The Sewers
Carlos squeezed into his rubber, airtight diving suit – prising on his helmet and gloves – and waited until his colleagues connected him to various steel chains and pulleys before lowering him into the sewer. He disappeared into the filthy water. His only contact with the world – a radio microphone inside his bright yellow helmet.
‘I’m always fearful when he’s down there,’ mumbled his partner Victor to the journalist – who was doing an article on various city sewer networks, for a national magazine. ‘Keep talking dude,’ he called, turning to the reporter. ‘I’m at ease if I can hear him. If he goes quiet for too long, I panic. I have lost two mates in the last three years doing this job and I don’t want to lose any more.’
‘What happened?’ asked the reporter. His name – David Pritchard, and in contrast to the small overweight Carlos he was tall, exceedingly skinny and looked as though he needed a good meal.
‘Swept away by an unexpected rush of water we suspect. There are over six hundred miles of sewers and pipes below this city,’ explained Victor. ‘Someone has to keep them flowing, otherwise this great city will grind to a halt. We’ve had thousands of homes flooded before ‘cos the system has become blocked.’
‘How long will he be down there?’ inquired Pritchard.
‘Till he finds the blockage, its pitch black and a torch is no good to him, he’s just going to have to feel his way around.’
‘Whaaat?’
‘No seriously, we don’t want him down there more than twenty minutes. It’s about twenty-four feet down and will be very cold. Not talking from experience mind. You wouldn’t get me doing that job.’
‘I’ve got it,’ shouted Carlos.
‘Good work man,’ hollered Victor, ‘that was quick going.’
Carlos proceeded to struggle with a pile of junk, including bottles, plastic bags and what he thought was the body of a small animal. Managing to prise it free, there was suddenly a gush of water and the system was flowing again. As Victor and his colleagues hauled him up to the surface, David Pritchard reeled back in horror. The stench was horrendous. He felt violently sick, his stomach somersaulting several times over. Thank God he was a reporter and not a deep slime diver for the City Water Corporation, he thought.
His work colleagues tossed buckets of soapy water over Carlos and the slime and filth began to slide away. To David Pritchard’s amazement, Carlos removed his helmet to display a smiling face.
‘I love my job,’ he said. ‘That was easy. Wish it was always that simple. Not so easy when I find bodies blocking the drains, especially little ones if you get my meaning.’
David Pritchard knew exactly what Carlos meant. He knew there were kids living in the sewers and being a father himself, it didn’t bear thinking about. Agreeing to interview Carlos and his colleagues at the end of the working day over a cool beer and a few tacos, the journalist made a quick escape.
Nightfall came and the workers were gone. The streets lay quiet and deserted. Suddenly a grating sound could be heard as a manhole cover slid sideways exposing a dark hole from which emerged the dirty face of a boy about seventeen years of age. He shouted, and within seconds a hoard of filthy kids all emerged, following silently behind. The educator, the one who had been brave enough to visit them from the Crisis Centre, to try and persuade them to leave the streets, and to go to the nearby shelter for homeless children, had now given up. So had the Catholic priest, once full of faith, but who now refused to visit, having been chased off on two occasions by a kid brandishing a knife. As far as he was concerned, it was in God’s hands now. The police, well for them, the streets at night in this part of town were a ‘NO GO’ area.
The kids were living in the sewers below the highway, only a short distance away from where Carlos had been working earlier. He had encountered a few kids himself over the years. They didn’t bother him knowing he had a job to do, they just let him get on with it. The kids to many in society had become untouchable, branded sewer rats by some. They were a law unto themselves.
‘When they decide they need help, when they want to get off the streets, we can help them. Until then, they are untouchable,’ said the educator to David Pritchard when he managed to grab a quick interview with him following on from Carlos, later that week. ‘Most of them will die on the streets, probably before the age of twenty. If the streets don’t kill them, they will probably kill each other,’ he exclaimed.
Mousey was the first one out, followed by Cougar, Jackal, Tortuga and then Fat Boy. These kids were mean, nasty and dangerous. No one messed with them unless they were brave or very stupid. Each of them seemed to suit their nickname perfectly. These were the ‘Untouchables’ their ages unknown, never had birth certificates! Most of them themselves had no idea how old they were. Each day was the same. Week in week out, nothing much changed. The question hanging over them was WHO would be next? Who was going to die or be killed today? Death was acceptable. Sadly, life had no value unless by some great miracle of fate, one of them escaped from this god-forsaken place.
They didn’t like chicas – the word female didn’t come into their vocabulary – and they hated the other gangs living in the vicinity. The Untouchables were out, all of them looking for food, action and anything else to pass the time. The Molina’s were also around, a few blocks away, they were not armed. The Untouchables however, had every piece of nasty equipment you could imagine. Halcón – the one named ‘Hawk’ because he was supposed to keep watch – was paired with Silbar, the whistler. But Halcón was clearly not on form and failed to notice the activity at the end of the street. Consequently, Silbar never sent up the signal and soon the Untouchables found themselves face to face with the Molina’s.
Silbar whistled and the rumble was over in seconds. It was the Molina’s fault for crossing into the Untouchable’s territory. A fatal lapse of foolishness left one dead Molina, three slightly wounded Untouchables and Tortuga missing! Like sewer rats, they quickly dived back into the drain, the last one replacing the manhole cover. One body in a pool of blood left behind on the sidewalk. Fifteen Untouchables had left the sewer, only fourteen returned.
Tortuga – like most of the kids – was so doped up he barely knew the time of day. He had fallen into the hands of the Molina’s, who pushed him several blocks on an old juice cart to their base – The Molina House – an old derelict building which suited their purposes well. In actual fact Tortuga used to hang out with them and had been missing for ages.
‘We found Tortuga,’ shouted one of the kids who had recognised him instantly. ‘He’s a ‘#@&!’ mess, but it’s Tortuga all right.’
‘Hey, chido man,’ cried Beany, so called because he ate nothing but beans, and not because of his tall and scrawny bean pole stature. ‘I thought he was dead. It’s been months since he took off after that bust up at the house. Wondered what had happened to him.’
‘Well he’s obviously been living in the sewers. Maria can look after him,’ came the reply.
‘You’ve got to be joking, since when are you letting Maria stay ‘ere?’ snapped Beany.
‘Since I found Tortuga, you owe him man. He’s been living in the sewers and he’s a mess. If there is one thing about Maria she will take care of him. It will be good to ‘av a chica around for a while. She can cook for us too!’
‘Ok. Ok,’ agreed Beany reluctantly. ‘For a while, a short while!’
Maria was only too pleased to have a roof over her head. She had stayed at a shelter near the metro with a group of street kids, and then left, sleeping in doorways and under park benches. Now this was luxury, a real house with a roof that didn’t leak and all that stuff! Maria knew some of the chavos at the Molina House as she had stayed there before, though not for long. The chavos had a rule; no chicas. They called themselves Molina ‘cos they lived in the Molina House, but the truth of it was the only real Molina to stay there recently was Pablo Molina and he was killed in a hit and run no so long ago. She found some of his stuff in the attic and kept it for a while and then gave it to the priest. There was a book, Pablo’s book, a diary or something. She couldn’t read it, so thought the priest may as well have it. He was real pleased when she gave it to him. He worked hard to help the street kids, the same priest who visited the kids in the sewers, till he realised he was wasting his time. They were never going to listen. So Maria was now living in the attic, and seems like she had inherited the job of looking after some chavo called Tortuga.
Sometime later a few blocks away at the makeshift shelter behind the metro a group of other kids gathered.
‘That sounds scary,’ said the little one who had been listening to the chavos talking about the rumble between the Molina’s and the Untouchables. ‘Some kid is dead and the Police are talking about going down into the sewers and flushing those kids out,’ remarked one. ‘Trouble is I think it’s all talk ‘cos no one really wants to go down there do they?’
‘Well the government will have to do something now,’ came the voice of the catholic priest – as he peered around the shelter entrance – interrupting the conversation and startling everyone.
‘They’re just on the case now and have sent a team down to clear out one of the sewers. Some dude who works for the water authority has gone down to check on another reported blockage and found several bodies. The rumour is it could be as many as 30 homeless kids down there, all dead. Toxic fumes I suspect!
‘Oh gross,’ murmured the little one.
David Pritchard was reporting and managed to get into the press conference where a statement was about to be released by the water authority along with an interview with the team who had made the grim discovery. He was not surprised when Carlos and Victor took their seats. The debate raged. Representatives from the Government said that every effort would be made to avoid such a catastrophe again. Reports were requested from Carlos and Victor and their team who could offer information as to which sewers in the city might be inhabited by the homeless. The Crisis Centre workers, the Catholic priest, people from all walks of life had an opinion. The Government issued a writ to clear out all known sewers immediately but no one had an answer to the question, where will its occupants go next?
Mousey was the first one out. He always was! Followed by Cougar, Jackal and Fat Boy. All late teens. They were the lucky ones. They inhabited a different sewer to the dead kids. David Pritchard looked on – mortified. Two younger kids crawled out not much older than his own sons of 9 years. He wanted the story. He needed to know their story. Most of all how and why had these kids tragically chosen such a horrific existence? When he had been commissioned to do the story for the magazine on the city water system he never expected it to develop quite like this. His next article surely had to be to follow the lives of those who were evicted. Indeed, the question in his mind – what next?
