The fury was replaced by contempt.
'You believe yourself to be in a story, don't you?' he sneered. 'I think you imagine yourself as the hero who strolls into the enemy camp, baits the villain and then runs away to fight another day. Yes? But you're so wrong. My crusade is holy and righteous and you are nothing but a clueless heathen. I have bound my followers together in faith and blood through the power of my will. I lead them to glory and salvation. You have no idea the trials I have undergone, the opposition I have overcome, the demons I have banished. I am the hero of this tale, boy, not you. You're just a footnote. Nothing more.'
He was impressive when he got going.
'I don't know what you and your boy scouts have planned, but I can assure you it's utterly futile,' he ranted. 'You have no forces to call upon. We have the school surrounded and all your boys and their weapons are contained inside. They can't attack us for the same reason we can't attack them – they'd be cut down before they reached the walls. And even if it does come to a fight, which I think unlikely, my men outnumber you two to one and are not afraid to die. You should see them fight. It's a glorious thing. They fling themselves into danger without a second thought. They are magnificent!'
David's messianic fervour was impressive but I wasn't completely convinced by it. I thought about the two men I'd interrogated on the river bank the day before. Magnificent wasn't the word I'd use to describe them; they were just scared idiots happy to have a tribe to belong to. Obviously there would be a hard core of men, like the one I'd killed in Hildenborough, who'd fight to the last, but I was sure that if David were taken out of the equation then the majority of Blood Hunters would fall apart. I hoped so, anyway. My whole plan relied upon it.
'You're… you're right,' I said, trying not to overplay it. 'I know we don't stand a chance. I was bluffing. There's no way we can fight you, not like this.'
'Don't believe a word he says, David,' said a familiar voice behind me. 'He's got a plan, all right.'
I turned to face the new arrival. The guys I'd interrogated at the pillbox had told me Mac was here, so I'd expected to come face to face with him again. But nothing could have prepared me for how he looked. I recoiled involuntarily at the sight of him.
His hair was all burnt away, his bald head blackened and scarred. The left side of his face was also a mass of scar tissue, and it sagged downwards, indicating that he had no muscle control there. The left side of his lips had been burnt away too, leaving half his teeth exposed and giving him a permanent sneer of loathing and contempt. His left ear was a ragged tatter and his left eye socket gaped, black and empty. His left arm ended abruptly just above what used to be his elbow, but the right hand held a machine gun with measured confidence. He looked like some kind of zombie.
But it wasn't the sight of Mac that froze my blood and stopped my heart.
Because standing next to him was Matron.
And her face and hair were smeared with human blood.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
'Look,' I said, 'It's a pretty simple plan.'
'Too simple if you ask me,' said Bob.
'Can your man shoot as well as you say… yes or no?' I asked.
'He's bloody brilliant,' he replied.
'And does he have a problem with shooting people?'
'No,' he replied darkly.
'Then I reckon it's our best shot. Um, sorry. Not intended.'
'But are you sure it'll work?' asked Rowles.
'The Blood Hunters are a cult of personality. It stands to reason that if we eliminate their leader then they won't know what to do. There's every chance they may just wander off.'
'I can't believe this is our best plan. Hope they wander off. Jesus,' muttered Norton.
'You said he never comes out of the tent, so how are you going to get him out in the open?' asked Bob.
'I'll improvise. Just make sure your man's ready. The second David steps outside, I want him dead. Then while they're running around flapping their hands and wailing you lot come out onto the road and line up, weapons raised. But don't fire unless you have to. And Norton, you lead the boys out of the school and do the same. With their leader dead, and us sandwiching them between two rows of guns and making a show of force, I think there's the possibility of a surrender.'
'And Mac?' said Norton. 'We don't expect him to just walk away, do we?'
'No. I don't really know what he's going to do. He's the wild card.'
Matron held a gun on me as Mac and David walked to one side and talked quietly, glancing over at me every now and then. I stayed seated. I looked up at Matron, trying to get some indication that she was under duress. Nothing.
Eventually David returned to the table. Mac stood behind him, his twisted mouth lolling into a dangerous smile. His face was as hard to read as David's, probably because half of it wasn't really there. But he was up to something, and I didn't like it.
'At the urgings of Brother Sean, I have reconsidered your request to join us,' said David.
What the fuck?
'Oh. Um… thanks.'
'If you wish to retire to prepare yourself, Sister Jane will sit vigil with you in seclusion until the appointed hour.'
'Great, thank you,' I said, confused and suspicious. 'I promise you won't regret this.'
And so Matron and I found ourselves sitting on the grass in a corner of the tent, shielded from view by an improvised partition made of blankets draped over wooden stands.
I had so much I wanted to say. Jane Crowther was funny and vivacious; she stood up for herself and didn't take any shit from anyone. Could this blank-eyed acolyte really be her?
'I'm sorry,' I said eventually.
She looked up at me. It was hard to tell, but I thought she looked confused.
'If I'd just got rid of Mac earlier then I could have brought you back to the school sooner. They'd never have found you.'
'Thank heaven they did,' she replied. 'For I am saved!'
Please, God, no. I felt tears starting to well up.
'Nah,' she said eventually. 'Only kidding.'
I had never been so relieved in my life. Except for that time when I didn't die on the scaffold. On reflection, that probably trumps it. But I was pretty bloody relieved. I went to hug her but she pushed me away.
'Better not. I kind of stink. The blood, y'know,' she whispered, careful that we shouldn't be overheard by anyone lurking on the other side of the blanket.
'Yeah, about that. I meant to ask, why exactly are you covered in blood, carrying a gun and hanging out with psychotic religious cannibals?
'I'm a loyal disciple now, Lee. Have to be.'
'Why?'
'They have the girls. There are about a hundred people travelling with David now, and many of them have medical conditions that need to be managed. They need a doctor, so they need me alive. But I made it clear when they took me that if they harmed any of my girls I'd kill myself. The girls stay alive and untouched as long as I co- operate. They keep them in a caravan but they park it about a mile away from the main tent each night, just so I'm not tempted to try and find them.'
'But you're not a doctor.'
'You don't know everything about me, Lee,' she snapped impatiently. I'd touched a nerve. 'I went to medical school for three years.'
'So why…'
She interrupted me. 'Not important right now. That was another life.'
