Chapter 10.5: Death to the Ones at the End of the Serenade

(1007 words)
(Mike's POV)

It was just like the good old days with the Underbelly, I realized as I stood in the crowd full of rebellious and armed teens, my Traveling Shovel slash weapon leaning on my arm next to me. We were gonna fuck shit up and not take no for an answer. We were gonna do something and make it happen… not just sit back and passively resist, like the Class of Thirteen used to do.

And maybe it was just the drugs, but I was pumped, sure as hell. I was ready to keep making my point.

Damn Sara, forcing me to withdraw from the Underbelly. I never really liked her, anyway.

Filled with anticipation, I ran my hands over the familiar grooves and splinters of my old Traveling Shovel of Death. The metal shovel diggy part was covered in rust and caked on blood, and a few chunky brownish things that looked like flesh that had never really separated from the metal at the end of the handle.

I got that shovel ages ago -- well, three years before, give or take some. It was the only thing I’d brought with me when I ran away to the City. I knew it would be good luck for me in the coming years, and it was.

It was my good luck charm and my weapon. Beat that.

Then he stood up at the steps of the town hall, his echoing footsteps in front and to the left of me alerting me to the beginning of the riot. The one I once knew as the Saint Jimmy, who was now Gloria, and who was always Billie Joe Armstrong. His hair was somewhat slicked back, and as dyed black as always. Thick eyeliner reminiscent of Whatsername ringed his passionate green eyes. A wide grin marked his thin lips as he raised his hands above his head, ready to start the chant that everyone knew all so well. The anthem of the Class of Thirteen. Our rally call. Our mark of faith.

“You all know me! I’m Gloria! But who are we? We!” he screamed above the noise of the crowd.

“We are the Class of, the Class of Thirteen! Born in the era of humility!” we shouted as one voice, as a hive mind. “We are the desperate in the decline! Raised by the bastards of nineteen sixty nine!”

“What?!” Billie Joe shouted. “I couldn’t fucking hear you!”

We shouted it again, louder, much louder this time, like a military call, a crashing wave of sound: “WE ARE THE CLASS OF, THE CLASS OF THIRTEEN! BORN IN THE ERA OF HUMILITY! WE ARE THE DESPERATE IN THE DECLINE! RAISED BY THE BASTARDS OF NINETEEN SIXTY NINE!”

That’s when it hit me that the whole thing, the riot, was a very, very bad idea. I mean, giving three hundred teenagers guns and grenades? The hundred pissed off, passionate teenagers, nonetheless. Most of who were probably drunk and or high at the time. And probably some of whom were mentally ill… and off their meds, of course.
Yeah! Let’s all give guns to three hundred pissed off, passionate, drunk, high, not in their right minds teens! That’s a great idea!

Whose fucking bright idea was that, anyway?

Then I remembered – Whatsername. It was his idea, you know – with the whole Underbelly thing and all. This riot was practically that, really, just like the Underbelly except a few years older and not all that much wiser. It was the Underbelly all over again.

Damn nostalgia.

Whatsername had always said that trial and error are going to be the best judges, with everything, all the time. I personally knew – and I still know, for that matter – how many people had died at the Underbelly’s first few violent riots. I knew how hard it had hit him, and I knew how he struggled to pull it together enough to try again.
I didn’t know why Billie Joe hadn’t picked up on what – well, to me, anyway – seemed obvious… that Whatsername had failed his first few times. It had all gone wrong, and – like all of Whatsername’s first tries, and like anyone’s first tries -- it would all go wrong here.

The catalyst that shook me – literally, shook me – out of my thoughts was the first bomb that went off, somewhere in the middle of that crowd. The ground rumbled beneath my feet, the concrete an angry monster. I could hear people’s screams as they fell, metal and other “who knows what”s embedding in their skin and probably going deeper.

I darted out of the way of the guns’ aim and made a Mike shaped beeline to the edge of the crowd, carelessly parting the Human Sea (and cracking a few bones in the process) with my shovel. My panic button had been pressed and I knew something was direly wrong now.

Get the fuck out of here, Dirnt… run run run away… it’s not gonna end well Mike, not gonna end well…

My thoughts were a non-stop repetition of, basically, get the fucking hell out of here or you are going to die. Alone. With a piece of metal through your heart and lead in your veins.

“Mike, you fucking pessimist,” I muttered to myself as I kept hitting people blindly with my shovel.

I heard the police sirens then, and saw a flock of these morons running toward it. No! They’re gonna gas us or something!

I still knew, in that severely pessimist part of my mind, that all of us -- or, at least, a lot of us -- were going to be killed in this mess. At that point, I didn’t know whether I’d live to see the next day, or even the next few hours as the crowd thickened with armed officers, but thinned with the constantly falling dead.

You know what it was?

This riot was mass hysteria, plain and simple. It was hysteria, a mob like hive mind lead by a severely screwed up teen who believed in Hell and that Bush was the Anti Christ or some shit like that.

Which was fairly close to the truth. But, oh well, it didn’t matter since I was determined that we were all gonna die.

Is this what Billie Joe called having fun? Or was it his way of making a point?

Oh yeah, we were having a fucking blast.

You know, since no one there was gonna get out alive. No one would live to tell the tale.
So said my brain, which lied. I’m still alive, but so many people died that night…

A few more hours of this goddamn mass hysteria passed. The battlefield cleared, and I had already walked to a nearby bar to get a cold drink. I needed it.

And I trekked across what was now no man’s land to where Billie Joe stood, alone, looking out at the ruin and devastation.

All of which he had caused.