J - Luca

Luca was awakened by a well-aimed kick to his midriff. He had been
dreaming of Black Mengcheren again. He had dreamed he had been down an
alley, digging through a pile of fling for something he could sell,
when he'd come across a discarded chicken wings box from Big H. For
some reason he had opened it, and inside it was stuffed with bundles of
francs. He had been filled with excitement and was just about to touch
them, when suddenly a fierce wind had ripped through the alley,
scattering junk and casting the notes into the air. Luca had lunged for
them but missed, stumbled and ended up lying on his back. It had been
then that he had seen Black Mengcheren. Black Mengcheren was like a
slice of night; a towering ink-black shadow that grew taller and taller
as you watched, jagged with hooks and barbs. Sometimes, if you stared
hard enough, you could make out the narrow crystal slivers of its eyes.
Slowly, the shadow had spread along the ground and opposing building
walls, creeping closer, closer. Luca had started to crawl backwards but
Black Mengcheren was growing too fast and behind it the sky went purple
and orange as nukes bombarded the city and haloed it in roaring red
flame.

Luca doubled up, his eyes watering. He was lying on his side on bare,
cold floorboards, an old survival blanket draped over him. He drew in a
long, laboured breath. Gorman slid his worn leather boot from Luca's
stomach.

"Come on you paris shit," he said with a scowl. Joseph Gorman was known
to most people as Baby Joe on account of his bald head and squat
stature, but his boys knew better than to call him that to his face. He
scratched his scalp and looked down as Luca clutched his stomach. "Get
up&;#8230; I've got too many sprints on today for you to fuck around
in your wank pit dreaming of little fairy girls with no knickers on."
Luca sucked in another, agonised breath. His stomach muscles were quite
strong - it wasn't the first time that Gorman had woken him like this -
but he was still in a lot of pain.

"Okay," he managed to say, "I'm sorry. I'm getting up now." He gritted
his teeth.

"Now! Not tomorrow!" Gorman shouted. He drew his foot back for another
kick.

"Okay, okay." Luca held a hand out in a vain appeal for clemency. With
the other, he started to lift himself up off the den floor. Gorman's
boot hovered for a moment, then returned to the floor innocuously. He
turned to the other boys, who had been watching.

"What? D'you want some toecap too?" They all looked away, avoiding eye
contact. Gorman strode to the doorway. "Right - you've all got five
minutes to get yer gear on, do yer ablutions and get down the fucking
stairs. If just one of you's even a second late you're all on
punishment salaries for the rest of the week." Casting a cautionary
glare about the room, he straightened his collar and left.

Luca sat upright, the blanket across his knees, and allowed himself a
few seconds to wheeze. The room had become a flurry of activity, as the
boys dragged on trousers and shirts and queued biggest to smallest for
the single, grubby basin. Luca was thirteen and slight, with fine sandy
hair and cobalt blue eyes. None of Gorman's sprint boys were
well-built; you wouldn't last 'til sext unless you were spry as a
greyhound on Stimvit.

He dragged his slacks from where they lay crumpled beneath the
windowsill. The pane was smeared with a thick patina of grime. Across
the street, six floors down, was the textiles mill. It used to make
veils, smocks, jackets and ponchos for the laity, flags sometimes too.
Luca could only half-remember a time when it had still been open. He
had been a lot younger then, only five or six. He still had vague
impressions of noise and crowds. It was Mortars now, a Mutt-Hut. Most
of the work went on at night.

Hopping to his feet, he pushed a leg into his trousers. They were
patched at the left knee with a square of faded blue denim. The
stitching was coming loose, and his toe poked through the gap as he
tried to push towards the ankle.

"Oi, Blue." Luca looked up. It was Paolo. He was a little taller than
Luca, with dark hair shaved into a diagonal strip. He always had a wry
smile on his face. Most of the boys thought he was cracked. He did the
circuit every evening. "Splash us some baccy would you? I'm rinsed."
Luca paused.

"Hang on," he said. He threaded his other leg into his trousers and
pulled them up. He fastened the belt clip, then bent down and picked up
one of his sneakers. He tugged a small packet of tobacco out from
between the tongue and the laces. He handed it to Paolo. "There you go,
bro." Paolo nodded.

"Got any rizlas?" Luca rolled his eyes.

"You're pretty stripped right now, yeah?"

"Pretty much," said Paolo. Luca slid a rolling paper from the back
pocket of his slacks and passed it to Paolo. "Gracias. I've got a bit
of a famine going on right now but hey, can't last for ever, eh?" He
chuckled to himself. His eyes were bloodshot, his right pupil
permanently dilated after someone had landed a punch there during a bit
of kunnan east of the river. "How many runs you reckon Baby's gonna put
you on today?" Luca shrugged and picked up his shirt.

"Couldn't say." Paolo began to roll a cigarette. His thin fingers and
blackened nails moved quickly, nervously working the paper like a
loom.

"I heard some pretty bad shit going down last night."

"Yeah?" said Luca, fastening his buttons.

"Lot of bad blood between the Morts and Lawfuls. Mortars took St Vitus'
street. I don't know what's happening, but there's gonna be
payback."

"So we might get sprints across the river?" Paolo sealed the end of his
roll-up and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

"Looks like it." He pulled out a lighter. "Anyone running there is
fucked." He lit his roll-up then tossed the baccy packet back to Luca.
"Keep outa the dark today, yeah Blue?" Luca replaced the tobacco in his
sneaker.

"Sure. You too," he said. Paolo wandered back to his patch leaving a
trail of diffuse smoke in his wake. Luca wedged his feet into his shoes
and began tying his laces. The den was redolent with stale smoke and
sweat. The boys were all between eleven and fourteen, or at least they
all claimed to be. Behind the bruising, Luca felt his stomach gurgle
and contract. Soon as let-out came, he'd hit a Dim Sum stand for some
breakfast.

A yelp came from the near the basin. Sparks had just got a slap from
Tommo for taking too long.

"Easy kid!" Sparks said, taking a step back. "Just trying to get
clean."

"You'll never get clean," said Tommo. Several people guffawed. "Come
on, stop shitting around and get downstairs." Tommo was the biggest and
oldest and had a scar running right across his chest to prove it. He'd
used to be a kewpie, nearly as bad as Paolo, but he'd been off the
circuit for almost a year. Word was, he was looking to start a career
with the Morts.

A couple of boys were dressed and snorting caps of S+. Jim-Jim twitched
and made clicking noises as his hit target. Luca tested his chin with
an index finger. He could feel the beginnings of a downy, patchy beard.
He took a pack of Schumann Dent-tabs from his pocket and crunched one
between his molars. His tongue recoiled at the burst of sharp, almost
acidic mint. He swilled it round his mouth for about ten seconds, then
swallowed. Boys were already heading downstairs.

Luca ran his fingertips through his hair and glanced at his murky
reflection in the window. He looked sickly as ever. He bent down and
folded his blanket into a rectangle, then headed for the doorway.

The door arch was cracked in the middle, from where Sparks had
headbutted it. He had been on Mike's shoulders, playing Sumo Doubles.
Luca licked his lips, then wiped them with the back of his hand. His
head felt fuggy. He started cantering down the stairs. They were
concrete, chipped and worn, and they stank of piss and mould. The
banisters had fallen away, leaving only pale-ringed divots between him
and a drop that went six floors.

"Hey Blue! Blue! Para man!" Luca looked up to see Jim-Jim standing in
the doorway, his shirt half on, flapping behind him like a sail. "Para
thirty seconds, yeah?" Luca said nothing, but nodded reluctantly. He
stopped on the half landing, and leant back against the wall. The
window had been kicked through and never replaced. Weak though it was,
the resultant breeze was welcome. Damp brickwork crumbled beneath his
fingers as he peered up at the fungus thriving on the underside of the
stairs above. Gorman never bothered to get rid of fungus, not unless it
was coming into season.

Jim-Jim's clattering descent grew louder until he was next to Luca on
the half landing. Instead of waiting, he galloped straight past and
continued down the next flight. "C'mon Blue!" he called. "Don't be late
now, or I'll kick your culo!" Luca pushed himself away from the wall
and began to follow. Getting down the stairway fast could be pretty
demanding when you'd only just woken up. It took a lot of
concentration; sometimes there were slippery patches, or steps with
parts crumbled away.

The fourth floor window was boarded up. Luca stopped. There was
something new. A big iron nail, more of a stake, had been driven into
the centre. Hanging from it, brown and matted, over a half a metre
long, was a rat pelt. Suddenly it twitched. Luca instinctively hopped
back onto the tips of his toes and raised his knuckles. The pelt was
still. It was definitely dead. It moved again. This time, Luca unballed
his fists and relaxed. There were gaps between the boards. It had just
been the wind.

"Hey, what you doing?" came Tommo's voice from behind. "Any stragglers
get- fuck me." He stopped alongside Luca. "This happen last night?"
Luca shrugged.

"I just found it." Tommo stared at the pelt for a moment. It was
scribbled with little black flies.

"Does Baby know?" Luca shrugged again. "Shit." Tommo shook his head.
"Get yourself downstairs. He's not gonna be happy about this." Luca
continued down the stairs.
On the third floor there was a patch of wall with crosses and bullseyes
scorched onto it, studded with dents from where the boys had practised
shooting with their slings. He thought himself a pretty good shot; he
could hit a moving target whilst on the move himself from a range of
about fifteen metres. The problem with pocket slings was they couldn't
fire anything much heavier than a pebble with any real accuracy, but
the pros more than outweighed the cons. They were cheap, easy to
conceal, and you never had to worry about finding ammo. Besides, Luca
had heard of several people being killed by a well-aimed stone to the
temple. Making the sling lethal was just a question of releasing it at
the right speed.

Luca's ankle was still sore from where he had twisted it a few days
earlier, stepping on a length of pipe he'd thought was securely
bracketed in place. He was lucky it had healed so quickly. Sprains were
like a death sentence when you were on the sprint. As he reached the
second floor, he tested putting more weight on it, springing from it,
hopping. It was fine. Uncomfortable perhaps, but it would hold
out.

Surviving the sprints wasn't so much about how fast you could run as
where you could run. 'Sprint' was a bit of a misnomer. If the wrong
people (and in the Old Town, that covered just about everyone) saw you
running hell for leather down the street with a package under your arm,
you were dead, muerto, moosh meat. Sprint boys were soft targets for
anyone looking to make a lot of francs quickly. You had to take it nice
and easy, so you didn't stick out too much.
Luca jumped the from the stairway about three metres up, hit the
dirt-strewn floor, crouched, rolled, and sprung back to his feet,
coiling and uncoiling like a length of rope. There were boys who could
drop from even higher; some kicked off an opposing wall before they
struck the ground, so the force was distributed at an angle, instead of
straight down. It was a useful skill to perfect, in a job where
outrunning people was what kept you on the right side of the
afterlife.

He slowed down to a brisk walk as he entered Control. Most of the dozen
or so boys were already in there, sitting cross-legged on the
splintered boards. The far wall was patterned with a crumbling, faded
mosaic of the Buddha and his bulging stomach. It was stained pale brown
with dirt. Chipped tiles littered the floor beneath. Tommo was stood up
at the front, next to Gorman, scanning the faces of the seated and
working out who was absent. Luca quickly sat down next to a kid whose
name he didn't know. The boy had ginger hair buzzed almost as short as
it would go. The fingers on his right hand were bristling with thick,
tarnished rings. They softly scraped and clinked as he flexed his
fingers.

A couple more boys trotted in and positioned themselves behind Luca.
Gorman glanced at his Miyacom, scowled.

"That's it, time's up!" he yelled. "Tommo!" He turned and glared at
Tommo. "We're one short! Who is it?" Tommo scrutinised the group.

"It's Sparks." He gritted his teeth. "For fuck's sake! Sparks! Who was
last out? Why didn't someone check to make sure he was coming down?"
The boys blinked at him dumbly. Luca felt uncomfortable. He reached
down and tugged at one of his belt loops. "Right." Tommo started to
march towards the doorway.

"Leave it," said Gorman. Tommo halted mid-stride. "I've got some real
choice jobs this morning&;#8230; he's just volunteered." Gorman
waited until Tommo returned to the front of the room. He broadened his
stance, and set his knuckles against his hips. "Now, business. Six to
St Dismas&;#8230; you, you&;#8230; yeah, you two as
well&;#8230; you, and&;#8230;" Luca deliberately tilted his chin
upwards and tried to make eye contact. St Dismas Street was very much
Mortar turf - not safe, by any means, but familiar. If boys were being
sent there, it was probably to do sprints for 'Doctor' Karachi. Gorman
looked straight at the kid sat next to Luca, the one with the rings.
"&;#8230; yeah, you'll do." The six chosen stood up, picked their
way through those who remained seated, and filed past Gorman for their
chits. As they filtered out through the side exit, Luca nervously ran
his fingers across the rough surface of his knee patch. It was a smart
idea to get picked early. Gorman had a habit of leaving the worst jobs
for last. It was no good hiding your eyes when you were the only one
left in the room.

Gorman cleared his throat. "Okay - three for Basmala Walk." Rik,
Jim-Jim and Little Yao pricked up their ears like spaniels and sat
there grinning at Gorman with forepaws raised. "All right&;#8230;
come on, then." The three boys sprung upright, and started marching
towards the front. "It's a snap job, right? No fucking around. I want
you back here for twos before tierce." Rik, Jim-Jim and Little Yao
always did sprints together if they could, and Gorman usually let them,
not because he was kind, but because they worked well as a team. Little
Yao was looking particularly peaky that morning. All three were
notorious for their binges on uppers. Luca guessed they'd restock on S+
before they got anywhere near Basmala. Gorman handed each of them a
chit. "It's a new guy, so I'm trusting you not to sour it." Rik, the
trio's unofficial spokesperson, nodded. Tommo gestured towards the
door, and the three trudged out.

"Uhh&;#8230;" Gorman glanced down at the display on his Pad. "Got a
meet at the Pit. Two." There was only Luca, Tommo, and two other boys
left. One of the remaining two was Paolo. He looked at Luca and winked,
as if to say well? D'you fancy it? The Pit was one place you definitely
wanted to avoid. Once, it had been Lawful territory. Now the area was
'contested'. That meant it was on the front line of a turf war that was
getting hotter by the day. Luca looked back at Paolo blankly, as if he
didn't understand the intimation flashing in his friend's eyes. Then he
heard Gorman chuckling. It was a dry, shallow noise, and quickly
deteriorated into a hacking cough. A small and not particularly
satisfying irony was that Gorman, a sprint-mob gaffer, could only run a
few steps before he broke down wheezing. The insides of his lungs were
coated with a gluey film of mucus - ruined by the Old Town air.

Gorman thumped his chest with the top of his fist and allowed his grin
to return. "Sparks can do this one. Him and one other." He turned to
Tommo. "Go and fetch 'im. Drag the paris little wangyo down here now so
I can give him his chit."

"Will do," said Tommo. He pivoted and was gone.

"One more&;#8230;" said Gorman. He surveyed the last three boys.
Luca tried not to squirm under his gaze. "&;#8230; you." The arm
raised, the finger extended. It was levelled at the boy sitting
farthest to the left. Luca thought his name was Kyle. He wasn't sure,
because Kyle was new. He had pasty skin and seemed shy. He seemed
unfazed at being selected. Perhaps he didn't realise what he was in
for. Gorman tossed him a chit. "Go on, get on with it. Sparks 'll catch
you up." Kyle stuffed the chit into his sock and scrambled to his feet.
He exited without looking back.

"Gorman!" The yell was Tommo's. It came from next door. "GORMAN!"
Gorman looked irritated but showed no signs of moving.

"What?" he shouted back. Tommo appeared in the doorway. His face was
stretched and wan. Luca felt his bruised stomach clench. Tommo was
resting against the frame, as if his legs were about to give out.

"You'd better come and see this," he said. He was panting. Gorman still
had a fistful of plastic chits. He raised his arm above his head and
cast them to the floor. Luca flinched.

"What the fuck is it now?" Gorman squared his shoulders and began
marching towards Tommo. "If Sparks is holding up my op&;#8230;" He
smacked a clenched fist into his palm. "I'll cut out his lengua and
feed it to the fucking rats!" Gorman threatened to cut out a lot of
boys' lenguas. It was a favourite phrase of his. Luca had never heard
of him making good on the threat, but the man carried a lock-knife and
was fond of bringing it out and waving it when he got angry. None of
the mob was stupid enough to test Baby's limits, anyway. He wouldn't
kill you himself - he didn't need to. A long enough run of high-risk
sprints was all it took.

Tommo faded back through the doorway as Gorman approached. Luca watched
Gorman stomp through, listened to the crunch-crunch-crunch of his heavy
boots against the gritty stone floor. The footsteps stopped. Luca
wanted to inhale, but caught it and listened. "Motherfucker," he heard
Gorman mutter. He sounded more surprised than enraged.
Crunch-crunch-crunch. Gorman re-entered the room. "You two," he said,
addressing Luca and Paolo. "We have a problem." Luca gawped at him.
"Well get up, then!" Luca nearly toppled over backwards, but righted
himself with a deftly placed palm and sprung up onto his toes. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw that Paolo had done the same.

Gorman shook his head. "Go in there with Tommo. The three of you sort
it out. I'm off. This is a total fucking nail in the wrist." He stamped
his way to the side exit. "Head down the Pit when you're done. All
three of you, I mean. You'll need to pick up the slack." He stepped
through the door, slamming it behind him. The metal was corroded and
buckled, and the door didn't shut properly. It always hung slightly
ajar, a length of piping cannibalised from a junked Magpie the nearest
thing to a lock. The boys were all light sleepers by necessity. St
Jude's and the surrounding area was relatively kunnan-free thanks to
the Mortars, but the patrols couldn't be everywhere. The promise of
prompt and fatal reprisal was of no consequence to a hound chasing his
next hit. A bunch of kids 'd seem like easy meat.

Luca used his index finger to wipe away a slick patch of snot from
beneath his nose. He headed, reluctantly, for the stairs.

"What the fuck d'you think Baby's problem is?" he caught himself saying
to Paolo. Paolo sniffed.

"He's got a dick, size of a raisin," Paolo replied. "Never seen a femme
naked he didn't pay. Where you think all his chaching ends up? Down the
Academy or the Dizzy Moon. Picked up more diseases than the mooshes,
that one." Luca smaned, and Paolo joined in. Suddenly Tommo had
appeared in the doorway.

"This ain't fucking funny!" he yelled, bashing his fist against the
frame. His eyes were bloodshot. He'd obviously popped a few caps in the
interim. Then Luca saw his hands. They were red. As Tommo took a step
back, his hand left a lipstick smear on the white door frame. Luca
could feel his face starting to get hot. He had seen this shit before,
he saw it all the time. He could cope, he could stay on the path. If
you let these things faze you, if you let them break your
concentration&;#8230; you were a pussy, and natural selection was
weeding you out. He sucked in air through tightly stretched lips, and
held it. He followed Tommo into the stairwell.

There was a lot of blood, and it was dark and fresh. The pool reflected
the stairs, the fungus, and Sparks' body, like a polished crimson
mirror. Sparks was sprawled face down in the centre, his legs splayed
at impossible mannequin angles, one of his arms folded beneath his
chest. His skull was smashed, splinters of skull and clumps of matted
hair spattered about it in a fan-shaped blast. Luca could see bits of
his brain, but he'd seen brain before. He'd seen it all before.
Luca tested his mouth and found, without much surprise, that it had
gone dry. He ran his tongue along the gummy roof of his mouth, trying
to moisten it back up. Paolo was the first to speak.

"It got him," he said. There was a long, apprehensive silence.

"What do you mean?" asked Tommo. "He fell off the fucking stairs! No
one got him." Luca knew what Paolo meant. He'd been thinking it too. He
meant Black Mengcheren. Paolo paused as if distracted, and then
sighed.

"Forget it," he said. "I'm just&;#8230; this is fucked up. It's
nothing." Tommo went down onto one knee, pushed his hands over his face
and into his thick black hair.

"We need to move this. We need to get him out of here." He looked at
Luca. "You saw the tag, right?" Luca stared back blankly.

"Uh?"

"The tag," Tommo repeated. "The pelt, yeah?" He pointed up the stair
shaft.

"Oh yeah, right." Luca glanced back at the corpse. There was a thin
crack running lengthways across the floor. Blood was dribbling into it.
"I didn't know it was a&;#8230; I didn't recognise it."

"Learn to," said Tommo sternly. "It's a Packrat tag."

"Packrat?"

"That's what they're calling themselves." Tommo ran a finger along the
uneven concrete floor, collecting a waxy grey dollop of grease. "Don't
know much about them. They're new."

"I do," said Paolo suddenly, stepping forward. "Been a lot of talk." He
waited for Tommo's approval before continuing. Tommo nodded. "From what
I hear, they're mostly ex-monks, mutts, usual crap, yeah? Not a gang,
though - proper cult. Set up by some PHU reject. You know how they get
initiated?" He pulled up his shirt sleeve and slapped his tricep. "Shot
of moosh blood, right in the arm."

"Serious?" said Tommo, widening his eyes. Then he snapped his fingers
dismissively and turned away. "Nah man&;#8230; that's crap. You'd
die, straight off."

"I dunno, s'just what I heard. People exaggerate, yeah?" Paolo shrugged
half-apologetically. "Whatever's true, they're gone, man." He tapped
the side of his skull. "Worship mooshes, yeah? Wear their skins, use
their teeth for jewellery, y'know?"

"Bullshit," said Tommo, with a look of disgust. "It's hard enough
running away from them, let alone hunting the bastards down. You don't
go round looking for mooshes to fight. You'd end up dead." Paolo
inhaled through his nostrils.

"How d'you explain the tag then?" Tommo did not reply. He simply got to
his feet.

"We need to get out of here," he said. "Whoever they are, they got in
last night. I don't want to be around if they come back." Luca looked
at the broken corpse of Sparks.

"What are we going to do with hi&;#8230; uh, it?" he asked. Tommo
closed his eyes.

"We'll wash up all this blood," he said, "then we'll dump the body down
the CSO. They'll take care of it." The CSO was the Convent of the
Silent Order. The monks there did a lot of unpaid municipal work like
street-cleaning or minor repairs to the sanitation network. The
cleaning included corpses. If you dumped one in the immediate area, it
would be gone within twenty-four hours. Leaving someone by the CSO
offered them the chance of a semi-dignified burial. No one knew what
the monks did with the bodies they took, but it had to be better than
being gnawed to splinters by hungry mutant rats.

"What about&;#8230;" Luca hesitated. Paolo and Tommo were staring at
him. Tommo looked annoyed. "&;#8230; the Patching?" he finished.
Tommo glanced down at his shoes.

"We'll do it before we leave." His voice was quite, almost austere.
"It'll have to be a quick one." He moved for the stairs, then stopped.
"Well? What the fuck you waiting for?" Luca heaved out a sigh and began
to follow. His legs felt tired all of a sudden, like he was coming back
from a full day's work. He guessed it was just association. After
sprints were dished out, he never saw these steps 'til vespers. It's
all psychological, he told himself. You have to push through it.

Surreptitiously, he placed a palm against his right breast and
whispered a prayer to Baisanu.

"Hey bro!" Paolo called up from behind. Tommo glanced back over his
shoulder. "We got something to carry him on?"

"What?" said Tommo.

"How we moving Sparks?" Tommo continued powering up the stairs.

"However," he answered, at last. "I don't fucking know. Does it
matter?"

"There's a plank propped against the wall on the fourth floor, yeah?
It's thick, wide."

"Get it then," Tommo told him. "Can you carry it yourself?"

"Uhh&;#8230;" Paolo sounded a little out of breath already. He'd
been smoking too much, thought Luca. "I'll have a pop. If not, you two
can come help, yeah?"

"Right," said Tommo. "Me and Blue'll hit the den for water." He reached
the second floor landing and kicked off against it, increasing his
speed. "C'mon Blue, no fucking around. Get your little culo up these
steps!" Luca adjusted his stance slightly - lowered his head, leant
into the stairs. He started to control his breathing, pulling air in
through his nostrils, holding it one, two, three&;#8230; releasing
it. He heard the scuffle of Paolo's sneakers as he braked hard on the
third floor landing and pivoted through the doorway.

Luca felt like he wanted to talk about what had happened, to say
something. He wanted to tell Tommo what a tough break it was for
Sparks, and hear Tommo agree that it was fucked up. He knew Tommo would
just tell him to shut up, though. When one of the boys got exed, Tommo
coped by switching off his emotions and playing the big boss. It was
like he was trying to be like Baby. Or maybe, Luca realised, the way
Baby acted was an attempt at coping too.

He was falling behind. Luca gritted his teeth for a final burst of
speed, and fought to close the gap. He reached the door to the den two
seconds after Tommo. Tommo walked straight over to the sink and tugged
the metal pail out from underneath. Luca stood just inside the doorway,
staring round the room. It was weird to see it empty, a pile of folded
fabric marking each boy's patch. Tommo struggled with the tap until it
began to splutter water, then tilted the bucket underneath it. Not all
the buildings in the Old Town had running water. It was one of the
perks of living in Mortar territory. Water rates were included in the
'subscription fee'.

"Right," said Tommo, the almost-full pail wobbling in hands. "Take
this." He held it out for Luca to take. Luca crossed the room and
accepted custody, hugging it close to his stomach with one arm, and
holding the rusting handle with the other. It was larger than he
remembered, and as he moved the weight shifted, making him stagger. He
went second, so Tommo couldn't see all the water slopping out of the
sides and darkening the floorboards.

When they came out of the den, Luca suddenly felt very high up. There
were another two floors above them, but all at once Luca glanced down
the shaft and saw Sparks' splattered crimson remains at the bottom, and
he nearly fell, letting slip a little cry of panic. "Hey," said Tommo,
turning round, "you okay there, Blue?" Luca clutched onto the pail and
tried to bring his breathing back under control.

"Yeah," he managed, not sure if it was a lie.

"C'mon, then. This ain't our time we're wasting." Tommo started
skipping down the stairs, two or three at a time. Luca had to follow
more slowly. He was glad of the bucket, in fact. It gave him an excuse
to tread carefully, to plan each step.

Luca had liked Sparks. He'd been okay. A loudmouth, a showoff, and
sometimes even a bully, but okay. Still, that was the way it went. Luca
was saying things like that to himself more and more, these days.
That's the way it goes. Can't be helped. C'est la mort. When it comes,
it comes. He felt like he was losing his sense of things, losing the
meaning of them. When he'd been nine or ten, it had all been so much
deeper. He wasn't quite sure what he'd lost and what he was losing, but
things just happened now. Things happened and people died and he didn't
care. It was just shit going down.

He remembered the fantasies of his childhood and winced with
embarrassment. Black Mengcheren was the Old Town bogey man. It was the
story all the parentless kids told each other to explain why people
went round slitting each other's throats or dying scarred and filthy in
a gutter from a tox dose of Cynocite. It explained why God sat back and
did nothing, why He let a gang gouge out Luca's father's eyes and use a
piece of tubing to pour liquid coolant down his throat, while Luca hid
trembling under an old crate that smelt of yams.

The story went that, way back, before any of them had been born, before
even their parents had been born, there was a war, a big war. Luca knew
that part wasn't a fairy tale. Doubters only needed to take a look out
the window. There were plenty of buildings that had never been
repaired. Some places had been left as rubble and dust. Luca used to be
one of the kids who passed the story on, though, and there was more to
it than that. He knew how it went.

There was no divide back in those days. The war had raged on and on and
the barrier between this life and the next had been worn thin with all
the killing. Ghosts and demons passed freely from one side to the
other. The Old Town and the rest of the city were not segregated as
they were now. The people were good and humble, and lived together as
God's people, and God had blessed them and sent down His angels to
protect the city from attack. The people's enemies had tried to storm
the city, launched rockets and attacked with vast fleets of Isocraft,
but the angels used their powers to create a shield round the city, and
nothing could get through. On the ground, the angels joined with the
city people to fight the invaders, firing beams of white light from
their hands that blew up enemy vehicles and sent foot soldiers fleeing
in terror.

The angels' leader was the biggest and the strongest, and he had great
white wings in which he could enfold others to protect them from enemy
fire. He carried a spear of holy flame. The people called him Santo
Guerrero. He always fought at the front of the battle lines, bellowing
war cries and storming forward to meet the invaders head-on.
The siege raged on for months. It was a deadlock. The enemies could not
penetrate the angels' holy barrier, but the angels and the people that
fought alongside them could not drive their enemies away. For every
soldier they killed, another stepped in to take his place. The invaders
had ample supplies, and reinforcements were constantly being flown in.
The people of the city had suffered so many hardships, and seen so much
death, that it was difficult for them to let themselves believe that
the fighting could ever end. Many had lost sons or daughters, mothers
or fathers, friends or lovers. Now they were losing the most precious
thing of all - hope.

On a dark, dark night, as the people counted their dead, a hooded
stranger, a monk, came to Santo Guerrero. He fell upon the cold stone
floor of the great cathedral where Santo Guerrero and his angel
brothers resided, and praised the Blessed Warrior for his many feats in
the name of the Almighty. Santo Guerrero felt refreshed by this show of
admiration. The people had grown gradually more distant since his
arrival, and as they had withdrawn, so he, alone in the tallest spire
of the cathedral, had become more aloof. The constant battles were
tiring him, and the people's indifference gnawed at his heart. Though
he was divine, he had spent so long on Earth that he had grown
vulnerable to human vices.

Santo Guerrero granted the stranger an audience, and asked him what he
had come for. The stranger was silent for a moment, and then said he
knew how weary Santo Guerrero was becoming. He reminded the angel
leader that the people of the city were only human. If the siege was
testing the limits of the mighty Santo Guerrero, then how was it
affecting the mere mortals that cowered in the darkness of the streets?
Santo Guerrero realised that he had judged the people too harshly, and
was filled with remorse.

The stranger, who had remained quiet for a while, suddenly spoke. He
told Santo Guerrero he knew a way the siege could be ended in a single
day. At first, Santo Guerrero suspected the stranger of mocking him,
but his curiosity and freshly-spurred desire for atonement made him
temper his response. He would do anything to end the siege, he said,
but to finish it in a day would be impossible. For a second time, the
mysterious stranger insisted that he knew a way.

Even up in his lonely spire, Santo Guerrero could feel the people's
pain. He knew they were good people, who loved God. Though he had grave
misgivings, he was desperate to make amends for his lack of compassion
and release the city from its suffering. He turned his holy face
towards the stranger and asked what he would have to do.

"Jesus!" Tommo's cry yanked Luca from his reverie. He stopped, teetered
as the water in the bucket peaked and troughed, the steadied himself
and peered over the edge of the stairs. Tommo was two floors down,
stood a few metres from Sparks' bloody corpse. He was pinned against
the cold dry concrete wall, his hands spread out by his sides, his
fingers splayed. He was staring at the doorway with a look of fixated
terror. It was not a sight that made Luca want to hurry down and join
him. Luca took a tentative step forward.

"What?" he called. Tommo, frozen to the spot and breathing shallowly,
rolled his pupils upwards to bring Luca into view.

"Moosh," he croaked. The tendons in his neck were taut and pronounced,
like cables. He glanced back at the doorway, then mouthed the words
'big one'. Luca could feel his palms turning slick, could feel his
cheeks and forehead growing hotter. Tommo wasn't in a position to be
giving out instructions, just when Luca needed them the most. He had no
idea what to do.

Then he saw it. It was making its way out into the gore-flooded
stairwell, thick whiskers twitching skittishly. Its fur was grey-brown
and slick with some form of greasy effusion. Mooshes disliked the
light. They generally didn't come out at daytime, or not in packs, at
least. It had obviously been a while since this one had eaten. Its body
was all lean muscle interrupted by harsh angular knots of bone. In
front of it, the pool of blood was already starting to clot. The moosh
edged its paws a little closer, then dipped its nose and sniffed.

Luca glanced at Tommo. He was gauging his chances, waiting for an
opportunity to run.
The creature hesitated, then began wading through the shallow puddle
towards the broken carcass. From overhead, Luca couldn't see its teeth,
but he could imagine them all the same, sharp, jagged and yellow, a maw
full of poisoned needles. As it was closing in on the body, Tommo made
a break for it. He turned and sprinted and as he did so, his vest
caught a sharp tooth of wood jutting out from the broken window frame,
snagged and tore and wrong-footed him, and he stumbled and blundered
onto his knees and skidded onto his chest and forearms at the foot of
the stairs, tattooed with grazes.

For a few seconds, Tommo lay still. Luca watched the moosh with
trepidation. Its ears and whiskers had pricked up, and its head was
raised. If it didn't see him, Luca thought, Tommo could just play
possum until it was preoccupied with eating Sparks' guts again, then
sneak away. The moosh looked directly towards Tommo, and its thin red
eyes narrowed to slits. The moosh's tail began to thrash about behind
it. It started hissing like a cat.

Mooshes, Luca knew, could cover a three metres in a matter of seconds,
and take most of your arm or face off with a single bite. He'd seen it
happen to someone, or sort of seen it anyway. He'd kind of caught it in
a backwards glance as he ran once, somewhere behind him in the dark.
He'd heard the scream all right, though. Loud and clear and ululating.
The moosh clambered on top of the corpse, readying itself to pounce.
Tommo tensed up, braced himself. He clearly knew he was about to die
violently.

He was wrong. Luca was suddenly aware of a shape flashing through his
peripheral vision, then with an unceremonious whump-crack, a stout
plank of wood landed squarely across the moosh's back, snapping its
spine and pulping its insides. For some reason, Luca did not jump or
yell. He just stared down at the ochre-crimson mess and tried to make
sense of what he'd just seen. What had he just seen?

He felt someone patting him assuredly on the back. It was Paolo.

"Got the fucker, din' I? Got the fucker goooood." He grinned in his
cracked, kewpie way and went on swaggering down the stairs.

"Wha?" managed Luca, and then, running to catch Paolo up, "that was
you, right?" Paolo nodded. "Holy shit! If you'd dropped that one second
later&;#8230;"

"One heavy piece a' wood. Glad to be shot of it, yeah?" Downstairs,
Tommo was getting to his feet.

"Allah," he breathed, shaking his head and staring at the
viscera-flecked plank that had saved his life. He brushed himself
clean. Paolo reached the bottom at strolled past him. "What you
doing?"

"Fuck this shit," said Paolo, continuing to walk. "Too much kunnan for
a mortal muchacho like me." Luca knew he meant it. You could see it in
his eyes. No threats from Tommo, no amount of promised shit from Baby
was going to turn him round now. Then Tommo did a funny thing. Instead
of shouting, or chasing after Paolo and knocking him clean off his
feet, Tommo sighed.

"This is a mess," he said.

"That's the fucking buddhatruth," Paolo agreed with a chuckle. Luca
felt disorientated by their sudden shift in mood. Disorientated, and a
little anxious. If Baby heard them talking like this, they'd all three
of them get kicked to shit. He stepped forward tentatively.

"So&;#8230; what's next then?" he asked, pretending he thought Paolo
was just joking. "How are we gonna dig Sparks out from under all that?"
The rat had crunched rather than burst. Most mooshes burst, on account
of their swollen detritus-filled paunches. This one had been lean -
hungry enough to venture out in daylight. Luca didn't want to touch it.
Mooshes tended to be swarming with insects when alive, let alone when
dead. "Do we need to get another plank?" Paolo laughed. Luca had been
afraid he might react like that.

"Do what you like, Blue. Personally I can't take no more. I need outs,
yeah?" Luca looked at Tommo. Tommo wiped the perspiration from his
forehead. He inhaled through gritted teeth.

"I'm after starting Morts in a month. Stayed off the circuit
especially, you know, so I can get in." Morts wouldn't take anyone
who'd sold themselves in the last three months. Most gangs had a
similar kind of rule, except for real headfuck crowds like the Dyno
Kids. It did no good for your tough image if your gang-brothers were a
bunch of rentboys. "Baby's a jumped-up faggot who nobody'll take cos
he's too fat and too much of a fuckin' mauviette, you know? Can you
hear this? You hearing me?" Luca nodded meekly. "He fucks us around day
in, day out, and d'you know why? Cos we fucking roll over and take it,
that's why! You're all just a bunch of kids too scared to stick it, out
on the mean streets."

"So&;#8230; what you wanna do?" said Paolo. He threaded his fingers
together and cracked all his knuckles in a splintering ripple, like
applause. Tommo raised one of his feet off the floor pushed it back
against the wall. He stared at the frayed blue laces on his other
boot.

"Storm it, man," said Tommo with a grin. "Proper head-storm. Fuck it.
Fuck all this. I don't care no more." Paolo slapped his hands together
and hummed his approval. He swung round to face Luca.

"Don't have to come, Blue," he said. "Tell Baby we bailed on you, yeah?
Say we moved on. Ain't gonna make you dump this joint if you can't take
it, yeah?" Luca tugged at the neck of his T-shirt. His body seemed
light and insubstantial, like it was made from gas. He wanted to float
away now. Then a hammer-blow voice rang out inside his head. Hold it
together, it said, come down from the clouds and fucking get with it.
Concentrate.

"I know where we can land some hardcore Circus-Circus," he told the
others in measured tones. Paolo looked at Tommo and grinned.

"Serious?" he said.

Luca nodded. "But, before we go&;#8230;" he began.

"What?" said Tommo.

"Are we just gonna leave Sparks like this?" All three stared at the
sticky, furry explosion of fur and entrails. "He was one of us."

"What else can we do?" Tommo asked with a deep shrug. "It's not like we
can do the patching with that big&;#8230; dead moosh splattered all
over him."

"No, but we could do something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know&;#8230;" Luca shuffled his feet. "Like a prayer or
something, anything." Paolo let out a snort of derision, but Tommo
waved his hand to silence him.

"Okay, okay, whatever&;#8230; then we'll go. Bow your heads. I'll
lead." All three tilted their heads forwards and closed their eyes,
Paolo wearing a disapproving frown. Tommo took a deep breath. "Sparks
was a good guy who got taken too young by a shitty world. At least the
poor nooly can rest now. Amen." The heads remained bowed for a moment,
then floated back up to their original positions. Luca blinked as if
waking from a dream. "We'll go stock up on S+, then hit Blue's dealer
for the CC." He slapped Luca between the shoulder blades. "That's gonna
be okay, right?"

"Yep," said Luca. Paolo was already through the doorway and heading for
the exit. "So&;#8230; we're not planning on coming back?" He was
wavering, and he knew how weak it made him look. Tommo passed up the
chance to grill him for it.

"Listen, Blue," he said, leaning against the door frame. "Let tomorrow
take care of itself, okay? Today's all we've got, all there is, okay?
Just think, I'm not waking up tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. You
understand?"

"I understand," said Luca, but not very convincingly.

"Good. Now move your goddamn culo before I plant my goddamn boot up
it." Luca jumped into step behind Tommo. He couldn't help gazing a full
three-sixty round Control on his way towards the exit door. It was the
last time he was going to see the place, the last time after so long
waking up and being dragged down there every morning&;#8230; All at
once, Luca realised that he wasn't going to miss it one bit. It was a
pit, a curse, and he was walking out forever. Baby could kiss his culo.
A surge of endorphins coursed through his system. Paolo mule-kicked the
exit door and it swung into the outside wall with a stentorian
clang.

The street outside was redolent with ammonia and faeces. Luca always
reeled a bit as he adjusted to the smell, especially when it was warm
like this morning. You got used to it pretty quickly, and as Paolo had
once pointed out, everyone in the Old Town stunk a' shit, they just
couldn't smell it cos it was their own. Luca flicked his eyes left and
right to the opposite ends of the street. The coast looked pretty
clear. It was home territory, a safe place to be, comparatively
speaking. Most of the Mortars patrolling knew Baby's boys on sight.
They were okay anyway, because he handed out&;#8230;

"Tommo," Luca said, stretching out the vowels nervously. Tommo looked
round. "We've not got our chits, man. Baby left without giving them to
us."

"Then we'd better not attract any kunnan, right?" replied Tommo
brusquely. "Stop moaning Blue, you sound like my fucking
grandmother."

"You got a grandma?" asked Paolo, grinning. He'd be grinning
permanently now, thought Luca. He knew he was off to get wired.

"Shut up, P," said Tommo. "Let's cut all the jokes 'til we've got the
gear, okay? Just concentrate, right, keep your lids rolled back." Paolo
obediently shut up, and his grin eased, though it didn't disappear
completely. Tommo was right - there was much less chance of their
running into shit if they all treated it like a normal sprint.