ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) by Shawn Chesser Page A

frenzied movement of civilians piling
onto one another or the practiced precision of police officers rushing in to
break up the brush fires of violence springing up on the Square’s periphery.
    The one constant was that blood was in no kind of short
supply. If it bleeds, it leads—the unspoken tenet of those in the media
beholden to ratings to keep their lofty titles—was being taken to a whole new
level as the camera passed over a clutch of leather-clad forms tearing into a
prone officer. Hands flashed in and out of the writhing man’s midsection and
came out clutching ropes of shiny intestine.
    It was clear to Duncan the carnage was being recorded by a camera
mounted to a helicopter orbiting slowly above what looked to be no more than
four square blocks. And at all four points of the compass around the Pioneer
Courthouse Square, police in riot gear and soldiers in tan uniforms were
actively engaged in deadly games of cat-and-mouse with a seemingly feral mob.
Then, even from the elevated vantage the moving aerial platform afforded, for a
quick second, the entire scene below was obscured by white smoke pouring from dozens
of metal canisters shot into the crowd from the officers’ stubby black rifles.
    In response, the helicopter bled off altitude and side-slipped
to cut the corner. As the ground-hugging smoke drifted over the crowd, Duncan
picked up on what looked like winks of gunfire, the star-shaped eruptions illuminating
the slow-roiling cloud in shades of red and orange.
    The firing continued and the glitter of tumbling and
bouncing brass was obvious as individuals squirted from the rank and file and
the cops on the ground parted their lines to allow the soldiers to move
forward.
    “Holy hell,” Duncan muttered. He moved to the edge of the
couch and craned forward as the camera zoomed in to frame a lanky twenty-something
clad in cargo shorts and hoodie. There was a wild sneer parked on the kid’s
bearded face and his lips were drawn back over white teeth. Then, as though a
switch had been flicked, his eyes went wild and locked onto a nearby officer
brandishing a shiny clear shield in one hand and eighteen-inch baton in the
other. And like a fire-and-forget missile, ignoring everything around him, the
unarmed protester covered the yard-and-a-half toward the officer in a
herky-jerky-gait that seemed to catch her completely off guard. The millisecond
of hesitation during which a battle between training and normalcy bias waged in
the officer’s head proved to be fatal for her as the kid wormed around the
shield and got inside of the metal baton’s downward sweep. In the next beat the
officer’s mouth snapped open in a silent scream and the kid’s fingers on one
hand plunged under the face shield, going for the woman’s eyes. The two fell in
a heap, the protester on top and clawing frantically under the visor, the
officer beating at his back weakly with the baton. Barely a second elapsed before
the officer’s legs shot straight and, as if the baton and shield were totally
forgotten about, both gloved hands released the items and went for the attacker’s
hooded head, clawing at it wildly as spritzes of red that could only be her
blood pulsed onto the blacktop around her helmeted head.
    “Kids today.” Duncan slumped back into the couch. He kicked
off his boots and stretched out prone, eyes locked on the television as other
shield-carrying officers surged forward to help their downed comrade. From
outside the frame a number of helmeted cops on bicycles outfitted with yellow
placards that read POLICE swarmed in silently only to be overtaken by the crowd,
many of them, their signs forgotten, now empty-handed and exhibiting the same
bloodlust as the kid kneeling over the cop and jamming a double handful of
human flesh into his maw.
    The new round of tear gas was now roiling above the melee and
then breaking like waves as it met the rotor wash from the hovering helicopter.
    The urge to get up and fetch another beer