John Ridley: What Fire Cannot Burn

That was the difference between then and now. Now there was time to scream at people just trying to do their banking to get the F down. Fire off a few shots if they didn't get the F down.

These days, when all you had to worry about were outgunned LAPD cops, seemed like there was all the time in the world for bad things to happen.

Unless you're jagged on crank. You're hopped on tina. Then time's got a way of being trippy. unnervy. No matter how fast things happen, they don't happen fast enough.

For Mike Anderson, with his baby in the stroller, it took a swipe of a pistol to the head to hurry up his downward progress. Wasn't really much of a blow. Mike Anderson more or less went with the swing, went to the ground on his own and covered his daughter knowing, beneath his body, she'd be safe.

David, Carol, Rick: still screaming, but learning well from the pistol-whipping demonstration the rewards of noncooperation. They pressed themselves on the tile behind and below their desks. Would have pressed themselves through the floor if they could have. The tellers went down behind the counter.

In the whole of the bank only three were standing. The Sweaty Guys. Mr. Roth.

Mr. Roth was old, didn't move so quick. Mr. Roth's eyes were probably bad and his hearing most likely shot. There was a real chance Mr. Roth didn't know, didn't really understand, what was happening. For him it must've been like trying to figure out what's going on when you're watching the world from under five feet of Jell-O. The «fucks» screamed, the pistol whips given: It was all lost on him.

"Wha… what's-"

"Get down!"

"I, I don't-"

"Get the fuck down!"

It could be read in the Sweaty Guys' dilated eyes. Loss of control was on the horizon. Mike Henderson saw it.

From where he was on the floor Mike Henderson, sensing the badness to come, had a variation on a single thought: I gotta do something. No matter his daughter was there, no matter doing something wasn't… wasn't right, wasn't safe, he could real easy see the sum of the equation before him: Old man doesn't move fast enough, jagged thugs don't react rationally. Bullets fly. Old guy dies.

"Get down on the fuck-"

"I don't… I can't-"

From the rest in the bank a modified Greek chorus chanting in frightened wails: "Please, Mr. Roth! Get down, Mr. Roth!"

One of the Sweaty Guys worked the slide on. his gun.

Should've done that before he hit the bank. Anyway, a round was chambered. He was, finally, ready for business.

"Goddamn it, fucker! Get the fuck-"

Consequences didn't matter.

It was coming to that.

Consequences didn't matter for Mike Henderson. A life mattered. Not his own. Mike Henderson had to-

"Told you to get the fuck down!"

A gun yelled twice. Deafeningly loud in the tight space.

The screams, the screams from David and Carol and Rick, from Diane and especially from the security guard, spiked and died. The bank was filled with a bed of sobbing.

All looked.

Even Mr. Roth, still standing, looked and saw the two sizable holes in his chest.

A couple more screams from someone at the sight, the sight of Mr. Roth with those holes.

The two guys, the Sweaty Guys, they weren't high anymore. Not so much so. Shooting someone can do that to you. Sober you up. Shooting someone in California where they execute people for such things will slap the fuzziness straight out of you.

Mr. Roth looked up, looked from his wounds to the formerly Sweaty Guys.

And then the wounds in Mr. Roth's chest, which were not wounds, but truly holes- tunnels opened to allow the passing of a couple of slugs-self-sealed.

And then Mr. Roth gave a smile. A smile that stretched, stretched itself across his face. The corners of his lips seeming to… not seeming to. They did. The corners of his lips touched the base of his ears. Teeth filled his mouth, swelled to fill his mouth. Twisted. They went jagged. Looked more like ivory claws then dentition.

For a second Mr. Roth's smile… it quivered. It quivered. For a second it was like Mr. Roth's smile couldn't contain its glee, its perverted anticipation.

And then Mr. Roth's smile, his jaw, had at the two used-to-be/now-again Sweaty Guys who'd tried to rob a bank and had only gotten as far as shooting at a seemingly old man. Mr. Roth's smile bit at them, tore at them, ripped, ripped and ripped them. Did not slow for the shrieking, the screaming, the spraying blood and flying flesh. And meat.

And Mr. Roth's smile accomplished all this mayhem while Mr. Roth's body remained a good thirty feet clear of the slaughter.

Somewhere along the way darkness got a bad rap, got itself associated with fear and malevolence. Bad things only happen in the dark.

Perception, not truth.

The dark was safe and warm. People calmed and closed their eyes and slept in the dark. The dark was as solacing as a womb. It was coming out of darkness into the light of the day when you could see just how fucked-up the world was.

The APC doors opened. Harsh white sunlight hacked its way into the vehicle's bay.

Soledad held up a hand against it, against the light. But there was little blocking of the sun to be done.

Every time.

Every time she spilled out of an APC on a call Soledad felt like she was dropping out of a Huey into a hot LZ deep in Charlie territory or exiting a

Bradley for some foot patrol in Fallujah, dodging random IEDs.

It was an assumptive feeling. She'd never done either of those: urban pacification or hit an LZ. Hadn't even been in the military.

But Soledad was pretty sure the feeling of dread, of imminent unavoidable death that came with taking either of those locales was the same as rolling out of her APC. The same, 'cept for the fact that across the street, in Soledad's war zone, was a Quiznos where she'd once had an exceptionally adequate lunch. On the far comer was a computer store where she'd had her PowerBook worked on three times because the first two times the twenty-something the joint passed off as a tech expert had not one idea in hell what he was doing. In Soledad's war the battleground was here. Not a desert city, not a rice paddy halfway around the world. Here; her city. And the enemy didn't, wear a uniform or in any particular way identify itself as a combatant or insurgent. The enemy looked like Soledad, or the kid working at the copy shop, or the mother of two out running with her jogging stroller.

The enemy looked normal.

The enemy, however normal-looking, was anything but.

LAPD squads surrounded the bank at Main and Rose. Uniformed cops used the squads for cover. A growing crowd across the street from the police action stood out in the open. Overhead news birds from Channels 4,7 and 9. Circling low. Making communications difficult. Ensuring the viewing public would get "live team coverage" if anybody got killed.

The shit was, most definitely, about to get rolling.

The uniformed Officer in Charge waved Soledad over. Her element was right on her heels. Her element, Pacific MTac, she'd inherited in a command, shuffle when its most recent sergeant was KIAed. It'd only been his third call on point. Third time's the charm.

Pacific MTac: Eddi Aoki and Jim Whitaker on HKs, Jesus Alcala, a probee, working a Benelli. Alcala was a baby MTac, but he'd proven himself on four previous calls. Without fear, with smarts and deadly aim on the Benelli. A3! that and the fact Manhattan Beach had one less freak walking around courtesy of a one-ounce slug was proof enough of Alcala's skills.

Eddi was a known quantity. Her, Soledad; they'd survived going head-to-head-no pun- with a telepath. Eddi'd come back from a nearly shattered knee to get a slot on an element. She was a cop Soledad had no problem giving her back to. Whitaker.