fff#51

the plan was simple – make a trip across the border and make some extra money. it would never be enough money to disappear completely but it would certainly relocate me far enough to start a new life. a life away from this urban nightmare where i wouldn’t have to hide. no more dodging bullets and dirty cops. the city had been fucked for nearly a decade and i wanted out. maybe the chance at a new life clouded my mind and i didn’t fully understand what i was getting into, but this seemed no different than the game i always ran, except now the rewards outweighed the risks ten times over.

with runs like this i was rarely the only person offered the job and this time would be no exception. there were three couriers at the boss’ meeting other than myself and i could only assume that they all got an offer too – the world might call us transporters but we preferred “couriers,” even if what we carried was typically illegal. one of the other three was a real asshole who called himself switch – no one else knew his real name was malcolm. he worked alone and covered the same turf i did. if i ever lost a job, it was to him.

crossing the border wasn’t exactly something to look forward to. residents of the eastside had been banished from the rest of the city ever since the riots and anyone crossing the border into the city was supposed to be killed on sight. i had crossed in daylight plenty of times before but that was normally in the back of a police car – for runs like this i’d wait ‘til night. cops might not patrol the eastside but those dirty scumbags would come looking whenever they needed a somebody to take a fall. avoiding them and border patrol, i’d have to cross over, collect the package (i had stopped wondering what was in them), and bring it back in tact; and it would have to be tonight.

everyone from the eastside knew the safest way to cross into the city was through the sewers. years of dumped toxins and its faulty structure made the sewers quite dangerous which seemed to keep the cops and border patrol at bay. i ducked into the sewer just after midnight, knowing i would be on the run the moment my feet hit the sludge. it reeked like shit and window cleaner which served as a constant reminder that i was probably inhaling some unknown poison and expedited my trek across the border.

about 20 blocks later i climbed up a ladder that spit me out into an alley well within the city limits. i crawled behind a dumpster to let my lungs and head clear the fumes of the sewer. any of the other transporters could be close so i sat for only a few moments before heading for the warehouse. the warehouse was the one building in the city that could be mistaken for the eastside. it had nearly burned to the ground years earlier when a witness in a case against the boss tragically died the day before trial. it was never rebuilt, which made access easy.

i went up the stairs toward the room where the package was supposedly held. i knew now by the amount of ether in the air that the package was probably a hefty sum of coke – whoever had cut the cocaine had done it right here in the warehouse. i approached the package, an army-issued olive green backpack, but just as i pulled it onto my shoulders i heard a voice. i would’ve known that voice anywhere. it was malcolm. i knew he was close.

in this world of transporting it’s all about running, but i was tired of running; that’s why i took this job to begin with. pulling my gun from my belt, i spun to face him, and fired… but the little creep beat me to it.