Bruce stood at the back of the line. Sewage had soaked the wounds on the soles of his feet, and the pain had gone numb. The line ahead stretched nearly two hundred meters.
He surveyed his surroundings. Along with the homeless and addicts, there were quite a few children in the line.
The children were all thin and small. Some were missing fingers; others walked with a limp. Holding rusty metal lunch boxes or chipped plastic bowls, they huddled in groups of three or five, watching the adults around them warily.
Bruce did not know these children. Unaware that the East End had a gang of children, he assumed they were simply kids from the slums.
Jason Todd had sent the younger and disabled children in his gang to line up for food at the relief station, while he took the stronger, sharper ones out onto the streets to "make money."
With limited resources to survive on, this was the most sensible way to divide them up.
The line shuffled forward. The smell of oatmeal and cheap bread drifted from the relief station's serving window.
Bruce's stomach cramped. He had gone more than twenty-five hours without food. Ever since Yang Ming had started explaining those principles to him, Bruce had barely had an appetite.
A dozen or so places ahead of Bruce, several children reached the window. Without expression, the worker ladled a scoop of gluey oatmeal into each of their bowls and tossed in half a piece of dry, hard bread.
The children shielded their bowls, preparing to retreat to a corner nearby to eat.
Three thugs in battered leather jackets approached them. They had not joined the line, but had been squatting beneath the eaves across from the relief station, smoking.
One of them, a bald thug, stopped