A Time to Die by Mark Wandrey

an hour. It took Vance three tries before he even got the page to load!
    At first it was just a POV shot from a crummy little hotel room as a man complained that the Mexican army was not allowing any of them to leave the building. Then shots could be heard outside, and the camera was carried out onto the room’s tiny balcony and aimed down to the street.
    Troops had established a checkpoint less than a block from the hotel. Two armored cars were parked nose to nose, effectively blocking the street. In addition, sand bags were piled to create a pair of improved firing positions. Machine guns were set up in each. Vance watched intently. This looked more like Beirut than Mexico!
    It was not readily apparent where the shots were coming from and the camera kept erratically pointing here and there trying to locate where the sounds were coming from. Then a group was captured in the view running towards the blockade. Shouted challenges were issued but the men and women showed no signs of slowing. The image was of poor quality and Vance couldn’t tell if they were attacking, or fleeing something. It mattered not to the troops, who opened fired at fifty yards.
    Vance jerked violently at the first shots – the chatter of an M-16 on three round burst. The bullets met flesh and bone with smacking impacts that even the tiny camera picked up. Two people went down, and the crowd staggered to a stop. Screams of pain and protest rose in the evening. He hadn’t realized the recording was shot at night until then. He didn’t understand any Spanish, but the word ‘No’ was yelled by the troops over and over again.
    Several knelt down to see to the wounded as the crowd continued to grow from behind, more and more people rushing into the street. Vance guessed there were more than a hundred in just ten seconds and still more came, pushing up on the others from behind and forcing them all to creep forward. The soldiers were getting nervous and fired into the air over the crowd’s heads this time. More screams of confusion, but whatever drove them this far had them more scared than the soldier’s guns.
    Then there came new screams. These were around the corner, behind the crowd, and it was like nothing Vance had ever heard. Visceral and primal guttural bellows that were barely human. A hellish grinding of rage and horrible, unspeakable need combined to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The troops fell silent and the crowd roiled like a bucket of worms. Some kicked at locked doors, a few piled into alleyways jammed with overfull dumpsters. Another hideous scream sounded, and the crowd responded to the noise like a trigger, and exploded towards the troops.
    A few small arms spoke immediately and people fell, but only a few. The camera focused on the road block, the machine gunners were looking back at their commanding officer and screaming, their faces a mask of fear and confusion. More orders were made, and one machinegun finally began to roar to life. But the crowd had already reached them.
    “I don’t know what kind of riot this is,” the camera holder said, pulling back in shaky movements as the crowd enveloped the soldiers and their guns fell silent under screams. “Everything just went crazy a few days ago. I’ve been getting second and third-hand reports of riots all over Matamoros and other border cities. With the fighting in Mexico City, we think the legitimate government is hanging on by a thread. A friend thinks it’s Islamist fanatics, but there are no demands, and the Islamic hate sites are all silent. No one knows what to do, no one knows what the rioters want!” It was a plea for answers to the unanswerable.
    The camera focused outside again, at the checkpoint. Some of the soldiers were fighting with the rioters, but most of the civilians were just racing past them on down the avenue. The border crossing was only three miles in that direction and more shots could be heard from that way.
    The horrendous