Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (9 page)

             
“’ove you,” she whispered. Baggs didn’t think that she was awake. He stood and looked down at her, and then felt the tears begin to fall from his eyes and roll over his cheeks. He stifled a sob, and thought,
I’ve got to get out of here.

             
He went into the bathroom and changed into the clothes he had stored under the sink as quietly as possible. With his jeans and bloody shirt back on, he looked one more time at his daughters, who were asleep on the mattress. He hoped that he did not wake them as he left.

             
Baggs removed the chair from beneath the door handle, unlocked the deadbolts, the chain locks, and the door handle. He relocked the door handle after opening the door, and glanced back at his redheaded daughters, sleeping peacefully on their mattress one last time.

             
Baggs stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him. He had left his keys on the table; he did not need them anymore. He turned, opened the door to the stairwell, and as he walked down the stairs, he tried to not think of the fact that if he survived Outlive he could see his daughters again. If he survived, they could have meals like that once a month, and he could hold Tessa again while he slept. If he survived, he could finish reading the Harry Potter series to Maggie.

             
He tried not to wish for these things, because the hope scared him. It made him feel soft, and weak. He wanted to feel fearless and ready to die as he entered the arena. Historically, bravery seemed to pay off in the Colosseum.

             
Baggs lit his last cigarette for the month as he stepped out onto the streets and began to walk through London at one in the morning.

Part 2

1

              Baggs had made it all the way to the Media Tower by three in the morning. His feet were aching and swollen by that time. From reading medical books in the library, he suspected that he had plantar fasciitis, but had no means of getting this checked out. Whenever he walked for long distances, his heel and the bottom of his foot ached. At three in the morning, as he sat on the stone steps in front of the Media Tower and took off his socks to examine his throbbing feet. He saw that the tissue had swollen so much that where his arch should have been, his foot protruded further than even his heel.

             
“Damn,” he whispered. He took off his other shoe and began doing some of the stretches he had read about in the library. He stretched each individual toe backwards, and forwards, and then stood and stretched his calf muscles on the steps. Then, he sat down and rubbed the sore areas of the bottoms of his feet with his right hand; his left was not dexterous enough for such a task.

             
Baggs chided himself for not taking any ibuprofen with him on his journey when he knew that he would be walking such a long way. There was nothing he could do about it now. He slipped his socks on, then his shoes, and walked up the steps towards the Media Tower’s entrance.

             
The Media Tower was a tall, black triangle of windows that came to a point 40 stories above the concrete. As Baggs walked up, he saw that the point at the top of the building happened to be centered with the moon from his point of view.

             
The door was, as he expected, locked. There was no writing on the glass to give any indication of what time it would be opening back up. Not knowing what else to do, Baggs walked along the wall a ways and sat down with his back against the structure.

             
At least it’s not raining,
he thought, looking up at the sky.
Actually, I couldn’t have hoped for better weather.

             
He looked among the moonlit streets and masses of concrete, wondering if Tessa and the girls were still asleep. He hoped so. For most of his twenty mile walk towards the Media Tower, he had been fearful of Tessa catching up with him, teary eyed, and begging him to come back.

             
Baggs shook his head as he looked out at the streets that the weeds were reclaiming. Even though Tessa was usually the rational one of the two of them, he thought that he knew best when it came to this issue. They now were really out of CreditCoins, and there was no one who would intervene and save them as their bodies slowly deteriorated until they didn’t have enough energy to breathe anymore.

             
No one cares about us. No one cares about the poor.

             
On his way to the Media Tower, Baggs had gone through downtown. He had seen whores dressed in fishnets and high heels with gaudy makeup caked onto their faces. He had expected this. What he hadn’t expected was that so many of them were so
young
. “Hey, sugar,” one girl had called to him, and when he turned to her, she winked and beckoned him to come over. “Wanna play?” she asked. Baggs thought sickly that she appeared to be eleven. She was a child.

             
A few blocks later, Baggs had moved into a richer part of town, where at two in the morning, men and women smelling strongly of colognes and perfumes were waiting outside a nightclub called “The Circus.” Paparazzi were standing outside, cameras idle, talking to each other—they were apparently waiting for some celebrity to exit the club. Men and women stood in a long line, many of them swaying drunkenly. The bouncer at the door to The Circus wore a clown outfit with a painted red mouth. He spat when Baggs walked by. The music was so loud on the inside that Baggs could feel it in his chest as he passed on the street. The door to the Circus was flanked with two glass windows that looked inside to small platforms. Inside the windows, on each of the platforms stood a woman, naked, and chained by the necks so that she had to stand, but could not sit. The women’s’ entire bodies were painted; one was painted to look like a peacock and the other looked like a leopard. Both of the girls were drugged, and Baggs guessed that they were slaves used for sex and entertainment. Their eyes didn’t see Baggs as he walked by. They stared off into space with dilated, lazy pupils. The girl who was painted to look like a leopard was leaning on her chain, as though she didn’t notice it was choking her. The men and women in line didn’t seem to notice much.

             
The most disturbing thing Baggs saw while walking through London was the dead kid in an alley between two tall apartment buildings. It looked like the boy had fallen (
been pushed
) out of a high window, and was being picked at by rats. Regardless, a drunken man was sleeping ten feet away; he had a bottle of whiskey beside him and had pissed in his blue jeans. Baggs wondered if he knew the kid.

             
Baggs shook his head again. It was a mean world out there. No one cared about the kid on the pavement, the chained up sex slaves, or the eleven year old whore. Likewise, no one would care if sweet Maggie and Olive never ate again.
Greggor cares more about his diamond nipple rings than helping anyone out, and George Thurman cares more about his wife’s fake breasts.

             
Baggs sat there for a moment, wondering what time someone would show up and let him into the building. He was tired. Thinking he might just relax for a few minutes, he lay down on the stone and shut his eyes for a moment. Sleep overcame him quickly after that and he didn’t wake up until five minutes after seven in the morning.

              Baggs awoke just enough to be conscious of his surroundings, but didn’t feel like opening his eyes yet. There was a
clack clack clack
noise close to his head and in his stupor he thought that either Maggie or Olive must be banging something against the walls of their apartment. But then the
clack clack clack
noise came closer to his face and he opened his eyes, alarmed.

             
Instead of the cracked, paint-chipped wall of his bedroom, he was looking at the stretching mass of buildings that was London, painted orange by the dawn sunlight. He slowly realized where he was, and a pang went through his chest.
I’m not at my apartment. I’ll never be at my apartment again.
He realized what was making the
clack clack clack
sound just before he got kicked in the stomach.

             
Boots.

             
The one furthest from Baggs reared back and slammed into his upper abdomen, causing him to cough and turn over, losing his breath.

             
“Ye’ can’t sleep here! Git! Git!” said an angry female voice. Baggs opened his mouth to explain that he wasn’t a vagrant and was waiting here to sign up for Outlive, but found that he still couldn’t talk. His diaphragm was contracted and he couldn’t draw in air. Another boot came up and kicked him in the chest. He rolled over and saw a female police officer standing over him. Her eyes were covered by reflective glasses. She had an assault rifle strapped around her shoulders and was holding the handle. “I said, ‘git!’”

             
Baggs slowly got to his knees and put his hands up to show that he meant no harm. Behind him, business men and women were going into the front of the Media Tower, wearing suits and looking over their shoulders at the homeless man having a confrontation with the police. “Don’t kick me again,” Baggs said.

             
“Git!”

             
“I need to go inside. I’ve got business here.”

             
“Business, eh? You’re barefoot and you say you’ve got business in the Media Tower? Git! This ain’t your home!”

             
Barefoot?
Baggs thought. He was still groggy from sleep. He looked down and was surprised to find that the officer was right—he was barefoot. He cursed loudly. “Someone stole my shoes!” He stood and looked about as though they must be lying around.
How could they have taken them off of me without waking me up? They took my socks, too!

             
“Rubish ain’t supposed to sleep on the front door of the Media Tower. I’m warning you, you better git!” The woman put the back of the rifle against her shoulder, but kept it pointed towards the ground.

             
“Hold on, hold on! Just give me a second to find my shoes. I’ve got to go to the Media Tower, I’ve got actual business here.”

             
Now, she pointed the barrel at Baggs and grabbed his full attention. “Either tell me precisely what business you’ve got at the Media Tower, walk of the premises, or I’ll make you git off!” She talked through gritted yellow teeth.

             
“I’m here to enter Outlive.”

             
“Outlive?”

             
“Yeah, like on the HoloVision Box.”

             
“I know what it is, but you don’t enter this way. Didn’t you see the sign? It’s on the street; it says you’re supposed to report around the corner. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

             
She lowered the gun and began to trot down the stairs. Baggs walked behind her, the stone cold on his bare feet. He thought about how it was odd that there were police available to make sure that no homeless men were eye-sores on the steps of business buildings, but there weren’t any available to see that eleven year old little girls weren’t whoring themselves out in the middle of the night.
Priorities,
he thought.

             
As Baggs and the officer walked besides the giant building, she turned to him; “You know that Outlive is dangerous, right? People die in that thing.”

             
“I know.”

             
“Why’d you want to do something dangerous like that?” she asked. Her breath smelled like coffee.

             
“My family needs the money is all,” Baggs said.

             
“You don’t want a normal job, then? I guess that’s it. People don’t like to work, I s’pose. It’s odd, but that’s the common, every day man. They want the taxes to pay for everything. D’you know you can get free soap from that church on Lamar and 22
nd
—
free
soap. Don’t have to pay nothin’ for it! Some rich guy who died gave the funds, I hear. Doesn’t make sense to me, as an officer and all, why you’d
want
to give people like you—no offense—free soap. Haven’t y’ever heard of a
job?”

             
Baggs didn’t respond, but it didn’t matter. The officer didn’t want any kind of a response—she just wanted to hear herself talk.

             
“Well, here y’are; big sign and everything. That sign says,
Outlive Sign-Ups,
but I guess you can’t read or nothin’. I wish you’d get a job, but if you won’t, best of luck to yeh. Good day, now.”

             
The officer walked off, leaving Baggs standing in front of another entrance. She whistled while she walked, and Baggs suspected that she was contemplating the unfairness of charity. Baggs knew that there were only about five hundred jobs as police officers open in London at that time, and that the jobs available were closing because of things like increased K9s in the police force. Baggs thought it was odd that she was so critical of someone who didn’t have a job when she only had one by luck. The police academy literally got hundreds of thousands of applications a year—Baggs often sent one in—and only interviewed fifty or so applicants. If their luck had been different, Baggs could have been the officer and she could have been homeless.