up on people. The Public Housing Police only shows up in force when they do a drug and gun sweep. The rest of the time, they stay well away from the tenements. We have security cameras on every floor, but most of them are broken. Nobody gives a shit about welfare rats.
Our apartment is on the twelfth floor of a thirty-floor building. I make my way down the stairs, taking three and four steps at the time, speed over stealth. At the bottom of the staircase, I pause again to listen. Then I open the door to the lobby, and hurry out of the building to fetch my gun.
Guns are illegal, especially in welfare housing, but just about everybody has one anyway. I don’t keep mine in the house because of the random checks, and because Mom would have a fit if she found it. I hide it in a waterproof tube that’s stuck into a crevice of the building’s huge mobile trash incinerator. It’s a great hiding place-nobody ever checks there, and the container is always in the same spot-but it leaves me easy prey until I get out of the building. I check to make sure nobody is watching, and walk over to the trash container.
Every time I reach into the crevice, I expect to come up empty. Every time my hand closes around the cool metal of the magnetic storage cartridge, I let out a breath of relief. I open the lid and take out my gun. It’s an ancient cartridge revolver, made over a century and a half ago. It holds only six rounds, but it works even with crummy ammunition, which is far more common than the good kind. Most of my meager ammo stash is hand-loaded from old brass cases and scrounged lead scraps. Revolvers are more popular than automatics because a dud doesn’t tie up the gun.
I stick the revolver into my pants, right behind the hip bone, where the tension of the waistband holds the gun in place. It’s risky to walk around with an illegal gun, but it’s riskier still to walk around in the Public Residence Cluster unarmed.
There’s one thing that’s nice about the rain. It keeps most people indoors, even the predators. When it rains, the streets outside are almost peaceful. I pull up the hood of my jacket, and walk out into the street.
I’m soaked to the bone within five minutes. You can stay mostly dry if you use the awnings and building overhangs as cover, but I’d rather get wet. Doorways and other dark places close to buildings are dangerous. You walk past one where a bunch of apprentice thugs loiter, and your journey is over. I almost got mugged twice last year, and I’m more careful than most.
My father’s apartment building is almost at the other end of the PRC. There’s a Public Transit station nearby, but I can’t enter without setting off the gun scanners at the entrance, so I walk.
This is the place where I grew up. I’ve never been outside of the Boston Metroplex. Tomorrow, I’ll be off to Basic Training, and if I don’t wash out, I’ll never see this place again. I’m leaving behind everything I’ve ever known, and everyone who’s ever known me, and I can’t wait.
Dad opens the door after my third buzz. I last saw him over a year ago, and for a moment, I am shocked at how much he has changed since then. His face is haggard. When he was younger, he was a very handsome man, but the cancer has eaten away most of his substance, physically and mentally. His teeth are horribly bad, enough to make me want to recoil when he opens his mouth to smile.
“Well, well,” he says. “Come to say your good-byes, have you?”
“Mom sent me,” I say.
“Of course she did.”
We look at each other for a few heartbeats, and he turns around and walks back into the apartment.
“Well, come in, come in.”
I step into the hallway of his apartment, and close the door behind me. Dad walks over to the living room, where he drops onto the couch with a sigh. There’s an enormous collection of medical supplies on the table in front of him. He catches my glance and shrugs.
“Pointless, all of it. The hack at the clinic says I’ll be worm food in six months.”
I want to give him a snide reply, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do it. The room smells like sickness, and my