Divvy Up by Stephen Marlowe

In a brutal postwar city where even execution squads treat death as a racket, Hardesty waits with a firing party as a condemned man is due to be shot. When a woman kills the prisoner early, he lingers to loot the body while the others pursue her, exposing his own role in the profiteering scam of "jumping the gun." The encounter opens a world ruled by scavenging, betrayal, and survival through cheating first. Hardesty is then confronted by an armed woman claiming to be the dead man's widow, who demands the wallet he stole. Their standoff becomes a tense negotiation of lies, suspicion, and mutual predation, all under the constant menace of air raids. When bombing tears through the ruined city, Hardesty survives by instinct and luck, then robs the injured widow and kills her when she threatens to expose him. Amid the digging crews, scavengers, and guarded rescue work, the story presents a society where moral restraint has vanished and disaster itself is just another chance to profit. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.