8 Falling Down: Fire and Brimstone

When men fight together one with another, and the wife of the one gets up close, all sneaky like, near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smacketh him around, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the family jewels: respect that badass bitch and run for thine lives.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12 (Unified Standard Edition)

- - -

The acrid smell of smoke drifted their way as the trio crossed the Q street bridge over Rock Creek, picking up their pace a bit as they walked towards Sheridan Circle. They were flanked on either side by two and three story white stone homes, arrayed up and down the sidewalk in solid masses of elegant architecture.

They could hear people shouting up ahead: it sounded like some sort of rally.

"Oh great, what now?" Josh grumbled suspiciously as they came to the roundabout intersection. There was a small crowd of all sorts listening to a man standing in front of an old, stained copper statue on top of a long stone pedestal.

On the far side of the circle, mostly covered up by the statue of the horse rider, Hitomi could make out two abandoned police cars - well, the blackened shell of them anyways. They had already been burnt out and only a few wisps of stubborn smoke found their way winding upwards from under crumpled hoods.

Hailey eyed the crowd and tugged them both closer to the left, towards the far side of the sidewalk where one of the embassies was.

"No clue, just keep going," Hailey commanded, still keeping her eyes on the man who was yelling something to the crowd. They could almost hear him, and the crowd seemed both enthusiastic and dangerous. No kids. Just men and women of mixed persuasions pumping fists in the air.

Hitomi followed behind them as they hugged the inner part of the sidewalk, walking along a stone fence beneath a large, rectangular hedge of greenery, when she accidentally took a wrong step into a flower bed, crushing a lilac.

It turned her ankle just a bit, not enough to sprain, but enough to make her stumble forward, and she recoiled in horror as a dark face loomed at her from above.

She let out a yelp, and Hailey and Josh turned to find her stumbling past a dark, bronze statue that had been tucked into a stone alcove around the street corner.

"STEP AWAY!" A loud voice yelled at them.

They all turned to find an armed guard, standing outside the doors to what must be an embassy, turned towards them as his companion still faced the crowd. They both had hands resting over long rifles that were strapped to their bodies.

"Sorry," Josh said, and they all took a few steps away from the outer edge of the building.

"OFF THE SIDEWALK!" The guard commanded, again.

"God dammit," Hailey muttered, pulling Josh's hand. Hitomi tucked her pipe back behind her a bit, trying to keep it non-threatening.

"Fucking who does he think he is - sidewalks are public property, fuck," Josh swore, eyeing the crowd they had just stepped towards. The guards were scanning between them, the crowd, and the other few pedestrians working their way around the circle.

"Sinners!" they could hear clearly. The man on the monument's voice was carrying now across to them. "Sinners in the hands of an angry God!"

A roar of approval came from the mass.

"God has promised that He could cast the wicked down to Hell, at any moment!"

The crowd yelled back, "Amen!"

"God has made this Earth a Hell for us, to punish us, the wicked!"

Again, a chorus of "Amen!"

The companions kept moving, finally past the two guards who didn't seem to speak fluent English, as they weren't responding to vaguely threatening tone of the preacher's impromptu sermon. Hitomi, meanwhile, was growing terrified.

"We must cleanse ourselves, to return to God!"

The crowd chanted back: "Cleanse us!" and the preacher joined them, "Cleanse us Lord! Forgive us!"

Then the preacher was silent. The crowd fell silent, waiting in anticipation. The moment grew, pregnant in its worry. Hitomi could suddenly hear their own footsteps on the pavement again. It was utterly eerie against the low background noise of fires and distant alarms.

"Do you hear that?" the preacher asked, barely at a level where Hitomi could hear.

Josh looked alarmed and pulled on Hailey's arm, "Move, c'mon," he said, his legs pumping faster. Hitomi clutched her satchel in one hand to her side and choked up on her pipe so she could walk faster - now she was holding it from the middle.

"I said, 'Do you hear that!?'" the preacher asked, much more loudly.

The crowd cried out, "No!" and "What!?" and other questions.

"That!" began the preacher, "Is the sound of God not answering us! He is silent."

A beat passed.

"He has forsaken us!"

Loud booing erupted from the crowd, and someone, a woman screamed out, "No, never!"

The preacher raised his hands to the heavens in what Hitomi imagined supplication might be like, then waved them over the crowd.

"No, never. We have forsaken HIM! We have allowed the unclean, the filth to live among us! The impure! The wicked! The only way back to HIM is by cleansing OUR COUNTRY! And We. Will. Start. Right. HERE!"

They roared again, parting as the preacher began stepping down from the pedestal.

Oh god.

No.

The crowd parted in just the right way for the three of them to see three bodies, two policemen and one policewoman, slaughtered at the base of the monument like cattle. Their uniforms were torn and their limbs were piled haphazardly together. One of the policemen was white, but the other two were visibly darker, but their bodies were too far away and too mangled to tell what race they had been.

"We will cleanse the HEATHENS!" the man cried out, and the entire crowd turned, their focus on the two armed guards who had been standing in front of the embassy. Realizing that something was seriously wrong with the crowd they had swung their rifles forward, only noticing the dead police officers when it was too late.

Their radios on their chests were bursting with static and loud voices yelling at them, but it was too late. The crowd was moving so fast that the fifty or so feet remaining between them meant they couldn't get back in the doors fast enough.

"FUCK!" Josh yelled, "RUN!"

They did, trying to break away, but the crowd had split, with some going in front of them to block off the other side of the intersection, and the rest flowing behind them towards the embassy guards.

They were trapped. They turned their backs to one another, trying to keep an eye on the mass of twenty or thirty people that had grown hungry around them. The preacher had stepped in front of the two guards, reading the plaque on the door, "Latvia? It sounds middle-eastern! MUSLIM HERETICS!"

That's all that the crowd needed to hear, it sounded like, but the two soldiers had already gotten some distance, backing up and already almost within the archway covering the embassy entrance. Hitomi could see steps leading downwards.

One of the soldiers dropped to a knee, squarely aiming his rifle at the crowd. The other soldier took a standing position behind him, and yelled, "STEP AWAY! DISPERSE!"

CRACK.

The soldier collapsed backwards as the one on his knees looked up in shock.

CRACK. CRACK.

The sound of two shots filled the intersection. A man stepped up next to the preacher, holding his gun up in the air and squeezing off another shot.

BOOM.

All eyes were on the preacher again as they stared at their handiwork. The soldiers were dead. An incredible wailing sound pierced their ears, coming from inside the embassy building.

"Thy will be done!" the preacher yelled, and swung his hand forwards.

A wall of bodies ran towards the embassy gate, which, inexplicably, was open - it's iron construction useless. Two of them snatched up the rifles from the dead soldiers. Josh used the moment to yell at both of them: "Now!"

All three bolted, hoping to get through the crowd surrounding them on the other side. Josh had pulled out the gun he had tucked away in his waistband and had it held ready across his chest. Hitomi had her pipe, and was right behind them.

They could hear screams of alarm from inside the embassy.

More shots.

Two people in front of them, a man and a woman, crumpled to the ground as bullets fired from the embassy windows tore through his neck and her chest respectively.

It enraged the northern segment of the crowd, it looked like there were six of them left, and they rushed towards the trio yelling obscenities. Josh shot one, then another. Two of them fled, and one reached Hailey, throwing her to the ground. The other was shot twice in the abdomen by Josh, crumpling right in front of him, clutching his belly and screaming: "LORD! Give me strength!"

Josh put the gun against his forehead and shot him again.

Hitomi was going to be sick.

Hailey screamed and Josh realized she was wrestling with her assailant who had punched her several times. Hitomi watched as Josh half-circled around them and jabbed the gun under the man's armpit, firing up into his neck and chest so as not to risk hitting Hailey.

Hitomi rushed forward, putting down her laptop satchel and helping Hailey up with one hand. The sound of breaking glass and gunfire intensified.

"RUN!" Josh yelled, pushing Hailey behind him and aiming towards the maddened crowd again, "GO! YOU HAVE TO-"

CRACK.

Josh spun around, blood spurting from his leg, falling down in a heap in front of them. He lifted up the gun and got off another shot.

Then: *click* *click*

The gun was empty.

They were surrounded again, the surviving eight or nine members of the crowd had them followed them to the northern side of the intersection and gotten around them. Hitomi had hoped that the embassy workers might have been able to keep shooting from their windows - please keep violating international law! - but the angles of attack were all wrong now.

The man who had shot the soldiers stepped forward, a long rifle pilfered from a corpse, slung down on his hip. The preacher was next to him, clapping him on the shoulder, proud of his work.

"And so the Lord has delivered us," he said smugly.

"Fuck. You." Josh ground out. Hailey was holding him, bent over trying to stem the blood in his leg. Hitomi was frozen, horrified by how Hailey's thumb had disappeared into Josh's wound as she applied direct pressure.

"Stop! Let us go! We're believers!" cried out Hailey.

The preacher's smile widened.

He was like no preacher Hitomi had ever seen. He wore no frock or mark of his calling, but instead had a plain business suit on. The man next to him, the killer? He was wearing the same thing, but had a strange tie on with a big turquoise stone set in it - it looked like two strings were holding it in place.

"We must all face the Lord's judgment, sweet thing," he said, then turned to Hitomi, "And you, darling? Are you a Child of God?"

"Y-yes," she lied.

"Ohhh! Lookit that!" He turned around to the other members of the mob, "This little thing here is a Child of God!"

He spun back to her, clapping his hands with glee. "And you wouldn't be a Liar, would you now? The Lord hates the Hypocrite and the Liar."

"N-no, no, I believe in God, I do." Hitomi desperately tried to channel all the church lessons she'd learned from the Smiths, trying to buy time.

"Oh! Oh! Listen my brothers and sisters, we have found a wayward sheep!"

The crowd laughed, and someone cheered out, "Hallelujah!"

"And you're saved, are you?"

Hitomi thought hard: saved. Saved. Yes, the Smiths had talked about baptisms.

"I was baptized," she said, testing the words.

"In Jesus's name?" the preacher teased.

"Yes, yes, I was!" Please believe me. She needed time.

Hailey yelled out, "She's our friend, she was baptized two years ago! I was there!" she lied, trying to help.

"Well! Well then. I think there's been a misunderstanding."

The preacher raised his right hand, placing it on top of the gun still aimed at Hitomi and slowly pushing it down.

It worked? They believed them?

Hitomi breathed out, finally, maybe they would let them go?

"My flock, did you hear? We have found our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Praise be!"

The survivors smiled and yelled, mockingly, "Praise be!"

"But, little missy, hmm, are you... a foreigner? You look Chinese. Hmm? Maybe you aren't really what you say you are? Maybe you're polluting our beautiful land? Impure? Unclean? A heathen?"

"Foreign devil!" someone yelled.

OK. Lots of Asians were Americans. She wasn't white, but she saw a vaguely Asian man in the group. Lots of girls at school were mixed raced. Could she pull it off?

"N-no, I'm... j-just scared. I live in Maryland." Please don't hear my accent. PLEASE.

"OH! OH! She's just scared!" he yelled back to the crowd, waving his arms theatrically, "But you need not fear little lady, no no, the Lord is with all of our countrymen today!"

She clutched her pipe to her chest in complete terror, both hands clutched with white knuckles, unnerved by the man and his mob. Hailey was shaking Josh, and had managed to press a piece of cloth into his leg.

Hitomi was left standing there - alone.

"Now, as a believer, you know the Good Lord sends us trials, isn't that right?"

"Y-yes."

"Mmmhmm, so, let's decide on a test for you. Do you remember the scriptures talking about the Shibboleth? Do you?"

The what now? "Uhm, no, sir." Be polite to the crazy person.

"No? Well, that's OK. That's just fine. Not everyone can read every single, little, scripture, now can they?"

"I guess not, n-no," Hitomi confirmed.

"Well, it goes like this: after a battle the losing side tried to sneak back across the river to get away, but the other army found them. They all looked alike. But then they said, 'Say Shibboleth,' but the other army's people had a slightly different language, and said 'Sibboleth' instead."

He was grinning again.

"Would you believe they caught 2,000 people that way?"

"W-wow," Hitomi offered as a response, trying to humor the crazy man.

"Slit their throats and tossed 'em in the river. Praise the Lord," he finished the story, smiling madly.

"O-oh..."

"So! How about we let you all go... if you can say... lollipop."

He popped the 'p' sound at the end. The crowd all laughed.

Hitomi's face fell.

Lollipop? That son of a bitch.

That racist, murdering, fascist piece of shit just wanted to hear her roll her R's to humiliate her before using it as an excuse to brutally murder them all? They hadn't toyed with the police officers they'd killed, she guessed.

"No," she said, "Fuck you."

And she spat right in his grinning face. Her spittle sprayed across the right side of his nose and his upper lip.

The preacher jerked back in shock, his entire demeanor twisting in rage. He had barely begun pointing at her before his partner had begun swinging up his gun, ready to put the petite Japanese girl down with a bullet or two.

She blinked.

There was a blur of motion, and suddenly the wanna-be gunslinger had his wrist snapped and his throat crushed in two swings of her pipe.

Hitomi could see the gun falling in mid-air, she could see flickers of herself everywhere, the pipe in her many-dozen hands frozen still or raised in indecision. Some of them were of her on the ground, unmoving, others were screaming in pain.

But those weren't her. She was right here. Doing this.

Seven left.

Her hand reached out, snatched the gun from its fall, and placed a shot into the open mouth of the surprised preacher. It felt like slow-motion: she could see the bullet shattering his teeth before punching out the back of his neck.

Six.

She shot three more times, two into the chest of someone who had rushed her, once into the forehead of the man behind him.

Four.

She dropped the gun, knowing it was empty. She could see the after-image of a confused Hitomi trying to pull the trigger without success flicker out of existence to her right.

The pipe blurred in both hands as she took a baseball bat stance and dashed forward, destroying the knees of a woman who had pulled a knife from her purse. She finished the back of her head.

Three.

Someone had turned, starting to run away.

Another trying to jump on her. The pipe smashed upwards, reversed so the pointy end was right-side up, and crunched into his belly. She spun it around and cracked the curved portion on his spine.

One threat left.

She hooked the curved portion of the pipe directly into the crotch of the man, who futilely tried to protect what was left down there as she rocketed the straight portion forwards, slamming it vertically across his face.

Clear.

Hitomi stopped, still holding her pipe, and considered the bastard who was running away. Could she hit him from here with her pipe if she threw it really hard?

Her "magical attack time" seemed to be over. She couldn't believe what had just happened.

A burst of gunfire rang out: tat-tat-tat, and the fleeing coward's head exploded as a team of four soldiers came pouring out of the Latvian embassy's gates, armed not with rifles but full sub-machine guns.

Hitomi, wisely, put the pipe down on the ground.

It was still in her hands.

God dammit.