Children's Crusade

Through the tiny crack as the doors closed she caught a glimpse of him turning away from her and running down the corridor. Then there was gunfire and screaming, and the soft buzz of the lift's engine as the metal cage lowered her gently to the ground.

As her eyes filled with tears, she caught a faint hint of lilies on the air.

Part One

Lee

Chapter One

'When is it acceptable to kill another human being?'

The question hangs there as Green waits for an answer. It takes a moment but eventually a girl three seats back raises her hand.

'Caitlin?'

'When they're trying to kill you, Sir?'

We make them say Sir and Ma'am at St Mark's. Old skool.

Green writes this on the whiteboard. I make a mental note to add whiteboard pens to our scavenging list; we're running short.

'Anyone else?'

More hands go up now that someone else has taken the plunge. Green indicates them one by one, writing their contributions up.

'When someone's trying to kill a friend of yours.'

'Or a family member.'

'When someone is a murderer.'

'Or a rapist.'

Green doesn't react any differently to this suggestion, but I shift in my seat, uncomfortable both for him and for myself.

'Or a paedo.'

'In a battle, like a war or something.'

'As part of an initiation.'

Okay, we'd better keep an eye on that one.

'When they're stealing your food or water.'

'If they try to take over your home.'

'For revenge.'

Green turns quickly back to the class. 'Who said that? Was that you Stone?'

The boy nods, unsure if he's about to cop a bollocking.

'Revenge for what, though?' asks Green intently. No-one answers. The class seems confused. 'You see, Stone has hit the heart of the matter. A lot of your suggestions — murderer, rapist, paedophile, thief — wouldn't killing them just be an act of revenge? I mean, the crime's already been committed. You're not going to bring back the murder victim, un-rape someone, un-abuse a child. So why kill the criminal other than for revenge? And if it is revenge, is it a justifiable thing? Is killing for vengeance a crime, or a right?'

Another long pause, then a boy at the back, quite close to me, says: 'But in those cases it isn't just revenge, is it, Sir? Coz they might kill again, or rape or abuse or steal. So by killing them you're protecting everybody.'

Green claps his hands, pleased. 'Yes!' he says forcefully. 'But what about prison? If you could lock the person away and thereby protect everyone? Remove the danger, and what purpose does killing the criminal achieve then other than vengeance? So again, is vengeance okay?'

'But there aren't any prisons any more, Sir,' responds the boy, warming to the discussion. 'And food and water and stuff are hard to get. So it's a question of practicality and resources, isn't it?'

I can tell Green is pleased. This boy is lively and engaged.

'So are we allowed to do things now, after The Cull, that we would have considered immoral beforehand?' demands Green.

'Yes,' says the boy firmly. 'The world has changed. The morals they had before The Cull are a luxury we just can't afford any more.'

'You don't think morality is absolute?' responds Green, who once fired a clip's worth of bullets into an unarmed man and has never displayed a hint of remorse. 'That some things are just wrong, no matter what?'

'Do you, Sir?'

Jesus, this boy's, what, fourteen? And before I can help myself I tut inwardly and think 'kids these days'. I smile ruefully at my own reaction. Am I getting old? I notice, as well, that he said 'they'. He was born ten years before The Cull, but already the people who ran the world then are another breed, as ancient and unknowable as the Romans. How quickly we forget.

Green beckons the boy forward. 'Come to the front, Stone.'

The boy rises and walks down the aisle to the front of the classroom, the other children gently laughing at his discomfort. Green hands the boy a book.

'Turn to page thirteen and read Vindici's speech.' The boy begins to read, stumbling over the archaic language at first, but gradually gets the hang of it. I sit, transfixed, until he cries: 'Whoe'er knew murder unpaid? Faith, give revenge her due!' and I notice a momentary grimace that flashes across Green's face as the knowledge of his act of vengeance twists in his guts.

I quietly rise from my seat, nod encouragingly at Green, and sneak out of the classroom.

When I was at school, plays like The Revenger's Tragedy seemed ancient and irrelevant, hard to understand and full of abstract moral question that meant nothing to us. But these kids? This generation of children who saw everyone they've ever known and loved die slow, painful deaths and then had to survive in a world without law, authority or consequence get that play on a level I never could, and Green — twenty-one now and no longer the uncomfortable, persecuted teenager I first met — has turned into a fine drama teacher; impassioned, encouraging, good with kids. He's also a pacifist now, and refuses to touch a gun under any circumstances.

I'm oddly proud of him. Which, given our personal history, is quite something.

I stand in the hallway and listen to the babble of voices drifting out of the four classrooms that stand adjacent to it. It's a good sound, a hopeful, productive noise. It's learning and debate, friendship and community. And it's rare these days. So very rare.

I glance up at the clock on the wall. 10:36. Of course GMT no longer exists, so the world has reverted to local time — the clocks at St Mark's take their time from the sundial in the garden. I wonder if time, like morality, is absolute. Does GMT still exist somewhere, like those echoes of the big bang that astronomers and physicists were always trying to catch hint of, waiting to be rediscovered and re-established? And if the clock that set GMT is lost, and we someday recreate standard time, what if we're a millisecond out? How would we ever know? I linger in the hallway, surrounded by the murmur of learning, and daydream of a world in which everyone is always a millisecond late.

That's what the security and community of St Mark's allows me, allows all of us — the chance to daydream about the future. I can't imagine that any of the survivors who are stuck out in the cold, scavenging off the scraps of a dead civilization, ever daydream about anything but the past.

Morning break's at quarter-to, so I decide to swing by the kitchen and grab a cuppa before the place is overrun.

I head deeper into the old house, following the smell of baking to Mrs Jenkins' domain. Sourcing ingredients to feed seventy-three children and sixteen adults would have been a pain even before Sainsbury's was looted to extinction, but now it's a full time job for Justin, ample Mrs Jenkins' very own Jack Spratt.