Apocalypse's Prelude

by Carl Damen

  As the latest round of yells died down she crouched to pick up the sign she had hastily thrown together before she had rushed out to join the budding demonstration. It featured a crudely-drawn death's-head E.H.U.D. helmet beneath the slogan "Who Defended Raul?" She hoisted it over her head and began waving it, feeling some satisfaction as a forest of other signs grew up in the moments after hers.

  She stood taller, pushing up on the tips of her toes, and looked around at all the signs that now floated above the heads of the crowds. The speaker in the archway was launching into another rant, but Alice was distracted by a sudden movement in the forest of signs. The outer edges were rippling, distorting her vision of them. As quickly as they had come up the signs began to come crashing down, like trees caught in a pyroclastic flow. Renewed yelling followed the felling of the signs, though this chorus was more directly vitriolic, more focused on the here and now. Of course; the police weren't on the observation deck alone.

  The presence of police along the outer edge sent a physical ripple of agitation through the crowd. Alice felt herself caught up in the compression wave, bodies behind shoving her tightly into bodies before. As the wave passed and she was pulled into the trough she lost control of her sign, watching helplessly as it whacked someone on the shoulder and disappeared in the sea of humanity.

  The man she had inadvertently hit fell backwards into her as a reflection of the wave, magnified by the passions of those capable of hearing the speaker's rhetoric, pulsed past them. She tried to push him back up but was almost immediately shoved forward into him as another wave, the strongest of them all, pushed in from the outer edges. She waited for it to pass but as soon as it had another wave, then another, pounded in from behind. Moments later waves from the front reached her, and she realized that something must have happened, must have sparked action.

  She managed to free her arm and clear enough room to pull out her mobile. News-feeds flicked by on the screen, and she stopped when she saw a live video stream that appeared to be coming from somewhere high up in the Municipal Services building. It showed the crowd, a cumulatively dark brown amoeba stretched over the streets surrounding City Hall, disappearing past the side of the MS building to the north, but staying relatively constrained to the width of the Hall to east and west. A thin border of blue defined the edge of the amoeba on the west, but to the east and stretching north the border had broken and become commingled with the brown. Arms grew from the amoeba, stretching to swallow the bits of blue still visible, but the blue was able to fight back, small clusters bursting out radially to swing out and turn on the now free-floating arms, swallowing them and leaving the digested remains to sprint off as individuals, too weak to be a threat to the invading blue organism.

  The entirety of the amoeba now pulsed in a north-easterly direction, along the sightline of William Penn, trying desperately to devour the free-moving blue masses. The blue line to the west, meanwhile, was taking this opportunity to push in, acting as a semipermeable membrane hemming the amoeba in yet letting bits of it drift away as—

  A foot came down on Alice's right ankle and she dropped the mobile, watching helplessly as the little black rectangle disappeared among the roiling legs of the crowd. She straightened and stifled a groan as the pain in her ankle shot up her leg. A moment later she let out a full scream as the man before her turned, inadvertently hitting her alongside her head with his elbow. He pushed past her, though whether in haste to tangle with the police or due to pressure from the front of the crowd she could not tell.

  She spent a moment rocking back and forth, supported by the masses around her, and waited for the ringing in her head to stop.

  Someone moved, and she found herself falling towards a person who was suddenly not there. She was able to stumble enough to recover her balance but was immediately pushed from behind by the eastern side of the crowd trying to escape to the west.

  Momentum carried her for several feet, stumbling and fighting for balance, before the force of western movement was cancelled out by eastern movement.

  Okay, enough was enough. Alice knew from watching the Washington riot earlier in the week that her position here was not a good one; if she wanted to avoid injury, she had to get out. She thought back to what she had seen on her mobile, and decided the west would be her best chance, as fighting hadn't yet started there. After a few moments of fruitless struggle, she realized free movement would be near impossible; she was just going to have to wait until the crowd broke up enough that she could get through. On the other hand, she could make her own hole...

  In her pocket was a tube of pepper spray; that should be enough to open a corridor to the outside. On the other hand, introducing a weapon, even a non-lethal one, into this situation would not make things any better.

  An intense surge of movement from behind forced her decision, and she pulled out the tube.

  "Hey!" she yelled to the man standing to the west of her. "Let me out!"

  The man tried to shrug, but there wasn't enough room to perform the gesture properly. "Sorry; I'm just as stuck as you are!"

  "I'm really sorry about this!" The tube came up and leveled at his face.

  "Shit!" The man pushed away from her, though it didn't get him very far. It was enough to cause ripples, however, and a few moments later a new current pulsed through the center of the crowd, leading towards freedom to the west.

  Alice sent the tube back into her pocket and let the current move her several dozen feet closer to freedom.

  She was just starting to think she would make it out of this in a good enough condition when the crowd broke around her and she realized that hostilities had commenced on this side as well. The crowd was breaking off into clumps, about ten strong, and facing off against clusters of two or three police officers decked out in riot gear. She watched in horror for a moment as a group of men—more like teenagers—wrestled an officer to the ground and began to beat him with shoes and protest signs. She caught a glimpse of her "Who Defended Raul" sign coming down on the officer's helmeted head before she looked away.

  She didn't have a chance to take advantage of this opening and make her escape; a clump of the crowd pushed past her and caught her up. Escaping from this clump was useless for now; police officers hemmed it in on all sides, a microcosm of the greater amoeba.

  A woman standing next to Alice bellowed and charged forward, only to have a truncheon cracked across her jaw. She fell to her knees, her mouth bleeding freely, and whipped her arm up into the officer's groin. Despite the heavy padding he had there, he groaned and slipped down to the woman's level.

  Seeing the downed officer, the clump surged towards this weak point in the barrier, carrying Alice along with it. No one seemed to have given a thought as to the downed woman, however, and Alice, now on the outer edge, tripped over her, sending the whole clump sprawling down into the street.

  Alice screamed as someone heavy landed on her already tender ankle, and she felt it give way under the weight. She tried to extricate her leg, but it was pinned under the struggling mass. She curled in on herself and moaned, tried not to think of the pain.

  Footsteps clattered on the pavement near her head and she looked up to see the remaining police redistributing themselves around their downed prey. There was a momentary glimpse of on officer's face, and Alice thought she recognized him from somewhere. The moment passed, and the police where upon them. They swung their truncheons to no rhythm, merely putting as much force behind each blow as they could.

  The rioters, still pinning Alice to the street, tried to roll away from the blows but found it nearly impossible amongst all the flailing limbs.

  Eventually one man, who had the seeming fortune to be near the top of the pile, was able to roll off, stand, and stumble a few feet away before the police focused all of their attention on him, surrounding him and beating him back down to the ground.

  The others on top of Alice took this opportunity to make breaks of their own and soon it was just Alice and the blee
ding woman she had tripped over. She pushed herself to her feet and gasped as she put weight on her ankle. This wasn't good, not good, no...

  Nausea tinged her vision as she looked around, desperate for a viable means of escape. Walk out, past the police, lose herself in the next few blocks, try to find a cab...

  She hobbled away, ignoring the pained screams from all around her. Not this, not now...

  She was in sight of a few lingering police on the edge of the perimeter, acting as border guards, keeping the clearly deranged contained within, when pain blossomed across the back of her head, her vision flashed, and then everything went dark...

  The family funeral of Raife Omerta was scheduled for the coming Tuesday, but the pastor of St. John the Evangelist had declared that the Sunday mass would be held in the boy's honor. Consequently, a huge portion of Philadelphia, especially its high-school aged population, had packed out the church to pay respects to their heroic comrade.

  Amanda, being somewhat close to Raife, as well as for... other reasons, had insisted that they attend the memorial. Grant had declined; he never felt comfortable in churches, and he was not yet ready to spend an extended period of time with has daughter. Jack agreed to come on the condition that they arrived early. He was glad they had; the church was almost completely filled by the time they forced their way into the back of the sanctuary, and crews of volunteers were hastily erecting cameras and outdoor screens to convey the proceedings to the overflow.

  After what seemed like a hot, crowded, agitated eternity, the pastor entered, preceded by a column of alter children, and the congregated mourners stood to sing a hymn. When the pastor had shuffled to the front of the sanctuary, the singing petered out, and scripture was read.

  Jack tuned it out and stared up into the vaulted ceiling, tracing out the supports that held the roof aloft. This wasn't the first time Jack had been in a church—he had spent time in several oddly-shaped protestant monstrosities, always in their function as community centers—but it was the first time he had been in a proper, traditional cathedral. He could appreciate this bit of antique engineering.

  After what seemed like hot, crowded, agitated hours, the pastor stepped aside and a weeping, middle-aged woman was led in front of the pulpit. She spoke at some length about her son, interrupted frequently by bursts of uncontrolled sobbing.

  The longer she spoke, the more uncomfortable Amanda became. "That wasn't how it happened," she whispered. "The police didn't start this. I did."

  "You had no way of knowing it would end up like this."

  "That doesn't make it less stupid. God, everyone's blaming the police now... That's not going to end well..."

  When Mrs. Omerta was finished, her husband led her back to her seat then took the stage himself. Unlike his wife, he said very little about his son. Most of what he said was directed against the police and the government, and Jack could see where Raife had gotten his political streak from.

  As Mr. Omerta's tirade wore on, noise from outside the building grew louder. At first this was ignored; dinner-time traffic. Then it continued, past the end of Omerta's speech and into the next, a lawyer with the ACLU who would be representing the family against the school district and police department. It was getting too late for most people to be out. Furious whispering broke out, drowning out the lawyer and filling the whole room with white noise.

  Jack saw several people checking their mobiles; when they did, they rushed out the door. He grabbed Amanda's wrist. "I think we'd better get out of here."

  "Is something going on at City Hall?"

  "I don't know—hopefully we're far enough away that we won't get caught in it."

  It took them some time to actually get to the door of the church; it seemed as if half of the attendees had all gotten the urge to flee at the same instant.

  Then they stepped out of the church and into a riot.

  A flood of pedestrians was coursing through the street, funneling through the openings between parked cars and trucks, occasionally sweeping over the obstacles, leaving broken windshields and shrieking alarms in their wake.

  Jack immediately turned back to the church, but another group of mourners was already trying to push out, so he and Amanda were forced into the mob.

  By staying on the edge of the crowd they were able to avoid the worst of the current, and only moved a few dozen yards.

  "What's going on?" Amanda yelled.

  "Looks like somethings going on at City Hall!"

  A back flow was beginning on the sidewalks, heading in the direction of Penn Square.

  "We need to get out of here!"

  The main flow of pedestrians ebbed for a moment, and Jack took the opportunity to duck behind a row of parked cars, dragging Amanda behind him. A moment later the back flow broke into the street proper and managed to reverse the tide a moment before a phalanx of armored police drew even with the church.

  Now that the rush of flight was over, those wanting to confront the police were pouring in with an even greater force, hemming in Jack and Amanda and leaving them trapped.

  The inevitable clash of flooding rioters and damming police occurred in front of the church: a young man with a baseball bat, half running of his own volition, half pushed by those behind, swung at the leading police officer. The swing glanced off the officer's shield, and the officer surged forward, knocking the bat back to crack into the man's jaw. The man fell back into the crowd, able bodied rioters swarming around him and surrounding the hapless officer who now found himself surrounded by six exceedingly angry men.

  He swung his shield at the two directly in front of him and his truncheon at the one to his right. The three behind him pushed, knocking him off balance. These three were themselves attacked from the rear as the other police engaged, but by then it was too late for the first officer. Undefended while he flailed helplessly to regain balance, his three remaining attackers stripped him of his shield and forced him to the ground.

  Over the roar of the crowd, Jack heard bones crunching.

  Amanda sat on the pavement, her back against the car. "Shit, shit, shit—it's happening again, they're all going to kill each other, shit shit shit—"

  Jack ignored her and stood on his knees to stare over the car in perverse fascination at the chaos erupting around them. The police moved forward, their line running diagonally up the street while those on the left edge stopped to help their fallen comrade and those on the right pushed up to engage with fresh rioters.

  The rioters, for their part, where pushing in tighter, coming from somewhere up the street. They must be new, fresh to the battle, as none of them were coming from the direction of City Hall.

  The right edge of the police line curved as it engaged in combat once more. This time, they weren't playing defensively. They raised their shields, charged forward, cracking their truncheons with bone-shattering force against the hands that pushed past the shields.

  Several police weren't carrying truncheons, and instead sprayed the crowd with tear-gas and pepper spray. Rather than discouraging the crowd, it only made them angrier, and they climbed on top of one another, using each other as springboards to launch themselves on the police, collapsing individual officers to the ground, trapped under their shields. Soon the police line was in disarray, and the rioters were able to surround the few remaining police and bludgeon them with improvised clubs.

  With the blockage mostly gone from the street, many rioters broke ranks and continued down the street in the direction of Penn Square, though enough remained to ensure that Jack and Amanda were forced to remain a while longer.

  Just as it looked like the violence would be over here, a new set of screams erupted from the cluster of rioters still pacifying the police. One officer had abandoned his shield and equipped the truncheon of a fallen comrade. He was now using his weapons to perform a series of swift, surgical strikes on his tormentors, leaving them curled on the ground, hopefully unconscious, possibly dead.

  The flow of movement in the street s
lowed as people stopped to see the lone officer, mowing his way through rioters, always managing to stay one step ahead of the ten or so people who were up against him.

  A large man, at least six feet tall and armed with a crowbar, pushed his way through the crowd and to the officer, swinging his weapon and bellowing. The officer froze, fell into a boxer's stance, twin truncheons held at the ready. The man swung at the officer's head, but the officer ducked, sidestepped, swung out his right-hand truncheon and caught the man in the kidney.

  The man grimaced but didn't slow. He spun to face the officer, grabbed his helmeted head in a one-armed bear hug, and used his free hand to bring the crowbar down toward the helmet. The officer reacted immediately, bringing the right truncheon once more into the kidney, then the left into the man's groin, then right into the base of his skull. The crowbar fell and the left truncheon came up and caught the man below the ear. The officer was free.