Streaks of blood were left on the floor as the men were dragged away. Both having received a swift beating from the swarming police. What they had managed to impart on one another was nothing compared to how they looked now.
Daniel watched the rough treatment without giving it much thought. Violent fights, sneaky stabbings, and even the odd, indiscriminate shooting were all still fairly commonplace around the public side of the Warehouse, despite the ever-tightening security. With the guards intervening in this case, Daniel had enough good sense to stop watching. Although it did make him casually settle his hand on the butt of the pistol on his right hip, which was secured inside a nylon holster by a safety strap with a quick-release snap. The ruckus had also caused him to eye the crowd a bit more carefully; these fights could always be set up well before hand, a distraction for something much bigger.
Perusing the wares and prices along a row of baker baskets gave Daniel the time needed to calculate which items on the grocery list he could actually manage to buy. Of course everything was for sale if you could pay the asking price, but he only possessed seventeen stipends. Beyond the salvage left inside his home, this was everything that he had left to his name.
The creased paper of Daniel’s municipal stipends were tucked safely away from the pickpockets, hidden inside a rabbit pelt pouch that hung on the end of a string, half-way down the inside of his pant leg. Avoiding human contact was all but impossible after entering into certain sections of the bazaar. Losing money to a crafty pickpocket, who used this fact to his or her advantage, was a lesson that Daniel only needed to experience once before it became ingrained.
But seventeen stipends, it seemed, did not buy what it used to. Daniel tried his best to stretch them out as far as they would go. Only managing to buy two heavy loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, a small paper bag of potato chips, the haunch of a medium-sized dog, and three hot-house tomatoes.
With both of his bags now as full as they were ever going to get, Daniel donned a posture meant for intimidation. He strode across the dirt-defined aisles in a lunging gait. Keeping his shoulders arched back he tried to look as tall as possible, his arms crept away from his body and his chest puffed out slightly. It was now time for the most dangerous part of any trip made to the Warehouse, and it involved keeping everything that he had stuffed inside the two burlap sacks.
Weaving his way closer to the exit, Daniel noticed that the guards had not resumed their posts after dealing with the earlier tussle. This made his shoulders reflexively droop slightly back down again, coiling his body for action by lowering his center of gravity. He stopped briefly at the large rolling door that served as the entrance into the Warehouse. Even the seldom felt warmth of the sun and its reaching-for-sunglasses brightness splashing on the stained concrete before him did not manage to raise his spirits.
After the blue framed mirrors were in place over his eyes, Daniel still had to tilt his head downward to bring the brim of his hat into use. After this shielding was in place, he could clearly see what was outside. Some fifty yards away, stretching out before him like a bad dream that refused to end, stood the swarm of ‘drifters’, at least this is what everyone with residency called them.
Driven by the prospect of landing a steady job, anyone hearing the rumors about the work camp further to the south came running in droves. The city was the main staging area for all of the trucks, workers, and equipment that made its way down to contain the ecological disaster that the terrorists caused by attacking the Fermi II nuclear power plant ten years before. Despite their individual plights the Council refused to take the drifters in, starving masses were nothing new after all, and a “pay to play” policy had been adopted long ago to deal with this problem. If you brought trade goods or a skill that was in demand you could pay your way in, maybe even get transported down to the work camp. If you showed up empty handed and unprepared you joined the rest of the group standing outside the Warehouse fence until you scrounged up something, or until you