Higher education

After Jack had rested up, Nick presented him with a set of car keys.

'Here you are, a present from me to you, your first vehicle. It's in… a condition, no MOT, no insurance, high mileage. Previous owners: not a fucking clue. You can do what you want with it.'

They sat in a beat-up little old car with sweet wrappers on the sticky carpets and dog hairs all over the upholstery. Jack was thrilled. It was his first car.

'Out of all the cars in Huddersfield, why did you pick this one? It's shit,' said Joe from the back seat.

'Shut up, Joe, it's great,' said Jack. He was thrilled to be in the driver's seat for once and busied himself with adjusting the angle of the seat and mirrors once more.

'It's a good training car,' said Nick. 'It won't matter what happens to it.'

'How come you're teaching Jack to drive?'

'Jack needs to learn how to drive. I might as well teach him,' said Nick. 'Why, did you want a lesson afterwards?'

No, I'd probably kill us all,' Joe muttered. He put down a bottle and lit up a spliff.

'Look, can you open a window or something?' enquired Nick.

'Come on, Joe. Seriously. I'm trying to learn how to drive here,' said Jack.

'It's only the fuckin Bhuna. We're not going to get arrested. There's no fuggin' police. It doesn't matter, it's just the Bhuna. The Bhuna's life.' Joe mumbled away to himself.

Jack shook his head and ventured a question. 'Nick, if we are going to work together and do stuff, there's a few things I'd like to ask. Like, there's a few questions I'd like to know the answer to.' Nick looked irritated. 'I just feel I've been kept out of the loop for so long and want to know what's going on.'

'Well, let's drive and we can talk about stuff as we go, alright?'

It was a nice enough day for a drive. The sky was overcast, it was windy and the windscreen was speckled with rain – pretty average, all in all. Nick got Jack rolling down the road and around the roundabout a few times. Jack clutched the wheel and seemed terrified of letting go, terrified at turning the wheel to go off down another road or even to change the car out of second gear.

Eventually they got Jack scraping enough gears and revving down a street until he went to park in a house's driveway for them to catch their breath back. Here they had a great view down on to the rolling valley floor, the grassy fields, trees and the majestic railway viaduct that reached over by Milnsbridge village. They could see for miles, and see the distant gleam of sunlight over the rooftops of the far reaches of the town where the hillsides parted to the valley. Nick breathed a sigh of relief. There was one bit where the bonnet had got dented because Jack stamped on the accelerator instead of the brake, and he felt sickish from all the kangaroo-hopping.

'What did you want to know?' Nick said, and he massaged his neck.

What did they want to know? Now the time had come to ask, Jack and Joe couldn't think what to ask.

'The Bhuna,' said Jack. 'What actually is it?'

'Oh my God!' Nick groaned and rolled his eyes. 'It's just a plant. I don't know. I don't actually know the answer to that one. With Andy, you see what happens when you have too much, and with Ryan, what happens when you don't have any. That's what the Bhuna is. That's all you really need to know. It makes no difference. And don't bother asking Andy what it's all about. You'll be there for days.'

'I know that from past experience.'

'The Bhuna's life,' said Joe.

'Yeah, that's right. The Bhuna's life. That's what it is. It's some kind of experimental herb. I don't know. Now don't ask me again,' said Nick. 'Anything else?'

'It's good though,' said Joe.

'It is good,' said Nick. 'The Bhuna is good. The Bhuna is a good thing. A good thing is what the Bhuna is.'

'It's incredible,' said Jack.

'Bhuna's life,'

There was quiet.

'What's this that I heard about you getting on with Jenny? At the bar while we were all partying? And Sarah?' Jack asked with a certain awe mixed with jealousy.

'Yep, it's true,' Nick said in a low voice, grimacing, trying to mask his irritation.

'It's fucking good though,' mumbled Joe.

'Shut up, Joe! Jesus Christ, how much have you had?' said Jack. Nick took the spliff from Joe's fingers and took a puff.

'I'm literally—' Joe started. 'You thinking of settling down with a nice, virtuous young lady and making it official?' he continued, seemingly as out of the loop as Jack.

'Virtuous? They both think "celibate" is a kind of fish,' Nick said.

Jack and Joe laughed, and Nick shook his head and couldn't help but grin despite himself.

'What's going on with you and them now? They seem pretty edgy when they're around each other,' said Joe.

'I don't know. It was temporary, fleeting. Like friendship, life, and youth. Now ask me something else,' Nick said.

Why do we only get hungry for the Balti? And how come we only recently started hearing this story about it being a deer you killed? Before that, we only ever got vague answers about stuff you found in jars,' Jack said.

'God's sake. I knew you'd ask that. Look, I'll show you. I think that if we're going to be on the same side and do what's best for us all then I should be able to trust you with something. There are some things other people don't need to know. It's just best that way.' Nick looked each of them seriously in the eye. 'Drive on and I'll show you.'

'Why's Jack need to learn t' drive?' slurred Joe.

'It's an important skill to know and one that's vital in an emergency. Learning to drive also boosts your self-confidence. I think a person changes after they learn how to drive, like you're more capable and can do more things,' Nick replied. 'Maybe then you two won't be so useless. You ready?'

He got Jack to reverse out and they hopped, stalled and trundled back down the road. He tried not to bump so many other cars this time.

At the roundabout on top of Church Street, Nick directed Jack along a different road that took them past banks of trees and the low, sleepy terraces of the sandstone houses of the town.

'Keep it steady, let's not try to run before we can walk,' said Nick. 'You see this leisure centre? This is where we got our first armoury from after the Big Bang. All cricket bats and things.'

'I don't remember,' said Jack.

'Few people do. I don't remember much about it. Those were hazy days. We were Bhuna'd twenty-four-seven and were so erratic I can't even understand half of what we said and did back then,' said Nick. 'I don't even know where all that equipment got to. I haven't seen it for ages. I think we even tried wearing American football armour and cricket pads and shit. It was crap.'

'Many things now seem so distant I even wonder if I imagined them. Where we were, where we've been and what happened to the world in which we lived once, an age ago, but still in recent memory. I need to go out and see again what once was to reassure my eyes that my own past wasn't a dream,' Joe said, abstract and wistful.

'That's cool, Joe. Good for you. Take a left here, I want to show you something,' Nick said.

Further on, the view opened up between the houses to reveal more of the far side of a valley and the hilly countryside. It was a little bit quieter now and completely still. Birds were a rare sight and their song had fallen silent.

'Pull up here,' said Nick.

From here the friends could see over the rough stone wall that flanked the winding road that twisted between the hills. Over one side there was a rough patchwork of scruffy little paddocks with wooden huts that looked like they were for livestock.

'Matt, Ryan and I found these fields and the animals left in them. There was no one left to look after them. They were trapped in these fields and left to die.'

Nick turned to Jack and Joe. 'The reason why we crave the Balti isn't the curry sauce or the spices or the smoke killing our taste buds or some shit. It's because of the fresh meat. There's something about the Bhuna, maybe it depletes nutrients or something. We need to eat fresh meat to replace them. We had to lie to everyone – there never was a deer we killed for venison. We came here and got ourselves a pony. We've been eating pony all this time.'

'Oh my God, that's awful! Oh, that's terrible. Why? Why, Nick, why?' Jack said. Joe groaned and looked ill.

'Why did you tell everyone it was venison?' said Joe. 'And why did it have to be a pony, for God's sake?'

'Oh come on, boys. I didn't think you would be this squeamish about it! What's really the difference between a horse and a deer? They have four legs, hooves, eat grass, and run fast. One's known to be cute, cuddly and goes "neigh", the other is an acceptable food source. It's illogical. Imagine the fuss the girls would make if we told them they had to eat pony from now on.' 

The friends laughed, still appalled, but conceded that Nick had a point.

'But why kill something in the first place, when there are all the canned goods we could ever eat in the world?' Joe said mournfully.

'It was the Bhuna. The Bhuna made me do it. I can't explain,' Nick said. 'It came up to us, hungry and hopeful. It stood there and we looked at it and it looked at us and we looked at it right back… It seemed so alive, you know? It had vitality and life to it, not like the stuff in the local store. Then, we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we brought something else home for dinner? It was the Bhuna, it makes you think differently. Who wants to eat canned shite all their life anyway?'

'I've noticed that everything seems kind of tasteless recently. Even a bag of sweets seems watery and bland to me, but a strong curry like the Balti has all the flavour of the past, maybe even more,' said Joe. 'Maybe it's the meat.'

'The same thought came to all three of us who stood looking at this beast. We all had the idea of how awesome it would be to kill and cook our own meat for once, like in older times. There would be something manly about it and a bit of pride and we were right. It's the Herb. It makes you do things you'd never dare otherwise,' said Nick. 'It was worth it. We had to. It was definitely worth it.'

'And if we needed something to stop us ending up like Ryan, then you had to, right? It's not really a choice. You had to,' said Jack.

'Yes! That's right. You get it now,' said Nick, pleased. 

'Poor Ryan,' said Joe.

'Poor Ryan,' Jack and Nick repeated.

'Trouble is, there's no more pony. We'll have to look for more,' Nick said. 'And no, it doesn't have to be an actual pony next time. Now I've let you in on this, can I trust you to keep it a secret?'

'Alright,' Jack and Joe agreed.

That's great. That's… really great. We're going to go out and we're going to do great things,' said Nick with a little forced enthusiasm.

'We'll have to trust each other more and work together if we want to survive this. We will get rescued but we have to have a plan to stay alive until then. Matt would have us holed up in that place forever, sitting on our arses, waiting for the end and hoping that the Dead don't find us. We need to look further afield. We need to find other people and get rescued. Fast. Time is of the essence. And we need more pony.'

Jack and Joe agreed but sounded uncertain.

'This is our town. We should be the kings of it,' said Nick. 'We've got to break out of our shell here.' He pulled a thick blunt from his shirt pocket and a gold zippo with a Union Jack on it.

'Smoke with me,' Nick said. 'Together we can make shit happen. If there's one good thing that can come out of this mess it's that we made a legacy for ourselves. We took the town back and changed it to how we saw fit. We owned it. If we can do this we can do anything. Go anywhere.' Nick had the blunt between his teeth and lit it as he said this, then passed it to Jack.

'I know we haven't always got along the best, but that should change. I think I overlooked you till now,' Nick said. 'But when you're part of the group, part of the "in" group who go out and do things, it's exciting. A lot of fun. Things happen with us.' 

Joe was dazed-looking and didn't respond, but Jack had an enthusiastic grin. 'Yeah, I always wanted to be part of that,' he said.

'Can I have a go? When do I get to drive?' Joe asked as Jack made the car crawl back along the route they had taken. He drove very stop-and-start because of how well packed Nick had made the blunt.

'Not now, you're wasted,' Nick replied as he helped Jack steer.

They took a turning back at a fork in the road Nick had mentioned earlier and the last corner peeled away to reveal a collection of larger buildings, both industrial and modern, beyond a row of trees planted on the verge. 

This, Nick said, was a high school he'd found. It was completely abandoned. No Dead, nothing. 'It's funny how there's so many places we never knew existed until after the Big Bang. I mean, this is so close to us but I never knew it was here. I never came this way in all the times I lived here. It was rare for any of us students to stray from the town centre. I mean, why would we? It had everything we needed. I never knew Huddersfield was so big. There's so much in this area that we discovered only after it had all gone.'

'Why have you brought us to a school?' Joe asked.

'I always hated schools. I resented how much it robbed me of some of the best years of my life and took away my freedom when I needed it most. You two strike me as guys who might feel the same? Don't you begrudge your young, incarcerated years?' Nick said.

'I was happy in primary school,' said Jack, 'but secondary put paid to all that. Everything changed in secondary school and I lost that all. I hated every second.'

'I was really depressed all the way through school. I didn't want to be there and my teachers and parents made me feel worthless just because I didn't want to do their stupid bullshit lessons and wasn't good at them.' Joe looked emotional.

'Same,' said Jack.

'Yeah, same,' said Nick. God, these two were such losers. 'The only parts I liked were smoking at lunch break then going off after school and misbehaving round town.'

'One of the cool kids,' Jack said sarkily.

'Yes,' Nick said, smiling. 'Well, gentlemen, today we get our revenge. None of us attended this school, but we are going to do what we always wished we could do, and what all the pupils of this school wished they could do, what they would have loved to see, deep down. I'll show you,' said Nick. 

 'We can do whatever we want in this town now! It belongs to us. All this is ours to do with as we wish. The only limits are in our mind. It doesn't have to be a prison and we certainly don't have to lurk and mope around, stuck away in that place. We're free to do anything.'

Nick led Jack and Joe to a building that had already had the glass of its double doors smashed, presumably during his earlier visit. After they ducked through the gap, they were met with a long, drab corridor painted an insipid off-white that sapped the imagination and drained all the life from those inside.

'I never realised until I left them how much schools were like prisons, but this one seems like a mental institution,' said Jack. The building's older parts were fashioned from the imperious, blackened sandstone of nineteenth-century Huddersfield and sat heavy, archaic, stoic and impenetrable like an asylum. The insides were lofty, high-ceilinged, domineering and inhumane. The three of them imagined the armies of souls forcibly marched through the corridors to be indoctrinated. They were processed, regimented and disciplined against their will until their sentence was served and they were ejected out the other side.

They stopped to talk for a bit as they leant against the walls because the blunt they lit was very strong.

'Look at all the crappy murals they were forced to make. They've got displays of crusty old English monarchs and geography shit like how volcanos are formed. They toiled over boring things no one cares about. I remember how I had to do all of that. I looked through the iron bars of the playground at people in the free world outside when I really, really didn't want to be there and was forced to do all that. Then when I'd finally done my time, served my sentence and saw kids behind the playground bars, it really sunk in how glad I was I survived it,' said Jack.

'I remember looking out of the window into the free world and seeing the adults and how they didn't have to sit through maths classes. Oh how I wished I could be them. I couldn't wait to be an adult. Later, I passed the same railings on the other side with bags full of beer and cigs off for a Bhuna sesh and it had never really sunk in till then – I finally had that freedom that I'd always yearned for,' Joe reminisced. 'The thing was, I never noticed because on the other side in the supposed free world it was just as shit. You traded school for your job and going to uni and lectures and doing assignments in your supposed free time, and I looked in from the other side of the bars and saw the kids playing and envied them. What a simple life. They looked happier than I was!' 

Nick laughed at what they said. Pathetic!

They looked around at how the school had been preserved in the relatively short time since 'The Big Day', a time so recent and yet unreachable. Nothing would bring it back. So many children had passed through here, so many groups of friends, and all their voices, their personalities and quirks and stories. Now they had vanished and became history. The wobbly handwriting and the scribbly colouring-in on the murals' artwork were made by people lost to memory. A few reading books were scattered on the floor. They featured cute animal characters that looked out from covers and pages, their big eyes searching eagerly for young ones they could teach lessons to who were no longer there to see.

'This is all that's left of this school and its children. It's like a memorial to them,' said Joe.

'Memorials are there so others can remember,' Nick said. 'There's no one left to remember! The only thing this cursed building is, is a monument to is how generations of children were imprisoned here and made to suffer. These halls are a testament to their pain. You can see it in the horrible dull work they had to make. You can feel the anguish in every crayon-scribble that makes up King Henry's fat, bearded face. You can sense the resentment in every scissor-slice used to make the title banners, and torment in every finger-smudge of PVA! It's an institute of oppression that made human souls unlearn how to be free.'

The friends started laughing during this impassioned speech, including Nick. They slid down the walls they were leaning on for support and sat around in the corridor, chuckling as they sprawled on the floor because they were so high.

'You're right. We must take down the system!' said Joe.

'On the other side of the building is the library. Every kid's favourite place to be detained, I don't think. That's where we can take down the system,' Nick said.

On the way there, the friends raided every unlocked classroom they passed along the way. They tore books in half and flung them about and threw them to each other to volley-kick them into the air and laughed at how the pages rained down. They kicked the desks so they knocked into one another and fell against each other like dominos across the room.

Once in the library, they looked at the shelves full of books, each stacked so high, an irreplaceable collection now the printing presses had ceased. This was the combined knowledge of people who had dedicated their lives to their work.

Nick handed Jack the golden lighter. 'Use it,' he said. 'Make a difference. Do something. Teach 'em a lesson.'

Jack held the flame to one book until it lit up. The cover and pages curled from the heat and the jacket sleeve discoloured and blackened as the fire rose. The burning book looked small and sad as it creased and singed. They watched as the delicate traces of flame reached up to the next shelf and the flame guttered and took on the book's dust jacket.

The slow, uncertain progress kept them rooted to the spot. Would the fire spread, would it smoulder out, should they let it? Should they stop it now or light another to help it along? 

The fire took hold and the paper burned with large yellow flames that crinkled and crackled among the pages and spread up and through the shelves. The progress of the fire was fascinating and horrifying. It grew rapidly and was very soon beyond control. They had done it now.

The three of them could feel the heat on the bare parts of their skin. It woke them from their daze. Without a word, they pulled each other along and ran for the door.

The three of them watched through the glass panes of the library doors. Because of the effect of the Herb, the fire seemed to be a living thing, a brilliant, vivid orange. The glow was mesmerising, and they watched it in awe until they coughed at the smoke and eventually realised that they should be concerned for their own safety. They ran to the car park, sited centrally to the building complex, to sit and watch the show from there. They smoked and betted on where the fire would spread next.

After a time, great billows of smoke blew their way. It stunk, made them cough and their eyes water. They would have to move along. The front of the school had a sports field, with a football pitch and a rounders diamond. It would make a safe place to sit back and watch the incredible devastation. To get there they had to make their way around to the other side of the buildings.

'Oh my God, look!' said Joe.

Nick and Jack looked in through the dark windows. Inside, there were small figures moving about – blazing masses of light that were running, zigzagging erratically around the burning room. Other little unlit figures scattered wherever they could away from the dashing fireballs until they collided with each other and fell on themselves in their confusion.

Those were children inside, or rather the Dead, a number of whom had been assembled in the hall on that first day and had been trapped in there ever since. They flailed around in the dark as their skin and clothing burnt and the fire began to spread out into the room from blankets, bags and belongings lying about on the floor. It seemed they'd prepared to stay overnight while the crisis went on outside. They blindly ran from the flames inside the room and from those that were already on their body as they fell over and ignited each other in the human inferno.

'Those are children in there,' Joe said dumbly. 'What have we done?'

'I didn't know they were in there. I didn't come round this way before. I had no way of knowing!' stammered Nick, aghast. 'I didn't know.'

'We can't tell anyone about this,' they agreed, guilty as one in their crime. They felt like foolish children now the bubble of their exhilaration had burst, guilty and appalled at the terrible thing they had done. Even if they had been lost to the infection, those were children who burned in there and they could hear the muffled chorus of their screams because of what they had done. 

They went home.