The second in a series of one-shot short stories.
The radio says stay inside but I slept at Sara's place again and need to get home and check on things. So I'm walking.
Downtown is already gone. I can see the smoke from here, black columns and that stink. Helicopters circle but they're not doing anything. Just watching. What else can they do?
I take Garrison Street because it's residential. Wrong. There's a couch on fire in the middle of the intersection. No one around it. No one watching. Just there, burning.
At Fifth Street there's a police cruiser on its roof. Wheels still spinning. The door is open and there's blood on the pavement but no body. Just blood in a pattern that suggests dragging. Someone spray-painted PIG COOKER on the windshield. The letters are steady, backed in white so it pops. Solid technique, good concept. Someone took their time.
Three blocks north I hit the first real crowd. Maybe three hundred people, no direction, groggy from the night before. I see tents, folding chairs, sleeping bags on the asphalt. They’re holding territory. Tonight they’ll try for the next couple blocks. Like Stalingrad. I read Vasily Grossman for a class in college.
I try to go around but get pulled in. Bodies pressing. I can't see past the person in front of me. A teenager wearing a gas mask is filming people on his phone with exaggerated detachment. From what I can see, he’s shooting mostly girls.
“Is cell service back up?” I ask.
“No,” he replies.
The whole crowd is like one thing with too many legs. Drifting through the commercial district where every window is gone. A sneaker store completely empty. Floor to ceiling, just empty shelves and broken glass on the tile. Nary a flipflop to be seen.
A man stands in a doorway with a baseball bat tucked under his arm, rolling a smoke. His shop is untouched. He's not threatening anyone. Everyone goes around him without discussion. Whoever he’s worried about isn’t the protestors.
At Harrison I break off. The precinct house up the block is fully burning. Probably since last night. The roof’s caved in. Fire trucks two blocks away, not moving. Riot police in a line between the fire and the trucks. Just standing there with shields up. Their building is burning and they're watching it burn because moving forward means the crowd and they don’t seem ready for that.
I go around through residential blocks. People on porches. A woman waters her plants. Her neighbor is boarding up windows with plywood. The sound of the drill competes with distant sirens. A couple is arguing about deck furniture - worth the effort of moving it all inside? A few kids skate a curb they built out of a section of I-beam and PVC pipe.
I cut through Jefferson Park. The basketball court is empty save for a shopping cart overturned in the middle of it, rotting groceries. The park feels wrong. The chain-link fence has a section pulled down, bent back like someone drove through it.
At the park's edge there's a car with all its windows smashed but otherwise intact. The glass is everywhere, millions of tiny cubes.
The chanting starts somewhere to my left. I can hear it but can't see the source. Which streets. The words bounce off buildings.
I find the march two blocks over. This one is organized. Energized. People with megaphones, people with vests, people directing others where to go. Dollar store snorkel masks as DIY protection against CS gas Someone hands me a bottle of water without asking if I need it. I take it and follow along in the wake of the crowd.
Someone's set up speakers on a flatbed and is playing music. Something with horns. Go-Go music. Trouble Funk. Drop the bomb, drop the bomb. Too loud and upbeat for seven in the morning but everyone's moving to it anyway.
A white kid with a red cross armband is walking in the opposite direction calling out. "Don't go near the bridge. Guard's there."
"What about Lex?” I ask.
He pulls out a folded paper. It's a map, hand-drawn, marks all over it. "Morrison underpass. Was open twenty minutes ago."
"Was?"
He doesn't answer. Just folds the map and keeps moving.
The underpass is dark and I don't like it but I go in anyway. Graffiti on the walls. Fresh paint. ACAB in letters taller than me, but faded, maybe from back in 2020. Someone wrote Obviously underneath in different handwriting. Fresh. Drips.
I hear footsteps behind me. Running. I press flat against the wall. Four people go past carrying something long. Hot water heater? They don't look at me.
My building's on Lexington. Four more blocks. A car drives past on the sidewalk because the street has something blocking it. I can't tell what. Just a dark mass with plywood leaning against it. I hope just trash bags or something.
At Lexington I can see my building and something's wrong. The front door is propped open with a cinder block. Even in normal times, that’s insane.
I go in. The lobby's trashed. Mail scattered everywhere. Someone spray-painted what is meant to say LIBERATED ZONE on the wall by the elevator, but badly misspelled. Not trusting the elevator, I take the stairs. I pass a body on the second floor landing. Sleeping, hopefully.
Third floor. My door is open. Not kicked in. Just open. I can hear voices inside. More than one person. Music's coming from my apartment. My speakers.
I stand in the hallway trying to decide what to do. I could leave. Come back later. Come back never. But my laptop's in there. My documents. My clothes.
I push the door open wider.
There are five people in my living room. Three on my couch. Two on the floor. They look up when I come in but nobody moves fast. Nobody's surprised. One of them is a woman maybe forty with short hair and faded tattoo sleeves. She's the one who speaks.
"You live here?"
"Yeah."
"Thought it was empty. The door was unlocked."
"It wasn't."
The music is loud. My stereo. My records. Someone's going through my records right now. A kid maybe nineteen is flipping through them one by one.
"We need a place to crash," the woman says, seeming to concede to the obvious break-in.
I look at them. They look at me. Nobody's armed that I can see but there are five of them and one of me and, let’s be honest, I’m not a fighter.
"I need to get some things," I say.
"Go ahead."
I walk to my bedroom. Someone's been in here too. My bed's unmade but I left it made. My closet door is open. I grab my laptop from the desk, frankly amazed it's still there. I shove it in a backpack along with some tshirts and an accordion file I keep important stuff in.
In the bathroom my medicine cabinet is open. My Lexapro is missing but I can handle that.
I come back out. They're all watching me now.
"That it?" the woman asks.
"Yeah."
"You gonna call the cops?"
"No."
I stand there with my bag like an idiot. My apartment full of strangers. My stereo. My records.
"You can stay if you want," she says. "There's room."
"I'm good."
"Suit yourself."
I leave. Pull the door closed behind me. It doesn't latch and I see why. The cylinder’s been removed. I feel a wave of sadness. Overwhelming. I jog down the stairs with blurred vision.
I start walking back toward Sara's place. My laptop bag over my shoulder. The city’s on fire and I don't have an apartment anymore and I'll have to figure out what that means but right now I'm just walking.
A block away I hear engines. Multiple vehicles. Coming fast, no sirens. I step into a doorway and turn back to watch.
Two SWAT vans pull up in front of my building. Armored officers pile out. They're moving fast. Lots of guns. They go in through the propped-open door.
I stay pressed against the dumpster. I can hear shouting. Then louder shouting. Then what might be gunfire or might be flashbangs. Hard to tell.
People start coming out. The five from my apartment. More from other floors. Hands up. Being zip-tied. Pushed into vans. More than a few are bleeding from head wounds.
The woman with the tattoos is being dragged out. Not fighting. Just not complying. She's yelling something I can't make out. The officers dragging her are laughing.
They're all loaded into vans. The SWAT team goes back inside. Clearing the building floor by floor.
I wait. Ten minutes. Fifteen. They come back out. Get in their vans. Leave.
The street is quiet again. My building's front door still propped open with the cinder block. Nobody inside now except whoever was smart enough to hide or fast enough to run.
I think about going back. Checking the damage. But there's nothing there I need more than I need to not be zip-tied and tossed in a van.
I keep walking. The sun is higher now. I'm thinking about Sara's place. Whether she'll let me stay another night. Whether I even want to ask. Whether it's better if I’m on my own.
The city burns and I'm walking and my apartment is full of new people I don't know or empty of people or being raided by SWAT or all of those things at different times and none of it matters because I'm not there.
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