and together they heaved the construction upright. It was difficult. The heavy structure swayed and warped as they manhandled the post into the hole. They stood back and looked up at their handiwork.
It's a potent image, a man on a cross, possibly the most iconic there is. It's full of associations and meanings, mythic resonances of sacrifice and martyrdom. I looked up at Bates, whose head lolled drunkenly onto his shoulders, glassy eyed. Here was no sacrifice. He was no martyr. He was just a weak man who'd tried to be strong and had failed. No great tragedy, just another failed hero.
Mac seemed unsatisfied by the spectacle. I think he'd expected some wailing and moaning, begging and pleading. He'd been looking forward to this moment and now it had arrived his subject wasn't delivering the goods. Where was the catharsis? Where was the triumph? How could he gloat over a man so rag-doll limp that he was barely even present at his own execution?
I felt a tiny glow of satisfaction. The sedative that I'd taken from the San was doing its work. Norton had ensured that he was chosen to take the condemned man his final meal. He'd relayed my promise to find Bates' family and inform them of his death, before offering him a syringe. Bates had obviously accepted the escape route we'd offered him, and had injected himself. If I'd judged the dosage right he would lapse into a coma and die within a couple of hours and no-one would be any the wiser. Mac would think the crucifixion had been quicker than expected, probably assuming heart failure and shock, while Bates surfed out of this life on a warm wave of drug- induced bliss.
It was the only mercy we could offer him.
The boys were dismissed and they marched away in silence.
Mac took one last look at Bates and then walked over to me and began to wheel me towards Castle, leaving his one-time mentor to what he believed would be a slow and agonising death.
I took some satisfaction in knowing that I'd cheated Mac of that, at least. It was not much of a victory, but it was something, some small scintilla of compassion.
Now that I was his second-in-command I needed to find a way of talking to Mac, of being his mate. It was difficult to know which tack to take but I decided to brazen it out and be chummy and sarcastic and hope he went with it and didn't take offence. I gulped and took the plunge.
'You,' I said witheringly, 'have seen Pulp Fiction way too many times.'
He chuckled and replied 'I got pre-medieval on his ass.'
And then Bates began to scream.
'At last,' said Mac, with satisfaction. But he kept wheeling me onwards and he never looked back.
The scream of a dying man is a terrible thing to hear. It cuts right through you, strips you of all your illusions of immortality, removes any comfort you take in your own existence and reminds you, in the starkest way possible, that we all survive the day at the merest whim of fate and happenstance. It's humbling and horrifying and once you've heard it you never forget it. But at least it's normally over quite quickly.
I lay in the San listening to Bates scream for about an hour before I decided that I could stand it no longer. Either I'd got the dosage wrong and he had come around, or he was suffering the worst trip imaginable. Whatever. I'd either not helped or, perhaps, had made things worse. I wasn't prepared to live with that. Time for Plan B.
I levered myself off the bed and hopped across to the medicine cabinet. My leg was so bad now that even hopping was almost unbearable. But what did my pain compare with that of the man outside screaming into the face of inevitable death? I opened the cabinet and sorted through the little bottles until I found the right one. I grabbed a syringe, filled it, and jammed it straight into my wound. For a moment there were two men screaming, but then the sweet morphine did its work and my leg felt warm and clumsy and twice its normal size. But at least it bore my weight. I had no idea how long it would take for the drug to affect my senses, but I knew I had to be fast. I limped to the door and checked the corridor. Empty. Thank heaven for small blessings. My rifle stood against the wall in one of the corners, untouched since I'd put it there when I was brought into the San wounded, what seemed like a lifetime ago.
I picked it up and limped to the back stairwell. Again, no-one around. I hit the stairs and climbed. I was starting to get dizzy. I held tight to the railing as I made my way up to the locked door that gave out onto the roof. Two hard blows from my rifle butt took care of the lock, and I was out, underneath the low grey clouds.
I made my way to the edge of the roof, which felt springy underneath me, like I was walking on a duvet. The sky above me began to spin and I felt a hot flush rise up my body and face, like a cartoon character who's just eaten a hot chilli. I walked right to the edge and looked down, swayed unsteadily and leapt back. Carefully.
I lay down, assumed firing position and sighted my rifle on the chest of the man so far below me, who screamed and screamed and screamed.
I tried to focus on my task but the roof felt as if it was swallowing me up, engulfing me like quicksand. My head felt tight, my vision swam, my hands shook.
I grasped the rifle tight and closed my eyes. I steadied my breathing and opened them again. The madness scampered around the periphery of my vision, but I found that I had, for a moment at least, clarity.
Maybe it was the recklessness of drugged-up mania, or perhaps I was simply so far gone that I had ceased to worry about the consequences of my actions; whichever it was, I didn't hesitate for an instant. In a heartbeat I did the one thing I had been trying so hard to avoid these long months since The Cull had made each man, woman and child the sole guardian of their own morality; the one thing I had feared the most because of what it would say about where my choices had brought me and what I was truly capable of.
I squeezed the trigger and ended a man's life.
Finally, I was a killer.
LESSON TWO: How To Be A Traitor
CHAPTER SEVEN
Before The Cull, back when St Mark's was just another boy's school and I was just a fourth-former trying to pass my exams, I got on the wrong side of Mac once.
It was Friday lunchtime and I had cycled into town to buy myself a bag of chips and pick up a magazine. Popping out at lunchtime wasn't forbidden but it was tight, time-wise, and if you dawdled you ran the risk of missing the start of afternoon lessons.
That day I bumped into a girl from the high school who I had met at one of the formal social events that the two schools collaborated on every now and then. I was awkward around girls. I had been in single-sex education since I was barely able to walk, and I didn't have sisters. It wasn't that I didn't know what to talk to girls about; I didn't know how to talk to them at all.
So while I was browsing the shelves in the newsagents this girl came up, said 'hi' and we chatted for a few minutes. Her name was Michelle and I liked her. I can't really remember what I said; it's a bit of a blur. I was just concentrating on not spitting, swearing or belching. But it seemed to go off okay and she smiled as she said goodbye. She was pretty, I was blushing beetroot red, and I dawdled and daydreamed all the way back to school where I cycled straight into Mac, lying in wait at the school gates for waifs and strays.
'What the fuck time do you call this?' he asked.
'Sorry, I just, um…' Nope, no way out, caught bang to rights.
He grabbed the magazine.
'Hey, hey, what's this? SEX?'
'Um, no, it's SFX. It just looks like that 'cause the picture's covering the bottom of the F.'
'So you say. But all I can see is a magazine with a woman in a bikini on the cover and SEX written across the top of it.'
'It's Princess Leia.'
He rolled up the magazine and whacked me round the head with it as hard as he could.
'I don't care if it's Princess bloody Diana, it's confiscated.'
There was no point protesting.
'So you a geek then, eh? Little spoddy sci-fi fan? Wank off over pictures of Daleks do you?'
So many cutting responses came to mind but I wasn't stupid enough to deliver any of them. I just stood
