“They won’t be happy until we tip over,” Nero observed.
The driver was on his cell phone.
“Tell Titi and Haha that I love them, baby,” he cried. “And I love you, too. Oh, baby, I love you so much.”
The crowd was beating on the windows with American flags, and all Satan, Nero and the driver could see was an angry swirl of red, white and blue. The van went up for the third time. It hovered at the top of its arc and then hands began slapping the metal panels, urging it over, tipping it like a cow, and their hearts lurched as it finally succumbed to gravity, teetered past its balance point and then crashed to the asphalt. On impact, all its windows blew out in a shower of safety glass.
A roar went up from the crowd and then hands were reaching in through the windows, trying to haul the three of them out.
“I’m not Satan!” the driver howled. “I’m a Methodist!”
He was dragged away into the sea of grasping, tearing hands. Hands grabbed Nero’s ankles and hauled him out on his belly. He grabbed the cup holders as he passed but they snapped off in his hands.
“My Lord!” was the last thing he screamed to Satan as he was pulled out of the van and swallowed up by the mob.
Satan was alone. Hands were snatching at him, but they couldn’t get a grip. He crawled through the drifts of broken glass until he reached the rear doors and kicked them open, emerging into the crowd. He was bruised and scratched, cut and shaken.
“Nero?” he shouted.
The crowd was on him. They grabbed him, violating him with their fingers, pulling him in every direction, lifting him up, pushing him down, hitting him, shrieking and screeching, waving their signs in his face, showering him with spittle, screaming their chants and personal beliefs into his face. Behind him, the battered minivan caught on fire. Up on the roof, Sheriff Furlough had had enough. He lowered his binoculars.
“Alright, boys, it’s all fun and games until someone sets a fire. Send in the cavalry.”
An acne-spotted deputy stepped to the far edge of the roof and scissored his arms frantically back and forth over his head. After a moment, he turned back to the sheriff.
“They’re comin’!” he shouted.
Down on the ground, the cavalry came rolling around the corner of the courthouse from the parking lot on the other side of Harbin Avenue where Furlough had been holding them in reserve. The noise of the crowd changed from an angry roar to a panicked gabbling as people sensed that the cavalry was on its way. Protestors ran before them, fear blossoming across their faces, backing away at first, then jogging away, and then just turning and flat out running like Hell. Panic swept through the crowd.
The cavalry were two hundred strong, volunteers from all the different state sheriff’s departments wearing riot helmets and facemasks, bandoliers of tasers strapped across their bulletproof vests. They looked like stormtroopers. They looked like they meant business. But that’s not what struck fear into the hearts of the protestors. What broke the will of the crowd was that they were all riding Segways. Black Segways. And on every Segway, across the matte black cattle catchers welded to their fronts, was the motto: “Tase ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.”
The cavalry advanced, firing tasers into the crowd like bon voyage streamers during the opening credits of The Love Boat, rolling forward in a flying wedge. Tased protestors dropped to the ground, jittering uncontrollably and wetting their pants. A seven-year-old child was urged by her parents to run up and put a flower on the lead Segway but she got tased in the face instead and went down like a seven-year-old sack of bad parenting. The Segways plowed up the middle of East Musser Street, slicing through the center of the crowd. On camera correspondents ran, their cameramen staying behind to get that one perfect shot and getting tased for their trouble. Their soundmen dragged them to safety. The cluster of protestors packed tight around the burning minivan held their signs up like shields, or weapons, or weapon-shields.
“I don’t think they’re gonna move,” a heavyset deputy said to Sheriff Furlough up on the roof. “They’re gonna topple them Segway things.”
“Just you watch,” Sheriff Furlough smiled. “I may have majored in non-violent crowd control back in college but I minored in ultra-violent crowd control, so that tends to balance things out.