John Ridley - What Fire Cannot Burn

And then it moved. Fast, like before. Violent. With its hands it grabbed. With its teeth it bit, cracked. Tore away the bones of Raddatz's wrist. A sucking, popping sound.

And a scream from Raddatz. He saw his own hand, gripping his gun, flipping through the air.

And the freak: blood flesh-spilled from its mouth that curved with a smile.

Raddatz stepped back. Thought he was. Thought he was stepping back. He was falling backward. Took the ground hard. Instinct-a cop's instinct, plain survival instinct-told him to get up, get back into things. If you're gonna die, die. But die fighting. Die taking the thing with you. So Raddatz tried to scramble off, push himself back up. He slipped on his own blood. His stump useless for helping out in the effort to stand. Good for nothing except causing him pain, bleeding massively.

No getting up. No getting back into the fight. The next couple of seconds held nothing but the remainder of his life. Just time enough to consider: eyes closed or open? Does he go out like a man, watch death coming? Does he shut his eyes and pick, that one last image to ride to eternity with?

Eyes closed. He conjured his wife, his boys.

Please, God, let 'em know my last thought was of them.

He calmed none. Held his family tight in his mind. Took a quick hit of every emotion he'd ever felt.

Please, God.

Please…

Thunder is its own thing, he'd always thought. When Raddatz was a boy, when his father taught him, as good fathers do, to count the seconds between lightning and thunder to figure how far off a storm was, Raddatz just got it into his head thunder is different from lightning. And it is. But they're partners. It takes lightning to make thunder-the sound of a vacuum collapsing when air is riven by electricity. So when he felt it, when Raddatz felt the sharp bite of charged particles racing above him, he knew it was lightning when he heard the thunder. Heard the animal scream of the freak as it fried. Smelled flesh that was bone-roasted.

Tsui there was nothing but the sound of breathing.

His own. His own was all that remained.

His shaking, convulsing diminished. Volition returned. Raddatz used it to open his eyes. The world swam around him. A mile away, maybe just ten feet, was the freak. Burned, obviously. Skin charred where it wasn't just cooked away. Probably dead. It was motionless enough to be dead. There were bodies about, body parts about. Blood everywhere. All that remained of his former fellow cops. Raddatz's head moved in some direction. Actual geography was lost to him. Upside down to him was a woman. A female anyway. She was little older than a girl. A teen. She wore a shirt that both quoted some urbanism and showed midriff. Baggy pants that peekabooed the thong her parents must have hated her wearing. Such a normal girl. Other than the arc of electricity that crawled around her clenched fists. Three cops dead. Raddatz dying. The freak that had done all that stopped by a youth with tricky fingers.

Her mouth moved. She spoke to Raddatz, her voice lost to him. His senses failing him.

Fading. He was fading. Blood was flowing from him. Life was slipping from him.

As he traveled on, Raddatz caught up with the words of the girl as both her voice and his life headed for eternity.

The girl had said: "Don't be afraid."

There's something about dying, Eddi. There's something about it that-"

"That drives you insane?" Eddi talked through the pain in her head, the pain in her wrists; the cuffs biting into her flesh. "You didn't die."

Raddatz didn't take Eddi's acid as insult or sarcasm. He took it as point of fact.

"I died, Eddi. I did die. If not technically, then I had the NDE that changes you. How could I die and not get changed?"

"You're not changed. You're fucked-up!" Words delivered with a spray of the blood that filled her mouth.

"You've never been pushed to a state above and beyond every other thing you used to

believe, Eddi?"

"Stop saying my name!"

"There's never been a time you've done things never mind the consequences, others might find

…" From a picket: Eddi's .38. The gun that was meant to kill Raddatz. "You deserve to die."

"I do." No argument from Raddatz. Just an expression of sadness. "But not how you think. I deserve to die because… They aren't freaks, Eddi. They are different than us. They're-"

"They're fucking mutants!"

"They're not afraid."

"They ought to be scared. Kill me, but that's not going to stop us from taking out every last-"

"They're not afraid as we know fear. That girl: If she'd been identified by the police, what would have happened to her? A warrant would have been issued. She would have been hunted. Maybe killed. Her family sent inside just for being her family, for never having turned her in to the cops, but she knew she had to try and stop the metanormal that was in the middle of killing me. That is, if it didn't kill her. If the police didn't kill her. There's a difference between us and them. Not in their abilities. Not in being genetically better. What sets the best of them apart from us, sets them to a degree above us, is so basic, but beyond you and me. Metanormals, the ones who believe in good aren't scared of doing what's right. Facing persecution, without regard to self, no matter the law, they're not afraid of serving a higher cause. Serving mankind. Isn't that what lifts our species above common animals; to do good without regard? And isn't that what holds our species back; the inability to give selflessly? And I know you're thinking: Cops; we do that. Give of ourselves. We put our lives on the line to fight them. But we fight from a place of fear. Stop them, or they'll destroy us. Stop them, or they take over. Stop them.

"They don't fight from fear. They fight for right. For all They fight to end fear. That young girl, when she gave me life, she took my fear."

"You've got no fear. That makes you a, a traitor now? She saved your life, so you kill cops."

"They're using you, Eddi. Do you understand? They used Soledad, now they're using you."

Just the mention of her name. Soledad. Enough to slow Eddi down. No matter she'd been pummeled, no matter she was on the floor cuffed, for the first time since she'd gotten her sense back Eddi listened.

"What do we fear?" Raddatz asked. "What are we all scared of? A return to the days before San Francisco. The metanormals-the good, the bad-going at each other in the middle of Downtown LA, or New York, or Atlanta. We're scared of this 'cause we've been told to be scared."

"Because more than half a million people got killed on May Day."

"And do you think if Pharos hadn't gone after Bludlust, things would've turned out different, the city wouldn't have been torn in half? When that happened, we said to our leaders: Not again. Do what you have to, but never again. So there was the Executive Order, there were the MTacs and the deportations and the SPAs. The government could do what it wanted, when it wanted, in the name of security. I know, Eddi, I know what you're gonna say. It was, it is, a time of war. We need to protect ourselves and do so extraordinarily against an extraordinary enemy. But do you think the desire for power is limited to metanormals? Ordinary people want to be extraordinarily. What genetics hasn't given them, the law grants them. The Executive Order gave men power.

"But memories fade, Eddi. Every day the past slips farther and farther away. People don't remember May Day as much as they recall the sight of cops with HKs taking out metanormals in the middle of the street. You've seen it, the rise of what's called freak fuckers; the liberal fringe. How much longer before their voice takes hold, the Executive Order gets rescinded? Metanormals get rights again? There is that fear. It cuts deep among normal men who value their power. It's why someone like Soledad got persecuted for taking half a step outside the law."