Page 2

That day my way took me only several streets over, where I knew a storage bin below a ruined warehouse. Had I needed to go further, I would have left correspondingly earlier. I walked over lumps of stone and broken brick, picked my way past the wrecked burned out skeletons of vehicles. All these were familiar to me; in some cases I had watched these very vehicles burned, their occupants dragged out and murdered. By now, I’d seen too much killing to care.

The warehouse had long since been gutted and vandalised, but I knew where the door to the storage area was hidden. It hadn’t, at the time, been discovered yet by the gangs. That day I removed the rubble I had piled up in front of it and opened it just enough to slip through. As soon as I was inside, I closed it. The darkness was intense and immediate, but I knew better than to strike a light. Anyone could have been waiting in ambush. I felt my way to the piles of clothes. This time I wanted a leather overcoat, knee length, to ward off the approaching winter. I also wanted a cap and some shirts but this bin had none. I picked out a leather coat, fumbling in the darkness and listening for any kind of extraneous noise, my hand brushing my gun butt. I couldn’t carry too much clothing at one go – not only might I have to fight, if someone saw me with a bundle of clothes they would wonder where I had come by it and begin searching.

When I came out of the warehouse it had finally begun to drizzle, greasy drops splattering down at intervals. I put the coat on, buckling it around my waist and carrying the gun in my hand so it could be seen. I debated for a moment whether to try my luck elsewhere, but then decided it might be wiser to get back home.

I was halfway home when I heard the screaming. Normally I would have ignored it, but it was coming just from my right and I still had a little time before darkness fell, so I turned to look. There was an alley that was now mostly blocked by rubbish and accumulated rubble. A gang member in a pink sweater was maltreating a woman. It was the woman who was screaming.

He wasn’t raping her. If it had only been a rape I would have said nothing and moved on. Rape is such a commonplace these days I don’t believe I know a single woman who hasn’t been raped multiple times. Instead he was whipping her with a length of rubber tubing. It’s an extremely effective method of causing pain, and she was trying to protect her head with her arms and screaming.

"You," I said, almost by reflex. The gang member stopped whipping her and turned. He was only a boy, maybe in his mid teens, like most of them. Few lived to reach their twenties. He had a friendly vacuous face and grinned at me. He was missing a front tooth.

I knew him then. I had met him several times, and sold him some of the narcotics my contact across the city had passed on to me. The drugs hadn’t been sold for money, of course. Money is worthless now. But the gangs had paid well with food and medicines. I used to sell to the gangs, take my cut of the proceeds, and pass the rest on to my contact. It was rather lucrative and had given me a measure of immunity as well. But then one day I had gone over to the contact to get a fresh supply of heroin and found his disembowelled corpse, so that had been the end of that little job and of the immunity. Some of the gang members still remembered me, though. I hoped this would be one of them.

"Well," he said happily. The woman had stopped screaming. "Do you have a fresh stock? It’s been a while."

"No. No drugs. Sorry." He had no visible weapon but his orange rubber hose, but he wore his gang identity like a shield. "I just wanted to ask why you’re beating this woman."

"This?" He looked down at the woman. "She’s a slave. I felt like hitting her."

"A slave. All right, I’ll buy her from you." I never understood where the idea had come from. "What price do you want for her?"

"Drugs." He licked his lips. "Heroin. Meth. Anything."

"No, no drugs. I can’t get any. Look here, I’ll give you this." I took off the leather coat, keeping a careful hold on my gun. "You take this and give her to me."

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