Poke

Poke, kept her eyes open all the time. The younger children were supposed to be on watch too and sometimes they could be quite observant but they just didn't notice all the things they needed to notice, and that meant that Poke could only depend on herself to see danger.
There was plenty of danger to watch out for, the cops for instance they didn't show up often but when they did they seemed especially curtain of clearing the streets of the children that were playing around there. They would flail about them with their magnetic whips, landing cruel stinging blows on even the smallest children, haranguing them as vermin, thieves, pestilence, and a plague on the fair city of Rotterdam. It was Poke's job to notice when a disturbance in the distance suggested that the cops might be running a sweep. Then she would give the alarm whistle and the little ones would rush to their hiding places till the danger was past.
But the cops didn't come by that often. The real danger was much more immediate big kids. Poke, at age nine, was the matriarch of her little friends, but that cut no ice with the eleven and twelve and thirteen year old boys and girls who bullied their way around the streets. The adult size beggars and thieves and whores of the street paid no attention to the little kids except to kick them out of the way. But the older children, who were among the kicked, turned around and preyed on the younger ones. Any time Poke's crew found something to eat especially if they located a dependable source of garbage or an easy mark for a coin or a bit of food they had to watch jealously and hide their winnings, for the bullies liked nothing better than to take away whatever scraps of food the little ones might have. Stealing from younger children was much safer than stealing from. And they enjoyed it, Poke could see that. They liked how the little kids obeyed and whimpered and gave them whatever they demanded.
So when the scrawny little two year old took up a perch on a garbage can across the street, Poke, being observant, and saw him at once. The kid was on the edge of starvation. No, the kid was starving. Thin arms and legs, joints that looked ridiculously over sized, a distended belly. And if hunger didn't kill him soon, the onset of autumn would, because his clothing was thin and there wasn't much of it even at that.
Normally, she wouldn't pay any attention to the walking dead. But this one had eyes. He was still looking around with intelligence. None of that stupor of the walking dead, no longer searching for food or even caring to find a comfortable place to lie while breathing their last taste of the stinking air of Rotterdam. After all, death would not be such a change for them. Everyone knew that Rotterdam was, if not the capital, then the main seaport of Hell. The only difference between Rotterdam and death was that with Rotterdam, the damnation wasn't eternal.
This little boy what was he doing? Not looking for food. He wasn't eying the pedestrians. This was just as well there was no chance that anyone would leave anything for a child that small. Anything he might get would be taken away by any other child, so why should he bother? If he wanted to survive, he should be following older scavengers and licking food wrappers behind them, getting the last sheen of sugar or dusting of flour clinging to the packaging, whatever the first comer hadn't licked off. There was nothing for this child out here on the street, not unless he got taken in by a crew, and Poke wouldn't have him. He'd be nothing but a drain, and her kids were already having a hard enough time without adding another useless mouth.
He's going to ask, she thought. He's going to whine and beg. But that only works on the rich people. I've got my crew to think of. He's not one of them, so I don't care about him. Even if he is small. He's nothing to me.
A couple of twelve year old hookers who didn't usually work this strip rounded a corner, heading toward Poke's house. She gave a low whistle. The kids immediately drifted apart, staying on the street but trying not to look like friends of Poke.
It didn't help. The hookers knew already that Poke was a friends with them, and sure enough, they caught her by the arms and slammed her against a wall and demanded their permission fee. Poke knew better than to claim she had nothing to share she always tried to keep a reserve in order to placate hungry bullies. These hookers, Poke could see why they were hungry.
They didn't know what the pedophile wanted, when they came cruising through. They were too gaunt, too old looking. So until they grew bodies and started attracting the slightly less perverted trade, they had to resort to scavenging. It made Poke's blood boil, to have them steal from her and her crew, but it was smarter to pay them off.
If they beat her up, she couldn't look out for her crew now, could she? So she took them to one of her stashes and came up with a little bakery bag that still had half a pastry in it.
It was stale, since she'd been holding it for a couple of days for just such an occasion, but the two hookers grabbed it, tore open the bag, and one of them bit off more than half before offering the remainder to her friend. Or rather, her former friend, for of such predatory acts are feuds born. The two of them started fighting, screaming at each other, slapping, raking at each other with clawed hands. Poke watched closely, hoping that they'd drop the remaining fragment of pastry, but no such luck. It went into the mouth of the same girl who had already eaten the first bite and it was that first girl who won the fight too, sending the other one running for refuge.
Poke turned around, and there was the little boy right behind her. She nearly tripped over him. Angry as she was at having had to give up food to those street whores, she gave him a knee and knocked him to the ground. "Don't stand behind people if you don't want to land on your butt," she snarled.
He simply got up and looked at her, expectant, demanding.
Now, you little bastard, you're not getting nothing from me," said Poke. "I'm not taking one bean out of the mouths of my crew, you aren't worth a penny.
Her friends were starting to re-assemble, now that the bullies had passed.

"Why did you give your food to them?" said the boy. You need that food.

Oh, excuse me!" said Poke. She raised her voice, so her crew could hear her. "I guess you ought to be the crew boss here, is that it? You being so big, you got no trouble keeping the food."

"Not me," said the boy. "I'm not worth a penny, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. Maybe you ought to remember and shut up."
Her friends laughed.

But the little boy didn't. "You got to get your own bully," he said.

"I don't get bullies, I get rid of them," Poke answered. She didn't like the way he kept talking, standing up to her. In a minute she was going to have to hurt him.

"You give food to bullies every day. Give that to one bully and get him to keep the others away from you."

"You think I never thought of that, stupid?" she said. "Only once he's bought, how I keep him? He won't fight for us."

"If he won't, then kill him," said the boy.

That made Poke mad, the stupid impossibility of it, the power of the idea that she knew she could never lay hands on. She gave him a knee again, and this time kicked him as he went down. "Maybe I start by killing you."

"I'm not worth a penny, remember?" said the boy. "You kill one bully, get another to fight for you, he wants your food, his scared of you too."
She didn't know what to say to such a preposterous idea.

"They eating you up," said the boy. "Eating you up. So you got to kill one. Get him down, everybody as small as me. Stones crack any size head."

"You make me sick," she said.

"Cause you didn't think of it," he said.

He was flirting with death, talking to her that way. If she injured him at all, he'd be finished, he must know that.
But then, he had death living with him inside his flimsy little shirt already. Hard to see how it would matter if death came any closer.
Poke looked around at her friends. She couldn't read their faces.

"I don't need no baby telling me to kill what we can't kill."

"Little kid come up behind him, you shove, he fall over," said the boy. "Already got you some big stones, bricks.

Hit him in the head. When you see brains you done."

Hes no good to me dead," she said.

"I want my own bully, he keep us safe, and I don't want no dead ones.

The boy grinned. "So now you like my idea," he said.

"Can't trust no bully," she answered.

"He watch out for you at the charity kitchen," said the boy. "You get in at the kitchen." He kept looking her in the eye, but he was talking for the others to hear. "He gets you all in at the kitchen."

"Little kid get into the kitchen, the big kids, they beat him," said Sergeant. He was eight, and mostly acted like he thought he was Poke's second in command, though truth was she didn't have a second.
"You get a bully, he makes them go away."


"How did he stop two bullies?" asked Sergeant.

"Like I said," the boy answered. "You push him down, his not so big. You get your rocks. You be ready. Aren't you a soldier? Don't they call you Sergeant?"

"Stop talking to him, Sargent," said Poke. "I don't know why any of us is talking to some two year old."

"I'm four," said the boy.

"What's your name?" asked Poke.

"Nobody ever gave me a name," he said.

"You mean you so stupid you can't remember your own name?"

"Nobody ever said no name," he said again. Still he looked her in the eye, laying there on the ground, her friends surrounded him.

"Isn't worth a bean," she said.

"Am so," he said.

"Yes," said Sergeant. "One damn penny."

"So now you got a name," said Poke. "You go back and sit on that garbage can, I think about what you said."

"I need something to eat," said Penny.

"If I get me a bully, if what you said works, then maybe I give you something."

"I need something now," said Penny.

She knew it was true.

She reached into her pocket and took out six sweets she had been saving. He sat up and took just one from her hand, put it in his mouth and slowly chewed.

"Take them all," she said impatiently.

He held out his little hand. It was weak. He couldn't make a fist. "Can't hold them all," he said. "Don't hold so good."

Damn. She was wasting perfectly good peanuts on a kid who was going to die anyway.
But she was going to try his idea. It was audacious, but it was the first plan she'd ever heard that offered any hope of making things better, of changing something about their miserable life without her having to put on girl clothes and going into business. And since it was his idea, the crew had to see that she treated him fair. That's how you stay crew boss, they always see you be fair.

So she kept holding her hand out while he ate all six sweets, one at a time.

After he swallowed the last one, he looked her in the eye for another long moment, and then said, "You better be ready to kill him."

"I want him alive."

"Be ready to kill him if he isn't the right one." With that, Penny toddled back across the street to his garbage can and laborious climbed on top again to watch.

"You are not any four years old anymore!" Sergeant shouted over to him.

"I'm four but I'm just little," he shouted back.

Poke hushed the Sergeant up and they went looking for stones and bricks. If they were going to have a little war, they'd best be armed and prepared.

The end.

Written and edited by:
Jamie Lee Case.