Chapter 3 is long, so I'm posting it in two parts. I'll post the second part on Thursday. Enjoy, and please continue sending in your comments. Constructive criticism is vastly appreciated, as are compliments about my nice hair. If this is your first time, then you should start at Chapter 1.
Enjoy!
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3
Later in the morning, James and I decide to walk back to my apartment. We want to pick up the provisions I’ve stored there and look out for a suitable vehicle along the way. We’re looking for an off-roader in good condition. I still want to head home to Bramble and I’m certainly not cycling there. In the interim, we decide that we’ll stay at James’ place rather than mine, both for the sake of comfort and because there’s less chance of any dangerous encounters in his residential neighborhood.
Last nights weather was clear, so the snow on the ground from the previous day has half-melted and refrozen, so the old snow is topped with a light crust of ice that crunches rather than slips.
There’s a cold breeze in the air that whips our faces as we stroll down Liberty. It’s good to be in another’s company after a week of lonely monotony. Together, we finally feel safe walking the streets. Otherwise, when we’re alone, we’re both terrified of who we may find.
James’ fear of man is legitimized by the attempt on his life from an anonymous sniper two days ago, which he told me about yesterday, while I lay on my back in the grocery store. Nobody’s targeted me yet, so my fear comes from what I’ve seen around me. Perhaps the fear makes less sense, but it’s real. Let me explain.
Before the TV stations stopped broadcasting, the twenty-four hour newscasts showed riots in almost every major city across the globe. As individuals found themselves in increasingly desperate situations, they reacted in all kinds of despairing ways. And as the vestiges of law enforcement tried in vain to quell a suddenly lawless society, the public’s anger exploded in a surprisingly predicable manner: wanton destruction of anything and everything; a sheer unfocussed explosion of rage and frustration.
Two weeks back, I witnessed, first-hand, one of those huge, iconic riots. It began at the university housing down the street from my apartment. The high densities of people inside the dorms, even after so many students returned home in worry, meant that the G9 plague spread through the buildings at astonishing rates. In Pittsburgh, the Tower Dormitories — three interconnected circular dorms that resemble giant shampoo bottles — reported a confirmed infection rate of seventy-eight percent. Health authorities responded by enforcing a quarantine on the building. Even at such a high percentage of infection, and despite the mass exodus of students in the area, the (apparently) healthy students numbered two-hundred and eleven scared and panicked individuals.
Outside the building, to a gallery of press representatives, the Chief of Police announced that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” and the Department for Infectious Disease warned that breaking the quarantine would seal the fate of the entire city. Of course, the plague had already sealed the city’s fate, only we didn’t know that yet. Protestors sent word to the mayor, the governor, and anybody that would listen, but to no avail. The cogs of bureaucracy couldn’t turn fast enough to revoke the decision. Instead, the Chief of Police stood by the doors with a rank of officers behind him, threatening to shoot anybody who should try to pass him. Local news said, and I was in the gathering crowd so I can verify, that after three short hours of enforced quarantine, the students, who knew they were doomed no matter what the outcome, started a riot in the Towers’ lobby — a communal area connecting the three buildings. Outside, several thousand fellow objectors joined in. Within minutes the officers enforcing the lock-down were overpowered, doors were rammed open and two-hundred and eleven potentially infectious students ran out to meet several thousand other bodies.
Authorities had dispatched crowd control units before the riot began, as the crowd began to swell in numbers and the officers at the quarantine border found themselves increasingly nervous. Throughout the crowd, protestors were tying bandanas and shirts over their mouths and noses in preparation for the imminent pepper spray and tear gas. Row upon row of masked individuals began to yell and stomp. After the break in quarantine, teenagers clashed with the riot shields. Kids threw bottles.
A fire broke out somewhere.
I watched a girl point accusations at an officer who, in turn, grabbed her arm and pulled her behind the wall of uniforms, shields, and beating clubs. She screamed in despair and a man, maybe her boyfriend, lunged to catch her. Police officer’s subsequently beat the man to the ground. Of course, the crowd responded to events these events and established a chain of escalating violence. Somewhere, someone was firing rubber bullets. I hoped they were rubber bullets.
Much of the time, the mass of other bodies shielded me against the violence. I was an observer, not a participant. But within minutes an unexpected surge in the crowd pushed me forward, those ahead of me broke to the sides, and I found myself on the frontline of the confrontation. I faced a line of cops, three deep, beating plastic shields. These particular men were trained to intimidate and strike fear into the hearts of civilians, whenever necessary, to force submission. I could feel the surge of bodies behind me; the ripple and heat of anger and discontent. I knew that if anybody to my rear pushed forward another couple of steps the officers would attack me. So I thrust my body backwards into the crowd, yelling, shoulders first, and cutting through any gaps I could feel. All around me were screams, threats, and yells. Cops grabbed at arms wherever they could and clubbed at bodies otherwise. A police loudspeaker was calling for order. A protester somewhere in the crowd had their own loudspeaker, and yelled, “Don’t you know it’s illegal to disagree with the government these days? Don’t you know it’s illegal to gather in the streets? Don’t you know it’s illegal to insist on your own human rights?”
I pushed back a few more rows and spotted a canister arching through the air into the crowd. Gas billowed from it and protestors scattered from the area of impact. Then another canister flew at a right angle to the first and landed fifty-yards to my left. A guy on my right yelled in my ear, “FUCKIN’ PIGS!” I joined in with the yelling for a while in the relative safety of numbers and distance, as the atmosphere of conflict intensified in the area. “WE’RE JUST PEOPLE,” I screamed, impotently. The mood shifted again and I continued to push backwards. A cloud of CS gas descended upon me. My throat tightened and my eyes burned, as if someone dropped onions in my eye sockets. No, not onions. It felt like someone dropped razors in there. My nose ran. I was a mess of mucus.
The crowd overturned a car in the street and set it aflame. A fire truck’s horn blasted from the distance.
In time, much of the crowd dispersed into South Oakland — a predominantly residential section — away from the university and the rioting. By the morning, burnt out cars filled South Oakland. Couches were pulled into the road and burned in enormous pyres of rage.
That night, the crowd eventually turned upon itself, as anger at the injustice of the police turned to anger at the injustice of the plague. All it took was a bit of looting and a personal vendetta before the violence became as pandemic as the plague.
Within twelve to thirty-six hours, individuals would find the plague had spread to them and regret being in the hive of infection that day. Tragically, they would die before realizing that their involvement with that crowd didn’t make any difference to their health at all. They would have died eventually, no matter how they decided to spend their final days.
But back in that moment, as the fire engine used its hose on the crowd rather than the fire, I squeezed down one of the tributaries formed between the advancing rows of riot police. I came out running into East Oakland, perhaps two hundred yards from the riot’s epicenter. Several other protestors were running alongside me and the cops focused their attention on those continuing to provoke the violence, letting us pass unhindered. I looked back at the mess of people who now formed scattered clumps. Gas canisters soared and billowed and fire engine hoses blasted those individuals who showed particular tenacity.
My nose still ran and my eyes stung from the CS gas, so I wiped my face with my shirt, leaving a trail of mucus on my chest, and cleared the tears from my vision. Standing still, I looked up again and stared in disbelief as officers fired guns into the crowd and then the crowd fired back at the police. Screaming was intensified. A woman lay on the ground close to me, atop a small, but growing, puddle of blood. It must have been a stray bullet. It must have been.
Behind me, restrained teenagers were bundled into trucks by armed and masked police officers. By that time, the authorities had closed the overflowing, infection-filled hospitals, and the woman on the ground would have died if someone didn’t help her. I went over to her body and tried to lift her onto my shoulders, and another woman stopped to help me. I took off my belt and we attempted to apply it as a tourniquet on the injured woman’s bleeding leg. She was unconscious from shock. Once we stemmed the blood flow, we picked her up again and balanced her across my shoulders. Somehow, I jogged with the woman balanced there for a hundred meters or so, with the kind stranger helping me handle the extra weight. Eventually she turned south herself, heading towards Schenley Park and yelling over her shoulder, “Good luck!”
With the injured woman on my shoulders, I arrived at Craig Street and hobbled towards my apartment. A careful balancing act got me through the front door and up the stairwell. Emily was in my apartment when I arrived. I was bloodied, red-eyed, covered with my own mucus, and had a woman draped over my shoulder, dripping blood on the floor.
Emily yelled, “What the fuck?”
Earlier that night, she’d asked me to stay home because, as the world was turning to shit, she didn’t want me putting my life in any further risk. She’d begged me to stay in the apartment and to watch what we could from the window or fire escape, but in the end, I was selfish and I went anyway. “I promise I won’t stay long,” I had yelled over my shoulder and left her there alone. I wanted to see the event. I’m a dick sometimes. I knew that, but I didn’t care.
And now Emily’s fears were proven legitimate. I had a stranger on my back, bleeding on the ground, and Emily rushed to help me. “I don’t know who this is, but she’s bleeding bad.” Emily helped take me distribute the weight and lift the woman from my shoulders. “It’s chaos down there; they broke the quarantine in the Towers.”
“Fuck. People were trying to break into the lobby here you know?”
I didn’t reply. I was exhausted.
“Get her on the couch,” Emily said. “Come on.”
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Continued here.
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Dave
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