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Existential Threats

Thomas Fitzgerald McCarthy

    “This one’s for you, Dante!”
    The skinny activist screamed madly as he swung a metal post into the phalanx of police shields. It landed with a futile thud. Two dozen officers enveloped the enraged protester and he quickly vanished beneath a hailstorm of batons.
    Lieutenant Draper watched dispassionately. At his feet lay a black lanyard with the photo ID of a detained journalist clinging to it. What remained of the press corps were orbiting the public WiFi of a nearby bowling alley, like meteors snatched by a planet’s gravity.
    Fighting had flared up along Washburn Avenue and Melbourne Street still had some activity, but the battle was more or less over. Draper surveyed the battlefield behind a small barricade wedged between a Cash for Gold store and abortion clinic, his face slick and yellow beneath a sodium vapor lamp.
    Public mourners for Dante, the martyred car thief, had made their boisterous march toward Precinct Twelve on two parallel streets hours earlier—Frederick Douglas Avenue and Jackson Street. The Mujahideen had attacked the embassy in Kabul much in the same manner. When they closed to within two-hundred feet of the precinct, swat teams loosed tear canisters and pepper bombs into the violent horde. Choking and burned blind by pepper spray, the protesters on Frederick Douglas stumbled through a narrow alley out onto Jackson. Protests collided. Activists mistook each other for cops in the veiled smoke and traded blows.
    Commander Fleming called up a pair of light-armor tanks. They hit the crowd with water cannons and then he barked for J-Squad to move in. Memphis PD attacked on both flanks in a pincer move and then the reserves rammed forward in full force.
    The march was crushed.
    Tear gas canisters overshot the protesters and landed ahead of them. Retreating activists were ghosted. They crashed headlong into parked cars, walls and postal bins.
    Over two-hundred were arrested.
    “Shots fired over on Mud Island, Lieutenant.”
    Draper nodded absently, snapping back to reality. Sam Barber, his second-in-command, was standing there apprehensively.
    “We’ve got two down—444’s.”
    Draper nodded again. OISs. Officer involved shootings. Barber’s eyes mirrored Draper’s own imagination like crystal balls. More protests and more battles. Fighting would be fiercer next time around.
    The captain cast a quick glance back at the unblemished walls and front doors of the precinct. Snipers stirred restlessly atop the roof.
    The embassy was safe, at least.
    Barber offered to drive. Mud Island River Park was more than ten blocks away. There must not have been any other ranking officers on scene—or just nobody that wanted their fingerprints on it. They boarded a standard Memphis PD vehicle and departed under escort.
    “Great job tonight, Lieutenant.” Barber said. “I just wanted to say that. You kept everybody safe. Can I ask you, sir, what did you do before all of this?”
    “Military history major in college—” Draper trailed off, watching as a skinny black kid was dragged down by several officers and handcuffed, babbling something that sounded like Farsi. The captain tried to read his lips to translate, but then he saw that the kid’s eyes were glazed over and he was high. Several SWAT officers retrieved AR-15’s and spare kevlar from the trunk of a nearby car and then banged on the hood to let the driver know it was okay to take the kid back to the makeshift holding cells at the old downtown gymnasium.
    A middle-aged black woman in a Statue of Liberty costume wandered alone through the emptying intersection, no shoes. She was handing out catfish nuggets to other activists from a white paper bag. She was an odd sight among flag burners and black bandanas, like a Tom Otterness sculpture in a workshop full of sharp edges. Behind her, a half dozen teenagers evaded an advancing line of riot officers by scaling the fence of a McDonald’s. A manager flagged them down and granted them sanctuary inside. A few minutes later they reemerged, carrying off food cartons and cash registers.
    As the city flashed by his window, all of the colors seemed to run out of it.
    Fluorescent orange tracers sailed across the nightscape, momentarily obscuring the distant street battles as the riot snaked its way toward the outskirts of the city. Spheres of blinding white light brightened and then imploded as the police slung flashbangs into the dissipating mob.
    He stared dead-eyed at the empty core of Memphis. Metal shutters everywhere like fallen guillotines. Abandoned buildings thick with the blight of nailed boards. Bandaids on broken bones. Nothing warm or real.
    Inanimate ruins punctuated by the empty holograms of human beings.
    When Fleming reached the scene, he immediately realized why he’d been called here. Both of the men involved were his. They were all his.
    “It was by the book, cap,” Joe Wheat stated flatly. “You should have seen this crazy bastard’s eyes. He was screaming and waving a gun in people’s faces. I had to get it on.”
    “That’s the truth!” Jim stammered as they made their way over to the cordoned off scene. “My mark was nuts, too! He tried to stick me!”
    The others murmured in agreement.
    “I saw it.”
    “Damn right.”
    “Tried to stick Jim.”
    The captain stood and observed the two bodies with dispassionate scrutiny. Both black. Both headshots. Both clutching something close.
    “Kalashnikovs and daggers,” he muttered to himself.
    Exactly as he’d imagined it. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
    The first man held a five-by-five mirror. There was a small puncture near the top, where a forty-five millimeter had gone through so cleanly and with so little fracturing that the glass looked more like dented mercury.
    The second man was late-aged, with a braided beard the color of ash. He wore a loose yellow-green rastacap and a thin red marina mesh. In his right hand he held a pin. And in the other—
    A police doll.

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