Although she had more questions, Kennedy kept them to herself as the journey continued, reminding herself that they would either get answered anyway during the course of events or she would die without ever really knowing but at which point she would be past caring anyway. Trying to work out where they were going by attempting to pick out the obscured, near-invisible landmarks out the car windows, her mind drifted back to the processing centre. She wondered about the people either side of her in the queue and whether they had reached the front of their respective lines yet. She smiled to herself, imagining Rosie chattering and flirting with whoever awaited her in that small chamber between the room where everyone was lined up and the processing floor, right up to the moment of death. She had been nice, Kennedy through, her memory already glossing over the elements of her personality she had thought at the time might become hard work, even irritating, with prolonged exposure.

She thought about the marks on necks of the yellow-graded bodies. The two small, pink lines. Clearly these were in some way linked to the killing method used, as much as the cut throats of the red Animals and small bug-bite-like needle-marks of the green. She mulled the thought around in her mind for a few minutes, trying to think what kind of fatal instrument could leave such a mark without damaging the rest of the body. Then it hit her. The pink lines were burn-marks from some kind of super-powered taser, pressed into the neck and delivering a jolt of electricity that would be near-instantly fatal. She pictured Rosie in the room, trying her best to be cooperative while the worker checked the charge on her tool. Would she be kneeling? Kennedy wondered. Standing? Perhaps even given a chair on bench to sit on? Kneeling seemed most likely. She wondered if her bubbly friend had been mid-sentence as the electrodes were pressed into her neck. She thought about the rather voluptuous body making its way down the conveyor to be hung up, drained and gutted like the catch of the day before being parted out and packaged up for distribution.

When thinking about the family who had arrived and waited together only to be separated by grade, two of the children marked as green while the third and his parents joined Rosie in the yellow line, her mind drifted to her own mother and she wondered what she was doing at that exact moment. One thing Kennedy had been emphatic about when she had said goodbye was that she didn’t want her mum staying home that day, sitting on her own in the house and wondering whether her only child was dead yet.

“As soon as I’m checking in at the processing centre,” she reminded her, “the compensation payment will hit your bank account! It’s not like you need it for bills,” she had pointed out kindly, “and you don’t have anyone else to save it for like you did with my dad’s to buy me Christmas presents! So go out and blow it! All in one day if you want to! Take your girl-friends on a shopping trip and treat them to dinner. Cocktails afterwards! Whatever you feel like doing but please,” she had looked directly, pleadingly, into her mother’s eyes, “do something fun today, and don’t be alone!”

Outside the darkened windows, the landscape changed. There were no more buildings, just hedgerows, and the ghosts of mountains and trees in the distance. Wherever they were, it was certainly far away from anywhere else.

“So,” Esmeralda broke the silence, trying to engage the others in a bit of time-passing banter. “Who’s done the most fucking this week?” The other three eagerly launched into the stories of the wild and improbably sexcapades of the previous seven days, seemingly trying out out-do each other in terms of quantity of partners, number of times they had done it and the outrageousness of each occasions. Kennedy said nothing, staring out the window. That time with Bobby had been her first time and her last, her only time, and she did not regret that for an instance.

What was this obsession? She wondered. Rosie had been the same! Why did so many people seem determined to spend their last week of life fucking like it was going out of fashion? Like there was the risk someone else might use up all the sex before they got theirs? Sure, she understood the desire to cram as much activity as you could into the little time remaining to you, to do some of the things you thought you still had years left to get around to, but why so much fucking? It hadn’t felt bad with Bobby, not once they both got used to it, it had even felt quite nice once she relaxed and found a rhythm but so did a lot of things! Sure, if they had never tried it, she could see having sex being one item on an Animal’s bucket list but for so many it seemed to be the whole list!

What about a mug of fancy hot chocolate? A slice of cake from that expensive bakery? The movie everyone had told you about but you’d not get around to watching yet, the parks, places and attractions you’d always fancied visiting but had never been to? Surely, Kennedy thought, there were plenty of things just as good if not better than sex so why was everyone so obsessed with it? Not for the first time in her short life, she sighed and wondered what it was everyone else seemed to understand that she was simply missing.

The sigh had come out a little louder than she intended and got Naomi’s attention.

“Hey,” she poked her in the ribs playfully, “you’re pretty quiet! Bet you’ve got some stories! Why are you holding out on us? Trying to remember the best one?”

“I was actually wondering,” Kennedy replied, sounding more irritating than she had meant to, “when the rest of you found any time to eat, wash or sleep this past week?”

“Plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead!” Stu pointed out with a chuckle but it was too late. The frostiness of Kennedy’s reply had soured the mood and they all fell quiet. Sitting awkwardly in the middle of the seat, Kennedy hated herself for upsetting them. She really hadn’t meant to. She had been so absorbed in her own thoughts that the words had come tumbling out unfiltered. It wasn’t that she begrudged them their fun, she just didn’t understand it. Could not feel a part of it. She wondered if that was what it must be like to be deaf and be aware that music was a thing but never able to actually experience it, or blind and unable to appreciate art or the beauty of nature? It certainly seemed to make them all happy and wasn’t that what really counted? Was she behaving like someone with a mild dairy allergy to bans everyone around her to drinking milk.

“Hey, sorry.” She smiled apologetically. “I didn’t mean that how it came out. I’m just… not into all that. Y’know? So I don’t have any stories to share.” There was one, of course. She felt sure they would get a kick out of hearing what had happened between her and Bobby in the swimming pool changing room but she did not feel like sharing it. It was not just her experience. Her Story. It was Bobby’s too and to share it without him, even if she didn’t mention his name, felt oddly disrespectful. “But glad you guys had fun!” She grinned, trying to win them back over and the others seemed to relax. “So,” she asked, wanting to get the conversation started back up again, “where were you all when it happened? You know,” she held up the wrist that normally bore her watch and tapped it, “when you found out!”

As Kennedy had hoped, this led to an equally animated conversation, one that she was able to properly engage with this time. She glanced over at Mr Lomax. He was sitting silently. Still. His eyes staring straight again and, although they were aimed squarely in her direction, Kennedy felt certain that he was not looking at her. No, he was looking through her. Past her. Not really focussed on anything that was going on in the car although surely ready to chastise or discipline any of them who stepped too far out of line.

After another twenty minutes or so the car slowed and they heard the crunch of gravel under the tires before the vehicle came to a complete stop. There heard the click of the driver’s door opening then footsteps on the gravel before the back door was opened and Mr Lomax ordered them all out.

Standing rather uncomfortably barefoot on the crunchy surface, Kennedy looked in awe at the property they had been delivered to. She supposed it was technically a house but a house bigger than her school! Made from a mix of red brick and yellow sandstone, it looked quite new yet in a classic, timeless style, as if it could really have been built in any era from the fifteenth century onwards. The front doors stood open and she could see a grand lobby beyond. Theirs was not the only car in the driveway, far from it, but rather shockingly it did appear to be the most modest. A woman in a smart, white uniform came out of the doors and ordered the naked teens to line up which they did, hurriedly but awkwardly, before she walked along the line, inspecting like almost like a drill sergeant.

“Very good!” She declared herself satisfied with a rather abrupt nod. Kennedy noticed her slight Scottish accent. “Mr Lomax, that will be all.” She dismissed the smartly-dressed man who got back into the car. “Animals,” she turned to them, “follow me! We have lots to get done and not enough time in which to do it!”


To be continued...