The Killables (2 page)

But Evie didn’t have to worry about the world outside, because she was one of the lucky ones, one of the ones inside the City’s walls.

The City was the only good, safe place in all the world, and that was why it was always under siege. That’s why its citizens had to understand how fortunate they were and had to work as hard as they could to keep the City secure – to do everything they could to remain virtuous, to remain worthy of the City’s protection.

Because it only took one bad apple to ruin the basket.

The road to work was long and wide; before the Horrors it had been the financial district of the City of London, a place where evil had flourished, where all that mattered was the collection and multiplication of money. The City didn’t have money; workers received tokens for goods which provided them with everything they needed.

But whilst money and its servants had not survived, the road had, and some of the buildings. Including the hospital – although now it was the Great Leader’s headquarters. It had been to the hospital that he had fled as the final hours of the Horrors had unfolded; in the hospital that he had convinced others to follow him, to believe in him, and to seek another way of living. A good, peaceful way.

There were five departments in Government Block 3 where Evie worked: Unit 1 – technology. Unit 2 – data. Unit 3 – label changing. Unit 4 – intelligence. Unit 5 – research. Evie worked in Unit 3. It was an airless room in a grey building, a new one, built in the centre of the City just minutes from the City Square, where a statue of the Great Leader stood proudly. Most of the government buildings were new; the ground on which they were built had been cleared of the rubble and old buildings left after the Horrors. The Great Leader had seen them as a new beginning, a chance for the City to establish itself as different from the cities that had stood before, with their corruption and deviants. Not everything was new; resources were limited and where buildings still stood safely and securely, they had been incorporated into the City’s design, exorcised of their previous inhabitants and allowed to be part of this new, good place. Just as its citizens had been allowed a second chance; a new, better future.

As Evie approached the building she was already taking off her coat, ready to place it quickly and efficiently in her locker before walking up to her Unit. Loitering was not condoned in the City; busy, focused minds were good minds, the Sentiments said. Standing around, gossiping; these were the breeding grounds of evil, of temptation.

But as she got to the steps that led up to the building’s door, she hesitated, her cheeks flushing slightly. It was Lucas.

‘Evie.’ Lucas smiled formally, his blond hair made almost white by the early morning sun, his clear blue eyes so striking in colour but so emotionless that Evie sometimes wanted to hit him just to see if they were capable of tears. But that was because she was a terrible person. Only a terrible person would have such a thought about the man they were going to marry. ‘Good morning. How are you today?’

He walked towards her, hand outstretched for a formal salutation, his gold watch glinting as he did so. She held hers out too, forced herself to smile, reminded herself how lucky she was that Lucas had chosen her. Marriage matches were made by both partners, both partners’ families. But everyone knew that someone like Lucas could have had his pick. Evie still wasn’t sure why he had chosen her. ‘I’m well,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘Very well.’ A smile. Then an awkward little raise of the eyebrows. ‘Well, better get to work.’

‘Absolutely.’ Evie nodded, trying to project herself into a future where they were married, where they slept in the same bed, where they spoke to each other with an easy familiarity instead of in stilted, awkward sentences punctuated by even more stilted, awkward silences. But she couldn’t see it, couldn’t imagine what it would be like.

He turned, and her eyes followed him as he walked back to his brother, who was waiting for him on the other side of the steps. Lucas was never far from Raffy, who looked so different from Lucas it was as though he was his negative: dark, dishevelled hair, dark thunderous eyes.

They said that where Lucas looked like their mother, Raffy looked like their father – and it was more than just looks. They said that was why Lucas rarely left Raffy’s side: because he wanted to watch over him, check up on him. Because he didn’t trust him.

Then again, no one seemed to trust Raffy much.

Silently, Evie watched as Lucas and Raffy walked towards the building; then, just before they disappeared, Raffy turned and their eyes met for less than a second before he turned again, Lucas looking at him quizzically before they were hidden from view. Lucas would be going to the first floor where the senior managers worked; Raffy to Floor 3 where the male Units were situated. Evie herself was on the fourth floor, in one of the female Units.

From the age of eight, boys and girls were all segregated to prevent impure thoughts. From then on, they were educated separately, even worked separately when they left school at fourteen. As Evie made her way to the stairs, she found herself trying to remember when Lucas had started being a presence in her life, when his visits had become visits to her and not to her parents. Not that they were ever left alone. Not for long. As far as marriage was concerned, their parents arranged meetings between them to find a match. She wasn’t sure who had been more surprised – herself or her parents – when Lucas had made the match formal by asking her parents for her hand. Even then he barely spoke to her. Even then it felt like something that was happening to someone else.

Sometimes Evie wished it was.

And then she wondered why she couldn’t be like everyone else, grateful for what she had. But even as she wondered, she knew the answer. Because her mother was right about her. Because she was the bad apple in the basket.

‘Morning!’ Christine, who sat next to Evie, smiled at her as they arrived together. ‘How are you?’

‘Really well. You?’

‘Great!’ Christine smiled again, then turned back to her computer.

Christine was the closest Evie had to a girl friend, but they didn’t talk all that much – a few words after the weekend, a smile in the morning. It wasn’t that Evie didn’t want friends. She just found it hard to make them when her head was full of secrets and longing that she could never reveal, not to anyone. And anyway, now that they were working there wasn’t much opportunity. Talking was frowned upon during work hours, and after work they were both expected home to help their mothers and meet with their matches or, in Christine’s case, potential matches that her parents had deemed suitable. So Evie found it easier not to share at all; to keep her head down, keep herself to herself. It wasn’t hard; the City didn’t encourage close friendships, after all. Friendships created loyalties that might conflict with the City’s needs. Friendships might become awkward if things ever changed. Like Labels.

Evie made her way to her desk, stopping first to pick up ten reports from the supervisor’s desk at the front of the room. Ten reports at a time; once finished, another ten would be taken until the reports had ended or the day had finished. At least that was what the managers used to say, but the reality was that usually the day ended before the reports did, and usually everyone worked a little bit late in order to finish them off.

The government building that Evie worked in was known as the System building; it supported and enabled the System, which regulated everything within the City walls and kept order.

Evie’s job was Label Changer; it was her first job and she had been doing it for three years, since leaving school. Their teacher had introduced the various trades and apprenticeships open to them. Seamstress, carpenter, grower, farmer, builder, technician, electrician . . . the list had seemed endless, some of the roles so inviting, like Growers – to immerse her hands in earth every day, to create food from small seeds, nurturing crops until they were ready to harvest.

But Evie’s mother was a seamstress; if she were to take any apprenticeship, it would be at her side, pricking herself with needles, her clumsy fingers failing to copy the small, delicate patterns that her mother so expertly produced. The choices seemed wide at school, but daughter followed mother and son followed father; that was always the way. Unless they did very well at school. Unless they were good enough to work for the City itself.

And so Evie had chosen the government, an office job, considered a coup because it required tests to be passed, interviews to be endured. More importantly it had persuaded her mother to drop the idea of Evie becoming a seamstress, convinced her that Evie wasn’t letting the family down in any way. Once she was married, their job would be complete. They thought they had done a good job, too, on the surface. Evie was a good citizen to all intents and purposes. Her grades were good; she could recite the Sentiments, every single one. She was a B, a good label; she had never been in any real trouble. Lucas, a senior manager, a respected citizen, was to be her match. She had done well. So far.

She looked at her reports. The first one: a change from B to C. Not life shattering, but an unhappy message to receive. In her mind’s eye Evie could see the letter arriving with its official stamp, the yellow ribbon accompanying it which would replace the blue ‘B’ ribbon, to be worn at all times on the lapel. She could hear the whispering of neighbours as they craned their necks to see, could feel the humiliation of the man concerned – Mr Alan Height – his fumbled apologies to his family, his shoulders hunching slightly as he left the house the following morning. Labels were how the System looked after everyone, looked after the City. People were given labels of A, B, C or D. As were the best – they were pure-thinking, truly good people who always helped their fellow citizen, who never thought about themselves, who were courageous and honourable and just. B’s were next best; they were also good, but not quite as good as A’s. They were trusted members of society; they held good jobs, ran community functions. C’s were okay. Most people were C’s. C’s were good on the whole but were open to temptation; sometimes had bad instincts; were easily led. C’s had to be careful; during the Horrors it had been C’s who carried out most of the carnage, dropped most of the bombs, co-ordinated most of the atrocities. Not because they were bad but because they’d fallen for the arguments of the evil ones. Of course they didn’t have labels back then; they thought people were just people, all the same. And if they didn’t, then they didn’t say anything in case they offended someone. But it wasn’t an offence to warn someone that they were vulnerable. It wasn’t an offence to look after them, to make them aware, to monitor them and make sure they were safe. That’s all the labels did. It was easy to see physical differences between people: who was strong, who was weak, who needed protection from the sun, who needed to eat less and exercise more. Everyone accepted that people were different physically. But inside? Inside, they were different too. You just had to know how to tell, what to look for.

Evie started to process the label change, inputting the relevant codes, checking and double-checking that everything was as it should be. It was irrelevant and nonsensical to feel for someone whose label had changed, she knew that. As Sentiment 26 explained, a label change was neither happy nor sad, just self-induced fact. But Evie couldn’t help herself; she could not forget the look on the face of her neighbour, Mrs Chiltern, when she had gone from C to D. She carried the shame with her long after her label had changed back to C; had never again spoken to Evie over the garden fence, or popped round to their house for tea. She wasn’t welcome; Evie’s parents had made that much clear, but even if she had been, Evie knew she wouldn’t have come. D meant deviant. D meant dangerous. Evie never knew what Mrs Chiltern had done to deserve such a label, but it didn’t matter. The System knew, and that was enough.

The System knew everything.

Evie had nearly finished Mr Height’s label change. Downward changes were always easier than upward changes – fewer checks and double checks, fewer codes to input again and again to ensure that changes were correct. Every day, the System would assess all the citizens of the City; every week there were hundreds of changes to ensure the equilibrium, to ensure that society was regulated, that goodness was valued, that order was maintained. Because order meant peace, goodness kept out evil, and because the City was predicated on community, on society, on the group not the individual.

But it wasn’t the several thousand strong City community who got the labels, it was its individuals, Evie often thought to herself. It was its individuals who had to break the bad news to their husbands and wives, individuals who were shunned on the street if their label had changed for the worse.

But such thoughts weren’t allowed. To question anything about the City was to suggest that you knew better than the Great Leader. And what could be a greater sign of selfishness than that?

Methodically Evie keyed in the codes and made the change, writing the System code onto the paper report when she had finished. Her problem was that she thought too much, she told herself. Even when she was asleep her brain kept working when instead it should be resting, trusting, accepting. By thinking too much she was as bad as the people who had doubted the Great Leader. The people who had brought about the Horrors. The people who lived outside the City walls, waiting to destroy everyone inside.

‘Evangeline, are you staring into thin air again?’ Evie looked up with a start to see Mrs Johnson, her supervisor, looking at her, and she reddened.

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean, I’m sorry.’

Mrs Johnson raised an eyebrow and Evie took out her second report. C to D. Forcing her eyes to look only at the screen ahead of her and not into the immediate future of the report’s subject, Evie started to type.

As usual, Evie was late home. An hour this time. Sometimes it was more. It didn’t matter; her parents would wait for her. Everyone worked hard in the City; everyone was productive. Busy minds were happy minds, the Great Leader said. Productive individuals meant a happy society. And hard work meant less thinking time, less opportunity for evil to flourish.