Rage Within (4 page)

Tom was waiting for him. He’d taken the quick route, running along the edge instead of climbing back up the riverbank. He jumped into the water as they drew closer, wading up to his waist, where he was able to take Kurt from Mason’s exhausted arms. Together they dragged the unconscious teen back to land, where Tom shoved Mason aside and began to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him.

After a few impossibly long minutes, Kurt coughed water. Eyelids fluttered and eventually opened.

“What the hell happened?” he spluttered.

Mason glanced back at the train bridge, where he could see the rest of his friends slowly moving along the shoreline. The girls were in the lead. Scotty was at the back, barely trying at all to keep up.

“I’m not sure,” Mason answered.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Kurt said. “He just turned around and clocked me.” Bringing his fingers up to his face, he winced as he touched the flesh. “I think he broke my nose.”

“Scotty punched you?” Tom asked incredulously. “That’s impossible. He’s never hit anything in his life. Dude’s a wimp. He can’t even kick dirt without a guilt trip.”

“Well, he did,” Kurt said. “He clocked me and then pushed me off the bridge.”

Mason stood up and started walking toward the girls. He moved along the shoreline, ankle deep in river water, sneakers squishing into wet dirt. It didn’t take him long to reach the girls. Ignoring them completely, he turned to Scotty.

“You punched him?”

Scotty didn’t say anything. He glared at Mason with hate-filled eyes.

Mason brought his arms up, pushing Scotty backward and into the bush. “Answer me.”

“Yeah, fine, I hit him,” Scotty said. “He started it. You were all fine and crap when it was me he was pushing around. How come you didn’t stop him?”

Mason froze. “Everything happened too quickly. You know that.”

Scotty didn’t respond.

“You could have killed him,” Mason finally said.

“And he could have killed me,” Scotty shot back.

“He was joking,” Mason said. “Yeah, it was a bad joke. We get it. But what you did was worse.”

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Scotty said. “You’d better remember that, because it’s gonna come back and bite you in the ass. Soon enough. You’ll see.”

Scotty turned and ran straight into the bushes and was gone before Mason even had time to respond. He stood there and stared at the spot where Scotty had disappeared until Britney came up and handed over his shirt.

“Here,” she said. “You’re all covered in goose bumps. You’re gonna freeze to death.”

“Thanks,” he said.

The shirt was warm against his body.

“Do you think we should go after him?” Tom wandered over, buttoning up his shirt.

“Nope,” Mason said. “He might be waiting at the car, but I doubt it. Let him walk. Maybe he’ll cool down.”

“That was messed up, man,” Tom said. “Why’d Scotty do that? I didn’t realize he hated Kurt that much.”

“Not sure,” Mason said. “It was weird. Did you see his eyes?”

The others came over to join them; the girls had their arms around Kurt’s waist. Blood was dripping down his face, staining his shirt.

“I want to go home,” Staci said.

Mason nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

ARIES

Granville Street was packed with people, and not in a friendly way.

Aries and Sara had agreed to meet up at Blenz to grab a coffee before heading down to Robson for a day of shopping. Neither of them had any money, but that didn’t matter. Looking in windows was free and Robson was always entertaining. But shortly after they sat down with their drinks on the patio, the crowd began to gather on the sidewalk. Within half an hour people were starting to get a little riled up. Aries could feel the electricity in the air, or maybe it was the way the crowd was buzzing with excitement.

“Is this a protest?” Aries said.

It was hard to tell. An older man with glasses and a bad haircut screamed at the people across the street. He was holding a sign that said something against abortion. There was a picture of a dead fetus in Technicolor detail along with a coat hanger. The image made Aries feel a little nauseated, so she pushed the remains of her drink away. The man continued to yell and brandish his sign at a group of kids passing out Gay Pride stickers. They were giving him the finger and waving
multicolored flags. Another pack of people wore strange masks with white faces and large pointy noses. Their bodies were covered with long black capes and robes. They bounced up and down in the middle of the street, adjusting their masks while letting their robes flutter and drag along the sidewalk. From behind Aries and Sara, a girl with green hair and a nose ring dropped some pamphlets about animal rights on their table. Pictures of monkeys being tortured in laboratories stared up at Aries. She quickly turned the leaflets over, but the back sides weren’t any better. She picked them up and tossed them in the garbage.

“It’s weird,” Sara said. “They’re all here but no one seems to be on the same side.”

“Whoever organized this should be fired,” Aries said.

Sara grinned. Her phone beeped and she checked it, immediately sending a text back. Aries assumed it was Colin by the way she smiled. She’d never understand for the life of her why her best friend liked the biggest jerk in school.

“Hey, the guy from Greenpeace is picking his nose,” Sara said as she put her phone back in her purse. “Now, is that any way to represent a company?”

“Seems very natural to me,” Aries said. “Isn’t Greenpeace about nature?”

Sara giggled. “It must be environmentally friendly.”

“Still,” Aries said. “This is weird. I’ve never seen a protest that protested everything before. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”

They watched the various groups standing around in the street. There were a lot of irritated faces in the growing crowd. No one seemed to know what was going on. People were filling up the sidewalks and overflowing onto the streets, where confused motorists slowed down and honked their
horns. A bus driver pulled over and started screaming at a group of teenagers wearing black hoodies and ripped jeans. They yelled back, refusing to move.

More people showed up. A lot of people stopping now had puzzled expressions. Many of them were just hanging out like Aries and Sara. They’d heard the commotion blocks away and had come down to check things out. Several started texting on their phones. A group of German tourists wearing Vancouver tourism shirts chattered away while taking pictures on expensive cameras. Aries listened to an animated girl on her phone screaming at her friends to come down and join the fun. Someone bumped into her, and her phone flew through the air to where another girl stomped on it accidentally with her combat boots.

“Hey!”

Aries looked up and saw Becka Philips and Joy Woo heading over toward their table.

“This is crazy, right?” Joy said loudly. The noise on the street was growing and she had to shout. “Can you believe it? We were just down by the SkyTrain and they’ve got the cops bringing out the riot gear. We saw tear gas!”

Becka nodded excitedly. “Might be a good time to split. It’s worse down there. The cops are getting pissed.”

“This is so weird,” Aries said. “Any idea what’s going on?”

Someone shouted from behind the girls. Aries leaned around Joy to get a better look. Two of the boys in the black hoodies had picked up a newspaper box and threw it at a parked car. Glass shattered and the car alarm immediately went off.

“It’s all over the news,” Joy said. “Apparently it’s a bunch of computer hackers. They sent out multiple messages on all these Vancouver forums. Just about every single protest group got e-mail information to come down to Granville.”

“So someone made it all up?” Sara looked impressed.

“Seems like it.”

Farther down the street, a homeless man held up an empty Starbucks coffee cup, begging for change. A guy wearing an expensive leather jacket punched the cup, sending change scattering into the gutter. When the man got down on his knees to retrieve the money, someone kicked him.

“Anyway, you should get out of here,” Joy said. “We’re gonna head back around. I’ve got my car parked a few blocks off Davie. Hopefully we can still get to it. Do you need a ride?”

Aries glanced over at Sara. They’d taken the SkyTrain down. If the police were gathered by the station with riot gear, they might not be able to get back on. It might even be temporarily closed. The thought of walking home definitely wasn’t appealing.

“Yeah, we could use a ride,” Sara said. “Only if you don’t mind.”

“No worries,” Joy said. “But let’s go now before it gets even crazier.”

Aries stood up and Sara reached under the table to find her purse. Aries saw the brick coming first. She managed to grab Sara, pulling her back and away before the window shattered. Glass and part of a neon sign rained down on where the two of them had been sitting. Aries could see the backs of two of the hoodie-clad guys disappearing into the crowd.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Sara nodded. Her lower lip was trembling.

“Can you believe that?” Joy said. “Bunch of jerks. There’s always someone who has to go and make things violent.” She turned and shouted at the crowd. “Come back and do that again, you cowards!”

Sara giggled nervously.

They started making their way through the crowd and toward Davie Street. It was slow moving; there weren’t a lot of open gaps to sneak through. Aries noticed that several stores were locking their doors and putting Closed signs in the windows. She didn’t blame them in the slightest.

“At least we’re moving away from the cops,” Becka said. “I doubt my parents would be impressed if I got arrested. My brother would love it, though.”

“Where are these people coming from?” Sara said. She dodged being shoved by a kid with a skateboard and wraparound sunglasses. “You’d think it was New Year’s Eve. I’ve never seen such a crowd. And we were down here for the Olympics. Remember? It wasn’t nearly as crazy as this.”

“Word travels fast?” Aries said. She watched a family cowering in a doorway, the father trying to maneuver one of those fancy jogging strollers. “It is strange. You’d think people would have better things to do with their time.”

From somewhere down the street, loud blasts filled the air. Someone beside them screamed. Becka immediately covered her ears with her hands.

“That sounded like gunshots,” Joy said. “Come on. Move faster.”

“Where’s it coming from?” Sara asked.

“Behind us,” Aries said. She strained her neck up to try and listen. “At least I think so.”

“I’m not sticking around to find out,” Joy said, pushing her way between a bewildered couple wearing matching Windbreakers.

But in front of them, things weren’t getting any better. One of the pro-life people broke into a fight with a girl who might have been a Greenpeace member; it was hard to tell. She was screaming at him when he picked up his protest sign
and waved it around several times before bringing it down on her head. As blood dripped from the gash in her forehead, another protester, maybe animal rights, grabbed the wooden board, and a violent tug-of-war broke out.

A man stood a few feet away from the girls, with dirty sweatpants, no shirt, and a Santa hat perched on top of his head. He was holding a badly painted banner, waving it high above his head.

The End of the World
Is Here

He was chanting something over and over. It took Aries a few seconds to make out the words.

“From our lips to God’s ears. From our lips to God’s ears.”

It was so comical, Aries burst out laughing before she could stop herself. Sara looked at her like she was crazy.

But it was the banner, not Sara, that pushed the chuckle down into her stomach. The way it stood out above the endless sea of heads. Something about it suddenly made her throat close, and goose bumps broke out against her skin.

The banner was right.

No. Absolute garbage. People had been predicting the end of the world forever. And some crazy guy in a Santa Claus hat couldn’t possibly know the truth about something so big. The world wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

Right?

He speaks the truth.

The voice was so subtle, she didn’t realize it was just her
thoughts. She actually caught herself looking back, trying to figure out where the voice came from.

Great, now you’re going bonkers. Wonder if he has a matching hat for you.

It didn’t help that the crazy guy had noticed her watching him and started making his way through the crowd. She froze, and people pushed into her, shoving her back and sideways, but she couldn’t move.

Then Sara reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her onward. A new wave of people passed between them and the man, and his banner disappeared.

“Come on,” Sara said. “Or we’re gonna lose Joy. I don’t want to get stuck here.”

“Me neither,” she said.

It took them several minutes, but eventually they reached the end of the block. They caught up with Joy and Becka waiting on the corner.

“Let’s cross over to Howe,” Joy said. “It shouldn’t be as bad down there. I think it’s just Granville.”

Aries nodded.

A sudden series of sharp banging noises filled the air. Someone had set off fireworks in the middle of the intersection. Aries was shoved from behind. Turning, she immediately recognized the green-haired girl who’d given her the animal rights tracts. The girl screeched several times in her face before falling to her knees and covering her ears. Pictures of abused monkeys and anti-fur pamphlets fluttered to the cement.

Aries glanced up to where she could barely make out the fireworks bursting above the streetlights. Too bad it wasn’t dark out; it would have been very pretty to watch. People started pushing against her, shoving and shouting, trying to
get away from the explosions. No one else but her seemed to realize that the noises weren’t threatening. Sara grabbed hold of her hand, pulling her close and away from the mob.

“It’s okay,” Aries shouted. But no one heard her.