Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Read Online Free PDF

those who were sick or addicted or mentally ill would receive the care they needed to make them productive citizens again.
    The public—especially the urban-dwelling public—seemed to be going for the Domicile Plan in a big way, and as a result the concept was gaining support from both parties.  Dan could understand the attraction of getting the homeless out of sight while balming one’s conscience with the knowledge they were being cared for as they were retooled for productivity, but he found the whole idea unsettling.  The domiciles did sound like concentration camps, or detention camps, or at the very least, gilt-edged prisons, and he found that frightening.  So would many of the homeless folks he knew—and Dan knew plenty.
    But how many homeless did Senator Arthur Crenshaw know? 
    These were people.  It was easy to forget that.  Yes, they were on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder—hell, most of them had fallen off the ladder—and they sure as hell didn’t look like much.  They tended to be dirty and smell bad and dress in clothing that wasn’t fit for the rag pile.  They offered nothing that society wanted, and some undoubtedly had AIDS and wouldn’t be around much longer anyway.  But each had a name and a personality, and they’d hoped and dreamed about the future before they’d forgotten how.  Truth was, they could all vanish into smoke and the world would not be appreciably poorer; only a few would mark their passing, and even fewer would mourn them. 
    But they were people , dammit!
    People.
    Not a cause.
    People.
    Dan hated that the homeless had become such a trendy cause, with big-name comedians and such doing benefits for them.  But after the stars took their bows, after they were limoed back to their Bel Aire estates, Dan stayed downtown and rubbed elbows with those homeless.  Every day. 
    And sometimes at the end of a particularly discouraging day of elbow-rubbing with the folks who wandered in and out of the kitchen he ran in the basement of St. Joseph’s church, even Dan found a certain guilty attraction in Crenshaw’s Domicile Plan.  Sometimes he wondered if maybe Crenshaw could indeed do more for them than he ever could.  But at least with Dan they had a choice, and that was important.
    And that was why they had come here tonight.
    They stood quietly now, waiting for their last-minute instructions.  They numbered about thirty, mostly males.  Dan had hoped for more.  Forty or fifty had promised to make the march but he was well satisfied with a two-thirds showing.  You quickly learned to lower your expectations when working with these people.  It came with the territory.  After all, if they had enough control over their lives to act responsibly, if they knew how to follow through with a plan—even as simple a plan as gathering in Tompkins Square at six o’clock—they probably wouldn’t be homeless.  About half of the ones who were here carried signs, most of which Dan had hand printed himself during the week.  Among them:
     
    SAY NO!
    TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS
    FOR THE HOMELESS!
    and:
    WHAT ABOUT US ?
    WHERE DO WE FIT IN?
    and Dan’s favorite:
    ARE WE OUR
    BROTHER’S KEEPER?
    OR DO WE TELL
    BIG BROTHER TO KEEP HIM?
     
    “All right,” he said, shouting so he could be heard in the back.  “Let me say this once more in case some of you have forgotten: We’re not here to cause trouble.  We’re here to draw attention to a problem that cannot be solved by putting you folks in camps.  We’re here for informational purposes.  To communicate, not to confront.  Stay in line, don’t block traffic, don’t enter the hotel, don’t fight, don’t panhandle.  Got that?”
    Most of them nodded.  He had been pounding this into them all week.  Those who could get the message had already got it.  This last harangue was for the benefit of the press microphones and the police within earshot, to get it on the record that this was intended as a strictly peaceful