gone and we'd relocated, I decided to treat it like a drug. I though I had to go cold turkey. No guns. No power to give orders. No clique or gang. I would be completely independent. That way no-one could ever get their hooks in me again. I couldn't fall off the wagon, be seduced into letting someone else tell me what to do."

"So it wasn't fighting you were afraid of, it was following orders?"

He nodded.

"And you don't feel that way any more?"

"No. I trust you and your Dad, and Jane and Tariq. You're good people. Plus, I know now that it wasn't a drug. I won't have a relapse because I changed when I shot Mac. It's taken me a while to realise it, but I'm a different person now. There's nothing left of the boy I was. His vices aren't mine. His weaknesses, either."

He turned his head and looked me in the eye. "Think back Lee," he said. "To who you were before The Cull. Is there anything about that person that you recognise when you look in the mirror?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Me neither. I'm a man now," said Green, turning back to the fire. "I know my mind and I know I'm capable of choosing for myself. And right now, I choose to fight. I owe it to Matron, and to all the kids I teach."

"No, really, just stab him would you?" said the voice. "Pious little shit."

"Thank you," I told Green, pretending I didn't hear a dead man whispering in my ear. "I won't betray your trust."

Green smiled into space. "You'd better not," he said.

Eventually everyone else left to spend the night in the beds at the nearby hospital. I stayed put and watched the fire burn. I knew I should try to sleep, that going into battle tired is suicide. But there was no point even closing my eyes. Ferguson hadn't made contact, Dad was missing and Jane was captured.

I didn't know what to worry about most — my Dad fighting off a besieging army, Jane being tortured by a monster who treated people like dirt on his shoes, or our chances of getting cut to ribbons by landmines and gun towers sometime around teatime the next day. Whichever way I turned, things looked bleak.

As the sun rose I heard the distant engine of a lorry. I grabbed my gun and ran to the main road, careful to stay out of sight as the noise grew louder. A minute or two later a removal lorry, huge and unwieldy, rolled down the road. As it passed I caught a glimpse of the driver and ran out, waving my arms and shouting. He must have seen me in the rear view mirror because the lorry pulled up and Ferguson jumped down from the cab.

I ran to met him.

"Is my Dad with you?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I found the kids, though."

"The ones in Hammersmith?"

He nodded. A girl jumped down from the other side of the cab. Short and stocky, with an eye patch and long red hair, there was something vaguely familiar about her.

"Hi Lee," she said as she walked to Ferguson's side. My face must have betrayed my confusion, because she added: "Caroline."

"Bloody hell," I said, astonished. "We looked for you everywhere."