It was the only job, part 1

It was the only job Peter had ever worked at where the old men did the dangerous work, and the young men got to sit around and watch. Now it was a hot three o'clock in the Nigerian sun and he was exhausted with boredom. He rested his chin on top of the stone wall to relieve his aching neck, his eyes fixed on the action fifty feet away in the garbage-strewn swamp. The old men crept up to the largest pile of junk, their geiger counters held out in front of them like pistols, like the best defense was a good offense, except in this job there was only defense, and only for the young.

Peter was 15 and he wasn't married, and hadn't a thought of children, but he'd stopped trying to argue with the old men two weeks into the job. "You're young," said Charlie. "You'll want sons when you start getting older. Trust me." So he shut his mouth. Charlie was up there now, shuffling in a careful gait with his inadequate apron making his body shapeless. The old men looked like very evil hunters. They were very black in their age and dressed in dark uniforms and soundless and entirely intent on the rusting white assemblage in the middle of the junk heap, and it was spooky to see them converge on it.

It was most likely an old radiation therapy machine. Somebody had dumped it here outside Lagos in the 70s, probably, and nobody but the crew had any idea what it was--or so they hoped. At least, nobody but the boy they paid to find dumping grounds knew it had any significance at all, and certainly no one knew there was probably enough cesium inside to make fifty dirty bombs.

The old men had frozen. Charlie leaned back suddenly as if something had hit him in the chest. He glanced at Lovejoy, who glanced at Grandpa, who paused only a moment before spitting on the ground and calling, "What you doing in there? You come on out, now." His voice was high and confident like a flute. "Come on out, now."

And Peter waited but he couldn't see anything. He licked the sweat off his upper lip. Charlie and Lovejoy shared another glance, a long one. When Grandpa took a step forward, they did too. Peter felt a high, excited feeling under his ribs. He couldn't move. He saw the figure rise, and it was very thin. Grandpa opened his mouth again. "Now just come away from that. We trying to do some work here."

The figure looked at the old men. It was a bent, beaten youth who might have been about Peter's age, but who obviously hadn't had the luck to land a job and a home and steady bread. The youth's ribs showed and he had nothing on but some dirty shorts and a pair of bright blue gloves. He had a rusting canister clenched in one fist and the corners of his mouth also shone blue.

As Grandpa strode forward quickly on his old stick legs, the youth thrust a hand into his mouth. He pulled it out glistening, then ran.

"Stop!" shouted Grandpa, and Charlie and Lovejoy after him. Charlie broke into a careening run, his mouth hanging open to suck at the mosquitoed air. Lovejoy dipped his dark head down to peer into the junk pile then ripped out a curse. Grandpa half-turned and looked back at Peter so sharply that Peter's shins were bleeding from his crash over the stone wall before he even thought. He bounded downhill into the swamp and through the brush, overtaking Charlie in an instant, the creepers clutching at his wrinkled uniform. His eyes didn't adjust as he plunged in, but he still saw the flash of a bare smooth arm ahead of him as the other boy sprinted away. He heard Charlie yell after him but Charlie's words weren't anything to the look he'd seen in Grandpa's eyes. Peter was young and crazy with sitting around and he knew he could catch this boy.