3 Death in a Parking Lo (1/2)

It wasn't business as usual for the parking lot attendant. Li Yang could see his charred corpse in the half-melted remains of the glass kiosk next to the entrance into the parking lot.

The lightning had struck right next to the kiosk, and the vehicles that had been parked nearby were now all smoking, burnt-out wrecks. The attendant didn't have a chance: he had been killed instantly.

Li Yang came close to dying, too. After he'd realized the sirens he'd heard belonged to the motorcade headed for the United Nations building, he continued to slink between the parked cars, pulling on their doors. And just a couple of minutes after he'd found the sneakers, he came across a real treasure trove.

He didn't have any high hopes when he tried the rear passenger door of an old, dirty Chevrolet parked right in the middle of the lot. It didn't look like a car that could contain anything valuable. But it did.

He nearly missed the paper bag rolled into a tight ball, and pushed between the steering column and the dashboard. It was visible only when he'd put his head under the steering wheel and looked up.

The paper bag contained a small plastic sachet, which in turn contained a big pinch of yellowish powder. Li Yang knew what that powder was. It was a mix of synthetic narcotics called ivory dust, and it sold for around five hundred dollars a gram on the street.

Li Yang didn't use drugs. This wasn't because he thought they were evil; he simply could not afford them. This was also why he always refused the rare offers of a free hit. He was afraid of being consumed by a need to have another hit when the effect of the first one had worn off.

He had been living on the streets ever since his mother died, over a year earlier. Her meager pension checks had just about covered the rent on a room in a run-down apartment she and her son shared with three other people. During the time he'd spent living on the streets, Li Yang had seen with his own eyes what happened to people who were fond of drugs.

Most of them became tired, dirty husks of their former selves. They were willing to humiliate themselves beyond belief just so they could get another hit.

When Li Yang's mother had been still been alive, she used to scold him for his pride.

”You are too proud,” she told him repeatedly. ”Remember: pride comes before the fall.”

But she had been wrong about that. It was his pride that kept Li Yang from falling, from surrendering to the hopeless despair he felt almost every day. He was too proud to turn into a junkie enslaved by addiction. There was only one way to make sure he never became one, and that was to never take any drugs.

Selling them to someone who wanted them was another matter, particularly if he'd come into their possession by accident. Everyone made their own choices. Li Yang had no moral qualms about selling the little plastic bag of ivory dust to whoever was willing to pay him. Their drug problem was their problem, not his. He had enough of his own problems to deal with, thank you very much.

He was very happy when he'd found the ivory dust. There was at least a gram of the powder in the sachet. It was enough to keep him in food and drink for several days, maybe even a full week if he got a good price.

First he'd found the sneakers, and now this! His birthday was turning out to be one hell of a lucky day.

He was congratulating himself on his good fortune when the sky turned white, and the boom of a thousand thunderbolts nearly broke his eardrums.

He acted instinctively: he ran a few steps, then threw himself on the ground and crawled under a parked car. He didn't see the parking lot attendant die in his booth. He lay under the car with his arms wrapped around his head. He was screaming at the top of his voice from the pain in his ears, but he couldn't hear his own screams.