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“Half of the county management’s run; the other half has grabbed its guns and headed to the riot.”
By the time we arrived, the Youth Vanguard Armed Auxiliary had blocked the streets leading to the city downtown with police and fire vehicles. Two off-road trucks and a motorcycle, all with just-fitted light machine guns in the permanent mounts that stood empty save for drills, were covering a road running west. The firemen had rigged their hoses to push the crowd back with water, but the curly-haired seventeen-year-old and the veteran retired sergeant commanding the Auxiliary ignored the firefighters.
Maynes tried to find someone in command. A senior trooper had his few uniformed men behind their nose-to-nose patrol cars, but he couldn’t speak for the firemen. The Youth Vanguard had a veteran “military trainer” but was under the command of a curly-haired seventeen-year-old with a buttercream complexion; his eyes were shining with excitement and his combat vest was stuffed with magazines for his carbine. The boy looked to his trainer for guidance in placing his forces, and the trainer was clearly trying to win favor with the boy. The firemen had both guns and water cannon. All three groups were ignoring one another, though they’d coordinated enough to block the street with their fire trucks, squad cars, and a school bus.
Smoke rose from the burning store and the sound of windows being broken was audible off to the east.
“Anyone think to send a couple uniformed officers off to calm everyone down?” Maynes asked the fire chief.
“You want us on the firing line, too?” Home asked. “There’s a good view down the sidewalk.”
“God no,” Maynes said.
The firemen ignored him, as did the deploying Youth Vanguard. “You’ve no military authority in this situation,” the curly-haired youth said from within his two-sizes-too-big uniform, prompted by his grizzled old training sergeant walking with the aid of a cane. He had a set of captain’s bars that looked as though they’d been taken out of their jeweler’s case that morning.
“Your funeral, kid,” Maynes said. “Sarge, you sure you want the Virgin Hairy here? Doesn’t seem the right man to run this show.”
“He’s got the rank at the college,” the sergeant said. “He’s a big rail baron’s kid. I’m just here to amplify and clarify.”
One of the firemen, sitting in the cab of his vehicle, stuck his head out the window. “Crisis Committee says that if they head downtown, they have to be dispersed.”
“Dispersed how?” Maynes asked him.
“They didn’t say.”
“No one wants responsibility,” Maynes said.
“I do,” the Youth Vanguard leader said.
The entire line of armed figures behind the cars on the street nearest to us stiffened. I drew myself up to my full height and looked down the street.
A motley collection of old women, mothers with kids in tow, and a smattering of teenagers who probably should have been in the church schoolrooms was proceeding down the street in two distinct throngs clustered to each sidewalk. The younger were nearer to us and the Youth Vanguard, the older ones facing the troopers. Some were banging the tiny saucepans together like miniature cymbals—at the time, none of us knew that a missing cookware delivery was at the heart of the disturbance. No one on the Crisis Committee, or anywhere else at the Administration Center, knew anything beyond the mob attacking and looting the flea market before moving on to the biggest store in town.
The Youth Vanguard, now sighting down their carbines, exchanged comments up and down the line. Beckley was not a big city; no doubt the students recognized a face or two.
“The Crisis Committee is in session. You are all subject to the military discipline under the Riot Protocol,” the curly-haired teen with his honorary captain’s bars called through the megaphone.
“The Crisis Committee,” Maynes said. “That’s a word to strike fear in the heart of the desperate.”
The protest march-cum-riot stopped. They were close enough so that even those with below-average eyesight (common with humans past the flush of youth) could see the guns arrayed against them.
I did not hear everything the crowd shouted back, but some of the teenagers sporting sledgehammers and crowbars knew him. It seemed curly hair had a local reputation for filching women’s undergarments off the drying line and using them for sexual relief purposes.
He didn’t give them time to do much more than process the implied threat. “Fire!”
Who can say why he gave the order? My own guess is that he wanted to make a name for himself as a decisive leader with the Vanguard, his college, or perhaps his family. A quick, harsh lesson that ends with a few bodies in the street appeals to some of the Kurians who think their brethren and Quislings go too easy on the human herd.
To their credit, about half of the Auxiliary members pointed their guns high enough so that the bullets would land a thousand yards behind the crowd. But enough rifle fire still swept the crowd to make wounds blossom on humble clothing.
The troopers blasted away with their shotguns.
The machine-gun fire from the heavy vehicles was the worst of all. The firemen, each man chosen for his instinct for brutality, handled their weapons well. Whole groups of women tumbled down as though their feet had been rigged with trip wires.
Screams of fear—and aged rage, as it seemed even the old women of the Coal Country were ready to finish a fight once it started—broke out from the crowd.
I expected the crowd to run, especially those in the back, but instead they threw themselves down en masse. Were they instinctively following the example of the falling bodies?
“Shoot above their heads, you fucking idiots!” MacTierney yelled. No one heeded his voice. Home was content to hoist himself up by the rearview mirror on the bus for a better view. Maynes made a couple of notes in the little notebook he kept in his breast pocket. He checked his watch for reference.
