Kat strolled with steps buoyed by the day’s successes: pants on her legs, shoes on her feet, and carton in her hand. She traveled from the larger avenue onto smaller offshoots in the last vestiges of light offered from an ever-darkening horizon. Pedestrian traffic thinned with every corner she turned. The streets became narrower, the buildings more neglected, the trash piles higher.
She walked with purpose, retracing her morning’s footsteps. As she turned another street corner, she flashed a quick glance behind her as she had done at every junction since leaving the Beggar’s Market. Fellow night travelers ignored her, charting their own courses through the winding streets for their own, hidden ends. The expressions on the vagrants were all different and yet the same, telling the same story of privation. Even children wore faces of stone. As she swept over the ebbing crowd, her eyes caught on a different type of wanderer. Dressed in rags like everyone else, his pants were a sun-bleached khaki, his shirt a soiled, dark green. The face above the clothing was the gaunt mixture of grime and scars she had come to expect but his countenance didn’t convey the despondent hopelessness so common among Shantytown’s inhabitants. His narrowed eyes, his tight, pursed lips and the singular focus of his stride bespoke of a man with a goal.
Kat’s dark eyes locked onto cold, lifeless ones. She intuitively knew that when singled out with attention, most people with guilty intentions instinctively looked away. This man merely quickened his pace toward her. The single-mindedness sent chills down Kat’s spine.
She broke into a dead run. As she raced down the garbage-strewn street, nimbly avoiding beggars and other obstacles, she realized for the first time that she was fast. Surefooted in her new shoes, Kat flew around a corner without looking back. She nearly collided with a family holding hands as they walked up the narrow street but avoided disaster with a graceful pirouette. Her lungs began to labor to meet her body’s needs as she turned a third corner, then a fourth.
Halfway down the final street, Kat realized she had missed the turn to the road that led to Rat’s small alley. She reduced her speed fractionally and glanced over her shoulder. The green-shirted man was nowhere in sight. Kat slowed further while alternating her watch forward and behind. Ahead of her was the street she had traveled last night, the one granting access to the opposite half of Rat’s alley, occupied by the crone that had threatened her with the leg of a chair. Given the events of the day, the mental image of the elder woman wielding her makeshift club was laughable.
Kat reached the opening to the alley and scanned diligently behind her for her pursuer. Nothing.
Maybe he wasn’t really after me, she hoped but kept her vigil. I suppose it’s possible that not everyone who looks at you is a mugger. After a final, furtive glance, she ducked into the alley.
The buzzard was hunched over a blanket, her back to the alley’s entrance. She appeared to be sewing.
“Just passing through,” Kat said merrily as she trotted toward the trash wall dividing the hag’s space from Rat’s.
The woman took several moments to grope for her chair leg. Once it was firmly in her hand, she twisted her torso toward Kat and with a wicked glare spat, “Get outta my space, you tramp!” She used her free hand to push off the ground and rose. “I’ll bash your head in!” The woman’s yellowed eyes tracked Kat’s path and she added, “Stay away from my man, you homewrecker!” She swung her club in a feeble attempt to brain her intruder.
Kat raised her right arm in defense but easily skirted the blow with an agile sidestep as she passed the woman. She reached the trash wall and began to climb.
Rat’s indignant reply roared over the pile. “I ain’t your man, you old goat!”
Kat carefully placed her free hand on the top of the chain link fence and, keeping her carton steady in her other hand, hopped over before the woman could reach her.
Beyond the wall, Rat was standing next to a large overturned barrel. A small rodent’s bloody body laid in pieces on the improvised table while its namesake stood over it with a small paring knife. Rat’s expression echoed the surprise in his voice. “Missy! Gotta say I’m shocked to see you.”
Kat checked the integrity of her carton as she walked toward him. “Call me Kat, Rat.” Her white teeth flashed as she heard her words. “I promise not to eat you.”
Rat chuckled as she stepped next to him. The sight on the drum would have made her retch twenty-four hours ago. Now, it was just life. “You’re not going to eat that raw, are you?”
“Nope. The fire gang will be starting up soon. I’ll cook it then.” Rat gestured toward an abandoned building along the alley, its length ignoring the trash wall dividing the territory. “A group of us risk using a room in there in the evenings. I drag this can over and the others take turns bringing wood or coal for the fire. We cook our food, boil water when we have to.” He pointed at a cardboard box lined by a tattered, blue tarp with a puddle of water in it. “It rained early last night so that water is still good for drinking. The rats will poop in it soon enough though and I’ll have to boil it.”
Kat licked her lips at the sight of fresh water. At least the massacre on the barrel had pushed away her thoughts of food.
Rat looked between his water supply and Kat and shook his head firmly. “No handouts, Mis—Kat. Giving out charity will just attract more people and eventually, one of them won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. You better be on your way.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want a handout, Rat.” The strength in her voice surprised her. “I wouldn’t take it if you offered one. When a mean, old bastard like you gives a young woman something, he starts to think maybe she owes him.” She placed the carton of booze on the barrel. “I’m looking for a fair business deal. You let me rent just enough room in your alley to sleep on and I’ll pay you with tonic.”
Rat’s eyes widened eagerly. He glanced at her with suspicion and then grabbed the carton and raised it to his face. The first sniff was tentative. The second one threatened to inhale the liquid into his nose. He groaned as he closed his eyes. “Ohhhh, I’ve been dreaming about this all day.” He placed the carton to his lips and drank in gulps. When he finished, he belched loudly and proclaimed, “You’re an angel of mercy, Kitten. A real lifesaver.”
Kat grinned triumphantly. “One carton’s worth a week. In return, I get to sleep here, gain access to your rainwater and can join the fire gang.”
“Two cartons for all that,” Rat haggled. “But I’ll throw in use of my fine cutlery.” He rotated the small blade in his hands. “Just not on me,” he joked.
Kat stared at the knife and its deeper meaning. Her throat tightened. Am I going to hunt rats and eat them? Am I going to become just like everyone else here in all the other ways too? The last twenty-four hours of her life had shown her the pinnacles humans were capable of along with their depths. She thought of Reynolds’ mercy and the lechery of the street preacher. I may not know who I am but I know who, and what, I want to be. Isn’t that the more important of the two? “Deal,” she agreed.
Kat poured the remaining contents of her carton into Rat’s empty bottle. She had plans for her own receptacle. She then pushed aside some of the trash in Rat’s alley and swept the ground with the sides of her shoes to clear a spot for her to sleep each night. She felt her confidence growing with every hour as she began to take command over a life that seemed so out of control less than a day ago. She wondered if her emerging personality was her old self breaking through her mental barrier or if “Kat” was truly a newborn.
Hours later, she leaned against the outside wall of the abandoned, brick building. She had been disappointed to learn that the fire gang wouldn’t accept her until she brought a night’s worth of firewood or coal. Rat had introduced her to rest of the gang though, all five of them. To Kat’s dismay, Starlet, the woman across the trash wall, was a member. Starlet’s contempt for the possible, new addition was unreserved but Kat had diffused some of the animosity by listening to the woman’s nostalgic telling of her days as a model even after the others had grown weary with her prattling and moved inside to make the fire. The other female, a short, middle-aged woman named Pru, seemed more open to Kat’s membership. The men, Patch, Mike and Johnny Tweeks, had been more than agreeable. Judging by their salacious looks, Kat assumed each of the men was eager for a new female member not only to further split the firewood duties but for ulterior reasons.
She let her eyes close and listened to the ruckus from the street beyond the alley. The hodgepodge of humanity passed by the entrance in pairs and singles. Few bothered to look down her alley with more than the paranoia that permeated Shantytown.
As tendrils of smoke carrying the smell of cooked meat wafted down the alley from the fire gang, Kat’s stomach complained about her shopping priorities once again. She drank water fetched from the blue tarp’s puddle with her carton as an offering to her hunger. It was poor solace but comfort nonetheless. A distant gunshot echoed down the street followed by a quick chirp from a security aircar’s siren. People crisscrossed the opening of the alley with greater urgency as Shantytown’s turmoil became a backdrop for the night.
Her eyelids drooped. Her grip around a new wire scavenged from the trash barrier relaxed and she entered the sleep of the dead.