“Barbara Wolfing-Gusset?” said the man in a bland Croydon accent.
She nodded.
“Baroness?”
She nodded again.
The man raised his arms and Barbara saw he was holding a shotgun.
As the pellets thudded into her she realised two things. First, that no dry cleaners in the world was going to be able to salvage her best party frock; and second, that she’d never find out who’d written Moira those beastly letters.
The man walked across the room and stood over her as she gasped for air.
“Sorry,” he said. Then he turned and walked away.
Barbara pulled herself out of the drawing room, leaving a thick, slick trail behind her. It was agony, but she fought her way back through the hall and into the scullery. After tremendous effort, she reached Tommy’s rotting skeleton and rested her head on his ribcage. She closed her eyes and prepared for death.
Then she opened them again and shoved the dog away.
For now.
THE SMOKE CURLED upwards from the embers of the Old Schools. No-one left alive in there, then.
Arthur panned the binoculars left and surveyed the wider ruins. The cultists — at least that’s what he assumed they were — had done their job thoroughly, but had made his infinitely more difficult.
The message painted on the wall of the (latest, only recently ascended, blissfully unaware) King’s house had directed anyone who was looking for him to his school. He’d obviously felt that it would provide a refuge. Arthur supposed it was a sensible idea; if the boy were safely ensconced in a stable community environment, it would make him far harder for Arthur to pick off. For that reason alone it showed common sense. And anyway, where else was there for the boy to go?
On his way to the school, Arthur had decided he would masquerade as a teacher from a similar institution. Computer Science; useless now, so unlikely to have to prove his credentials. If he could convince whatever passed for staff that he was legitimate — and damn, wouldn’t you know it, he’d not got a copy of his Criminal Record Bureau check on him right now and it was going to be hard to get a replacement wasn’t it, ha ha — then he could infiltrate the school, identify the boy and wait for an opportune moment to make his move.
Upon arrival, however, he’d discovered the school under siege by a ferocious band of naked, blood-daubed nutters led by some weirdo in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat. He’d stayed out of sight and let the siege play out to its inevitable conclusion — the complete destruction of the school and everyone in it. He was pretty sure there’d been cannibalism involved, but he’d avoided looking too closely once the gates were breached and the real savagery began.
Now, as he looked at the smouldering ruins of Harrow School, Arthur had difficulty deciding what to do.
If the boy king had made it to the school, he had almost certainly died in the massacre. But what if he’d been waylaid en route? What if he’d never made it here? There were too many variables, and Arthur had to be sure. He couldn’t have a pretender turning up and causing trouble once he’d taken the throne.
Then a dreadful thought occurred to him: perhaps the boy had converted — he was pretty sure one or two of the boys had joined the cultists. Blimey, he hoped he wouldn’t have to wade into that particular hornet’s nest.
No, there was nothing else for it; he’d simply have to rummage around in the debris and entrails in search of identification. He might get lucky.
With a weary sigh, Arthur collapsed the binoculars, put them in the pocket of his coat, and stood up. He felt a slight nervous tingle as he broke cover and walked towards the wreckage. He might already be king, and he might find proof of that fact within the next hour. He could embrace his destiny by lunchtime. He felt lightheaded at the thought of it, and lengthened his stride.
TWO HOURS LATER Arthur sat on a blood-soaked bench feeling deflated and nauseous.
Rifling through the pockets of half burnt — and in some cases half eaten — child corpses was not the best way to spend a morning. But, he told himself, if he was going to be king he had to earn the right, and facing up to difficult realities and making hard decisions was part of the job. Kings needed to be made of stern stuff. He was proud that he hadn’t flinched in the face of such horror; he’d only thrown up twice.
But he’d found no proof of identity. A couple of bodies had been identifiable by library cards — held on to for what reason, he wondered? Habit? Some kind of totemic article of faith that one day there would once again be fines for overdue books? — but the majority of the bodies were anonymous.
This was not acceptable. He’d managed to find and eliminate ten obstacles with no doubt at all, but now, at the final hurdle, he was going to have to make a leap of faith. The boy was almost certainly dead but Arthur knew that scintilla of possibility, that maggot of doubt, would gnaw away at him for the duration of his reign. He’d never feel entirely secure upon his throne, he’d always be waiting for the day when the miraculously resurrected boy king, now grown up and riding at the head of an army, would rise up to challenge his rule and topple him from the throne.
Unconsciously, his hand rose to his throat as he contemplated Charles I’s fate. Then he clenched as he recalled Edward II’s.
No, he had to be sure. There was nothing else for it — he had to find the cultists. If he could talk to the boys who had converted they’d be able to tell him the boy king’s fate. It was his final test, the last thing he must do to prove that he was worthy of his own destiny. He understood that.
But it really was going to be a pain in the neck.
THE KING OF England, Jack Bedford, picked his way through the wreckage of his school.
Coming back to school had seemed like such a good idea when the world died. After all, if any school was going to survive The Cull, it would be Harrow, wouldn’t it? As it turned out, only a few children thought of returning to school, so the community never had time to reach critical mass before their first big challenge.
When the Blood Hunters had turned up to kill and eat anyone who wouldn’t convert to their mad creed, Jack and one of his classmates had escaped the slaughter by sheltering in a huge brick ice house deep in the woods that made up a large part of the school grounds. They’d heard nothing in two days now, so Jack had emerged to scout the area.
He was shocked to see the school reduced to a pile of smouldering embers and a half collapsed stone shell. This was Harrow, for God’s sake. Was nothing sacred?
The Old Schools, chosen for a last stand in the event of attack, was still smoking, but he approached anyway. There had been twenty-three other children and one teacher — the Head of English, who had proclaimed himself Headmaster — here when the cultists had arrived. Jack didn’t hold out much hope of finding any of them alive, but he could at least bury any remains. There were no bodies here, though; everyone had been taken elsewhere during the bloodletting. Jack scrambled away from the still hot embers, ashamed at the relief he felt.
As he approached the dormitories he caught a whiff of cooking meat and a thick smoky stench of chemicals. He paused, thinking again. The sick feeling in his stomach hardened into a knot of fury and fear. He wanted to run as far as he could from this awful place, but at the same time he wanted to find a gun or a knife or a club, pursue the Blood Hunters and massacre the whole bloody lot of them.
He shook his head and sank to the grass, sitting down and wrapping his arms around his legs, resting his chin on his knees and staring blankly at the smouldering wreckage. Who was he kidding? He was fifteen, his arms were too long for his body and he kept bumping into things. Always the last to be chosen for rugby, Jack was not sporty or physically confident; he was gangly, awkward and beanpole thin. Give him a gun and he’d probably just blow his own foot off. He wasn’t going to be massacring anybody, let alone a gang of heavily armed psychotic cannibals.