Free Graveyard Shift by Chris Westwood Page B

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    â€œThere’s a word for this, Ben,” he said, waggling his stick at the traffic. “ Pandemonium . But get ready now, here comes our ride.”
    Cutting through the sea of jammed vehicles, easing through the tight gaps between them, a young Chinese woman approached, hauling a rickshaw. It wasn’t the usual cycle-driven pedicab you see around town all the time, but the hand-pulled kind with a red and gold canopy over its seat. Ignoring the crowds trying to flag her down from the curb, she cut straight to the corner where we stood, waving us aboard.
    â€œMr. October,” she called above the noise. “Please come.”
    â€œWith pleasure,” he said. “Ben, meet Luna. She also answers to the name of Lu.”
    â€œHello,” I said.
    She nodded stiffly at each of us in turn as we climbed into the seat. Her small oval face had a set, determined expression, and she wore her hair in a shiny black bun. She looked somewhere in her late teens.
    We were still settling in, and I was trying to fathom how the small single-seater took the two of us so easily, when she set off into traffic, ducking between stranded taxis andvans whose drivers were leaning full-time on their horns. Steam rose from the streets as if the city were close to boiling point. The air hung thick with the smells escaping the fast-food stalls tucked between touristy shops and department stores.
    The rickshaw girl turned onto a side street, picking up the pace through lighter traffic, legs pumping like pistons, feet slapping the ground with a steady rhythm. From the waist up she looked fixed and still, hardly moving. She faced straight ahead, glancing neither right nor left as she went.
    â€œAlmost there,” Mr. October said excitedly. “Another two blocks and your education begins.”
    We were on Wardour Street now, slipping easily between cars, through spaces that even motorcyclists couldn’t make.
    â€œWhen we get to the scene,” Mr. October said, “your next task will be to stand and observe. You’re likely to see strange and disturbing things, and it won’t be easy, it won’t be pleasant, but you were made for this, Ben. The Overseers are agreed with me about that.”
    I heard sirens nearby, and a woman screaming above the street noise. The buildings towered above us on both sides like dark castle walls, the lights of bars and clubs below washing the pavement red and green.
    At the head of the rickshaw, Lu ran on. Farther along she began to slow. Crowds were gathering at the four corners of an intersection. Two cars had collided there, by the looks of it at very high speed. A black Mercedes and a blue Volvo were enmeshed, nose to nose, in a tangle of steaming metal andshattered glass, their hoods raised off the ground where they’d met.
    A red-haired woman in her thirties staggered around the street, waving her arms and yelling at the crowd.
    â€œWhy don’t you do something?” she cried. “You saw what happened. Don’t just stand there!”
    â€œHere,” Mr. October called to Lu. “This is as far as we go.”
    She stopped a little way short of the accident, and I climbed out first before helping Mr. October down.
    â€œShall I wait?” Lu asked.
    â€œNo, we can take it from here,” he said.
    With a curt little nod, she maneuvered the empty vehicle back and around and returned up the street the way we’d come.
    Mr. October guided me into the crowd of onlookers. The woman was still ranting, still pacing up and down. She wore a dark green dress, torn at the elbows and shoulders, and one of her shoes was missing. Her face and hands were darkly smudged, and blood trickled down her nose from a cut on her forehead.
    â€œWon’t any of you speak up?” she said. “It’s obvious what happened. He was speeding the wrong way up a one-way street. There was no way I could avoid him.”
    No one reacted. No one replied.