I'm Not Shouldering This Blame [BL]

Ch. 33

STB Chapter 33: Capture

   Fourteen-year-old Johnson carefully stuck out his head from the rubble.

   The rain has stopped.

   There was a noise in the distance, and a self-made portable lamp with high power emitted a bright glare.

   On the water is a raft with people wearing raincoats on it. Using something like a spear to get rid of obstacles, they looking for valuable things.

   ——They’re not search-and-rescue personnel but hurricane survivors.

   Brazenly fighting for valuable items, they crash into a half-collapsed store, forced open the cash register and getting the wet paper bills. A few scattered coins slipped from their fingers, rolling towards the water.

   “Look! Old Holly, poor old guy!”

   After finding the body lying in the rubble, the mob violently kicked at it, loudly laughing.

   “The gold ring on this guy’s hand, who took it?”

   “I didn’t see it!” The man who lifted up the furniture and discovered the body raised his hands up, loudly making an excuse.

   The others apparently didn’t believe him, and soon, a fight started.

   Johnson took advantage of the confusion in the midst of the shouting and the wrestling to run away.

   “*pant**pant*.” The panting boy, who is just about to slow down, heard a scream and the sound of a weapon cutting into the flesh just behind him. Johnson shivered, not daring to take a break, and hurriedly escaped in the darkness.

   He has not experienced such a terrible disaster before, but he knew that for money, people would do all kinds of things.

   Johnson and his Uncle Rick lived in the slums for many years. He saw clients killing prostitutes; he’s seen gamblers who lost pick up a knife and stab people. There are also scammers who lied to get an old woman’s money.

   At the age of seven, one of his little buddies died in an alley next to trash cans.

   The slums are not large. More than a hundred people lived in this wretched place. There are no strangers here so when a kid sees the face of a criminal who has just successfully robbed someone, apart from anything else, he gave the boy a head shot.

   Johnson held the expired food that the bakery threw away, excited to share it with his friend, only to see their cold bodies in the alley, lying in a pool of blood.

   The case broke after one month.

   The criminal was robbing a basketball player who went to a seaside city for a vacation whose chest also has more than one bloody hole and was lucky to survive. The robber initially only wanted the money but found that his prey is muscular. Worried about not getting it right, he fired the gun first and then took the money.

   The noise that the case generated is not small. The criminal is in jail; the newspaper is very concerned about the kid who just died. There’s even a full-page memorial dedicated to him, condemning the prisoner, but also misspelling the child’s name.

   The only benefits that the child had after his death was moving to a cemetery beside a church.

   Compared to his partner, Johnson is already fortunate. The newspaper lets many people know about the slums in the City of Pedrone that some of them can’t read books and a child is without a full stomach.