The Missing Girls of Little Saigon

The rain drove her onward, cold lashes prickling her arms and legs. She wore only a thin T-shirt and fraying shorts, both soaked through and clinging to skin. Each step was a battle, her body convulsing with the effort. She staggered toward a streetlamp, clutching the frigid steel post.

Across the street, beneath the shadowed sprawl of an overpass, she saw them, a cluster of figures huddled together. Cocooned in layers of plastic tarps and damp rags.

“Help!” she rasped.

The figures froze. Their heads tilted toward her, their eyes sharp and wary. They seemed to measure her desperation against their own, and one by one, they shrank back, retreating deeper into the shadows. Tarps shifted, pulled tight over hunched shoulders and hollow faces, until all that remained was her.

Safer, they had decided, to see nothing, to know nothing.

Her cry had stolen the last reserves of her strength. She slumped against the streetlamp, her cheek pressed to its icy surface. Rain streaked her black hair across her face, cold rivulets trailing down her neck. A creeping numbness began to take hold, coiling around her throat, weighing down her limbs. Her eyelids grew heavy, until finally her body sagged.

Surrender felt easier than the agony of another step.

Then came the growl.

It cut through the downpour. Her eyes snapped open, terror surging through her veins like fire.

A single headlight split the darkness, its stark beam locking onto her. The light carved a jagged path and the growl swelled into a deafening roar.

She pushed off the streetlamp, lurching into motion, her legs stiff and uncooperative. An alley opened to her right. She bolted for it, heart hammering, but the motorcycle followed, its roar closing in.