Total Conflict Read online

  The boy walked through the steam and approached the staffroom door. He held up a fist and knocked. The door opened a crack, a great many safety chains pulling taut.

  Mr Gower peered out. His eyes were nervous as a cat’s, switching every which way. They settled on Sam and tightened.

  “Sam Radley. Why are you out of your lock up? The alarm to give the all clear hasn’t sounded yet.”

  “Harvesters are here,” said the kid plainly.

  “I’d gathered.” The headmaster’s mouth queered.

  Sam kept on staring up at the man. “Ms Christchurch is fighting them on her own, Mr Gower.”

  “As is her job as secretary and school security.” The headmaster’s voice matched Sam’s for inexpressiveness.

  A second face peered over the headmaster’s shoulder. Miss Keggle, the school nurse. Her features melted into a mask of fear.

  “Shut the child out, Robert!” she exclaimed. “We don’t want Harvesters blundering near here by accident.”

  “I suggest you tuck yourself away somewhere, Sam, if you don’t want to end up in a Harvester’s keep net.”

  The door to the staffroom closed, leaving Sam alone in the dark corridor.

  Bluze eased in alongside the door to the classroom housing Ridgeway’s youngest. Mrs Moon shuffled in behind her. With her ear defenders back in place, Bluze couldn’t tell what was occurring inside the room. Mrs Moon, though, had refused to wear the standard ear plugs provided for all staff and pupils. “Just let those bastards try to put me down with a bit o’ noise,” she’d told Bluze minutes earlier. Folding her arms over her chest, breasts bundled up like egg sacks, she’d added, “Reckon I can holler louder than any of them flesh freaks or their Sone guns.” Bluze hadn’t seen the point in arguing with the woman. Instead she stood alongside her outside the classroom and prayed Mrs Moon would prove more help than hindrance.

  She felt a rap to her bleeding shoulder. Glancing back, she saw the dinner lady pretend to rub her eyes with her fists, a mock crying motion.

  The children! Bluze fought against her natural terror, balled the emotion in the pit of her stomach and used it to fuel her attack. Tucking her last spark dust packets into the twin batons, she stepped across the doorway, raised her arms and fired. The powder sprayed into the mist with the quick release of a puffball fungus.

  Throwing the emptied batons aside, Bluze strode into the room. Several of the children’s’ lockups had been prised open and the Sone guns fired to render the youngsters passive. The kids twitched, as if they shared one nervous system inside the large keep-net. If they cried or whimpered, Bluze was glad she could not hear it.

  While the largest marauder continued his vile harvest, the others beat off the spark dust grubs to redirect their attention to the newcomers. Bluze stood her ground and let the first two come for her. Mrs Moon was keener to get into it and charged head-on at a third, meat cleaver raised. The dinner lady fought with a slice-and-dice motion, powering into the Harvester with bullish grit. Bluze, meanwhile, had drawn her sawn-offs. She wondered why the Harvesters facing her didn’t draw their Sone guns. Then she noticed the convulsing children held in each brute’s grasp.

  Bluze tried to aim. The combination of children as a shield and the steaming environment meant she couldn’t get a clear shot. At least not immediately. While the Harvesters staggered towards her, dragging the children along as easily as sacks of feathers, Bluze made a quick assessment of the lockups, teacher’s desk, small tables and two dozen wooden chairs. Her gaze lifted to the unlit gas lamp overhead, a huge bowl of dank green glass.

  She rammed the sawn-offs into the back harness and ran between the two Harvesters. Both launched their serrated blades out at her in unison. She dodged the blows; the blades clashed off one another, steel sparking. The wooden chairs became stepping stones; she skipped across those and onto the desk, where her footfall sent papers flying. She kicked off and up onto the first set of lockups – and couldn’t help imagining the children cooped up inside. The Harvesters were on her tail, their human shields tucked inside the crook of one arm, leaving the other free to wield a serrated blade. The sharp steel sliced into the lockups as she dodged, flashes lighting up the darkness. She propelled herself off the far edge of the lockup cabinet, hands grasping for the silhouetted shape overhead. She got a grip with one hand, the other clutching wildly at thin air. A brief instant of floundering then her hand found its grip on the gas light. Bluze pulled herself up, each breath a painful squeeze and tug. The huge bowl threatened to tip under her weight; its fastening held tight and she fought her way up to stand, legs straddling the curve of heavy opaque glass.

  She retrieved the sawn-offs. Below, the Harvesters pinned the young hostages across their organ-rich bodies. But Bluze had her clear shots now. She aimed in-between the plated metal at the vulnerable skulls and fired. The guns kicked back. She sucked in air against the pain from her stabbed shoulder. The Harvesters would have felt the blaze of pain as well, if only for an instant as their skulls burst. The hostages broke free from the slackened grip as the Harvesters’ bodies slumped.

  Across the room, Bluze made out a clash of Titans, Mrs Moon versus her opponent. The dinner lady had the upper hand as she brought her meat cleaver down twice in quick succession, taking off a hunk of the creature’s forearm then a slice of face. But just as it seemed Mrs Moon would win herself another head, the Harvester delivered a lethal stab with his serrated blade. Mrs Moon took the length of it through the chest. Bluze was glad of the distance between them. She was spared the old maid’s look of shock at the death blow, how the eyes would fix wide, drained of excitement and horribly pitiful, how the mouth would pop-pop for air and at last be still.

  She could offer Mrs Moon one consolation. Bluze took out the Harvester with a single shot to the throat.

  Sam walked back from the staffroom, trailing a hand along the steam-soaked wall. He didn’t understand why the teachers canned themselves away in the staffroom. Adults had bodies which could achieve so much. Then again, they were just as easily broken, he concluded, turning into his classroom to be met with the sight of slain Harvesters and the crumpled body of Mrs Moon.

  He focused on Ms Christchurch, standing on top of the vast gas lamp that was suspended from the ceiling.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Opposite was a huge birdman of a Harvester. The man stared at the child and put down his keep net, already half full of children. Producing his Sone Gun, the Harvester trained it on the boy while Ms Christchurch worked hard to perforate the brute’s armour with shots from her sawn-offs.

  The Harvester fired the Sone gun. In spite of her ear protectors, Ms Christchurch appeared mildly stunned and fell from the gas lamp, landing on the desk in a sprawl of limbs. Immediately, she was fighting to stand again.

  Sam winced. He stayed upright though and pointed a finger at the crenulated Sone gun. “They don’t work properly on me.”

  The Harvester discarded the gun and produced a pair of colossal serrated blades. He whipped them in front of his body like a silver Catherine Wheel.

  “Goodbye,” said Sam, and he turned and ran out of the classroom.

  Behind him, the Harvester forgot his existing catch and focused on the live mouse of a boy who’d darted away. Tucking the blades in tight to his elbows, he ran out the doorway on steel-pinned limbs.

  What did the kid think he was doing offering himself as live bait? Bluze threw aside her emptied sawn-offs and strode determinedly out of the classroom.

  The Harvester had discarded his Sone gun. She removed her ear protectors and broke into a jog. Hearing the steel clug of metalmorphosed limbs further along the corridor, she sped up, running past a blur of lockers, water fountains and stairwells.

  She stopped suddenly. A wheeze of sprung steel alerted her to the opening of the heavy boiler room door. Her heart got tight. She approached the door, inched it open and slid through the crack.

  Inside, the pyramids of dung bricks had been demolished where
the child had presumably scrabbled over while the Harvester’s twin blades gorged out hunks of the stuff. Ahead, the huge algal water tank was running dangerously low; the school’s steamy atmosphere was beginning to dissipate, which would allow the Harvester to move even more easily. The tank was hooked up to the furnace and colossal bellows by a great many pipes. Rigged with levers, hose, and a stitched skin of bolt plates, the furnace exuded a rich red glow.

  The boy stood silhouetted before a large glass window in the furnace door. Meanwhile, the Harvester became less human-seeming than arachnid. He craned up on two fat limbs of scaffolded metal. Each limb split into four. Squatting over the centre of the room, limbs craning out in all directions, the invader wove the serrated blades above his head, an action that reminded Bluze of silk being spun from spinnerets. The blades were brought to bear on the child like huge fangs.

  Bluze opted for higher ground. She charged into the room’s bloody glow. Suppressing her instinctual revulsion at contact with the thing, she clamped her hands around the nearest metal limb and climbed. The Harvester bucked in an effort to shake her off. But she continued to climb, slicing her palms on the sharp, bolted rods.

  Sam stood below, a small morsel with ever-staring eyes. The Harvester clattered forward, the folds and feathers in his skin scraping up against the hot boiler. Bluze gasped as her own thigh made contact with the roasting plate. She drew her handgun, positioned it against the soft meat beneath the intruder’s chin and fired.

  The Sledge drew up to the main entrance, a ravaged hole of dust and brick after the grenade blast. Children began to climb aboard the idling school bus, a mechanical warthog with spines of pig iron sticking out at every angle and fat bull bars.

  Bluze had already started working on the punctured door, retooling the lock mechanism. She waved off the children, a monkey wrench in one hand, a fistful of fresh bolts in the other. “See you tomorrow, Lloyd,” she called, and, “Walk don’t run, Meg.” Wincing, she put a hand to her shoulder where she had stitched her skin. The burn at her thigh pulsed angrily. “Don’t forget to hand the letter to your parents,” she called after the rabble, adding, “And ask for any spare eggs!”

  “Ms Christchurch.” Mr Gower appeared alongside her, blocking out the weak afternoon sun.

  “Afternoon, headmaster.”

  “Congratulations on fending off the raid.” The man sniffed and pushed his half-moon glasses up the bridge of his nose. “With Mrs Moon departed, we’ll need someone else to tend the farmyard. The teachers voted and allocated you the job. We have our hands full looking after the children.”

  Bluze would have responded, perhaps with a brief nod, a generous smile or a monkey wrench smashed into the headmaster’s ungracious face. But the man had already stalked back inside.

  The Sledge pulled away, honking goodbye. Bluze watched the bus recede into the misty landscape.

  She became aware of the boy at her side.

  “Did you teach yourself to lip-read, Sam?” she asked, staring down.

  He nodded.

  Bluze nodded too. The boy was deaf. It explained why the Sone gun had barely registered with him.

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “They got the Sticky Skin. I ran away.”

  “And you’ve been living…?”

  “In the woods behind the school.” The boy wrinkled his nose. For the first time, Bluze saw a hint of real human emotion. “It’s frightening at night,” he said.

  Bluze put the wrench down on the floor just inside the blast hole. She eased up the folds of oil skin and cloth around her face. It was beginning to drizzle.

  Reaching down, she adjusted the boy’s outerwear to protect him. He peeped at her from inside his hood. Bluze tried not to think about the hours the child had endured out in the freezing woods, or how the Devil’s Rain may have already started to eat its way into his skin.

  She extended a hand and the boy took it.

  “You’d best come home with me,” she said.

  They walked down the chalk path, away from Ridgeway School.

  Proper Little Soldier

  Martin McGrath

  Solomon and I had tried to push too far the previous night and so we spent the daylight hours lying in a ditch at the side of the road. This had seemed a comfortable enough spot to start with, a slightly deeper hollow hidden by the branches of a willow and an ancient, overgrown hedge. It was out of the wind and pleasantly shady in the early morning sunshine. But the rain started falling heavily from about midday and the ditch quickly filled, turning the hollow into a freezing pool.

  Solomon refused to move on – he was certain there was a pod nearby but the rain and the whipping wind were making it difficult for him to pin them down. So he sat and strained to hear while I just got soaked, too afraid to make a sound and getting colder and more miserable as the day went on.

  The rain stopped just before nightfall, the clouds cleared and a sparkling frost began to crisp the grass and spread rainbow crystals across the tops of small pools of rainwater. It was too early, the western sky still a stripe of burnt orange, but we had to move or we were going to freeze.

  We took the chance that the cold would have sent any pod back wherever it had come from and clambered out of the ditch.

  We stripped off our clothes there on the road, swapping into some of the relatively dry gear we’d hidden under our tarp. I gripped my sides trying to control the shivering that was shaking my ribs. Solomon began to do half-hearted little star-jumps

  “Let’s not do that again,” I said.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Solomon spat the words at me.

  “I didn’t say-”

  “You picked the stupid place,” he said.

  “Sol-”

  “You know, Maggie, I don’t know why I bother.” He started to stamp off down the road. “You can be such a bitch.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Sol!”

  And off I plodded after him.

  He stayed in a foul mood all evening and we bickered like an old married couple. Not that we were a couple. Not like that. Sol was a handsome man, the colour of the darkest chocolate, with high cheekbones and eyes you could melt in. But before things got bad I’d always said that all the good men were either married or gay – and Sol was both. His partner, Patrick, had been in London when it was hit and so with any luck he had been dead for almost eighteen months. I knew sometimes Solomon had nightmares that Patrick was alive and was being hunted in the ruins of the city.

  We were aiming to head north, into the cold, but we were staying off the main roads, keeping to country lanes and tracks where we could. Tonight we seemed to be heading more to the east, but the road was old and sunken between deep banks on either side, offering a feeling of comfortable protection. We walked on through the night, our conversation limited to a series of long and sullen silences interrupted by bouts of furious half-whispered bickering.

  The arguments were good. They kept us warm and kept us moving when it would have been easier to stop and shiver and feel sorry for ourselves.

  We were in the middle of a particularly good row about who was carrying the heaviest pack when Solomon stopped, turned and shoved me hard.

  “You bast…”

  The crossbow bolt ripped the air where I’d been standing and hit a tree in the hedgerow with a crack.

  Solomon dropped to the ground and I followed.

  “Don’t shoot!” We yelped together.

  Another bolt pinged the tarmac between us and tumbled off into the dark.

  “Go back!” The voice was a high-pitched squeak. A child.

  Solomon and I shared a look.

  I stood up, raising my hands.

  “Maggie!” Sol made a grab for my ankle but I shook him off. “You silly cow!”

  “Go back!” I heard the kid grunt as he snapped the crossbow string back into position.

  “We just want to pass through.”

  I saw his silhouette against the moonlight, peering out from behi
nd a tree where the road turned sharply ahead. He was small – I’d have guessed nine or ten but the past two years had been tough and food could be hard to come by. He might be older and half-starved. The crossbow was big, but he handled it confidently enough.

  I tried an experimental smile then realised that in the shadows of the deep-cut roadway it was probably too dark for him to see my face.

  “We just want to follow this road and go on our way.”

  “This road doesn’t go anywhere,” the boy shouted out. “This is the end of the road.”

  I looked back at Solomon. He had the map. He shrugged.

  “Then we’re lost and could use some directions,” I said.

  “Go back!” He gestured with the crossbow.

  “Oh come on, kid,” Solomon stood up and took a step forward. “Just let us past.”

  A third crossbow bolt flashed by.

  “Sod this!” Suddenly Solomon was running, his long legs eating up the distance to the boy.

  The boy was struggling with the crossbow, heaving at the string.

  Solomon snatched the crossbow and smashed it against the tree.

  The boy cowered back. Solomon raised his fist.

  “Sol!” I shouted.

  “He tried to kill me!”

  “He’s a scared child!”

  “He tried to kill you!”

  “Let him be.”

  I walked up to the pair of them. The boy was crouched at the foot of the tree. Solomon was glaring at him with an impressive impersonation of fury.

  I put a hand on Solomon’s shoulder, and reached the other one out to the boy.

  “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “I am,” Solomon growled.

  The boy cowered back further.

  I shoved Sol with my shoulder and he turned away, laughing.

  “We’re not going to hurt you.” I knelt down and reached across. “We just want to pass through.”