“Stone Streets” by David Sugarman

Last Updated: 8 December 2009 370 views No Comment Posted by: B-Side Empire

something hit me across my shoulders and my gun skittered away across the cobbles. ive never been in the old towns before. jones yells at me and i chase my firearm down the street in the opposite direction that the guy ran off so i dont know how this happened but next thing i know my face is copying the revolver and sliding across the frozen winter stones while that fucker staggers back from a wall his nose running red from where he smashed it on the old bricks. i try to get up but slip again on the iced pavement and crack my knees. jones hasnt caught us up. the other guy is still sneezing blood all down the front of his jacket and clutching his face cursing to himself. i cant tell if he even knows that he hit me. in a frenzy i cast about for my gun but i cant see it so i reach for my cuffs and finally scrabble to my feet with the help of the side of an old building. the shock of the fall starts to subside and the pain of the scraped side of my face begins to throb and ache. i can hear jones in the distance. sounds like hes taken a wrong turn and lost the other guy in the streets though hes been here before. not for a while id guess we dont get called out here too much.

i gauge my balance and step out away from the wall to cuff this guy. hes still caught up in his own distraught over his precious bloody nose. ive no sympathy. hes the one who pulled that job down in the greek sector a few weeks ago and took all the med supplies from the kids ward. im almost to him with my badge in one hand and cuffs in the other when he looks up and sees me. i try to be calm when i tell him hes under arrest for grand theft but he looks over my shoulder a little and i remember that i dropped my gun because something else hit me. and it does. again.

jones and i were not on the case when the greek sector chairman reported the heist that took the drugs. not our department not our responsibilty. not that we werent interested after all those trucks being robbed just before new year carrying similar products. what was weird was that according to rumour whoever was doing it wasnt paying any attention to what it was they were taking. just a random bunch of stuff sometimes enough to fill your pockets sometimes the entire cargo. like they didnt know what they were looking for. some of it wasnt even that valuable.

jones got the call last night that a small delivery van was being held up in a street on the borders of the city just outside the blair gate. armed robbery. in our sector. or just abouts. a concerned insomniac curtaintwitcher lady put a call in after seeing it through her window at 2 in the morning. when we pulled up a couple of side roads away we went through a couple of alleys hoping to surprise him. we had another team with us. scott and kelly i think but i didnt see them jones called them on the way. we caught him and he dropped what he was carrying and vaulted the hood of the car and took off down those crooked little passageways. the others stayed back and scanned some prints. so thats how we know that its the same guy. amateur. i dont know how he thought to get away without being caught when he left enough prints around to wallpaper a crib.

when i came to in the alley jones was standing over me looking concerned. i vomited. there was blood in my hair when i touched the back of my hair and i couldnt see straight. jones handed me another gun. mine was gone. one of the bastards must have taken mine when i got knocked out. jesus god. i couldnt really stand. not on my own so i pulled myself along a wall while jones went along a parallel alley. he offered to help but i told him to go fuck himself and he took that to mean i didnt want his help. so there were two of them right. ok. we could take two of them especially if one of them was still bleeding freely which he was. there was a nice shiny red trail to follow. might as well have been dribbling ink. ok so i was pretty much crippled and didnt have my cuffs and one of them had my gun but id go so far as to say we still had the edge. slight. from the way they were running they didnt know where they were going any more than we did.

he hadnt got that far. i backed myself into a corner knowing i werent in a fit state to fight or watch my own back and held him in my sights. he knew i was there this time but had his back to me. i tried to look for his accomplice but i couldnt do that and watch him at the same time. i called out for jones and his voice replied from a few blocks back. there wasnt much light as youd expect in the old town most of the electricity cables being gone but the houses seemed to still be occupied. i didnt realise there were so many people living this far out the blair gate. the slums on the east side have always been full to bursting right up to the partition until a few years ago and the population suddenly eased out a little. the bigwigs said the people had just moved out but they didnt say theyd left the city limits. no one has lived past the partition for 20 years or thats what i thought. jones arrived quick and the guy still hadnt said anything and i figured he was getting his breath back.

mister i called out. we know you pulled that heist back there, and twelve others just like it including sigma central hospital. he looked over his shoulder finally and i could tell straight off he couldnt see me. one of his eyesockets was collapsed and the other eye was full of blood and it looked half blind anyway. he tried a little grimacing smile but he was clearly in unbearable pain and i realised how much i was hurting. he coughed and said ok i cant run anymore. im hurt pretty bad can i can i get s some help.

i said since hed been depriving kids of help did he really think he deserved help.

he started laughing a bit which i couldnt understand because this guy must have been on the verge of passing out. he was near blind and his thumping heartbeat was still emptying claret out his face. must have been almost dry. anyway the laugh turned into a cough and jones and i moved in a little closer. i asked him whats so funny.

he said it was funny that it had taken us so long to catch him and yet we still didnt know why he was doing it. jones put a hand on my shoulder and i lowered my gun. wheres your friend jones asked. the guy shrugged and it nearly had him dead. we grabbed him under the arms and sat him down before we started off to get him back to the cars. jones radioed for an ambulance. i said can you see and he said he hadnt seen right for 16 years after the city shut up and he was diabetic but since he lived outside the partition he was ineligible for healthcare. i asked why he lived outside the partition for so long without getting sick. he said did he look healthy and i didnt know whether to laugh or stay quiet. cholera diptheria influenza hepatitis he listed the plagues of the slums inside the partition. so he said his family had the choice of certain disease and possible treatment or take the risk of living outside the partition. at first his cousin living inside the city had sent him treatment for his diabetes but when the cousin got put away for stealing the medicine he had to come into the city himself to try and get it. because of the insufficiency of the stuff hed been using the condition had progressed to the stage he was near sightless and he gave the last of his money to the street gangs for a gun to raid the pharmacies but of course he couldnt see what was written on the labels so he just had to take it all.

he passed out just before we got back to the cars. the ambulance came soon after and we loaded him in and started back to the office to get going on the paperwork still thinking about the guy. we didnt say anything for a while. it started raining and it rained all night with drops drumming on the windscreen. jones said i should get my head checked and i told him to mind his own business. he said he was minding his own business would i please stop bleeding on the headrest.