She paused of the threshold of the room, disturbed by the noises coming from within.
Ever since she’d arrived here, Caroline had spent at least an hour a day in this room, sitting beside the bed, reading out loud. Mostly Jane Austen, keeping it light. Sometimes, less often, she had just sat and talked. Once she had confessed to the murder of John Keegan and broken down in tears. As she’d cried into the eiderdown she’d felt a hand on her hair, stroking it softly. It was the only sign of understanding she’d had in all that time.
Matron hadn’t spoken a word since that day in Westminster.
Now Caroline stood outside Matron’s room and heard her screaming her way through labour. It felt odd to hear any noise coming from that mouth.
She stepped inside. Matron was sitting up in the bed, legs splayed, face red, breathing hard. She reached out her hand when she saw Caroline enter, so she stepped forward and held out her hand in turn. Matron grasped it tight and pulled the girl to her side. They stayed like that, hands locked firm, as Mrs Atkins oversaw the birth.
All the noises that Matron vocalised were primal. They were roars and cries and groans and screams. Not one word passed her lips — no fucks or shits or Jesus holy motherfucking Christs.
It was an animal birth.
The baby was born as the first light of dawn crept in the window.
Caroline held the child as Mrs Atkins cut the cord. She gasped in wonder at the tiny, blue screaming thing in her hands. So light and so angry at being removed from the nice warm place that was all it had ever known.
She laid the newborn on Matron’s naked chest and pulled the sheets up to protect it from the cold. It fell silent immediately, eyes open, comforted by the warmth of its mother’s skin and sound of her heartbeat.
“It’s a boy,” said Caroline.
Matron looked up at Caroline and smiled through her tears.
“I know,” she said. “His name’s Lee.”
Later, Caroline walked out of the room into the half-lit hallway and told the lingering children the good news before ushering them back to bed.
She walked down the stairs and out the front door to watch the sun creep over the snow covered tree-line. Despite all the losses of the last few years, all the terrible things she had done and had done to her, the hardship of their lives and the endless winter that had enshrouded them for so long, she knew, with absolute certainty, that she was where she belonged, safe and loved.
As her eyes filled with tears, she caught the first faint hint of spring on the air.
BONUS MATERIAL #1
SCHOOL’S OUT: THE PITCH
Author’s Note: For a brief time prior to launch, Abaddon Books circulated their shared-world bibles widely and encouraged submissions from anyone who wanted to pitch. I sent in three one-page outlines; two for Pax Britannia (now the sole domain of the estimable Jon Green) and one for The Afterblight Chronicles. Here’s the outline for School’s Out.
SCHOOL’S OUT
“When the plague had finally burned itself out and the dying stopped, the surviving boys and staff gradually drifted, one by one, back to the school. After all, where else was there for us to go?”
At St Bart’s College, an exclusive boys-only boarding school in an old stately home in the Pennines, only two teachers and the Matron survive to take care of the remaining pupils. Mr Bates, the PE master, was head of the school’s Army Cadet Force, and he takes control, forming the boys into a military unit, mounting a raid on the local TA armoury, running drills and exercises. Bates is a tin pot fascist, and constantly butts heads with Mr Gibbs, the art master, whom he summarily executes one day at breakfast for questioning an order. The sixth form prefects are the ‘officers’ but they are loyal to MacKillick, a sadistic bully who makes the junior boys’ lives a misery. Bates interrupts MacKillick and some of his cohorts engaged in the gang rape of Matron, who had unwisely attempted to discipline him. Bates attempts to intervene, but the boys first disarm and then crucify him, thereby taking control. MacKillick’s regime is brutal and punishing, and the junior boys are constantly humiliated and mistreated. Matron is kept locked away for the use of MacKillick’s loyal lieutenants. When one boy is sentenced to death by firing squad the fifth formers begin plans to oust him and his cronies from power.
MacKillick organises regular scouting parties to hunt and scavenge supplies from surrounding villages and towns. They begin to find evidence that nearby settlements of survivors are being attacked and plundered, but no bodies are ever found. Eventually they encounter another hunting party, smeared from head to toe in blood, hunting for human prey. Two boys are captured, the rest barely escape alive. Sensing the opportunity for a good fight, MacKillick leads a team to track down the culprits. They track the party back to their HQ, an ancient moated manor house. The moat is red with blood — the blood hunters believe that by surrounding themselves with a circle of human blood they will protect themselves from the plague. They have been harvesting the area, draining their captives’ blood into the moat, and then eating the remains. MacKillick is forced to stage his first major military campaign — the infiltration of the enemy camp, the extraction of his comrades and perhaps, if he can pull it off, the destruction of the enemy’s capacity to retaliate. Unfortunately he reckons without the treachery of his subordinates, and during the rescue attempt they contrive to leave him behind, unarmed, in a cell in the enemy camp.
Having rescued their comrades, though not without cost, the battle weary boys return to the school and attempt to set up a model society run along democratic lines. Fifth former Phil Norton is elected leader, crops are planted and their position is fortified. After a month of relative calm they find themselves besieged by the blood hunters now led by a vengeful, and clearly psychotic, MacKillick, who has slaughtered his way to the head of the tribe. One panicked junior attempts to sneak out at night, but is captured and executed in front of the school when the boys refuse to open the doors. Co-ordinating with a scouting party caught outside the school, Norton organizes simultaneous counter-attacks from within and without, but the fight goes badly and order breaks down, leading to vicious, prolonged, room to room fighting throughout the school. Casualties are heavy, but eventually the schoolboys gain the upper hand, and Norton and MacKillick fight it out man to man in the main school hall. MacKillick wins, breaking Norton’s neck, but no sooner has he bellowed his triumph than he is shot dead by the now fully recovered Matron, who assumes control and proves herself to be a far scarier badass than anyone could have expected. Unfortunately, the fighting has started fires, and the school burns to the ground. The remaining boys, led by Matron, set out to find a new home.
BONUS MATERIAL #2
SCHOOL’S OUT: DELETED PROLOGUE
Author’s Note: The initial synopses were well received, and I was asked to provide a more detailed breakdown and a sample chapter for two of them, one of which made the cut. The following extract was part of the pitch for School’s Out, and it stayed in the book ’til very late in the day, but I eventually decided to cut it. Jon, the editor, was a bit wary of that, but I convinced him. It was fun to write, and helped me establish the tone, but it was the only part of the book not written in the first person by Lee, so it felt out of place. I felt the eventual opening was much stronger because it established the ‘voice’ of Lee, his age, the setting of the book, and his attitude to authority all within the first few lines.