Children's Crusade

Chapter Thirty

They counted twenty-three dead soldiers, forty-six dead children and three young women in their final sweep of the Palace of Westminster. Plus Lee, of course.

Some of the soldiers' bodies had been horribly mutilated. One had been literally torn apart. Green chose to believe it was the women from the lords who did that, not the children.

He organised teams to recover all of the bodies from the building — all their dead, that is. They left the snatchers to burn, and buried their dead in Parliament Square.

When the mob finally burnt itself out they gathered in the road outside, dazed by what they'd done, slowly coming down like clubbers after a great night out. Green addressed the crowd, telling them about the school, offering a home to all those who wanted to come with him. Anyone who wanted to return to the communities they were snatched from could come back with them too, he promised to arrange safe transport home.

A bunch of the comfort women elected to come with them, but a group of nine children refused to come along, insisting that they could look after themselves, distrustful of all adults even still. He let them go.

The fire spread more slowly than expected, but the entire Parliament complex was ablaze by the time they loaded the remaining children back into the lorries and set off for St Mark's through the snow.

As they reached the edge of the city two of them parted company with the main convoy. Jack led a small team to Heathrow where they spent three busy days siphoning off aircraft fuel, laying charges, planning the biggest explosion since Salisbury. When they pulled out of the airport, they left a huge conflagration behind them. All the planes burned, the runways a mass of unuseable craters. Nobody would be flying children to the US from there ever again, and neither could the American Church land and start again. In the week that followed, they took care of Gatwick and Luton before returning to St Mark's.

Wilkes and Ferguson, who had taken off back to Nottingham once the battle of Westminster was over, had promised the Rangers would take similar steps at Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds airports. Obviously there were still local and military airfields the church could use, but they agreed this sent a strong message and was worth the effort.

Jane took no part in any of this. She sat silent, comatose, her eyes fixed on some distant point. She let herself be led into one of the lorries, compliant, like a puppet or a doll.

When they got back to the school she took to her bed and stayed there. She would eat when she was fed, sleep when the candle was blown out, wake when they opened her curtains.

But that was all.

It was as if she wasn't even in there anymore.