Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

“Cease and desist!” a much louder voice interrupted. This one was coming through an amplified microphone mounted on a Sonoma County sheriff’s truck, not just a handheld bullhorn. “This is a police order. You with the megaphone-come down and walk forward with your hands up. People in the crowd, start dispersing peacefully.”

“You think they gonna arrest us all?” Glenn shouted scornfully. “Where they gonna put us? The jails are already full, baby! Full of people who smoked a joint, or stole some food ’cause they was starving! While the motherfuckers who stole your jobs and your homes and your dignity, they flying around in private jets! Yeah!”

A different kind of murmur was starting to rise from the crowd, with a tone of angry assent. Monks saw several clenched fists raised into the air.

“This is an unlawful assembly,” the police microphone bellowed. “I repeat, disperse yourselves peacefully.”

The cops on foot were shoving their way toward Glenn now, but the crowd was shoving back. Nightsticks started to flail. Monks fought his way along, his hesitation gone-in a panic to get to Glenn and drag him out of this insanity.

“Andrew, that’s my son up there. That’s Glenn!” Monks yelled into his microphone. “I need help getting him safe!”

“Ten-four that,” Pietowski said. “We’re coming.”

Monks was twenty yards away from the shed when a California Highway Patrolman on a motorcycle came charging through the tangled mass of people, running straight into whoever got in his way and kicking them aside. Monks got a glimpse of his bull neck and broad back.

As the cop passed in front of the shed, he slowed and unholstered his pistol, raising it to aim at Glenn.

Monks stared, rigid with disbelief.

Then he yelled, “No,” and threw himself forward, grabbing shoulders and handfuls of clothing to claw his way through the crowd.

A man with the look of a biker snarled, “Watch it, fucker,” and punched him hard in the side of the head, knocking his sunglasses flying. Monks reeled, tripping over legs-

Hearing the terrible thumps of high-powered gunshots.

When he fought his way to his feet again, Glenn was gone from sight. The motorcycle cop was riding on, waving his pistol. Now people screamed and trampled each other to get out of his path.

And then, a black spiderweb the size of a half-dollar appeared on the back of the cop’s white helmet, like an eggshell shattering. It slammed him forward over the careening bike’s handlebars.

“Eleven ninety-nine, officer down!” the police microphone roared. “Code Three for all law-enforcement personnel!”

Monks struggled on toward where Glenn had been, now trying to keep from getting knocked down and stomped to raw meat by the fleeing human torrent. People were surging in all directions, even swarming over the marina’s moored boats and leaping into the channel. Through the yells and screams around him and the pounding in his own ears, he was aware of more gunfire, and he caught glimpses of shouting cops with raised weapons. A cordon of police had formed around the fallen Highway Patrolman, shielding him from the stampede.

“…return fire!” he heard the microphone boom. “There are snipers in the crowd! Repeat, officers are authorized to return fire!”

Monks made it to the shed where Glenn had been perched and clambered up the webbed iron frame of a derrick to the roof. Two cops were already up there, crouched, swiveling tensely with pistols ready, watching the chaos below.

Glenn lay off to one side, prone and still.

Monks jumped from the derrick onto the roof. Both cops swung to face him, aiming at him with two-handed combat grips.

“Stop right there!” one bellowed.

“That’s my son,” Monks shouted, and kept coming.

“I don’t give a fuck! Turn around and get out of here.”

“Wait a minute, you saying you know this kid?” the other one said. He yanked his handcuffs from his belt and started toward Monks. “Get down, asshole. On your face, hands behind you-”

“I’m FBI and that man’s a doctor!” a hard voice broke in, yelling up at them from below. “Stand back and let him work.”

It was Pietowski, striding toward the shed with a pistol raised in one hand and his FBI badge in the other. He was flanked by two men who looked like undercover agents, dressed like Monks in funky outfits, but also brandishing guns.

The cops on the roof hesitated, looking at each other. Monks pushed past them and dropped to his knees beside Glenn. His fingers smeared the greasy blackface makeup as he checked for vital signs. Glenn was breathing, and the pulse in his carotid artery was faint but steady. There were no obvious wounds. Monks turned him carefully onto his back.

Glenn’s half-closed eyes opened a little wider in recognition or surprise. He tried to say something, but only blood came from his mouth, bubbling between his lips.

“Hush,” Monks said. “Don’t try to talk.”

He could hear Pietowski behind him, up on the roof now. “This situation’s under control,” Pietowski told the two policemen. “You men can get on down and help your buddies.”

“If this guy’s really a doctor, he should be taking care of cops, not this maggot,” one muttered.

“With all due respect, officer, you don’t know zip minus shit about it,” Pietowski said harshly. “There’s still shooters out there. Go find them.”

Monks’s fingers located an entry wound in Glenn’s chest, below the sternum and a couple of inches to the right. His mouth bleeding almost certainly meant that the bullet had punctured that lung, but the lung hadn’t yet collapsed, and there were no indications that his heart or spine had been hit. Monks’s hands kept searching over the rest of Glenn’s body. He had heard the motorcycle cop fire at least three shots. But there seemed to be no other wounds. Probably, the first round had knocked Glenn spinning away and down, and the others had missed.

He eased the stocking cap off Glenn’s head, dreading what he’d find. But both of Glenn’s ears, minus the earring, looked just fine.

“How is he?” Pietowski asked.

“Lucky.”

“Paramedics are on their way. We’ll get him on a chopper.”

Monks kept his hands on Glenn, reading his instant-by-instant condition through them, automatically making small adjustments-keeping his nostrils clear, loosening his clothing. With good prompt care, Glenn was going to make it.

A team of two paramedics arrived within minutes, carrying a backboard. Monks helped them ease Glenn onto it, and watched them closely as they strapped him down and lowered him to another team, waiting on the ground with a gurney. They seemed competent, but he intended to go with them to the hospital, and he started to follow them off the roof.

Pietowski caught his arm. “There’s people lying on the ground who need you here,” he said, pointing at the havoc below.

The crowd was thinning at the marina by now, most of it surging up into town. Monks didn’t hear any more gunfire, but there was still plenty of panic. Cars were ramming each other, driving over curbs, through yards, into buildings. The metallic crunch of collisions pierced the air, and shards of splintering glass from windshields and storefronts sprayed out here and there, glittering in the sunlight. Thousands more were fleeing on foot, swarming like locusts along the highway, through the shops and restaurants, up the streets and into the clusters of condos on the hills. Police helicopters hovered close overhead, megaphones bellowing warnings, but it looked like nothing short of napalm could stop the frenzy. At least a dozen people had fallen and were lying motionless or struggling feebly. A couple of them were wearing police uniforms. Monks remembered that he had heard the words over the police bullhorn: There are snipers in the crowd.