Chapter 94
At first all it looked like was a bunch of people with placards, baseball bats, and blow horns. They reminded me of the “torches and pitchfork” crowds you read about in history. They were chanting and raising their fists. Then I spotted the rifles that some of them carried and if they had rifles they probably had handguns and other weapons. I still didn’t understand how the heck they got through the federal watchdogs until I realized our watchdogs were lapdogs and only dangerous to those of us who were law-abiding. They’d quickly been overwhelmed and beat down by those who had started to encircle us.
Rocks, bricks, and bottles started hitting the windshields of the outside vehicles. I made the kids lay down in what little bit of space was left in the van.
“And stay down,” I ordered. “Knox, grab the furniture pad and pull it over you guys in case of breaking glass. Now.”
“What about you?!”
“Nat. Not now. Knox … do what you can.”
He understood me to be telling him to do the twin thing and keep Nat calm. Or at least as calm as possible under the circumstances.
“Got it covered Mina. Daniel, get one side, I’ll get the other. Nat, you stay between us.”
I heard them in the background but I was busy trying to figure out why the scene in front of me was bothering me. Beyond the obvious of course. That’s when I concentrated and could hear what they were actually saying; or in this case, chanting.
1-2-3-4 We support the people’s war!
5-6-7-8 Organize and smash the state!!
What the heck?
“The only solution is revolution!”
“Hell no, we won’t go!”
“Tell me what you want! What you really, really want!”
“Justice!!”
“If we don’t get it … shut it down!!”
“Whose streets?! Our streets!!”
“Whose land?! Our land!!”
“Whose rules?! Our rules!!”
“The people united will never be defeated!!”
“Turn it up! Burn it down!!”
That was crap out of the history books. Communist goobers from the 20s chanted that trash. It went back even further than that. All the way back to what most people call the original Cultural Revolution set up by Mao Zedong in China way the heck back in 1966.
Then I remembered that Mao used young people and that’s when it hit me. These weren’t Yankee refugees. I mean maybe they were but that’s not really what they were. They were people my age. What most people would consider college age. Draft bait. I bet there wasn’t a single person in the crowd over 30 years of age. Most of them were pretty young. They looked road hard and hung up wet but you could still tell they were mostly young in age. It was the older ones, the ones with the dead eyes, that were armed with more than placards.
I was starting to get worried. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d been in school. The history books were clear. Mao used young people because for the most part they were ignorant of history and easily lead, because they wanted to belong … to something that meant something even if that “something” wound up to be something crazy. But being ignorant of history they didn’t seem to understand that all those types of “revolutions” bring is turmoil, bloodshed, hunger, and stagnation. My history professor called it retrogression.
All of that flitted through my thoughts, increasing my fear and worry, while the crowd continued it’s assault. We weren’t in the center, but I’d managed to keep us from being on the very outside. The trailer had been the problem. Then the truck beside me had what looked like a concrete cinder block thrown through its side window. I barely had time to cover my face when I saw one heading for the van’s windshield. Turns out they had a freaking catapult they were using to lob “missles” onto and into cars and trucks that were not on the outside of the knot of vehicles.
I grabbed the doohickey tool that Dad used to say looked like the bastard child of a three-way betwee a hammer, a screwdriver, and an ax. Of course he told Mitchell that, my delicate ears wasn’t supposed to hear it. It’s the thing that you can use to cut your seatbelt and break out a window in case your vehicle goes underwater or you need to escape from it for some other reason. It also made a bodacious weapon.
Why didn’t I have a gun? Well I did but it was hidden behind the van’s doghouse and wasn’t easy to get to. Kinda stupid but they ran a scanner over everything when you pulled up to the gate and after seeing a couple of arrests for being caught with a weapon, I refused to take a chance. The engine and AC mess kept the small handgun from being caught by the scanners, and even if they had, I had it trigger locked. So stupid.
I had just gotten the window breaking doohickey tool in my hand when there was a bang on the driver’s side door. Those bastards punched the lock and then used a crowbar to rip it open. Well I used the doohickey to smash the person - turned out to be a female - in the mouth as they tried to rip me out of my seat. Idiots didn’t pay attention to me having my seatbelt buckled and it made them angry. I fought better after the lessons I’d taken at Sheepdog, and I did some damage with the doohickey, but numbers still overwhelmed and I went down in pain from a multi person beat down.