The Cull Read online

  As they board the bus, each and every one of the kids gives me a swift, nervous glance. Taking in where I’m sitting, Figuring out which is the farthest seat away from me that’s still available.

  Fortunately, Pat isn’t so ridiculously superstitious.

  He’s the last to board the bus before it sets off. When he sees me sitting alone, he gives everyone a disgusted glare before sliding in besides me.

  I say ‘sliding in’, but Pat’s one of those naturally athletic guys who swings into a seat with admirable grace. Like it’s the perfect finish to an elegantly smooth, ten out of ten triple flip on the gym’s rings.

  Yeah, that’s why all the girls are always chasing after him.

  ‘So, how’d it go last night?’ he says. ‘I mean, explaining to your mum and dad about the police interview?’

  ‘Ah, you know my mum and dad,’ I say to Pat with a satisfied chuckle. ‘First thing they did after I told them was call Miss Pollitt. They gave her a rocket for allowing me to be interviewed by the cops without them being present. I think she must have said something along the lines that she was present throughout the interview, because dad shouted down the phone that it certainly wasn’t the same as him being there. Which, yeah, knowing dad, it sure as heck wouldn’t have been the same!’

  ‘So Jaz, we’re both in agreement that you’ve got a cool mum and dad, right?’

  ‘Pat, no one thinks their mum and dad are cool. Least of all me!’

  ‘Okay, way cooler than mine then.’

  ‘You’re proving my point, you understand that, right?’

  ‘What I understand is that this stroppiness is just the very thing I was trying to lead up to anyway, Jaz; something that’s been puzzling me for quite a while now. Like, how come you’re all seething away inside, like you’re this angry girl who thinks life’s been unfair to you? What’ve you got to be angry about? You’ve got friends–’

  He chuckles at this point, glancing around at the empty seats surrounding us.

  ‘Well, okay, you did have friends, until all this thing with you seeming to be Death’s apprentice came up. But apart from that, life’s looking just great for you, way I see it. I mean, you’re bright, and you’re not bad looking either – how many people get to get both those things right, huh?’

  ‘Hah! Not bad looking? You should see the raw material on a morning, before I put in a lot of hard work on the cold face.’

  To show him what I mean, I lean my face in closer towards his, letting him see the makeup I’ve applied so deftly that it even passes unnoticed at school.

  ‘You’ve got makeup on? Wow! It looks so natural!’

  ‘Shhuussh! We’re not allowed makeup in school, remember? So it’s got be applied intelligently!’

  ‘And this is why you’re angry? Because you figure you weren’t first in the queue when the straight teeth and what have you were being handed out?’

  I give a weak, partly embarrassed shrug.

  ‘You wouldn’t know it, Pat, but it’s surprising how being one of life’s fives rather than eight or nines can drag you down when you’re moping over some guy who’ll never give you a second glance. Besides, I suppose I’m really angry because I read; anyone who reads about what’s going on in the world today has just got to be angry.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I’m so free and easy, yeah?’

  ‘That and your straight teeth.’

  ‘I’d prefer straight “A”s, like you.’

  ‘Yeah, me and nearly ninety-five percent of kids in school. Where’s the point in that?’

  We both rock and jiggle in our seats as the bus slowly but noisily rumbles over the railway tracks of a level crossing.

  We’re suddenly thrown violently forward. We nearly bang our heads on the back of the seat in front.

  The bus has come to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Get out of the way you idiot!’ the driver furiously yells out. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  He’s standing up in his seat, leaning over his steering wheel. He’s wildly waving his fists at someone I can’t see lying beyond the bus’s large glass front.

  He turns back to us to explain the delay.

  ‘There’s an idiot blocking our path! He swung right out in front of me as we were crossing the tracks!’

  Pat moves a little way down the aisle between the seats, lifting his head up high so he can see what the problem is.

  ‘He’s right; it’s some jerk in a car who’s just sitting there on our side of the road!’

  ‘What if a train comes?’ someone behind me anxiously wails.

  Right on cue, the crossing’s warning alarms and lights begin to ring and flash.

  *

  Chapter 4

  ‘Get out of the way! Get out of the way!’

  The driver screams uselessly at the car blocking our path. He presses his horn again and again.

  The teacher, Miss Druen, is standing close to him. She looks flustered, frightened.

  ‘Back up!’ Pat cries out to the diver. ‘Back up, then swing around him on the other side of the road!’

  The blaring horn. The clanging of the alarm bells.

  The frightened chatter. The nervous shrieks.

  Everyone’s standing up in their seats, their faces white, deathly.

  At last, the driver sits down in his seat, his arms a whirl as he throws the bus into reverse.

  And there’s a new, even more frightening sound to add to the mix; the sound of gears whirring uselessly as they refuse to mesh.

  *

  Everyone seems to be screaming.

  Even the driver, who’s yelling out curses as he tries time and time again to force the bus into gear.

  Miss Druen, by contrast, is a frozen statue, her eyes wide with confusion.

  ‘Open the exits,’ Pat cries out, spinning around and pointing out the large windows designed to be used as emergency exits. ‘There’s one at the back, one on either side. And someone get the driver to open the door!’

  His last words are almost drowned out by a loud whirring of machinery, the clanking of metal on metal.

  ‘The gates! The gates are coming down behind us!’ someone shrieks out from the back of the bus.

  I whirl around in my seat.

  Through the huge rear window, I can see the automatic gate gradually dropping into position.

  ‘The train’s coming and we can’t get off the bus!’

  ‘Let us off the bus!’

  Most of the kids are panicking now. A few of them, however, have managed to cling on to enough sense to wrench back the handles on the exit windows.

  The windows fling open. Cool air rushes in. The sound of the clanging alarms and descending gates are suddenly louder than ever.

  There’s a chaotic scramble as the kids rush towards the nearest exit.

  They’re tripping over each other’s feet.

  They’re pulling angrily at anyone they think is blocking their way, or jumping in front of them.

  At last, Miss Druen has woken up from her trance.

  ‘One at a time, one at a time!’ she yells, like it’s going to do any good.

  Outside the coach, a few brave adults have rushed onto the railway line. They’re reaching up to help the first of the kids clamber out of the exit windows.

  The door at the front has also been opened at last, the kids hurriedly filing out.

  As soon as they’re outside the bus, the kids dash for the safety of the other side of the gates.

  Pat worriedly glances my way. He turns round, starts heading back towards me.

  Like me, he’s noticed that I’m a good way from any exit.

  I’m going to be one of the last to leave, unless I push and pull and barge my way to the front of those scrambling to get out.

  Other kids are staring at me too.

  White faced. Open mouthed.

  Scared.

  Angry.

  They think it’s all my fault.

  Think th
at I’m responsible for bringing them here.

  Bringing death down upon them.

  Outside, I can now hear the very worst sound of all.

  It’s the rails.

  Hissing. Like a huge, deadly snake.

  Hissing louder and louder, as the train hurtles towards us.

  *

  I’m still on the bus when the train smashes into us.

  *

  Chapter 5

  One minute – no, one second – I’m at the back of a mass of kids, all trying to get through a window exit that only lets two through at any one time.

  The next, there’s a blinding flash.

  The sound of two planets colliding.

  The force of a hurricane-like gust of wind.

  I’m suddenly flung upwards, spinning, tumbling.

  Pat’s with me.

  Unconscious. Holding my hand.

  When did we first hold hands?

  I don’t know.

  Wreckage is flying everywhere around us.

  Shards of glass. Chunks of metal. Shattered seats.

  Bloodied body parts.

  Strangely, we’re moving slower than all these other things.

  Like we’re in an invisible bubble.

  We drop back to the ground, just slightly after everything else.

  We tumble across the ground as lightly as if we’ve slipped and fallen on a grassy hillock.

  It doesn’t make any sense.

  We should have struck the ground at a back-breaking, bone-shattering speed.

  As I finally come out of my dizzying, tumbling roll, I look about me in amazement that I’ve survived – and that’s when I see him.

  An angel.

  He glows. Shimmers. Like the sun sparkling on water.

  Then, pulsating like the heat haze above a roaring fire, he vanishes.

  *

  Chapter 6

  This time, the loss of life is so great that the school is shut down for a few days.

  Miss Druen died too. The driver was amongst the severely injured.

  Fortunately, the train involved in the accident had been a goods train. The engine driver had died so quickly he wouldn’t have suffered, we’re all assured.

  The press and news channels have descend on the area, seeking to interview anyone they can. Particularly survivors of the crash like myself and Pat.

  I avoid them, naturally.

  Already, there are whispers circulating the neighbourhood that I shouldn’t have survived the crash: that I was seated in an area farthest from any exit points; that I’d still been seen standing on the bus as the train struck.

  The rumour that I’m Death’s emissary seems to have been accepted as fact by most of the other kids.

  Whenever I see them out on the street, they deliberately move out of my way.

  They suddenly change the direction they were taking. They glare at me with a heady mix of loathing and fear.

  Only Pat’s standing by me.

  He thinks they’re all talking crazy. Sure we survived, but obviously it was one of those freak situations where the force of the impact threw us clear.

  He’s not against talking to the journalists. He wants to explain the ‘miracle’ of our survival.

  There was a blinding flash, he told them. Then we passed out.

  (That’s what I’ve told Pat; that, like him, I passed out. He didn’t see the angel. So I’m not going to give him the idea that I’m a little bit crazy by telling him we were rescued by an angel.)

  We woke up off to one side of the accident, he’d told the eagerly listening press corp. We were safe and only a little bruised.

  They’d all lapped it up.

  Me, I tell them I’m too shook up to want to talk about it.

  ‘She needs time to adjust to the sad loss of her friends,’ Mum says, holding back a horde of clamouring journalists besieging our house.

  The headline writers just love the story.

  The miracle amongst the tragedy.

  A million-to-one chance; the survivors of the Forthingham school bus disaster.

  As the nation weeps, a cause for joy.

  My picture is plastered across TV screens and the papers.

  My pictured is scattered, torn and ripped, across our front lawn.

  *

  After a few days, even I’m beginning to doubt that I was rescued by some sort of guardian angel.

  I mean; it just seems so incredibly farfetched, doesn’t it?

  Why would an angel bother rescuing me? Why would he let all those other poor kids die so horribly?

  Perhaps, as Pat explains it, we were simply lucky enough to be thrown clear.

  The blinding flash of light was just a part of the shock of impact. The sight of the angel just my eyes or my mind playing tricks as I recovered from that dizzying roll.

  After an accident like that, I’d be bound to be a little dazed, a little confused, wouldn’t I?

  I’ve got plenty of time to try and work out what really happened that day. Obviously, I’m not exactly inundated with visits from school friends asking how I’m feeling, how I’m coping.

  Pat comes round, but he prefers not to talk about it.

  He’s done enough talking, he says. Now he just wants to forget all about it for a while.

  Unlike me, he didn’t steadfastly refuse the offer of counselling.

  It helped him, he says. Letting all those conflicting emotions pour out.

  Horror. Relief.

  Feelings of inadequacy. A sense of impregnability.

  Exuberance that he survived. Guilt that he did; a sense that he didn’t deserve to.

  While he’s here, we revert to normal and have a bit of a giggle on the computer. As we usually do, Pat hacks into various websites where I can add a few choice bits of misinformation.

  Why?

  Why not?

  It amazes me, the way you can post something up on the web and, a few months later, it’s become an accepted fact. Quoted everywhere you look. As if it’s from a reliable source.

  Did you know that wasps’ stings are the new, natural Botox? Well, you and few hundred million people do now.

  Ohh; and have I just let slip that I’ve been circulating another bit of false information?

  Like, how come such a hot guy like Pat is a bit of a geek when it comes to hacking into sites?

  Those things rarely go together, right?

  He’s a guy, too, who said he’d like to get straight ‘A’s?

  Well, sure he’s not too hot when it comes to the schoolwork. Like me, he’s bored with it. Unlike me, he pours all that frustrated intelligence into a passion for computers and music.

  As for Pat being physically edible; well, in my eyes he is, see?

  Beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that, right?

  And in this case, I’m the beholder.

  He does move lithely, if not exactly athletically.

  And yep, he’s got the most regularly straight teeth I’ve ever seen on anyone that hasn’t splurged a fortune on dental work.

  I just exaggerated a little when I said all the other girls were so into him.

  Well, that’s what I fear, isn’t it?

  That one of them will snap him up before I do?

  I simply can’t understand why they don’t all fancy him as much as I do.

  Oh, and while I’m in confession mode, all that about him taking control on the bus?

  It might not have happened quite like that.

  It was all so chaotic; people shouting everywhere.

  The diver might have been paying attention to Pat. He might not.

  Come on, be serious; you must have been wondering how the Pat I’d been describing earlier was always hanging around with someone like me?

  I’ve already said, haven’t I, that I’m no great shakes in the looks department?

  Or did you think I was lying about that part?

  Sitting beside me, Pat chuckles as he reads what I’ve added to a site he�
�s latched us into.

  It’s a site that’s already spouting some pretty wild theories about ‘The Mysteries of the Ancients’. Me, I’ve just made up and added a few extra equivalents of Shamir, the stone-splitting serpent Solomon recruited into the building of his temple.

  ‘They’ll never go for that, Jasmine!’

  ‘Ahh, these wilder, pseudo-scientific sites always go for it, Pat! There’s already so much weird stuff on there, they can’t tell when someone’s just made something up!’

  Downstairs, I hear a heavy rapping on the front door.

  I’d know that knock anywhere by now.

  I trot over to the window.

  Yep, I was right.

  The police car is parked outside by the kerb.

  *

  Chapter 7

  Either mum or dad will send the policewoman off with a flea in her ear.

  As they always do.

  ‘If you get any problems from her, let me know,’ dad had said to me after she called round the first time, just after the accident.

  Now she comes round at least once a day. Sometimes even twice.

  ‘If I could just have a word with Jaz, then–’

  That’s usually about as far as she gets before either mum or dad cuts her off.

  They’ll cite whatever law or restriction they can that’s basically telling her to go take a hike, unless she’s here to make an official charge.

  She’s persistent, I’ll give her that.

  We can’t keep turning her away for ever, can we?

  Sure we can.

  I haven’t been able to follow the conversation taking place downstairs.

  But I hear the door being slammed shut.

  I watch as she languidly makes her way back to the car, ignoring the hailstorm of questions thrown her way by the journalists camped outside.

  Suddenly, she glances back and up, catching me at the window.

  There’s a sour, determined look on her face.

  A look that says, I’m going to get you one day.

  *

  Today, the school is opening its doors once more.

  The journalists are out in force. They’re hanging outside both the school gates. They’re hanging outside the homes of each kid who survived the accident.