The body slumped backward in the chair, swivelling on the axis and tipping slowly. They ignored it, passing the work station as though it wasn't there. A steady flow of traffic moving around an island. Safe haven here. Nicko sucked the last centimetre of his smoke down, swallowing the grey flutter. Beside him, Susan made that cough-turn she did when she disapproved. Her fingers rubbed over the third button of her jacket, already wearing away the shiny coating. "I dunno what you reckon, but you gotta move him hey?"
"Nicko?"
"Hey?"
"He's right, Nicko, move the poor bastard." Susan nodded toward the man's slipping form. He was slim and contorted like a praying mantis folded backward. Dack stepped away from the wall, spitting his lit cigarette into the crowd - hardarse. "Nah, yeah. I'm right. Let's go."
The body moved like cement sacks tied together and the lugging was warm, even without Susan tagging her encouraging quips. "With the legs, lads. Always lift with the legs."
They dumped the body at the back door for collection, the boys lighting up as night broke. On the west bank the cool glass and steel structures still glinted, shadow reflections on the water. "There'll be more tonight, you know" Nicko nodded to the dead man, now curled up foetal, head kissing his knees. Susan looked away again, half shrugging. She kept on because Nicko asked her to, and Dack was a psycho waiting for the paddy van. If her father had known, something her mum said before the lights were cut and Susan turned them back on. /meat on the table is meat, mum. Don't bitch about what you can't change, dig?/ She slept in the back room with no windows. One door in, one door out.
The night bus rolled in, slim Jacketmen crawling off with nothing and on with the body, rolling him into the strip lit aisle. You walk the walk you talk, her dad said once. The bus fogged into the night, and the boys went back inside. The door stayed unlatched for her, and the warm orange of the stair light lit her elbow and shoulder. There was a warmth in this, like light kept away the dank smell of salt and meat from the riverbank. Word was they salted the banks to keep the bushes growing, keep the coast clear. The narrow riverboats touched base at the docks and nowhere else. Susan stamped the butts out before she turned in. One of those nights. The boys had clustered with some hard liners in the right quadrant, watching the tide roll in. New workers shifted uncomfortably in their swivel chairs, not used to being ignored yet. Two weeks in and they were tapping like all hell. God knows there's nothing else to do. The boys clucked like hens in their corner, blooded on the first night casualty. It was good mojo, catching the One, anything after would be Nicko's call first.
She could see Lukewarm sitting away from the crowd, sucking on the end of his pipe. The oldest of the boys at twenty five, they said he stayed to train. Watching him said otherwise. He kept an eye on the best and when they got a little too good, they disappeared. /promotion. Got to give 'em something to live for, neh?/ You got half a question with Luke, half a dismissal. Women weren't worth his time, not if they weren't in bed with him. God knows he ignored Susan like the tide. Eyes white washing her from the scene.
She watched the jittery type of the new recuits and memorised some faces. The healthy ones first, they kept longer and smoothed themselves into the hard, blank exterior the hardliners had. The unhealthy, the frail, she ignored. A man touched her arm and she could feel the heat escape her body, trailing behind her and into the man's fingers. He began to type again and she strode out the back, knocking up the flimsy barrier. Inside the stock cabinets were old chocolate drinks, dry powders she knew made the hot stuff.
She fixed the drink slowly, measuring the spoonfuls exactly against the tin, razor flat on top. The kettle boiled and she tipped the water in, watching the dry melt into wet and sighed. It would be the rains soon, hard packed earth muddying and clogging her shoes. Ten past nine, Nicko banging on the door because, hell, what are doorknobs for? "Suz, we're leaving soon. Get your shit together, neh?"
"Yeah, yes."
"...need help?" She slung the drink back and let it burn her taste buds and down her throat. "Fucking A, kimosabe."
She could feel him hesitate at the door, a thrum of nervous energy. That meant a hunt, which meant one of those poor locked bastards had gotten out.
-
It was the way she kept herself to herself. Always two steps in front of what was happening, it seemed. Dack watched her back as she stalked to the back room. One of the news had touched her, sucked some of the life from her, probably. Even now the new was getting antsy. It was about time they had a hunt. Dack moved to the slick metal panel and opened the new’s channel, whispering into the mic.
There was no need for an alarm, the hardliners were all there. Most watched the new break out without a twitch. Lukewarm laughed, stabbing his knife into the seat beside him. “Little boys, we have a hunt.”
Dack was next to Nicko when he decided to fetch Susan. “We could leave her here” Dack offered, trying to toughen under Nicko’s cold glare. “Or not. Whatever, man.” Nicko walked away like nothing had been said. He always walked like that, as though there wasn’t anything before or after movement. The girls were all over that. /it’s about the action, chiquita. I gotta move or I die, dig?/ And he’d move right on to the next one, like the current never happened. /Some guys got the touch, some guys got fucking nuffin/ everyone’s got something to bitch about. He didn’t mention Susan when Nicko returned alone, watched the flick of his eyes back and forth between the door and here. Chicks.
Nicko spent the next ten minutes brooding about it, her. When the door opened and she popped out, looking like a million-goddamned-dollars, he didn’t even move. That’s some kind of fugue state – that kind they teach you in school. Sinking into the mire of your own misery, or whatever. It was Lukewarm she talked to, like he was even something. And him not even looking at her. Chicks.
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