Moral Zero (6 page)

They passed steel bins left empty while rubbish and refuse of every kind was scattered everywhere, as if the bins themselves signalled some command to order that the people shunned. They passed the homeless or what seemed to be the homeless, though in this city they could be anybody. They sat or lay forlorn in clothes or bundled rags or naked and grimy. Some shivered and some sweated and many writhed on drugs or swayed on drink as if conducting some voodoo incantation to rid the street of its evils. Some of those sat were junkies and one or two were well-clothed and clean-shaven and this did not seem to matt
er. Some begged and were ignored, some didn’t beg and were ignored. By all except pushers and pimps, thieves and worse. Mr White saw them sidle up and sit down as if friends, to young women and men, to kids, to those well-dressed and those naked, to any and all, for even the ugly and old could be exploited, and perhaps in their desperation they were perfect for it. Mr White awkwardly gave a man with his hands out a few coins, and received a strange look from Red. The man looked at the coins in his hand as if they were foreign to him. He bit into one with what was left of his teeth and a tooth broke and his mouth bled over the coins. Another man came out of the shadows and they saw the glint of a blade and they left quickly while he kneeled down and close to the broke-tooth man.

Mr White followed Red close as he half-strut his stride and both their face
s glowed in the light of the neon signs that hung crackling from anywhere they could be seen. Their faces were ultramarine in the hazy light of a peepshow theatre, and scarlet and bloody in the outside embrace of a porn shop. Their features flicked green with envy and yellow with sickness and every colour of the rainbow in a dozen different tints and bleeds. They passed drug dens and brothels and gun-shops and run-down emporiums selling things behind fortified counters to any customer with the money and neither would ask questions nor demand answers. They passed a bright pink lit window and above it was a pink sign of a pizza with red neon meatballs. They entered and bought pizza for that was all the food there was and it came cold and crusty and the meat on it was nothing they could recognise. Red bought them both some kind of liqueur which he glugged and Mr White sipped slowly. Red told Mr White not to make any eye contact with any of the other patrons of the takeaway, to not even look at them, and Mr White replied that he would not even consider it.

They left and continued on to the border between District Seven and Ten. Only once did they pass a cop and
it did not harass them nor harass anybody else. They could not see its face hidden as it was behind its helmet but its manner of walking and how it stayed in the light and how its head moved from side to side but too quick to examine anything gave the impression of nervousness, as if it knew its continued solitary existence in these streets had even more tentative a future than those prostitutes and homeless addicts. They did see a number of drones, and heard even more, to the point that the buzzing cat-purrs that crept up on them and then past or were hidden behind walls or flying above them along rooftops or down in the sewers beneath their feet became no more an event than their own breathing.

Nearly there hombre,
said Red, as they passed though the darkness under a small dilapidated bridge that leaked some dark fluid from its bones. Mr White thought a few drops hit his shoes but he did not stop to check. The lights were less now and as he flicked his eyes quickly at the people in the street they seemed full of cruelty. He did not dare look at their faces and this gave them an absence of humanity, if there was even any there. He saw Red look at some of the bodies of the girls but he was looking less and less and whether this was due to a dropping quality or apprehension or weariness on Red’s part was unknown. Mr White saw a woman in leather straps and netting and something that looked like barbed wire around her crotch lean out of a doorway at their approach. She had a huge exposed cleavage and her lips were bulbous and sticky red, pumped so fat that they seemed to command her whole face.  He looked at Red and Red must have seen her first because without turning his head he shook his head emphatically and they walked on.

Mr White shivered and he finished the last of his liqueur which tasted of rotten fruit but all synthetic and shook full of sugar. He wondered aloud where the next bin was for he had not seen one in some time. Red told him to drop it on the street and after a hesitation Mr White placed it down as near the side of the street as he dared go and then hurried back. They passed a middle-aged woman in furs being sick onto the side of a grey-brick building without windows or doors. Her face was pale and blue and Mr White looked for the light but it was not blue but white.

Should we help her? Mr White whispered as they drew level.

I think you k
now the answer to that one man, said Red, and Mr White already did.

On both sides of his vision were alleyways and small side streets shrouded in the thickest blackness,
both full and empty, like beckoning voids, each one seeming a shortcut to oblivion. As though if he ventured down any he would never be seen again. He heard a gunshot from one and then silence and from another a scream and then silence. Both seemed to come from some other world hidden from his eyes, as though the blackness did not contain such dangers but was merely the gateway, and once you passed through you ceased to be part of this world and would be forever lost. His mind seemed to draw him closer to these shadows, shifting his perspective from side to side, but his body stayed on track out of fear and automation and so it seemed like his mind was struggling to escape its bonds while the body stayed firm and the mind lurched out on its own like some drunken phantasm of the night. It splayed out left and right and tried to fly to the voids and the tether caught and it was pulled back, secretly glad, springing back to safety and full of the rush of terror avoided.

We’re here,
announced Red abruptly.

Mr White looked ahead and saw a bright white light next to a long gate drawn across the road barring passage. As they walked closer they saw the
cold light came from a checkpoint guarded over by six cops and two armoured drones and an automated machine gun that revolved on an axis to point to them as their motion was sensed. As at the Five-Seven checkpoint there was a matching outfit on the other side of the gate.

You know the drill, said Red.
Answer their questions, don’t be a cunt, do the same on the other side, boom we’re through. The cop that caught me before didn’t get an ID.

A cop caught you?
Mr White’s mouth dropped open.

Just for a second. I
t’s cool man, don’t worry about it.

Mr White did worry, and as they stepped up to the checkpoint all the shining black helmets of the cops were turned to them as were the drones and the machine gun span its barrel slowly as if held just at the point of firing.

Mr White took a deep breath and held it.

Are you holding your breath? The black helmet was turned to him and he saw his own reflection shine back at him.

No,
said Mr White stiffly.

Red looked at him. He really
ain’t.

The cop
looked from one to the other. Names?

Jonathan White,
said Red promptly.

Um,
said Mr White.

Um?
said the cop, pausing typing, its hands hovering over the keys.

Johnny Um,
Mr White said, and swallowed. His face was growing hot.

The cop’s expression was invisible through the helmet. There was a long pause and then the cop tapped the keys and
gave them their papers back.

You can breathe now,
came the same flat electronic tones. Johnny Um.

Mr White tried to breathe out slowly through his nose but it all came rushing out at once and he gulped in air. The black helmet seemed to bore into him but all he could see was his own stupid face.

Move on, buzzed the cop, hands hovering once more on the keys, the rest of the body motionless. They moved on. Through a white door and into the checkpoint on the other side of the gate where they faced the same pointless process, and then they were out.

DISTRICT 10, STREET

See, said Red, as they walked down the street in District Ten, The thing with these checkpoints is that they just
don’t care
none.
Unlike the rest of the district, it’s the end of their jurisdiction and they’d rather see the fuckin back of you. Unless they’re already lookin for you and out for your fuckin blood, in which case I guess you gotta judge the risk and maybe find somewhere else to cross. But I ain’t even sure the cops at the checkpoints communicate with those on the beat. And the people on the other side of the gate, that’s a whole new fuckin system man, new force, new rules. They got nothin on you. Districts don’t share criminal data with each other, they barely share anythin. Totally fuckin independent, only connected by distance, like, like ignoring neighbours. The perfect getaway destination.

Red
kicked at loose stones on the road as they passed through what seemed like the same kind of street as before but with everything just in a different order, as if somebody had picked the whole street up and shook it and put it down again a bit further on.

Won’t they have a visual description? said Mr White, unconvinced.

Depends how fucked the cop could be to report one, answered Red casually. But that’s why I changed clothes.

What about the hair? You c
ould have put a hat on.

The hair stays.

Mr White’s face was once again taking on rainbow colours as they passed the neon-lit brothels and gun-shops and emporiums and spirit shops and pizza parlours and massage parlours that were not massage parlours at all, and all of them run-down and grimy and sleazy as if by design.

Are you saying ther
e was no risk at all back then?

Oh man,
chuckled Red, pointing and clicking his fingers at the shadows around him as if he was imagining himself to be firing pistols to ward off the darkness. There was loadsa risk. A drone coulda ID’d me escapin. The cop coulda had a good enough description for them to match me, say of a sexy young hombre with fuckable hair. Hell, the cop could have been one of those mannin the checkpoint tonight.

Goddamit.
Do you know what would have happened to you had you been caught?

Us,
Red replied helpfully. They’da took you too for bein with me.

Us,
said Mr White irritably. Do you know?

Red shrugged.

I do. We’d have been immediately arrested, imprisoned without bail, sentenced in court the next day with no defence counsel or even case for defence. No jury. No appeal. Then the same day we’d be shot. And if this district is one of those that employ torture, well we’d have that to look forward to as well before we die.

Red shrugged again. Chill man, these things happen.

Mr White put his hands up in the air as if calling to the gods and then put them back down again. Only in Rule Red! Only in Rule! Which is why we have to be more careful! They say that the punishment fits the crime but most of the punishments here seem to be death.

May as well
go for the biggest crime then, Red grinned, his teeth reflecting lime green in the glow of the latest sign.

Mr White
sighed. Just what were you doing anyway.

Nothin much.

No, really.

Just havin
sex.

With who?

I dunno.

You do know though, don’t you?

Yeah.

Mr White shook his head.
Red, the risk . . .

Red
waved his hands dismissively. That’s why we’re here ain’t it? Without risk what do we have? Without risk we’re nothin doin nothin. What’s the fuckin point? Why are
you
here?

Mr White paused, not understanding, either what Red was saying or his own reasons
for being in Rule. He tried to think. I’m here . . . to escape. The words came difficult and strange, as they always do when trying to put words to something where mere words could not do the job.

Red looked at him as if taking measure of
this, and then nodded slowly. Right. See, I dunno where you’re from, but for me, well, back home rules and laws are mighty fuckin thin on the ground. Mighty fuckin thin. Long as you don’t impact on the rich and powerful you can get away with all kindsa shit. That’s cause where I’m from the less you got the more of a fuckin commodity you are. But only en masse, shits ain’t given bout the individuals, see? Drops in the fuckin ocean. The less value they give you the less protection they give you. They look out for themselves and them alone. Like us all. That’s what got built up over time, the instinct to fuck another over. And so you think, right, well it’ll be fuckin chaos right? No sir. No. As each law dropped off the fuckin chart, meaningless in these . . . new ages of the predator and prey, as each law vanished to fuck the people grew more tired. I seen it. I’ve walked amongst the underclass outside the factories and workhouses and old underground bars stinkin from the sewers, and there ain’t life in their eyes no more. They been shit upon so long and it’s been dog-eat-dog there so goddamn much that they got nothin left to chew on.