Free Adrift 2: Sundown by K.R. Griffiths Page B

crossed by the rail line that led toward central London to the north, was a regular meeting spot for Morden’s fast-growing homeless population, and Sam would have expected to see someone there at midday. At the very least, there should have been one person under the bridge: the one Sam was supposed to be meeting.
    He saw nobody, and checked his watch. The face was cracked, but it still kept time. When he’d checked it five minutes earlier, it had informed him that he was late. It still said the same thing.
    So where the hell is he?
    The bridge was wide, spanning a patch of wasteland and a couple of derelict buildings. The space beneath was wreathed in shadows, but it was immediately obvious that there was no one at all waiting for him.
    Dammit.
    Sam frowned and slowed his steps a little as his thoughts raced ahead.
    He travelled to the bridge a couple of times a week, usually to pick up heroin. The guy who he had been buying off recently—a white-haired ex-rocker for whom the seventies had never really ended—called his product Brain Damage , but Sam was under no illusions. It wasn’t high-grade stuff: anyone who bought beneath the bridge knew that going in. What Sam got from the bridge was always the same. Not mind-blowing; not poison. When you had a habit to maintain, the not-poison part quickly became important. Far more than any desire for quality, at any rate. Quality drugs were for those people who still had jobs.
    Sam had a job, of sorts.
    Well, he had a way to earn money.
    And now that he had some to spend, Brain Damage-guy was nowhere to be seen.
    Fucking drug dealers. Untrustworthy bastards, every last one of—
    Sam’s heart fluttered. If there was nobody under the bridge to sell to him, he only had one other option. A man by the name of Trev, who never went anywhere near the bridge, and who had promised a few months back that if he ever set eyes on him again, Sam would regret it big time .
    Sam had believed him. Trev wasn’t a guy for making jokes.
    Shit.
    He quickened his pace, moving across a strip of patchy grass behind a supermarket car park. It was lunchtime, and the store was busy. Several shoppers glared at him as they loaded groceries into their cars. His clothes were a dead giveaway: filthy and tattered, hanging off a frame that had nudged the needle from slim up to unhealthy in recent months. They probably thought he was planning to steal a car or mug them.
    His cheeks burned, and he looked away, forcing himself not to acknowledge their stares.
    Moved quicker still.
    By the time he reached the bridge, he was running unsteadily, panting heavily. He hadn’t exercised in a long time, but it wasn’t his lack of fitness that made him gasp for air. It was the growing need in his body; the anxiety which spiked at the thought that there was nobody to buy from.
    Sam hadn’t taken a hit in a couple of days, and the churning in his gut was quickly becoming intolerable. If he had to wait too much longer, the growing tension in his nerves threatened to blossom, becoming an insufferable agony. He jogged into the shadows beneath the bridge, and when his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light, he saw that it wasn’t deserted at all, and his train of thought derailed.
    He hit the brakes so hard that he fell on his arse, jarring the breath from his lungs.
    Yeah, bad things happened to homeless people.
    But not like this .
    The area beneath the bridge, next to a skeletal building, looked like a slaughterhouse. There had been several people taking shelter from the rain there by the look of it.
    And something had ripped them apart.
    It was a massacre.
    Sam figured there had to be at least seven or eight bodies on the ground, each and every one missing significant pieces, as though they had been set upon by some pack of wild animals.
    I’m the first on the scene , Sam thought dumbly and, for a moment, he was so struck by the ridiculousness of the situation that he was sure he was hallucinating. Withdrawal