“I know. Need to find the girls. One last thing, though.”
She grabbed the med kit, opened it, pulled out a syringe and bottle. She filled the syringe and jabbed it into my good arm before I had a chance to ask what she was doing.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“Home brew,” she said. “Should help you stay on your feet for a bit. Take this.” She pressed a machine gun into my good hand. Then she leaned forward and kissed me hard on the lips. “Good luck!” And she was gone, machine gun held ready, out the rear tent flap.
The spot where she’d injected me felt red hot. The heat spread out from my arm, creeping through my veins until my entire body felt like it was full of lava.
It felt fantastic!
A stream of bullets ripped through the tent fabric right in front of me, cutting a horizontal line. I dived for cover. The bullets stopped for an instant, hitting something between shooter and tent, and then continued. A body slammed into the canvas, and slid down to the grass. Then a Blood Hunter backed into the tent, firing wildly. Once inside he turned and made to run for the other exit, but he saw me. He screamed furiously and raised his gun. I was quicker. Two bullets to the chest took care of him.
The man lying beside me groaned and rubbed his head, coming around. I vaguely recognised him as one of the men from Hildenborough.
“Wake up,” I yelled at him. He looked up at me, shaking his head to clear his vision.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Will be. You?” He nodded.
We got to our feet.
“Come on then,” I said. And we ran out of the tent into the battle.
I’d never seen anything like it. It was a free for all. Everywhere I looked there were people fighting hand-to-hand; everywhere the glint of sunlight on machete blades, the smell of blood and cordite. People were being stabbed and shot, strangled and beaten. It was a mêlée and it was impossible to get a sense of who was winning. The force we had brought from Hildenborough was only forty strong, so they were hopelessly outnumbered.
I raised my gun and took a few potshots, killing two Blood Hunters outright and wounding at least one more. I was shooting one-handed, from the hip, with my other arm useless on my chest, but I was still shooting better than I’d ever done before. All my senses felt crystal clear. Whatever it was Matron had injected me with, it made me feel invincible.
The guy next to me staggered backwards as his head exploded in two, cleaved by a machete. I spun, firing, and the stream of bullets ripped into a Blood Hunter who jerked backwards and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Suddenly I was in the thick of the fighting.
People crashed into me, locked in life and death struggles. Bullets whistled past my head. One Blood Hunter came for me, machete raised. I tried to bring my gun to bear, but it was grabbed by another Blood Hunter. I wrestled for control of the weapon, saw the raised machete out of the corner of my eye and let go of the gun. The Blood Hunter who’d grabbed it fell backwards with a shout of surprise and let off a burst of bullets, which cut down the one with the blade. As he fell I grabbed the blade and whipped around, throwing it as accurately as I could. It found its mark in the chest of the man who’d shot its owner. I grabbed my gun back from the lifeless hands of the Blood Hunter and tried to get some sense of what was going on around me. I couldn’t see any boys. Where the hell was Norton?
Through the mass of fighting I caught a glimpse of the sandbagged machine gun nest at the gate. Inside, a Blood Hunter was firing the GPMG down the drive towards the school. A group of Blood Hunters were kneeling next to him, firing back into the mêlée, picking off Hildenborough fighters. If nothing changed it was only a matter of time before the Blood Hunters got the upper hand. We had to shut that gun down, allow Norton to bring reinforcements. Someone crashed into me from behind, knocking me to my knees. I turned to find a young blood-daubed woman staring at me, a neat hole above her left eye. She fell sideways revealing Rowles, smoking pistol in one hand, machete dripping blood in the other.
“Orders, sir?” he shouted above the din.
“We need to…” He raised his gun and I ducked. A bullet whipped over my head and I heard a strangled cry. I looked up at him again.
Definitely the scariest ten year-old I’ve ever met. I was glad he was on my side.
“GPMG!” I shouted, pointing towards the gate. He leant down and helped me to my feet. I was only halfway up when I had to shoot through his legs, kneecapping a woman who was coming at him with a machete. He turned and finished her off with a single shot.
Once I was upright I took the lead. We shoved our way through the fight, firing and hacking our way to the edge of the scrum. Then we skirted around the outside, collecting two Hildenborough men on the way. We found a clear space near the wall, and Rowles said “Let me, sir.” He raised his gun and took careful aim.
As he took shots at the men behind the sandbags we stood guard around him, picking off any Blood Hunters we could get a clear shot at. The man next to me took a bullet to the thigh and then, as he bent down to put pressure on the wound, another round took him in the top of the head. He collapsed in a heap, instantly dead.
Rowles took a step forward each time he fired and the remaining man and I paced him, keeping him covered. He’d picked two of them off before they worked out who was shooting at them. By that point we were within a couple of metres of the sandbags. Rowles’ gun clicked empty and he tossed it aside without a second’s hesitation. I dropped to my knees and sprayed the sandbags with bullets as he ran towards them, machete raised, shouting some sort of battle cry. My bullets took one Blood Hunter across the chest and he fell backwards out of sight. The other fired wildly at Rowles but somehow the bullets kept missing, and soon the shooter was missing his left arm.
I heard a fleshy impact above me and the head of the man who’d been fighting beside me dropped at my feet. I dived forward and spun so I landed on my back, firing as I did so. But the gun didn’t fire. Empty.
I rolled sideways to avoid the blade that curved down towards my head. In doing so I rolled over my broken arm. Didn’t hurt a bit. The blade slammed into the grass next to my ear. I reached across with my good arm, grabbing the Blood Hunter’s wrist, but it was drenched in fresh blood from the battle, and my hand slid off as he pulled the blade free of the ground. He raised the machete again as I lay there on the ground, nowhere to go. Then a blur above my head as someone literally dived over the top of me, their shoulder hitting the Blood Hunter in the stomach and taking him down. Haycox.
Even over the din of battle I heard the dreadful crunch as they hit the ground. Haycox sprang backwards, his opponent’s neck snapped. He turned and reached down to offer me a hand up. But before I could take it his head snapped sideways as it shattered in a spray of blood and brain matter. Bullet to the head. He fell, stone dead. I scrambled backwards and tried to get to my feet. I was spending far too much of this fight flat on my bloody back. I saw two Blood Hunters come running towards me, lowering their guns as they came. Then they lurched backwards as an arc of heavy GPMG rounds picked them up and flung them, lifeless, to the grass. I looked across at the sandbags and there was Rowles, God love him, unleashing the GPMG at any Blood Hunter foolish enough to offer him a target.
I got to my feet and ran, crouching as I weaved through the fight, to the sandbags. I dived over them, landing smack on the fresh corpse of one of Rowles’ victims. I pulled his gun free and took my place at Rowles’ side, sheltering behind the wall of sandbags, picking off Blood Hunters.