Boys
1 Stephan Andropoulos
2 Josh Bradshaw
3 Dave Brunning
4 Will Dalton
5 James Dyer
6 Alex Green
7 Mahmoud Ibrahim
8 James Lewis
9 Sami Modha
10 Jack Trull
11 Joe Wright
12 Paul Yates
Girls
1 Alicia Brown
2 Abigail Dawson
3 Shabina Ghazali
4 Nina Haczynski
5 Emma Litchfield
6 Erin Lynch
7 Lauren Norris
8 Sophie Orr
9 Zoe Peacock
10 Natalie Rankin
11 Katie Robinson
12 Bethany Tupper
0 dead, 24 remain...
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PROLOGUE
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The old video tape was almost worn out from repeated use; the sound and picture were completely garbled in some parts, but even so, he was watching it again. He held down the fast-forward button until he got to the bit he wanted, then let it play. Lines of static danced across the screen, then the scene he liked the best appeared. Jerky camerawork as the crew manoeuvred their way through the tightly-packed soldiers and armed guards. The air was thick with the din of helicopters. Transporting the winner to the mainland from the island was a major operation, as she'd probably killed more people than any of the soldiers present and was considered a major security risk until she had passed through the normalisation process.
The camera finally managed to push through to the front line. Richie Stuart, the oily presenter, was chattering excitedly about what a fine game it had been, but the boy watching the tape was not interested in any of the peripheral stuff. He wanted to know what a winner looked like.
She didn't look like much. A gangplank was thrown down and she was led onto the dock, a small girl with short fair hair hanging over her face, her hands folded behind her back. She was surrounded by a detail of armed men to keep the reporters back. Richie Stuart hurried forward and, flashing his ID, was allowed through. He was the presenter of the Program, had been working non-stop for three days while the battle raged, and now it was over, it was his personal privilege to be able to interview the winner.
"Hello, hello!" he called. "Anna! Over here. Tell us how it was."
Anna stared at the camera blankly. She might have been pretty at the start of the game. She still didn't look too bad, if you ignored the chunk of hair missing from the left side of her head and the dried blood spattered across her chin and mouth, a souvenir from her final kill, which had been rather messy.
Anna's game had been magnificent. She had teamed up with her very best friend in the world, swearing she'd never play this game, and within half an hour she was walking away from the lifeless body of said friend with blood on her hands and a shiny new gun in her daypack. Then, she had been alone for almost two days without batting an eyelid, cool as a cucumber. After that she came down from her hiding-place and killed everyone she met, seven in total, until she was the last one standing. Not bad for the diminutive Girl 5, fifteen years of age, issued with a switchblade as her starting weapon. There had been some stiff competition, but she'd handled herself very well.
"It was all right," Anna said. That was all she could manage before the soldiers pushed forward and hustled her into the back of a van.
The boy stopped the tape and leaned back, resting the back of his neck in his palms. "It was all right." "I've been on better school trips." "I don't like Mondays." That was how winners talked. His facial expression shifted, consciously mimicking Anna's cool, vacant appearance, opening his eyes wide, like hers had been.
That was what winners looked like. He knew he'd look the same some day, if they'd only give him the chance.
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PART ONE
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"...comply within one hundred and thirty seconds."
Consciousness returned. He raised his head and looked around muzzily, at first not understanding. The room was different. Everything was different. Then he reached up to touch his neck and felt a cold metal band.
Ah. Now everything slotted into place.
The mechanised voice repeated its instruction. "Please sit in the seat with your name on it. Comply within one hundred seconds."
The class stared dumbly at the speaker, blinking in the glare of the harsh lighting. Their drugged minds were not processing the information. Then Alicia Brown (Girl 1) got to her feet and went to her seat at the front of the room. When she sat down, the chair beeped and a green LED light came on.
Erin Lynch (Girl 6), Emma Litchfield (Girl 5) and James Lewis (Boy 8) followed her example. More green lights came on. The rest of the class began to mutter amongst themselves.
"Please sit on the seat with your name on it. Warning: you are wearing Generation 4 PESR necklaces. Failure to follow instructions will result in their activation. Comply within 60 seconds."
Personal Electronic Surveillance and Restraint collars? That was something they all knew about, and it was not a good sign.
Everyone rushed to their seats immediately.
"Shit." That was Abigail Dawson (Girl 2), standing up again. "Left my bag..."
An amber light came on on the side of Abigail's chair. "Girl 2, Abigail Dawson, return to your seat, or collar activation in 10 – 9 – 8..."
Abigail sat down rapidly.
"Shit," repeated Josh Bradshaw (Boy 2), trying to create as much space between the collar and his neck as possible.
"What is this?" Natalie Rankin (Girl 10) was the first to speak up. "What's going on?"
"I don't know. Where's Mr. Atkinson?" said Zoe Peacock (Girl 9), who sat in front of her.
"We were watching that film…" said Natalie. It wasn't unusual for the odd student to doze off during yet another patriotic film, but the whole class keeled over like drunks at a free whisky festival? Natalie had a vague recollection of that. Her last memory was seeing her seating partner Shabina Ghazali (Girl 3) slumped across the desk – conscientious Shabina who would never fall asleep in class – and realising that something was wrong.
She turned to her current seating partner, Jack Trull (Boy 10). "We're not in the school any more," she said. "I wonder where we are."
"I've no idea," said Jack.
"They drugged us?" Joe Wright (Boy 11) wanted to know. "The film – is that the last thing everyone remembers?"
It was. No-one could recall how they had got to... wherever it was they were now.
"The youth units?" suggested Mahmoud Ibrahim (Boy 7). "I thought they stopped doing that."
He was referring to a wartime law that enabled the government to conscript young layabouts into the forces by use of the collars. Nobody knew how many of them died, either by disobeying and having their collars activated or being killed in battle, but the youth units were generally considered the scum of society and expendable. The scheme was only meant to be temporary, but like many other 'temporary' expansions of state power under the dictatorship, it never seemed to have been withdrawn.
Lauren Norris (Girl 7) jammed her hand in her mouth and began biting her nails.
"No, it can't be – not us. We're students," called out Will Dalton (Boy 4). "We're exempt!"
"No," said Shabina Ghazali (Girl 3). There was so much dread in her voice that Alicia and Abigail turned round to look at her, although she only spoke quietly. "It's the Program," said Shabina. "Look how we've been seated."
She was right. The class had an even gender split and was lined up by number, Girls 1-12 sitting beside Boys 1-12. An even match of 24 contestants. And then there were the exploding collars. A lower class of restraint that merely delivered a painful electric shock was more commonly used as a coercive aid these days.
"Oh fuck," breathed Abigail.
"It's the fucking Program!" yelled Stephan Andropoulos (Boy 1), for the benefit of those that hadn't heard.
Panic broke out in the room. Everyone was talking at once, some left their seats altogether. With a wail of fear, James Lewis launched himself at the doors and pounded them with his fists. The wasplike voice from the speaker warned him, then began to count down. At 4, Alicia leapt from her own seat and pulled him back, making him sit down before his beeping collar detonated. "No," she ordered, "Don't fight it now. Fight it later. Don't give them the satisfaction."
James Dyer (Boy 5) and Dave Brunning (Boy 3) made a joint attempt to smash the window by swinging James's sports bag at it. Made of thick Perspex and lined with mesh, it would not shatter. Both boys had to dash back to their seats.
There was nothing to be done. Josh Bradshaw (Boy 2) lobbed a drinks can at the screen and cried, "Fuck the government! Fuck them all!"
"Shut it, Josh! Is that helping anyone?" Alicia shouted at him. She didn't like him, with his unnecessary blue hair and facile political views. Most people grew out of anarchy and came to the conclusion that there are those who are obeyed and those who obey. Josh never had.
He was about to reply to the smug Christian Union president and self-elected group leader, when the screen flickered into life.
"Welcome to the Program!" said a man's voice, a vaudevillian showman's voice, as if unveiling the central attraction at the circus. It was Richie Stuart, celebrated TV presenter, game show host and, as of last year, co-ordinator general of the Program.
"Fuck... it's really real..." muttered James Dyer (Boy 5) to his best friend Dave Brunning (Boy 3). There was no pretending it wasn't happening now.
The TV host clapped his hands and grinned broadly. "As you see, we've moved to an automatic administration, so I'm afraid you won't be able to ask any questions. I will tell you everything you need to know in this short video, so pay attention. If you don't already know what the Program is, listen closely."
Richie Stuart outlined the basic principles of the game, telling the class that they numbered twenty-four at present, but there could only be one winner, and this situation would arise when everyone else was dead. Richie explained that they were on an island, a small insignificant lump of rock off Scotland, once the summer residence of some earl or other, that then fell into disuse, and was finally abandoned. It wasn't a large island, with only a small harbour where the fishing-boats used to come in and a few tumbledown houses, briefly used for stockpiling food and munitions during the war. "Look out for hidden goodies left by the army," Stuart advised the stunned class.
An aerial view of the island showed a central high point, then dense woodland in the north, a short and fat lighthouse jutting into the sea, then flat lands that might once have been cultivated, open and exposed until the steep cliffs on the south coast of the island.
"Every six hours, three zones on your map will become dangerous to those of you wearing collars – that, I believe, is all of you. I'll read out the times and locations on an announcement broadcast every six hours, along with the names of any classmates killed in action during that time. I can do this a maximum of eleven times, because the game ends at midnight of the third day. If we have no winner by this point, all the collars will be detonated."
"I've seen this before," whispered Erin Lynch (Girl 6) to the boy next to her. "A few years back, where that girl won it – I think it's the same island!"
"D'ya mean when Anna won it?" Alex Green (Boy 6) said. Neither of them actually watched the Program, having seen a highlights broadcast at most, but most people had a vague idea of past winners, if not the circumstances of their victory. They were now wishing they'd paid more attention to the bloodiest annual state TV show.
The simple truth of it was that the Program wasn't good TV. Usually you'd flick it on and there'd be nothing but tedious aerial shots of forest, or a deserted inner city, or an island shore – or, if you were really lucky, a contestant caught on camera playing the game. But shootouts were over in seconds, and interesting encounters were sparse. Watching some unlucky school kid wandering through the landscape trying to kill people with a boomerang was not exactly riveting. There were better game shows. Even if the Program was a once-yearly treat, good citizens could still watch the news, with its lurid war coverage, often more violent and interesting. Or Female Socialist Wrestling Heroes, state-sanctioned and always popular.
They remembered Anna, though. Anna had been pretty famous for a while. After her surprise victory, there was a brief marketing frenzy. Over the following six months they wheeled her out to advertise certain products, had her open a few cooperative supermarkets, but then she stopped making public appearances. She must be in her twenties by now, Alex thought, if she's alive. He thought that probably wasn't likely.
"The game will begin promptly at 00:00," Richie Stuart was saying, "so pay attention and be ready. I will call your names out in order. Boy 1, Girl 1, Boy 2 and so forth. Outside the door, there's a rack with bags waiting for you. Take only the one with your name on it or the collars will be activated. One of you will be released every two minutes, so don't hang around by the school building, best to make tracks. The last student will be released at 00:48, and I'm making the grid square containing this building a danger zone at one-thirty, so make sure you're out of it by then. I'll speak to you again at 06:00. Are we ready? All right, let's begin."
There was a beep from the screen, and a voice that wasn't Richie Stuart's began to read out the names.
"Boys #1, Stephan Andropoulos."
Stephan had been expecting to be called first. The shock was hearing his name read in his teacher's voice, in the same tone he'd used to read the register every morning for the past five years. Mr. Atkinson was involved in the Program too?
"I think he means you have to go and get your bag," said Dave Brunning (Boy 3), leaning forwards to nudge Stephan. "Good luck, mate."
"Okay." He stood up gingerly. The green light on his chair stayed on.
"Fuck. FUCK," he said to himself, and almost stumbled over his feet as he went for the door. They heard his footsteps in the corridor, then nothing. Stephan was gone. It was exactly 00:00 on May 1st, and the game had begun.