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Summer had settled in for the duration, and the city was sluggish: the sun sapped strength and resolve and blistered flesh and people walked quickly, for they were afraid. The heat wave was bad enough, but it was the news of the day that had most of them concerned: stories about the dead rising from their graves to attack and devour the living. Most of them had discounted the stories at first, but, as the media had quickly shown, the stories were true.

So, people walked quickly past the places where the homeless hunkered down, out of sight, and paid them no heed whatsoever.

From where he sat in the shadowed tunnel, his back against the wall, knees pulled up to his bewhiskered chin, George could see the "norms" as they passed his hiding place.

Those that bothered to glance into the abandoned railway tunnel at all, did so quickly, unconcerned by the hungry-eyed denizens of the dark who watched them pass. These, after all, weren't the hungry ones who needed watching; these were those castoffs who had fallen by the wayside to be completely forgotten by society; these were the worthless ones...

George felt his skin crawl and scratched the itch, wondering idly if he had fleas again. He had had them before, had gotten them from the rats that roamed the tunnel at night, and he didn't much care for them. Fleas, he had heard, carried disease. Or were those lice...? Whatever. He scratched his head with dirt-encrusted fingernails. Cleared his throat and pushed himself up to his feet. It was almost noon; time to go to work.

He heard a squeak, and turned his head to look. A rat the size of a small cat scurried away, down the tunnel into deeper darkness, and he watched it go. Yeah, you better run, buddy. I don't score no scratch, rat's on the menu tonight... It wouldn't be the first time, he reflected.

He took a step and realized that his shoes were untied. Bending, he carefully tied his shoelaces. It paid to look your very best. He straightened and headed toward The World.

Between him and the street, the cardboard boxes and lean-tos that comprised "the suburbs" were dark silhouettes. There weren't very many homes this close to the street: most people settled further back in the tunnel, as far away from the World as they could get. Many of them were as pale as dead fish, an army of ghost-like apparitions that passed him by in an endless parade, day and night. (Some of them passed through but once before disappearing altogether from all human ken.) He ignored them for the most part; he had his own troubles with which to contend.

He had fled The World himself when Ann and the kids were taken from him by a drunk driver. He had taken first to the bottle in an attempt to drown his sorrow and, later, had subsisted on unemployment until his benefits had run out; then he had walked away from it all- from the World- and had gone "underground." And here he had lived, for the past five years.

His steps were unhurried.

A pile of rags heaped in the back of a large, open-fronted cardboard box stirred as he passed, and a hoarse voice whispered: "Bring me back some wine, Georgie-boy..."

He paused, stretching slowly, and smiled in at the rags. "Sure thing, Mabel."

"You a good boy, Georgie."

"Thank ya, ma'am."

He liked Mabel, and he liked to think that she liked him. She was short, but "stocky," as she liked to put it: 5'2", and close to 300 pounds. He bent and peered in at her. Her eyes were wide and white in her black face. She was watching him watch her.

"You wanna come with me...?"

She shook her head. "Naw. My arthur right us is actin' up."

He nodded. "Okay." He straightened with a wave and moved on.

He walked toward the gaping maw of the tunnel, squinting as he emerged into harsh sunlight. Lifting one hand to shield his eyes from the glare, he looked left, then right. His heart sank; the streets were almost deserted. There were no cars in sight, only a handful of pedestrians. Those that passed him by cast him suspicious looks. A bus, empty but for the driver, crawled slowly across an intersection. There wouldn't be much panhandling today, no ice-cold bottle to get him through the night... No wine for Mabel. He hissed, disgusted, and stood with his hands in the pockets of his ankle-length green coat, looking around for a possible alternative.

He saw nothing promising, kicked in frustration at a can crumpled on the sidewalk. The clang of the aluminum can across the pavement seemed unnaturally loud in the eerie stillness. He paused then to slowly survey his surroundings. Most of the buildings were closed up, doors and windows shut (and no doubt locked). A siren sounded in the distance. He listened to it, marveling at its heretofore-unappreciated beauty. Hearing the siren was reassuring: it meant that, somewhere in the city, life went on.

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