Exton

It gets dark early in Exton. The night doesn't seem to fall so much as plummet, and suddenly the day is gone. It's a lonesome place when you're on your own.

You try to keep up your spirits by whistling, but that requires way more wind than you have to spare. You haven't eaten since ten this morning, when you salvaged the remains of a Big Mac from a trash can in the park. It might not be healthy, but it beats the hell out of going hungry.

And make no mistake, you are going hungry - a lot. You still have pride enough not to avail yourself of the homeless shelter on Fourth on any kind of regular basis. It's occurred to you, more than once, that that kind of pride might not be good for you.

Thing is, you could earn a good living, if the jobs were available. You used to make good money as an engineer - but then the economy went down the crapper and you found yourself out of a job, out of your house and out on the street. Now you rummage in trash cans for the remains of a half-eaten Big Mac and count yourself damn lucky when you can find one.

Damn, it's dark! Better find somewhere to bunk down for the night…! Good places are hard to find; if it's not the cops rousting you out of places the good people of this city don't want to see you in, it's the damn kids, looking for someone they can soak with gasoline and light on fire for kicks. And you've heard there are worse things still on these mean streets….

You heave a sigh of relief when you see that your favorite place - the underside of a stairwell, half-covered by a pile of shipping pallets - is still unoccupied. You hunker down under there, hugging your knees. Thank God it's still warm outside; you don't know what you'll do when winter sets in.

Fatigue and hunger take their toll, and you sleep….

It must be around three in the morning when you're woken by a sound. The city has a lot of sounds, most of them unwelcome, but all of them important if you plan to survive. The slow steady thrum of traffic; the constant babble of people going and coming; the sounds of pigeons and rats, cats and dogs and other things you don't see, only hear.

This sound isn't like any of them.

It's a hollow, raspy sound, like someone with bad asthma struggling to breathe. Actually - now that you're a little more awake - you have heard something like it, just once. An argument over a drug deal, a gunshot, and a guy sucking air through a punctured lung. I ought to help, you think, it's the least anyone can do in this godforsaken city.

You move cautiously out of your hiding place and look around. No one there… you put your eyes in your ears and you follow the sound to its source.

Shit, it's the graveyard! Of all the creepy places for a guy to be hurt, maybe dying…! You put the thought out of your head; it comes too close to home.

There, under the big crooked tree! Is it a man… or a body?

Only one way to tell. You move cautiously toward the recumbent form and grasp a cold hand. Fuck, I think he's in shock if he's not already dead. No living thing should be that cold.

Then the hand tightens on yours in an unbreakable grip. It stands and hauls you to your feet. The eyes are an eerie, glowing yellow-green - and then it smiles, and you see a double row of sawlike teeth, just before it lunges forward and tears into your throat.

Oh yeah. There are worse things in Exton….