Welcome to Prague

"Stop right there, you fucks!"

The cops moved in, just after the Poor People's Party filed past. Their shields and batons were raised, like the weaponry of villagers holding off a wolf pack in some old movie. "They go. You stay."

Connie thought she would hear one person telling the police to fuck off. She heard about twenty or thirty voices, including Tom's, next to her. She could not bring herself to say those words, despite Tom's elbow in her side, and she just watched in mute horror, unable to act, unable to identify herself as a journalist. She wasn't a journalist anymore, though. She was as much a part of this as Tom was, and she would stand here as long as he stood here, she resolved. She would not let him down. She tried to plant her feet in the ground, but her legs buckled dangerously.

The cops made quick work of them, closing in with the force and certainty of something from nature, their riot gear and shields making them strangely unnatural anyway.

She tried to jerk Tom out of the way in time, seeing blackness close in atop them, but the sting of Mace overtook her, and she couldn't hold him away. One of the cop clubs crunched down on the side of his head, and he staggered a little, but didn't fall.

"Tom!" She hadn't known that she could scream that loudly.

He looked towards her, startled, and then shook his head. He looked determined. She couldn't help him. He didn't look scared all of a sudden, and she felt her hope for things to end well drain out of her, replaced only by cold, coursing horror.

Broadcast lights popped on, sending everything into overdrive, and for a moment, she thought they were all ghosts on a distant, alien planet, before she came to her senses.

He weaved a little, and then sprang forward, slightly unfocused from the clubbing he'd received, but quick, hopefully quicker than the cops. For a moment, he looked like he might have gotten the drop on them, but a swift, sharp, second club to the head brought him down before he disappeared in a sea of riot gear and clubs. He didn't cover himself up, though, and didn't try to back away.

The crowd redoubled its efforts, screaming in hoarse, collegiate rage. The tear gas hissed forth again, and Connie couldn't stand anymore, but she didn't run. She just dropped. She had been waiting to drop for a while. Her head smacked the pavement with numbing hardness as her eyes started to cloud up with unconsciousness, and the ground thudded as the protesters moved past, heading towards the Hilton like an atom bomb had exploded behind them.

*****

The hospital was sterile, and as lonely as the city had seemed the moment she had set foot on the street. Machines beeped all around her, nurses coming and going, police tromping through the halls like jackbooted Nazi caricatures. Nobody had bothered to arrest Connie yet; no cops had even come to speak to her. Her press pass had saved her. Her eyes still burned, but at least she could see now, even if tears clouded her eyes. She wasn't sure that all of them were caused by the pepper spray, either.

People were murmuring outside her door. She'd had her reporter's gear returned to her, and her notepad, small and spiral-bound, lay within reach. Her editor was here from Cleveland, and would be in within a few moments to lecture her on how she'd let the whole thing go to her head. The revolution had been televised, and McCarthy, Tom's hero, was in the building. It was a shame that Tom wouldn't get to see him. Connie knew she could write a hell of an article on the guy, and her finger hovered on the button to summon the nurse, but she let it go.

_McCarthy isn't the story here, she thought. Connie picked up a pen and started to write in the notepad. "Cook County Jail: Attn. Thomas D. Moreno. Rehabilitative Care." She would have written more, but her editor had turned towards the door, and she couldn't share the last few days with him. She wasn't going to write about it, anyway. They wouldn't understand.

Her smile felt plastic, and her head pounded as she opened her lips to say hello.