The slug buzzed by the ear of an overweight woman with a wide-brimmed hat. Thinking the bullet was a fly, she flicked at the air with a fan she had folded out of a flier given to her by someone running for Columbus city council.
A squad of cheerleaders stood in a seven-girl pyramid in the middle of the street. The smallest of the troop, a redhead with pixie features, stood at the top of the formation, her face peeled into an almost synthetic smile. She punched at the air, cueing the twin, male cheerleaders below to catch her. “One, two, three, four,” she shouted before falling backwards. Just before she fell into the arms of the twins, the bullet zipped by, inches below her bare midriff. She mistook the slug’s high-pitched wine for a catcall from one of hundreds of young men in the audience. She turned toward the parade spectators, found a particularly good-looking guy—who she supposed had whistled at her—and winked at him.
Anton Fleschman, the Grand Cyclops of the KKK, Columbus, Ohio chapter, an avid hunter, recognized the bullet for what it was as it punched through the front of his red regalia just under his right armpit and blew through the back of his uniform, just missing his body and whining on.
At the end of its path, Schecky’s bullet found a permanent home; it thunked into the chest of AZP leader, Arlo Fitzgerald and lodged into his heart. Arlo rocked backwards, suddenly unstable. He felt what was left of his cold, vascular organ explode in his chest. He looked down to see a new hole in the white shirt he had just picked up from the dry-cleaner that morning. Gray fluid oozed from the entry wound. The pain overtook him. He collapsed backward. Unable to steady himself with his bad arm, his head made unyielding contact with the road, knocking him instantly unconscious or dead—nearby zombies couldn’t decide.
AZP marchers crowded around him, at first unable to recognize what had knocked their leader down. One of Fitzgerald’s aids, a man with one good eye, the other hanging out of the front of his face on a fleshy stalk, turned Fitzgerald over and spotted the oozing wound. “He’s been shot,” the aid shouted in a rasp.
Chapter 16
Most everyone near Schecky hit the deck, the vets who were beating the hell out of him, those who stood by watching, pumping their arms, the mother who had covered her son’s ears, berating Chuck for his language; they all collapsed, looking for cover. A quell fell over the area, a long moment of tense quiet in the shot’s aftermath. Everyone waited for what would happen next.
At first, Chuck didn’t know what had happened. He knew the little prick with the American flag pants had done something stupid: set off a bomb of some kind or fired a weapon. The kid lay curled up on the road, groaning, his right hand peppered with shrapnel cuts. Whatever the kid had attempted had gone wrong. The explosion had gone off in his hand, leaving it a hamburger mess.
Someone behind Chuck shouted: “He only has one shot.” That sentence sent the crowd into pandemonium. Parade spectators leapt to their feet and fled. Somewhere, a child cried, looking for his mommy. Somewhere else, an old gentleman fell to the ground under the trample of the wide-eyed and panicked. Many spectators, the smart ones, backed up against the buildings seated on either side of High Street, ducking into nooks and behind walls for cover.
NRPL protestors, still holding their slogans and placards, suspecting that the shot had come from one of the veterans, resurrected their chants.
One of the Nam vets ran at a pair of spindly NRPL protesters. The hippies didn’t stand a chance against the well-trained soldier. The G.I. snatched one of the hippie’s sideburns and the other hippie’s Afro. Before either kid could yelp, the vet slammed their heads together with such ferocity that both of them blinked out.
Fern drew his pistol and leveled it at the Vet.
“Put that thing away,” Smash shouted. “We’ll use sticks until the Serge tells us otherwise.”
Fern holstered his .38.
Smash unclipped the CB handset from his shoulder and raised Sergeant Bixbie.
Sergeant Bixbie trotted to the curb where he could better see what was going on down the parade route. He had heard a pop; had someone taken a shot? He couldn’t tell.
The radio receiver on his shoulder squelched to life. Smash Williams’s voice bled through the airwaves. “Serge, you there?”
Bixbie unclipped the receiver from his shoulder and shouted into it: “What’s going on? Looks like a rumble from where I’m standing.”
“We have a shot fired. I repeat: we have a shot fired. Some hippie S.O.B. drew a zip gun and popped off a round at the Nam veterans.”
“Pray for mercy,” Bixbie said to himself.
“I ask permission to engage with firearms.”
Bixbie swallowed hard. “You will do no such thing.”
“But Serge—“
“Williams, if it was up to me, I’d say show some iron. But I got Commissioner Stillman on my ass.”
“Stillman’s a chump; everyone knows that,” Smash said.
“Cool it, Williams; it’s your job if you don’t show respect for the office of Commissioner.”
“Respect for the office, not for the man.”
Sergeant Bixbie agreed with Smash but couldn’t say so on the open waves. Everyone knew Commissioner Stillman was on the take. But the commissioner had covered his tracks; even Internal Affairs hadn’t found his dirt during their shakedown of the precinct after Officer Greer’s indiscretion. Sergeant Bixbie wished he could somehow nail the Commissioner, but that wasn’t likely; Commissioner Stillman had friends in low places.
Sergeant Bixbie cleared his throat and spoke into the receiver. “This is just a rumble, a bunch of kids duking it out. I want you to draw batons and control that crowd.”
“What about the shot?”
“We don’t want a panic on our hands. Find the perp and quietly take him into custody. We’ll deal with the cleanup after this whole thing blows over. And no firearms. You copy?”
“Copy.” Bixbie’s radio clicked and went silent. He bit the knuckle of his right index finger—a habit that annoyed his wife—as he watched the violence unfold down the parade route. Under orders from Commissioner Stillman, Bixbie had only brought a skeleton crew of cops. But they were good cops. They would have this little squall under control in a few minutes.
The truth was, Sergeant Bixbie couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter 17
Kirkwell, Arlo Fitzgerald’s aid, shouted three words that spread throughout the AZP ranks like a brush fire: “He’s been shot.”
The great leader of the Allied Zombies for Peace, a war hero of the Civil War Confederate army, author of the important civil rights book, The Peace Doctor, negotiator of zombie civil rights with American presidents dating back to Andrew Johnson, champion to all American undead, was shot. A momentary silence settled over the AZP marchers. They stood like discarded bones, some lay in light piles, their scrawny bodies twisted and stinking. Others paced back and forth, trying to reason out why anyone would want to execute one of the few bastions of peace in an otherwise tumultuous world.
Someone broke the silence. A red headed zombie who had died in an industrial accident while working metal to make ships during World War II, her peroxide-bleached hair done up into a Veronica Lake do, raised one bony finger and pointed towards the white sheeted Klansmen who stood gathered like clouds, wondering themselves who had fired the shot and why. With a scrawny voice, nothing more than a choked out husk, the redheaded zombie woman shouted: “it was the KKK that did it.”
Almost as if choreographed, the overwhelming majority of AZP marchers swiveled around to face the KKK demonstrators. Stern, monstrous expressions twisted onto their gray, dead features. Dark, soulless eyes, some sightless, some colorless, some missing, stabbed