Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) by Chad Leito Page A

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.