The Killables (9 page)

Raffy heard the voice; his face went white. Evie turned and looked at him in despair. There were no words, nothing to say.

Raffy went to the window. ‘Look, I’ll make sure he knows this is my fault,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him I forced my way in. I’ll tell him you tried to get me to leave . . .’

Evie shook her head. ‘He knows,’ she said again. ‘He saw us.’

Raffy held out his hand, took hers in it and squeezed it so hard she yelped in pain. ‘I’m sorry, Evie,’ he said, his voice choking up. ‘I love you. I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. I love you too,’ she replied through the lump in her throat as Raffy climbed out of the window, down the side of the house and back into the garden where Lucas was waiting for him. They didn’t exchange a word; Lucas put a commanding hand on Raffy’s shoulder and steered him out towards the back gate.

He didn’t look back at Evie, who lay down on her bed, pulled the bedclothes over her and waited for the morning, for everything to change. Through her fear she felt something almost approaching relief that the truth was out, that she would be known for what she really was, that the pretence would be over. And with that thought, she fell asleep.

The next morning, Evie felt a strange sense of calm as she came downstairs. Lucas would have told someone. Her parents would know. But her mother was busy getting ready and seemed to barely notice Evie as she attempted to eat some breakfast.

Apprehensively, she got washed and dressed, then left the house, waiting for someone to point at her, shout at her or take her away. And yet nothing happened; it was almost as if what had taken place last night was another dream, as though it hadn’t occurred at all. And when she arrived at work and her supervisor barely looked up, and Christine gave her usual little smile of greeting, Evie began to think that maybe it had been a dream, that maybe none of it had happened at all.

She didn’t see Raffy anywhere, but that wasn’t unusual. He was probably at work already; could even be on the early shift. And when she didn’t see him at lunch, either, at the government canteen where they all exchanged tokens for plates of vegetables, bread and cheese, she told herself that it had all indeed been a dream. Raffy had not come to her house; he had accepted what she’d told him. He was staying out of the way to make things easier. Everything was going to be okay.

But try as she might, she couldn’t suppress what she knew was the truth. Raffy had come to her room and Lucas had seen. If Lucas hadn’t told anyone yet, there would be a reason. She had seen the anger in his eyes. She had betrayed him; she had violated the laws of the City, and she had fraternised with his brother. Whatever was going to happen, it would not be good, and waiting for it was only going to make it worse.

‘Deviant! Going home to plot, are we? To wallow in dangerous thoughts?’

Evie jumped – there were men behind her, running towards her with violence in their eyes. Immediately she froze, knowing that they were coming for her – that somehow, in the time between leaving work and now, the truth had come out and everyone knew her for what she was.

But as she stood stock-still, the men ran past her. Dazed, she watched as they moved in on their real target, surrounding him, baying for blood and shouting loudly. Before they closed in on him, she saw his face, saw the terror in his eyes. It was Mr Bridges, the man demoted to a D the week before, the man the Brother had warned them about.

She wanted to run, but she couldn’t; something in her had to witness the attack, told her she should know what lay ahead for her.

‘No,’ Mr Bridges was calling out. ‘I’m sorry. I . . .’

‘You what?’ heckled one of the men. ‘You’re not sorry. You’re a D. You’re a deviant.’

‘You’ve brought evil into the City,’ another man shouted, as Mr Bridges was thrown to the ground.

‘Corrupting our families,’ yelled someone else.

One of the men shouting caught Evie’s eye. It was Mr Adams, who lived a few doors down from her. He had been a D just the year before. He knew what this was like. He knew . . .

Evie crossed the road; she couldn’t watch after all. She felt sick to her stomach. She had to go, to get far away.

Mr Adams was still looking at her. ‘See?’ he crowed. ‘See how young Evie is crossing the road to avoid you? No one even wants to look at you.’

Evie hesitated. If she were brave, if she were reckless like Raffy, she’d tell Mr Bridges that it was not he who made her want to cross the road, but his attackers. But she was not brave; she was afraid. Attacks like this were accepted in the City, encouraged even. Not sanctioned, but the police guard and the Brothers would generally look the other way when a D was under siege. ‘Violence is wrong,’ the Brother would say, shaking his head sadly when he heard of such an attack. ‘But sometimes we must meet evil on its own terms in order to destroy it.’

So instead Evie ran into the bakery on the corner, pretended that she was studying the bread so that she wouldn’t have to see what was happening, wouldn’t have to be a part of it.

‘You want something?’ asked the woman behind the counter. ‘We’ve got some lovely flat loaves today. Just three coupons each. Or a wholemeal, if you like that sort of thing. Four coupons, I’m afraid, because the flour’s more expensive. But it’s big. Look.’ She held up a large loaf and Evie stared at it blankly. She could not think about bread, about food; she could think about nothing but what was happening to Mr Bridges, what would inevitably happen to her.

‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ she said to the woman. ‘I’ll have to talk to my mother.’

‘Right you are.’ The woman shrugged, looking a little disappointed. She peered out of the window at the attack on Mr Bridges. ‘Horrible business,’ she muttered. ‘Just shows you can’t tell, can you? Think you know someone and all the time they’re a deviant waiting to corrupt you. He was in here every day buying bread. I never thought he was . . . well, you know. One of them.’

Evie nodded uncomfortably, then turned to look back out over the road where the men were still taunting Mr Bridges. One had picked up a stick and started to hit him with it. Another followed suit. How long would she be trapped here? How long would she have to watch this torture?

And then, suddenly, she heard another voice cut through the men’s braying, which made them halt their beating. ‘You have been authorised by the Great Leader himself to mete out this punishment, I assume?’

It was a harsh voice, one so distinctive it could be no one else. She poked her head out of the door to see Lucas approaching the group, his gaze steely with anger.

The men stared at him furiously then, seeing his yellow label, appeared more hesitant. ‘What’s it to you?’ one of them growled, approaching Lucas warily. ‘He’s a D. He’s dangerous. He lives on our road. And we don’t want him here.’

‘What’s it to me? I’m a citizen of this City and my understanding is that the System is there to ensure our safety and order,’ Lucas answered icily. ‘This kind of behaviour is, as far as I’m aware, driven by anger and a need to assert yourselves, which are corrupt values that have no place within the City’s walls.’ He was smiling, but even from across the road Evie could see the ice in his eyes. She felt a wave of fear wash over her; they were the same eyes she had seen the night before in the moonlight.

‘How dare you?’ shouted the leader of the group, a heavy-built man with a shock of dark hair and insolent eyes. ‘How dare you suggest that we’re in the wrong? He’s the wrong’un. He’s the one who’s waiting to attack our families.’

He moved towards Lucas and lunged at him, but Lucas was too quick; he grabbed the man’s wrists, spun him around as if he were half the size, and held his arms behind his back. Evie gasped as she watched him; it made no sense. Why would Lucas protect a D? Why?

‘And you think that attacking him is what our Great Leader has in mind when he tells us in Sentiment 78 to “accept our label and that of others, for the System knows its business and we must know ours and strive only to improve, strive only to better ourselves and in so doing, better our community, our City and our civilisation”?’ he quoted through gritted teeth. He threw the man to the ground. ‘Get out of here. Go home,’ he ordered them, staring at each in turn as though daring them to defy him.

No one did. Their eyes cast down, they left, one or two turning every so often to shoot a remorseful look at Lucas. Then Lucas held his hand out to Mr Bridges, who was cowering on the ground. Evie watched wide-eyed, trying to make sense of it, of why Lucas would do such a thing.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

Mr Bridges nodded. ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ he croaked. ‘I don’t know how to—’

‘Don’t thank me,’ Lucas barked. ‘I want no thanks from a D. I was simply protecting those men from themselves, from being corrupted by you.’ He looked around and Evie ducked back behind the door. The next time she looked, Lucas was giving something to Mr Bridges – a card, his card – then he turned and started to walk. Right towards the bakery. Right towards Evie. She looked around frantically but there was no time to escape, and nowhere to hide in the small shop.

He opened the door heavily and she braced herself. Perhaps he would be kind to her just as he had been with Mr Bridges, she found herself thinking. Perhaps Lucas was not a machine after all. Perhaps . . . As he walked in, he saw her immediately. ‘Evie,’ he said, his eyes narrowing, the emotion disappearing from his face. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘She’s not sure which bread she wants,’ the woman behind the counter said with a sigh.

‘I am sure,’ Evie said quickly, trying to see some indication in Lucas’s face of what he was going to do, of what her future might hold. ‘I just . . . I need to check with my mother. It’s three coupons a loaf.’

‘Then you should not waste Mrs Arnold’s time,’ Lucas said impassively.

‘No, no, of course not . . .’ Evie replied, flushing guiltily.

She caught Lucas’s eye and he held her gaze for a few seconds until she could stand it no more and had to look away again.

‘I spoke to your father this afternoon,’ he said then, and Evie felt the blood drain from her face.

‘My . . . father?’

Lucas nodded. ‘I said I would pay you a visit this evening. If that is agreeable.’

Evie stared at him uncertainly. ‘Pay me a visit?’ she asked.

‘It has been too long,’ said Lucas evenly, his expression betraying no emotion at all.

‘Then I’ll see you later,’ Evie managed to answer as she backed out of the shop. She hesitated for a moment before letting the door close; opened her mouth to say something to Lucas. But she realised there was nothing to say. He had decided that he would tell her parents tonight, and there was nothing she could do. So she left, and went home, and waited.

‘Lucas, how nice to see you.’

Evie and her parents had finished supper and had been waiting, artificially, around the table for twenty minutes, not wanting to move because Lucas had specifically been invited for post-supper coffee. A tradition in the City for evening guests, coffee was always served at the kitchen table, and to move into another room would only highlight to Lucas the fact that he was later than agreed.

Evie looked up as her father ushered Lucas into the kitchen. She had barely managed to eat more than a few mouthfuls, had hoped against hope that he wouldn’t come, that something would crop up to prevent him, that he would find a reason to stay away. But he was here; she forced a smile, and reluctantly scraped her chair to the left as her mother ushered her to do, as Lucas took his seat next to her.

‘And how are we all?’ he asked, looking around the table.

‘We are very well, thank you for asking,’ Evie’s mother said quickly. ‘Will you have some coffee? It’s freshly brewed.’

Without waiting for an answer she jumped up and started to fuss over Lucas’s coffee, finding him a biscuit to go with it, asking him if he would like some of the apple bake they’d had for pudding. Evie had never forgotten the look in her mother’s eye when news of her match to Lucas had been announced, when the Brother had come to her and Evie’s father and suggested that Lucas would be interested in marrying their daughter. Not that Evie had been in the room; she had been looking through a crack in the door, listening intently as her fate was set out for her. Her mother’s eyes had lit up. But not with excitement, or pleasure, but with surprise. Then with relief. Evie would not be her responsibility any more; at least that was how Evie read it. Her father had been more sober; he had asked more questions, nodding thoughtfully as he considered the answers. It had been he, too, who had suggested asking Evie. It was only a courtesy; Evie knew she would say yes, knew there was no choice but to agree, but it was still nice to be asked. Nice to be given the impression that she was in some way involved in the decision and not simply an object being passed around.

Lucas turned down the apple bake and the biscuit; he took his coffee black. No sugar. Evie watched him as he drank it, his lips appearing not to feel the heat of the drink that still had steam rising from it. Was he entirely unfeeling? she wondered. Did emotions simply not register with him? Perhaps he was made of wood. Perhaps he
was
a machine underneath his human veneer. That afternoon she thought that she had seen something else in Lucas. Something that didn’t quite add up, that she didn’t quite understand. But she knew now that she’d been mistaken. Lucas had broken up the fight because he was following the Sentiments precisely. Logically. It was not because he felt for Mr Bridges, not because the hatred of those men had upset him. It was because he could not understand their anger and fear; he did not know what it was to feel such things.

‘And how are you, Lucas?’ asked Evie’s mother, leaning forward expectantly as though the answer Lucas would give was more interesting to her than any other piece of news in the world.

Lucas smiled. ‘I’m very well. Very well.’

‘And your mother? Is she well?’

‘She is,’ Lucas confirmed. Then he hesitated for just a second before continuing. ‘Unfortunately, however, my brother is ill. He is quarantined. But I myself am in good health.’