Makers

They piled out of their cars and started milling around, asking questions. Some approached the cops, who seemed in no mood to chat. The body-language could be read at 150 feet:

Goth: But officer, I wa

Cop: You sicken me.

Goth: All around me is gloom, gloom. Why can’t I go on my riiiiiide?

Cop: I would like to arrest you and lock you up for being a weird, sexually ambiguous melodramatic who’s dumb enough to hang around out of doors, all in black, in Florida.

Goth: Can I take your picture? I’m go

Cop: Yap yap yap, little bitch. You go on photographing me and mouthing off, see how long it is before you’re in cuffs in the back of this car.

Scumbag street-vendors: Ha ha ha, look at these goth kids mouthing off to the law, that cop must have minuscule testicles!

Cop: Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

Eyebrow guy: Um, can everyone just be nice? I’d prefer that this all not go up in flames.

Scumbags, goths: Hurr hurr hurr, shuttup, look at those dumb cops, ahahaha.

Cops: Grrrr.

Eyebrow: Oh, shit.

Four more cars pulled up. Now the shoulder was getting really crowded and freeway traffic was slowing to a crawl.

More goths piled out. Family cars approached the snarl, slowed, then sped up again, not wanting to risk the craziness. Maybe some of them would get on the fucking turnpike and drive up to Orlando, where the real fun was.

The four-lane road was down to about a lane and a half, and milling crowds from the shantytown and the arriving cars were clogging what remained of the thoroughfare. Now goths were parking their cars way back at the intersection and walking over, carrying the objects they’d pla

Sammy saw Death Waits before Death Waits turned his head, and so Sammy had time to duck down before he was spotted. He giggled to himself and chugged his coffee, crouched down below the window.

The situation was heating up now. Lots of people were asking questions of the cops. People trying to drive through got shouted at by the people in the road. Sometimes a goth would slam a fist down on a hood and there’d be a little bit of back and forth. It was a powder-keg, and Sammy decided to touch it off.

He swung his car out into the road and hit the horn and revved his engine, driving through the crowd just a hair faster than was safe. People slapped his car as it went by and he just leaned on the horn, ploughing through, scattering people who knocked over vendors’ tables and stepped on their wares.

In his rear-view, he saw the chaos begin. Someone threw a punch, someone slipped, someone knocked over a table of infringing merch. Wa-hoo! Party time!

He hit the next left, then pointed his car at the freeway. He reached back and snagged another can of coffee and went to work on it. As the can hissed open, he couldn’t help himself: he chuckled. Then he laughed—a full, loud belly-laugh.

Perry watched it happen as though it were all a dream: The crowds thickening. The cops getting out of their cars and putting their hands on their belts. A distant siren. More people milling around, hanging out in the middle of the road, like idiots, idiots. Then that jerk in the car—what the hell was he thinking, he was going to kill someone!

And then it all exploded. There was a knot of fighting bodies over by the tables, and the knot was getting bigger. The cops were ru

Perry spotted Suza

He’d just reached her when a noise went off that dropped him to his knees. It was their antiperso

Painfully, he raised his head and opened his eyes. All around him, people were on their knees. The cops, though, had put giant industrial earmuffs on, the kind of thing you saw jackhammer operators wearing. They were moving rapidly toward… Lester who was in a pickup truck with the AP horn stuck in the cargo bed, wired into the cigarette lighter. They had guns drawn and Lester was looking at them wide-eyed, hands in the air.

Their mouths were moving, but whatever they were saying was inaudible. Perry took his phone out of his pocket and aimed it at them. He couldn’t move without spooking them and possibly knocking himself out from the sound, but he could rodneyking them as they advanced on Lester. He could practically read Lester’s thoughts: If I move to switch this off, they’ll shoot me dead.

The cops closed on Lester and then the sour old male cop was up in the bed and he had Lester by the collar, throwing him to the ground, pointing his gun. His partner moved quickly and efficiently around the bed, eventually figuring out how to unplug the horn. The silence rang in his head. He couldn’t hear anything except a dog-whistle whine from his abused eardrums. Around him, people moved sluggishly, painfully.

He got to his feet as quick as he could and drunk-walked to the truck. Lester was already in plastic cuffs and leg-restraints, and the big, dead-eyed cop was watching an armored police bus roll toward them in the eerie silence of their collective deafness.

Perry managed to switch his phone over to streaming, so that it was uploading everything instead of recording it locally. He faded back behind some of the cars for cover and kept rolling as the riot bus disgorged a flying squadron of helmeted cops who began to methodically and savagely grab, cuff, and toss the groaning crowd lying flat on the ground. He wanted to add narration, but he didn’t trust himself to whisper, since he couldn’t hear his own voice.

A hand came down on his shoulder and he jumped, squeaked, and fell into a defensive pose, waiting for the truncheon to hit him, but it was Suza

He kept low and moved slow, keeping the viewfinder up so that he could keep the melee in shot. He hoped like hell that someone watching this online would spring for his bail.

Miraculously, he reached the outlier skirmish without being spotted. He recorded the cops taking the goths down, cuffing them, and hooding one kid who was thrashing like a fish on a hook. It seemed that he would never be spotted. He crept forward, slowly, slowly, trying to feel invisible and u

It worked. He was getting incredible footage. He was practically on top of the cops before anyone noticed him. Then there was a shout and a hand grabbed for his phone and the spell was broken. Suddenly his heart was thundering, his pulse pounding in his ears.

He turned on his heel and ran. A mad giggle welled up in his chest. His phone was still streaming, presumably showing wild, nauseous shots of the landscape swinging past as he pumped his arm. He was headed for the ride, for the rear entrance, where he knew he could take cover. He felt the footsteps thud behind him, dimly heard the shouts—but his temporary deafness drowned out the words.