In World City by I. F. Godsland Read Free Book Online

intersected by broad streets teeming with traffic, to a distant view of soiled tower blocks against a backdrop of green, densely-forested hillside. Then the picture zoomed in close to the city’s edge. Miranda noted broken cloud in the sky and a patchwork of light and shade falling on the crumbling margins of the city. It looked hot and humid, morning approaching midday. Then there was a cut to a street scene in which the cracked, rust-stained concrete facades looked like the bases of the tower blocks previously seen from a distance. Battered transits, open lorries and poster-strewn vans bumped slowly over potholes.
    The camera picked up a dirty, undistinguished car and followed the vehicle into the kerbside, where it pulled up next to a group of five raggedly-clothed children. The picture zoomed in to show their faces, tired, dirty and suspicious. The bulk of the car obscured the details of the transaction but it appeared as if one boy in the group, maybe eight or nine years old, had been singled out and offered something, which he stuffed into an inside pocket of the ill-fitting jacket he wore. The boy gave his companions a noncommittal nod and climbed into the front of the car. The camera was then inside the car, turned towards the front seats, taking in the boy, who was wedged between the driver and another man on his right. They were talking in a language Miranda could not understand. The driver joked with the boy and the other man offered him a cigarette. Miranda could see the boy relaxing. Only fragments of the track the car took were seen through the windscreen but it appeared to be circling the periphery of the city, the driver picking a track through an interminable waste of broken concrete and strewn rubbish. The only changes were the increasing desolation and the diminishing number of people.
    Finally the car drew to a halt in front of a derelict warehouse. The camera followed the two men and the boy towards a dark opening with a door hanging off. The boy showed some hesitation, but the two men on each side of him gripped his upper arms and pushed him on into the darkness. Inside, three men were waiting. Their faces were masked by stockings pulled over their heads. Cut-out eye and mouth holes rendered them identical and expressionless. The boy began to struggle but was held fast. The biggest of the masked men stepped forward, taking hold of the boy. One of the boy’s captors was thus allowed the freedom to receive a wad of currency notes, which he counted carefully. Another masked man took the boy’s other arm and the camera followed the two who had been in the car as their silhouettes were swallowed back into the brightness that shone through the door they had entered by.
    The camera pulled back to encompass the three masked men and the boy. Then it moved in closer to fill the frame with the boy’s face. His eyes were wide and he was shouting in high, querulous, staccato outbursts. The camera pulled back again to show the group heading for a steel-plated door. The one who had earlier handed over the money now keyed open the door, standing aside to allow the boy to be forced in. The camera cut to the inside to take in the door being slammed shut. Then it panned round the chamber they had entered. The only light was daylight filtering in through a grill in the roof, casting a harsh net of shadow over the space below. The camera moved down and circled the chamber. A heap of old tyres was tumbled into one corner. Otherwise there was nothing but filthy plaster walls and an uneven dirt floor. The three men left the boy to beat against the steel door while they took their clothes off. After that, the camera mostly focused on the boy’s terror and pain. The other shots were anatomical with occasional pull-backs to take in the hysterically energised bodies of the three men as they repeatedly battered and penetrated the boy. His screams of terror were gradually drowned out by the screams of excitement