A Ghost of Justice by Jon Blackwood

and the images in the corner swirled into a green cloud and vanished.  "Can we get you something?"
    "On, no.  I don't need anything.  I was…wondering if you were still in mind for a game of chess."
    "You play?  Any good?  At least as good as your father, I'm sure," he said excitedly.
    "Well," Emily confessed with a shy smile.  "I beat him once in a while."
    Walter laughed.  "More often than not, I suspect.  He's really rather easy to take once you see his strategy.  Though, I admit, I've lost to him myself.  Your father plays a solid game."
    Emily nodded.  "Just like him to.  And you, I bet, play a wild one."
    "More like devious," Ruth said.
    "Bite your tongue, woman," Walter protested.  "I'm most honorable on the board."
    To Emily, Ruth said, "Just mind your flanks.  He likes to make a great show of coming up the middle, but it'll be a feint."
    "Now you've done it, dear.  The poor woman won't know where to look for my hammer blows."
    It was half-past-midnight before Emily was too tired to play anymore.  They left the game unfinished by the fireplace.

 
     
     
    16
     
     
    John Hardy woke up for what seemed the hundredth time under his bush.  A freight train rumbled close by along the riverbank.
    That must've been what woke me this time, he thought, looking around.  He was relieved to see it was finally night again.  The only time he could feel even a little safe was at night.  The only time he felt a little comfortable.  The most comfortable since…
    He refused to think about it.  Over the last few days he had gotten rather good at suppressing the memories.  It was nearly automatic now.  Yet he still kept in mind that he had to be careful.
    And it was working.  His little hideaway looked like the rest of the overgrown bank.  The biggest danger was if anyone spotted the trail he was unavoidably making, but it was so narrow he was sure it would be mistaken for an animal's path.
    The crude shelter was even drier than at first.  A small ditch and berm he made now kept runoff water from getting in, and only a few drops ever came through the cover.
    Night was different.  Concealing though the dark was, it was the most dangerous time, for he had to go out.  He had to eat.
    There was no helping it.  Time to leave.  Time to scrounge.  His stomach was already feeling a sick emptiness.  I'm not quite used to one meal a day.  With energy he didn't really have, and eagerness he didn't feel, Hardy hurried across the cemetery to the hole in the fence, scuttling past the headstones.  Glancing up a hill to his left, he knew he should stop by.  They had been disappointed like everyone else, but continued to welcome him warmly.  She had only died last year, he the year before that.
    Not now.  He felt a little sick.  He needed food; real food.  Not some garbage scrapings.  If he got behind the Murata-Hilton at the right time, then maybe he could get some while it was still fresh, before it had been tainted by the rest of the spoilage.  Two nights ago he even got a whole baked potato.  Cold, but untouched.  He'd always been amazed at how much food the rich people ordered, then left barely eaten.  Now he was thankful as well.
    He felt it a good strategy not to hit the same restaurant two nights running, but to skip and try another.  So far the Murata-H was the best provider.  Must be the large number of foreign business hacks.
    And if other human strays were feeding at the same places, they seemed more tolerant if he didn't come every night.
    He skulked along a carefully selected route having the least lighting.
    It was too early yet to walk openly.  Too much traffic.  Nearing Monument Avenue, he turned down an ally and went the rest of the way along the backs of apartments and shops, many of them abandoned.
    Finally he got to the brick-paved area behind the Murata.  He took station against the catering van, a double row of Leland cypress near at hand if he needed to move.
    After a short