Then I heard shots. But they weren’t the sporadic shoot and return of a fire-fight; it was a series of measured single shots, about ten in all. I had a horrible suspicion I knew what that meant.
I made my way carefully through the corridors of Castle, passing bodies and bullet casings, splintered wood panelling and blood-soaked floorboards, until I came to the front door. I looked out across the driveway and lawn.
The guard post at the front gate was smoking and I could see the body of a boy lying across the sandbags; it was Zayn.
One less officer to worry about.
One less rapist for me to deal with.
The fight at the front didn’t look like it had been as fierce as the one out back, which had obviously ended in a running battle indoors. I figured they’d sent a small force to the gate as a distraction, while the main force had attacked from the river. It’s probably what I would have done. Fat lot of good it did them. Because standing in front of the school, before the assembled body of surviving pupils, stood Mac, smoking Browning still in hand. To his left lay a row of eleven men, all with their hands tied behind their backs, all with neat bullet holes in their heads. Six more men were kneeling to his right.
As I watched, Mac popped the clip out of his Browning. Empty. He nodded to Wylie, who raised his rifle and executed the next man. Then Wolf-Barry, Pugh, Speight and Patel each took a life. Green protested but he had a gun forced into his hands by Wylie. Mac barked an order and stood beside him, menacingly. Given no choice, Green closed his eyes, turned his head, and pulled the trigger. Mac patted him on the back.
One more team-building exercise.
One more crime to unite them.
I pushed open the front door and walked outside. The gasps of the boys alerted the officers, who turned, guns raised, and then stood there, amazed. Mac came running up to me, his face a mask of astonishment. He looked me up and down and said:
“What the hell happened to you?”
I told him.
“So what you’re saying is that I’ve just executed a whole bunch of potential allies who could have helped us take on a far nastier bunch of heavily armed psychotic fuckers who like bathing in human blood and are probably cannibals?”
“That about covers it, yeah.”
“Fuck.”
Mac ordered the officers to hang the corpses from the lamp-posts that lined the school drive in the hope that they’d deter any attackers for a while.
AFTER FILLING MAC in on my escapades I went to the San and attended to my own wounds, dosing myself with antibiotics and rubbing antiseptic and arnica on bruise after bruise. The wound in my side was excruciatingly painful, but I’d managed to miss all my vital organs and I didn’t think I’d punctured my guts. I stitched it up and hoped for the best; it would make strenuous physical exercise even more awkward and painful for a while. By the time I was done a hot bath had been prepared for me, one of the privileges of rank. Lowering myself into it was sweet agony, but I lay there, boiling myself for about an hour, letting all the tension seep away, trying to work out my next move.
We had been training for a potential war with Hildenborough, but after a brief, bloody skirmish they were out of the picture, replaced by a far more menacing enemy. This new force was highly organised, armed with machine guns and machetes, driven by religious fanaticism and pre-emptively attacking communities in our area. We had no idea what, if any, strategy they were using, where they were based, or when, if at all, they planned to attack. We were vulnerable and uninformed; what we needed more than anything else was good intelligence.
When I was cleaned up I briefed all the officers on the events in Hildenborough. I was relieved to find that there was no sign of the resentment I had been expecting from them; I had been blooded once again and it seemed I had earned their respect without even having to try. Mac made it clear that all information regarding the new threat remained amongst officers only; he didn’t want to scare the boys.
“Give ’em a day or so to mourn the dead and celebrate our victory,” he said. “We’ve seen off an attacking army of adults — twenty-eight of them — with only five boys dead. We can use this to increase morale a bit, coz if what Lee is telling us is correct then this was just a warm-up. I won’t leave one of my men in enemy hands so we’ve got to go and rescue Petts. That means picking a serious fight.”
Once the briefing was over the officers went back to the grisly task of hanging out the Hildenborough dead, and burying our own. Mac and I pored over an OS map of the local area and picked out the most likely bases of operation for the group that Wylie had colourfully christened the Blood Hunters. We mainly focused on places that would have good defences, which meant stately homes and old manor houses. There were a lot of them, but we prioritised and drew up a search plan.
While Mac pondered the offence that we would adopt as our best defence, I sent a note to Matron via Mrs Atkins, warning her of the new threat and telling her to be on guard.
“I HAVE NEVER been so bloody scared in my entire life,” said Norton. “There were bullets everywhere, the windows were exploding, the minibus blew up. I just closed my eyes and fired blind. Fat lot of use I was. Give me hand-to-hand and I know what I’m doing, but this was mental. Just fucking mental. And what I don’t understand, right, is why they picked a fight with us in the first place? I mean, what’ve we done?”
“They were watching us,” I said. “They saw Bates’ crucifixion, thought we were a threat. You can see their point, I suppose.”
“Still, couldn’t they have just, y’know, knocked on the door and said ‘hi, we’re the neighbours, we baked you a cake?’ I mean, there was no reason to come in guns blazing, no reason at all.”
“Look where it got them.”
“Look where it got Guerrier, Belcher, Griffiths and Zayn.”
I had no answer to that.
“I don’t want to die like that,” he said eventually.
“If it’s choice of being shot or being bled and eaten, then I’ll take a bullet every time, thanks. After all, been there, done that.”
“Yeah, yeah, stop boasting,” he teased, sarcastically. “By my reckoning you’ve been shot, stabbed, strangled, hanged and savaged by a mad dog since you came back to school, three of those in the last twenty-four hours.”
“I also shat myself.”
“All right. You win. You are both vastly harder and far more pathetic than any of us.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
“So, oh great unkillable smelly one, do you want to know how I’ve been doing?”
I nodded eagerly.
“Things in the ranks are confused. Some boys are really pumped up about the fight, gung-ho, ready for more. They reckon Mac’s leadership saved our bacon and they’re willing to fight for him now.”
“Mac’s fucking leadership provoked the bloody attack in the first place.”
“But they don’t know that.”
“Which boys are we talking about?”