‘Besides,’ said Mark, ‘I’m eighteen now, so I can legally drink this even by old world standards. This is coming back with me tonight, and I’ll still use it to celebrate leaving Oakenfold. Just leaving in a different way.’
Kate jumped at the sound of Mark closing his locker, and followed him further down the corridor. He reached for his radio.
‘Anything yet, guys?’ he asked.
A short pause, which Kate used to collect herself.
‘Nothing in the classrooms,’ came Ewan’s voice. ‘But they give a good view of the outside. Simon mentioned a bunch of metal shapes he saw around the school’s perimeter.’
‘Mentioned them?’
‘He does talk, you know. Around people he actually trusts. He saw these little shapes outside dotted around the place. They look like land mines.’
‘Better be careful on the way out then. Raj, how’s things?’
A short pause, although long enough for Kate to hear Mark’s voice echo off the walls. It had risen above a whisper, and that worried her. Mark’s complacency could spell trouble, but she didn’t dare to tell him with words.
‘I’m here too, you know,’ said Gracie. ‘Raj found the sports hall, and he’s looking through it right now. It’s packed with these huge things.’
‘What kind of things?’ asked Mark, impatiently.
‘He said something about power. He thinks they generate electricity or something. They’re big whirring things that reach halfway to the ceiling.’
‘So that’s how they’re powering the school, huh.’
Kate took out her own radio.
‘No,’ she gasped into it, ‘this is something else. We can power the whole of Spitfire’s Rise with a small petrol generator. Those things in the sports hall are for powering the AME shield.’
‘It’d make sense,’ came another voice, which she recognised as Jack’s. ‘The energy needed to maintain a shield over the school would be massive. Oh, and I’m fine out here, by the way.’
‘Have you seen anything?’ asked Ewan.
‘I’d have told you if I’d spotted movement,’ said Jack. ‘But now you mention it, I can see those little land-miney things too. But I don’t think they’re actual mines.’
‘How come?’
‘Because they’ve made no effort to hide them. They must be for something else.’
There was a momentary silence. Neither Kate nor any of the other students came up with any ideas.
‘We’ll keep searching,’ Kate said. ‘We’re almost at Paul’s office.’
Even after a year it still felt good to call the head teacher ‘Paul’ instead of ‘Mr Dale’. Special education had always been less formal in those ways, and it had been the ideal refuge for teenagers who had been traumatised in schools full of Misses and Misters in posh suits.
‘Speaking of Paul,’ said Mark, ‘I wonder if we’ve found him.’
Kate looked around, and saw nothing. Then she looked down and noticed the skeleton a metre from her toes.
She shuddered, but held herself together and kept silent.
It was the remains of an adult. Presumably a staff member. Or perhaps an adult student, since Oakenfold catered for nineteen-year-olds too. But Kate didn’t like to think of people in James’ year dying in their school.
I know your birthday ended three hours ago, she thought, but happy birthday,James. I hope it was one that you liked.
‘I don’t even know what happened to Paul,’ she whispered. ‘He might have survived. I… I know who this is.’
A cutlery knife lay next to the wall, less than a metre from the skeleton. Judit had made the mistake of threatening a clone with a weapon, so she had been executed instead of captured. But Kate hadn’t hung around to watch. She just ran.
At the other end of the school, a small group of staff members had shepherded the students through the back exit into the outdoor play area. It was normally reserved for the Block One students – those who were profoundly disabled – but that morning it was open to everyone. Kate had followed, looking for her friends in the crowd, finding only Chloe and Sally. She made it through the exit doors, and her heart leapt with relief at seeing James rocking himself next to the swings. When he saw her, his rocking and grunting had not stopped. But he had reached out towards her with a nervous stimming hand. It was love, in the kind of way only James could show, and that nervous stimming hand had been etched into Kate’s memory ever since.
Mark and Joe Horn were already attacking the fence. It was a sturdy fence, deliberately designed to keep people like them inside, but when half a dozen others joined in it didn’t take longer than a minute.
The staff members didn’t follow. Presumably they had got themselves captured trying to save more students.
When the fence came down, only some of the students fled. Some didn’t want to risk getting shot. Some were frozen in panic. Some of the Block One students simply thought they weren’t allowed to leave school, because it wasn’t home time.
Kate had watched as James had frozen himself to the swing, too deep in his routine-based comfort zone. But eventually he had relented and taken his younger sister’s hand. Maybe the fear of losing Kate had been worse than the fear of breaking his routine.
In what she remembered as Oakenfold’s proudest moment, each Block Two student chose someone with a more noticeable disability, and brought them along on their escape. Even Silent Simon had found another student with Down’s Syndrome and helped her along.
In what she remembered as Oakenfold’s most shameful moment, it had taken five minutes for them all to realise the difficulty of guiding profoundly disabled teenagers through the countryside with a literal army giving chase. Even Ewan – who had been absent that day, but met them in a field on his way to Oakenfold after something dreadful had happened at his house – had been in no position to come up with bright ideas. When a row of soldiers appeared at the end of the field, Mark had shouted ‘get bloody running, they’re not worth it!’ and everyone had obeyed.
Everyone except Kate, who had tried. But two minutes later…
She had evaded the oncoming army, and James had followed his captors as instructed. Within a few minutes, she had found the group again and joined them in their confused chaos.
So there they were: the last free students of Oakenfold. Kate, Mark, Ewan, Raj, Simon, Jack, Gracie, Sarah, Callum, Joe, Chloe, Sally, Rachael, Daniel and Charlie. (Kate raised an eyebrow when she realised she had thought of the dead students in Memorial Wall order.) They had wandered across the fields in a clueless daze, until Ewan had run ahead to find a place to shelter. He had later returned – with bloodied hands – and guided them all to the place he’d found. Inside, an ageing man with tears in his eyes had welcomed them…
‘Judit Ciskal?’ asked Mark. ‘Receptionist extraordinaire?’
Kate nodded.
‘Looks about her height. I remember her running around as well. So maybe Paul Dale’s still alive… guess we’ll never know. Let’s get to his office.’
Kate followed, hiding her contempt for the young man who had – rightly or wrongly – forced her away from her brother.