Dying for Rain

by Easton, BB

  “Before he comes out? Maybe twenty minutes? Thirty, tops.”

  “Perfect! I’ll be right back!” I tighten the sleeves around my waist and take off running.

  “Rain! Where are you going?”

  “Call me Stella!” I yell over my shoulder.

  “Did I ever tell you you’re my heeee-rooooo?” Elliott sings to me as we jog down the block, take a right, pass the now-maskless dead Bony, take a left, and sprint past the crowd in Plaza Park.

  “Ooh! Look at that! My fans await!” Elliott cups his hand and waves at them like the Queen of England as I pull him to a stop next to the news van.

  “Michelle,” I huff, trying to catch my breath. “Officer Elliott here would like to introduce the governor on today’s broadcast.”

  Michelle narrows her eyes in confusion. Then, she pops them open again once she connects the dots. “Of course! We’d love for you to do the honors, Officer Elliott. Thank you for coming on such short notice. The governor surprised us by moving the execution up, unannounced.”

  “Tell me about it, honey. We’re runnin’ around like chickens with our heads cut off over at the station. Got my boy Wes all suited up and ready to go though. He’s gon’ break some hearts, that one.” Elliott shakes his head, and I can tell that one of the hearts is going to be his.

  I know the feeling.

  “We don’t have much time, so I’ll cut right to the chase. In a few minutes, the governor is going to walk down those steps, and we need you to—”

  “Don’t worry ’bout me, honey. I got this!” Officer Elliott interrupts, flicking his fingers at Flip. “Gimme a mic! Where do I stand? How’s my hair?” He runs a hand over his perfectly bald head and cackles.

  Flip grabs his camera bag out of the van and leads Officer Elliott toward the capitol building as he continues to ramble. Then, glancing behind him at Michelle, he jerks his head in the direction of Plaza Park.

  Go. Now, he mouths.

  Michelle doesn’t hesitate. She leans into the van and grabs a large, padded black bag. Unzipping it, she says, “Lamar … I’m gonna need you to be my cameraman for the day.” Turning around, Michelle presents him with a full-size TV camera.

  “Oh my God. Can you even hold that thing up?” I ask.

  “Pssh.” He dismisses me as he accepts the equipment with straining, spindly arms.

  “I’ll start the broadcast,” she says, positioning the camera on his shoulder. “All you have to do is hold it, like this.”

  “So, is Flip just not gonna turn his camera on or somethin’?” Lamar asks, shifting his weight to support the load.

  “That’s right. He’ll use it to record; it just won’t be live. Yours will be.”

  Turning toward me, Michelle contorts her crimson lips into something I assume is supposed to look reassuring, but her wild eyes are just as manic as the cheering, shouting, fist-pumping crowd swelling behind her. She wants this just as bad as they do. Everyone here has lost someone or something because of Operation April 23, including Michelle. That’s why the dream spoke to them, motivated them to pick up their weapons and fight their way down here. The question is, are they here to start a revolution?

  Or do they just want their pound of flesh?

  “Let’s go!” Michelle grins.

  She leads the way, squeezing in between Bonys and housewives and pimps and homeless teenagers. “Excuse me!” she yells. “Michelle Ling! Channel 11 Action News!”

  But nobody can hear her, and we’re starting to get separated.

  Somebody grabs my wrist just as she and Lamar disappear through a group of old rednecks carrying hunting rifles. I try to yank my arm away, but the grip is surprisingly strong for a hand so small. I follow the skeletal arm it’s attached to up to the face of a woman who’s probably in her early forties but looks about fifteen years older. Everything about her is thin—her body, her skin, the limp blonde hair hanging around her sad, wrinkled face.

  “Ms. McCartney?” she asks, a pair of familiar green eyes lighting up in recognition. “Oh my God, it is you!” She wraps her other hand around my forearm. “You saw my boy yesterday!”

  Turning her head, she yells to a rough-looking crew of tattooed men and women behind her, “Y’all! It’s the reporter who interviewed my Wesson!”

  Her what?

  “Ms. McCartney, I’m Wesson Parker’s mama, Rhonda. I saw him on the TV yesterday, and I …”

  Her face crumples in on itself, and tears spill down her cheeks as my mind struggles to process the words she just said.

  Wes’s mama.

  I never really thought of her as a real person before. More like a ghost. A part of Wes’s past that he didn’t like to talk about. All I know is that she was a drug addict who neglected her children to the point that Wes’s baby sister died of starvation, and she’s been in prison ever since.

  But here she is, in the flesh. Wes got her eyes, her perfect nose. She must have been so beautiful once.

  “You can’t let them kill my baby!” Her voice goes shrill as she clings to me for strength. “Please, Ms. McCartney! Please! You gotta help him! That’s my boy! My baby boy!”

  Tears fill my own eyes as I watch the grandmother of my child beg for the life of her own son. Not only because I share her pain, but also because there’s someone else on this planet who loves him. He deserves all the love in the world.

  “I’m trying to,” I say, not loud enough for anyone to hear over the crowd noise.

  “I’m going to!” I shout, shifting my gaze from her to her terrifying group of friends.

  They look like they all just got out of prison, which … I realize … they did.

  “I’m going to rally everybody to help me, but I need to get to the middle of the crowd first.”

  Rhonda’s eyes—Wes’s eyes—fill with hope. “Really?” She jerks my arm. “Really? Did y’all hear that?” she shouts over her shoulder. “Let’s get her to the clearing!”

  Two big, burly men with facial tattoos and necks wider than my thighs step forward and, without so much as a hello, lift me onto their shoulders.

  “Ahh!” I cling to their shaved heads as they push their way through the crowd like human bulldozers, the rest of the released prisoners pushing through behind them.

  “Hey!”

  “Watch out!”

  “Ow!”

  “Fuck you!”

  Fistfights and shouting matches break out in the wake of my ex-con caravan as the clearing in the center of the crowd gets closer and closer.

  The tops of Michelle’s and Lamar’s heads come into view, and I exhale. They made it. Lamar’s camera lens turns to face me, and the red light is already blinking as the bodybuilders barrel their way into the circular opening that has formed around Quint’s body.

  Michelle is standing on one side of my blood-soaked friend while Lamar stands on the other, trying to keep a brave face.

  Poor baby.

  Michelle snaps her fingers at Lamar, instructing him to turn the camera toward her.

  “This is Michelle Ling, reporting live from Plaza Park minutes before the Green Mile execution event is scheduled to begin. As you can see”—she does a spinning motion with her finger, instructing Lamar to turn the camera in a circle to get footage of the entire crowd—“quite a crowd has gathered here today to express their outrage over what many are calling ‘senseless, government-sanctioned murders’ and ‘public executions for profit.’”

  Michelle gestures toward me, and Lamar takes the cue, unsteadily swinging the giant camera in my direction.

  “I have our newest reporter, Ms. McCartney, here with the inside scoop on the allegations against Governor Steele and his controversial Green Mile event. Ms. McCartney, can you please tell us why today’s execution was rescheduled for this morning?”

  I hear her question, but I don’t look into the camera, and I don’t climb down from my human throne. I don’t care about the people sitting at home. They can’t help me. The people I need to talk to are right h
ere. Right now.

  Sticking the microphone between my teeth, I cling to the stubbled heads of my helpers and slowly push myself to stand on their shoulders. They grab my ankles with their viselike hands, holding me perfectly still as I straighten my spine and look out over the park. Thousands of people have filled the space now, the tops of the saplings barely visible above their heads at the edge of the park. Riot cops line the perimeter, but they’re outnumbered a hundred to one. Anger and adrenaline rise off the crowd in waves as thick as steam. It’s a deadly powder keg of chaos.

  And I’m holding a microphone shaped like a match.

  While the crowd quiets to a hush, I scan the sea of faces for one to focus on. I think it will help me feel less nervous if I have one specific person to talk to. But I don’t find just one person. I find all the people.

  Q and the runaways are front and center, horsing around like little kids. Brad has Not Brad on his shoulders, chicken-fighting Q, whose thighs are wrapped around Tiny Tim’s head. Loudmouth and the other runaways I never got a chance to meet are standing in front of them, cheering and trying to help Q win.

  A sea of Bonys takes up the left half of the crowd. I pick out The Prez in his fur coat immediately as well as the kids from Pritchard Park who spray-painted our truck—I’d know that helmet with the nails sticking out of it anywhere.

  But the person I decide to focus on, the one who makes me think that everything might actually be all right, belongs to an older man with a face like Santa Claus and a body like a grizzly bear. A man I’ve known my whole life. A man who was more of a father to me than my own sometimes. A man who has a broken leg that I should yell at him for standing on right now.

  Mr. Renshaw.

  When I lock eyes with him, I don’t see anger there. I see forgiveness. Remorse. Understanding. It is not the face of a man whose wife just died. It’s the face of a man whose wife did something regrettable, and he’s come to make amends for it. Agnes must be okay. And when Jimbo presses his lips together and gives me a single nod, I know we’re going to be okay, too.

  If we survive what I’m about to do.

  Clutching the microphone with two shaky hands, I inhale the crowd’s desperation and exhale the terrifying truth. “Today’s execution was rescheduled for this morning because Governor Steele has a meeting this afternoon.”

  The crowd grumbles at the mention of our shared enemy.

  “At that meeting, the CEO of Burger Palace is going to pay him five billion dollars to be the official sponsor of the Green Mile execution event.”

  The grumbles turn to growls.

  “They’re going to rename this place Burger Palace Park and project King Burger’s picture right onto the field. I know this because I heard the governor say it with my own two ears, and so did my friend here … right before he was shot in the back by Governor Steele’s bodyguard.”

  Lamar pans the camera down to his brother’s body on the ground and almost drops it as his eyes squeeze shut in pain.

  You gotta get through this, buddy. Stay with me.

  “How do y’all feel about Governor Steele making five billion dollars for killing our friends and family members—good people—on live TV?”

  Fists and shouts fill the air.

  “Greed. That’s why our species was facing extinction. Not because we were wasting our resources on ‘nonproductive citizens,’ but because our resources were being hoarded by them!” I shove my finger in the direction of the capitol building, feeling the hands around my lower legs tighten to keep me from falling.

  “One percent of our population owns ninety-nine percent of the wealth on this planet! Think about that. That’s not nature’s way! No other species hoards resources like that. They take what they need, and they leave what they don’t. That’s the true law that was being violated. This isn’t about survival of the fittest; it’s about survival of the richest!”

  Mr. Renshaw nods his head in agreement, and a surge of pride fills the empty hole in my chest, turning the dark, decaying tissue into something pink and pulsing again.

  “Have you seen the governor’s mansion?” I ask, shouting as loud as I can.

  The people yell and raise their fists in response.

  “Your taxes paid for that! Have you seen his fancy new helicopter?” I gesture toward the landing pad behind me.

  Their shouts and fists rise up again.

  “Well, you bought it for him! Have you seen the CEO of Burger Palace’s private island?”

  “No!”

  “You paid for that, too, when they started charging forty dollars for a King Burger Combo! They’re killing us for profit, y’all. And that’s what’s about to happen right here, right now, to Wesson Parker if we don’t rise up and say enough!”

  The crowd shouts the word, “Enough!” in unison, throwing their fists in the air.

  The force of their conviction almost knocks me over. It hits me in the chest like a wrecking ball, overwhelming me with support. I felt like I was fighting this battle on my own for so long, clinging to this person I love tooth and nail while the entire world tried to take him from me. But I’m not alone anymore.

  And neither are they.

  “The folks who have been murdered here by Governor Steele and his executioner are good people. They’re your family, your doctors, your friends, your loved ones. They are people who were willing to die to save someone else.”

  To save me.

  “They are not the enemy. Doing everything we can to help each other survive isn’t what made us weak; it’s what made us human. The real enemy is the one percent of our population who took ninety-nine percent of our resources! The one percent who almost made us go extinct because of their greed. The one percent who killed a quarter of us off through mind control to make up for the lack they’d created and then told us it was our fault for turning our backs on natural selection!”

  I lean over and give the microphone to Wes’s mom, who’s watching me with glistening eyes. Hold this, please, I mouth to her.

  I untie the sleeves wrapped around my waist and pull the hoodie on over my head, careful not to let my gun fall out of the front pocket. As soon as those orange bones are visible, the left half of the crowd—the side with jackets matching mine—goes wild. I take the microphone back from Rhonda with a hopeful look.

  Standing back up, I shove my fist into the air, and when the entire crowd does the same, it feels like the ocean itself is rising up to meet me. Except for Q, who’s smirking with her arms folded across her chest.

  “They say they want the strongest to survive? Well, I say, there’s strength in numbers! Let’s show them—”

  “Shoot her!” a booming Southern voice shouts from somewhere behind me.

  My head swivels in that direction, and I find Governor Steele marching across the capitol lawn, pointing at me in anger, with Officer Elliott and Flip hot on his trail. Three riot cops rush across the street to drag Governor Steele away but not before he produces a gun from somewhere inside his three-piece suit and aims it directly at me.

  The brute squad drops me immediately, catching me in their heavily tattooed arms as two bullets whiz through the air over my head.

  The microphone slips through my fingers.

  And the powder keg explodes.

  Rain

  The second those shots are fired, a hundred more follow as the crowd erupts into a pushing, shoving, screaming, stampeding, mindless thing. Michelle, Lamar, and I are swallowed by the mob in an instant. People trample over Quint’s body as they push in all directions to get away from the madness. I watch as his mask goes flat under a cowboy boot, and I have to choke down my own vomit.

  But there’s no time to process. I’m going to end up just like him if I don’t stay upright. With every jarring shove, every push and pull, I feel myself getting smaller. It’s like that time my parents took me to the beach, and I got sucked away from the shore by the undertow. I remember feeling so weak, my little muscles no match for the all-powerful ocean. The o
nly difference is that if I get pulled under here, I won’t drown. I’ll have my internal organs liquefied under the stomping, panicking feet of Bonys and rednecks and newly released prisoners.

  Shots ring out every few seconds, followed by more screaming, and I don’t know if the riot cops are firing at us or if we’re firing at the riot cops.

  The giant ex-cons who were holding me up are able to force their way through the chaos, but when the crowd closes in behind them, it swallows me whole and forces me under, like a crashing wave.

  Fight! I scream at myself. Stay on your feet!

  Another ka-pow reverberates through the air as a man no more than five feet away from me topples into the crowd like a cut tree. I can’t get out of the way, and he lands on me, coughing up blood as we both go down.

  I scream as I hit the grass under two hundred pounds of bleeding human. “Help! Hellllllp!”

  I struggle to roll the dying man off of me as motorcycle boots and cowboy boots and combat boots and hunting boots stomp on my feet and trip over my legs and kick me in the side and crush my arms. Fear and pain hijack my brain as the assault continues. Instead of rolling him off, I pull the dying man back on top of me, using him as a human shield to protect my belly as I try to remember to breathe. Panic grips my throat and squeezes, stealing my voice as it whispers into my ears.

  Weak.

  Stupid.

  Powerless.

  Girl.

  But then I hear another voice in my ear, one that sounds less like me and more like a female rapper who smokes two packs a day. Faded green dreadlocks tumble into my face as the voice chuckles.

  “Bitch, how you gonna start a riot and then lie down and take a nap? That’s some gangsta shit right there.”

  Two hands grab me under the armpits and hoist, lifting me out from under the now-dead body just before another surge of people tramples him as well.

  I turn and find the feral, feline eyes of Q staring back at me, a smirk on her full lips and a spatter of blood on her right cheek.

  “You came,” I mutter in disbelief.