“This will for sure make the papers,” English says.
“The papers?” Beddy says, worried she can somehow be implicated.
“Think they’ll pay me if I send this in?” Fitz-Chavez says.
“If it’s HD,” English says.
“It’s fucking HD, bro.”
Beddy hears the ping of a megaphone being turned on. “All right everyone, you’ve been lingering long enough,” the distorted voice says. “Time to disperse!”
It’s only with that ominous command that she can move her feet. “I have to go,” she says to no one in particular, and starts pushing through the crowd towards The Grove.
“This is your final warning!” the voice says.
No one seems to give one fuck about the voice’s warning. The crowd is on all sides, a choked throng. Now that the ambulance is gone some attendees lean against the barricades with their back to the voice. They chat.
“Disperse, or we’re going to take measures to disperse you!”
She pushes with more zeal, excuse me, excuse me, throws elbows and knees where necessary.
Finally she’s out and moving fleetly down the sidewalk. The voice of the megaphone is on her right, decked in riot gear. His vest can’t quite contain his gut, and it spills out like black dough from a split biscuit tin. The other cops, none of whom wear riot gear, seem to pause what they’re doing and are watching him with interest, sensing some kind of show is at hand. In his left hand is the megaphone, and in his right is a red spray canister with a lever trigger on the top.
“Eat a dick!” someone says from the back.
The voice’s response is swift. He presses the trigger and douses the front row of people in bright orange spray. The attendees scream and cover their eyes, and the voice advances, hosing down those unlucky enough to be behind the people who have collapsed. Pinned between the advancing voice and the guardrail, the crowd scatters. Some run back into the safety of The Grove. Some run back to their cars. Some film this new scene with their smartphones. One distraught boy climbs the guardrail and jumps into the ocean. The voice makes sure to direct the spray high enough so that it falls like a baleful mist over all.
Beddy wants to do something but there isn’t anything to do but keep moving and not look part of the group. If stopped and questioned, she can say definitively that she is the least group-related person here.
A gaggle of chaperones are whispering agitatedly to her left, and one grabs a fireman by the arm.
“What was that?”
The fireman responds by bowing his head.
Beddy keeps walking over to the entrance of The Grove, a morbidly dull looking building from the outside. Its original incarnation was a fishing warehouse, but then the Osmondites caught or poisoned all the fish. Tonight it is spruced. The stairs spill with freshly stapled red carpet. Beneath the white clovered overhang two figures stand behind a podium.