Exton

Darkness. It's as though a giant hand snatched away the light, so abrupt seems the change. The few sodium-vapor lights cast a feeble gleam that intersects but does not dispel the darkness. And in that almost-palpable darkness, there is movement....

This is a bad part of town, Exton's own boulevard of broken dreams, our own Crime Alley. It is a place without pity, a place where survival is measured out in equal increments of poverty, squalor and misery. And survival is the proper term; you can't call what goes on in a place like this "living".

He shuffles unsteadily from one pool of illumination to the next, not old but no longer young. Years of dissipation have taken their toll. He totters on, a ghost with flesh, mind all but extinguished by who knows what drugs - and then they're on him.

They attack in utter silence, moving with inhuman speed, merciless and implacable. Their quarry seeks only escape; but there is no escape. Minutes later, razored claws and gleaming fangs have done their work. The body lies in a pool of gore, already stiffening into rigor mortis, and presently it is borne away. Someone opens a hydrant and the blood washes into the gutter; and all things are as they were before.