Lottery Boy Read Free Page A

to learn when to back down, mate,” he said. Jack didn’t seem to be listening, too busy licking Bully’s face. “Get off,” he said but didn’t push her away. He rounded up some of the spit off his cheek and swabbed the wound on her ear because dog spit was good for cuts, as good as medicine (though he had never seen this printed in the magazines).
    Eventually he stood up, went and took a long look in the river. He thought maybe he could still see it, a spec of blue, his twenty quid, sailing away under the bridge and out into the sea. The tide was going that way. He caught himself thinking about jumping in after it, though he couldn’t swim, not even doggy-paddle. He’d bunked off the school swimming lessons at the leisure centre because he didn’t like the noise there in the pool, all the screaming and shouting. He bunked off school too, for the same reason: having to sit still at a desk, questions and answers from thirty other kids all day, right next to his ears. He could just about put up with it when he had his mum to come home to at the end of it all, but after she’d died it was all just empty noise.
    He looked back towards the footbridge and one of the fake Feds was looking at him. Bully started walking off, whistled Jack to follow him, getting in step with the zombies until he could cut through between the eating places and make for the station. He thought about taking one of the tunnels to be on the safe side but he didn’t like tunnels, even in summer. He didn’t like going under the ground if he could help it. Besides, he’d got used to his route: past the fountain that wet the pavement on windy days, across the traffic lights, through the arch, up the steps where the dead train drivers’ names were scratched into the walls, and into Waterloo.
    Waiting at the traffic lights, he leaned against the railings. He watched a few zombies get ahead of the game, beat the lights, hop and skip between the cars like kids out for the day. He fiddled with one of the red rubber bands he wore on his wrists. He collected them, picked them up off the pavement and at busy times, fired them at the zombies as they raced away. It was a game he played. He’d invented different ways to do it, too – and so far, he’d come up with seven. His favourite, though, was to just ping it off his thumb. And that was what he did …
ping
. A zombie just stepping off the kerb slapped the back of his neck and looked round. Bully gave him the innocent face.
    “Big Issue… Help the homeless… Big Issue…” A woman with soft brown eyes was standing a few feet away. She was here most days in the summer now. And he had got used to her.
    The green man came and went but Bully wasn’t in a rush. He had all day, what was left of it anyway. He did a quick check for Feds, then started patting himself down. He did this ten, twenty times a day depending on the weather. It had become a routine, going through his pockets, making sure he had all his stuff, that he was all there. And it passed the time when he was bored because his coat had a lot of pockets. He’d robbed it from a bag outside a charity shop, leaving his old one there in its place. It was the best coat he’d ever had.
Barbour
it said on the label. It was warm and padded like a blanket inside but with a green and greasy skin to it that stopped the wind and rain like a brick wall. It had been way too big for him in the winter but he was growing into it now and the edge of it left a greasy mark on his jeans just above his knees. The best bit about it was the pockets. He’d never seen a coat like it. It had eleven altogether. The biggest one was like a rubber ring with holes cut in it that ran all the way round the bottom inside. And he’d cut holes in the two for his hands so that he could stash stuff in his jeans without anybody in the shops seeing.
    “Big Issue… Help the
hopeless
… homeless, I mean,” the woman said, correcting herself, but no one heard her except