6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (25 page)

The crowd’s immense cheers hurt my ears. My
throat was dry, but a rush of energy filled my body and burst out
my pores.

I’d found my political voice. Now I had a
fire under my feet that kept me going. And dad’s monthly checks, of
course. If my mother could teeter on the socialist cliff edge, I
was gonna jump off it.

I started to consume political material. I
found gobs of criticism from socialist party websites and books. I
read nonstop for months. I dropped out of school and didn’t even
date. I read about scams by the bankers, government corruption,
lack of oversight, and more. Anarchist papers. Communist papers. I
read them all.

I held my first rally in the fall. Fifty
newfound friends met in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
It was owned by some businessman from Yugoslavia. We jammed the
warehouse wall to wall. It was a party. After the speeches, we got
drunk and made some serious noise. But it was all talk. I wanted
more. I wanted politicians to go to jail. In just a few months I’d
grown our online subscription to over sixteen thousand subscribers.
I thought I understood the nature of corruption. I thought it was
all about selfishness and greed. At that time, I thought that the
system revolved around a few very powerful people making decisions
for all of us. The elite. The shadow government. As it turned out,
we were the ones in the shadows.

One night, my buddy, Reese, and five other
guys set out to do some guerrilla protesting. That’s what we called
it. Our end game was to embarrass a law office that protected
crooked CEO’s. We had to be sneaky about it. Good thing I was
excellent at being sneaky.

We put on our black suits and headed out to
club Tangle, which was next to the corporate law offices of Sim and
Mayers. Club Tangle was a packed house, which was what we needed.
First order of business was to pass out fliers with an info graphic
that succinctly laid out how much money corporations spend on
lobbyists. It also included names of CEO’s, their salaries, and
seriously fat bonuses.

The Law Offices of Sim and Mayers defended
corporations who enabled them to keep the little people under their
boot. We were whispering to people that something big was going to
happen next door at the law offices. The word spread. People knew
we were serious. They bit on the rumor and followed the carrot into
the street. Tweets and blogs got passed around like a blazing joint
and everyone started showing up. Traffic came to a grinding
halt.

I snuck away from the growing crowd and
slipped on my black ski mask. I put on my leather gloves and
retrieved a backpack I hid behind a dumpster. I pulled out rolled
papers and handed one to each of my guys. We ran down the alley and
into the underground parking lot, hitting the camera lenses with
sticky balls while a guy went into the front lobby to distract the
guards.

Reese, a jack-of-all-trades, picked the lock
to the lower security elevator door using some card clone device.
Once on the third floor, we ran to the windows. We only had ten
minutes. I opened a window at the corner office and ran to the
window facing the club. I could hear the ruckus growing on the
street. The cops had probably been called so we had to hurry. I
attached my roll of paper to the outer windowsill with duct tape.
There was a long string connected to a paperclip that kept the roll
of paper rolled up. I let the string dangle out the window. My guys
were doing the same at every window that faced the street. I taped
up two more paper rolls at two more windows and dropped the string.
All the strings were connected to a master string that hung to the
sidewalk. Time was up. I could see the reflections of police lights
dance into the building from the street below. The cops were early.
We hit the stairwell and practically flew down the steps. At the
street level was the emergency exit. We bashed through the doors
like we were sledgehammers. The alarm rang, but it didn’t matter.
We’d done our jobs. The crowd had successfully blocked the alley,
and we were absorbed into the masses. I walked to the front of the
crowd where the police were holding the line in front of the Sim
and Mayers’ building. I pressed my back to the barricade. I was
handed a bullhorn and when the attention came to me like magnet to
metal I spoke, “Sometimes we have to follow the money!” I yelled.
The bullhorn projected my voice like a flood of authority.

“We see wrongs happening and we see
corruption. Today we’re highlighting the very law offices that keep
corrupt men from going to jail!” Hands went up in the crowd.
Glowing screens from cell phones lit up the night. People started
their cameras rolling. I turned and ran past the few cops to the
steps of the building and turned. I held the bullhorn up, “Today we
show you what the media is too lazy or corrupt to tell you! We
advocate for the Forgotten Man!”

One of my guys pulled the master string we’d
attached to all our paper rolls. Banners unfurled from each window
behind me. They were images of everyday people. Across their faces
were words. They said ‘Fired’ across their blacked out eyes. Across
their chests were various reasons. They included: for being gay,
for being democrat, for being overweight, for missing too much work
because of a sick child, for getting pregnant — and feebler
excuses. I pointed to the posters behind me, “Each of these people
took their cases to court and each case was thrown out. By who?! By
corrupt judges and these guys. The lawyers that work in this very
building!” The crowd booed. Their faces were a sea of anger and
excitement. Their eyes reflected their humanity back at me. The
desire to be right and to feel a true sense of morality was as
strong as our beating hearts.

When the cops arrested me and my friends, we
laughed. We threw the remainder of our pamphlets into the air. The
propaganda confetti fluttered into the hands of the people. I felt
like I was bullet proof, like I was as strong as titanium. It was a
night I never forgot.

Unfortunately, my dad didn’t let me spend the
night in jail. Afraid of the publicity sewer his company would reap
in the press, he bailed me out and covered up my involvement. I
haven’t spoken to him since.

Our organization grew — The Red Stars.
Eventually I was able to get over fifty thousand people to March on
Wall Street. We were protesting the corruption of the banks and the
system itself. We camped out for days. Hundreds of supporters
followed. One week turned into five. Fifty thousand turned into a
half a million. I felt like a god, like I could do no wrong. This
energy that flowed through my thoughts kept me up at night. I
walked the streets, filled book after book with thoughts, opinions
and articles. Everyone knew me. Either you hated me or you loved
me.

The night it all fell apart I was half way
through a fifth of vodka. I was drinking and toasting our success
with a group, still faithfully camped on the National Mall.

Well, at first the protest got a lot of
attention. We were really making people think. Then the media
stepped in. They distorted our message and made us look like crazy
people. Some of us were crazy. We kind of attracted homeless
people, ex-cons, and the messed up alike. Who else could take off
work and sit around protesting and camping in a park for five
weeks? Anyway, shit started going down. A guy in Orange County
raped a woman. The cops tear gassed the park and everyone went
home. New York protestors jumped a couple of aggressive cops and
bashed their heads in. They got shut down. Houston had a counter
protest next door and eventually they started throwing punches.
Every time the cameras were pointed at a protestor they couldn’t
answer a damn question. Of course the media latched onto the really
stupid answers, and the Youtube whores sent the videos viral. The
longer we stayed there the loonier we looked. It imploded, the
whole thing. We were ineffectual.

I used to write about the evilness of the
rich. But I’m evil. I took everything away from everyone, including
myself.

#

The rowboat is a tight fit. I want to scream
out and hit something until the bones in my fists break.

The night hits us full force and the rain
stops. Then I remember I’ve got a light. In my pack, I have a
flashlight that can be turned into a lantern. I take Isabella’s
beater stick and set it on its end. The flashlight’s strap has a
clip on it, so I’m able to tighten it to the handle. I turn it on
and watch the darkness leap away from our little boat.

The light has a weird effect. It makes
everywhere else darker. The clouds block the moon and the stars. We
can’t see anything, but we can hear movement on the shores. There
are guttural screams in the distance and silence everywhere else.
Not even a cricket.

Rice whimpers to herself for over an hour.
She’s not even trying to keep herself quiet. Just after two in the
morning, Josh falls asleep from exhaustion. Tanis sleeps. Ben
passes out. He’d been drinking the entire time. I’m hoping he’ll be
more pleasant to be around when he’s sober, but the reverse might
be true. Isabella keeps her eyes wide open. She chews on a sucker
Tanis gave her, who, not surprisingly, has a stockpile of candy in
his pack. Markus doesn’t sleep either. He uses the light to read
passages from his Bible. Me and Hana keep the boat in the middle of
the river by taking turns rowing. We try to row as little as
possible. Andy sleeps as well, but he’s moaning like a he’s got a
fever. We change seats in order to find the most comfortable
configuration, but nothing seems to ease the cramped space.

I can’t tell how close we are to the shore.
Then I see them, eyeless faces moving along the shadows like
jackals working out how to attack us most efficiently. They’re
stalking us like we’re wounded antelope.

“Shit!” I hiss, realizing we’re too close to
the shore. Adrenaline floods my system. I turn the boat with one
oar and then row with both until the shore fades from view. One of
those walkers leaps into the water. Its twisted screeching face
fades to black.

After reaching the Hudson we float south
toward the Atlantic Ocean. I don’t want to get pushed out to sea in
a rowboat, but the receding tide gives us little choice. I’m
worried, but I say nothing.

“Those walkers must be able to hear us,” Hana
whispers. “They don’t have eyes anymore. So I don’t see any other
way for them to track us.”

Isabella speaks up, “Does it matter? They
want us. We have to find a way to burn them all.”

“Yes, it matters,” Hana replies. “It matters
to me.”

“I think you’re right,” I cut in. “They sense
us differently now. They aren’t human anymore. They must be hearing
us . . . or seeing our heat. Maybe they have sonar, like a
bat.”