All Bad Things

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No one causes trouble in the Central Market. The snipers make sure of that.

It’s been here for years, at least as long as Samson can remember, in the middle of a bombed–out five–story building on South Broadway, the roof torn out and all but the bottom floor destroyed. The walls—ringed at each floor by a few feet of rickety, crumbling cement and steel pipe that the two–man sniper patrols walk along, looking for trouble down below—seem held up by magic. The only concession to a roof is a series of badly stitched–together blue tarps that flap and snap in the wind high above. They keep the sun and the worst of the rain out, but just barely.

The first time he was here, Luke Samson was five, maybe six years old, and running with some kids in a gang called the Leather Jerks, doing what they had to do to stay alive. Good days were running messages, picking pockets, bashing heads. Bad days—well, there were things some of the kids did that didn’t bear thinking about. By the time Samson had joined up he was already towering over kids twice his age, and nobody made him do anything he didn’t want to, but he’d seen things. The memories make his blood boil even now.

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