Tails

 

The people’s concept of justice changes more often than the weather. The law is not flexible to situations or circumstances; it is permanent and fixed in place. You can't rise up against it when your perspective changes. Most of them don't have a moral or ethical reason to stage a rebellion, they are simply rats who will cling to the convenience that the mobs bring, take advantage for themselves. Scum.

The city has burned for 16 days and 16 nights, a constant screen of darkness caused by the black smoke strangles the skyline and the rumbling noises of on-going riots can be heard during any time of day. Occasionally a feeble rat routing from battle scuttles past, these men give a negative, cowardly connotation to a rat. They are more like a mouse, mice and rats, the general population devolving into rodents.

When there is no perceived consequence and no reaction to their actions, people degrade and delve into sin at a shockingly quick rate. I've seen them rape at the first chance, loot at a time when material possessions are worthless and scamper and scurry into the shadows and out of sight like the rats they are. I'll be honest that my conscious took a battering during the initial riots, weighing up the price of life against the cost of the crime. Now I barely flinch when pulling the trigger. Pest control. Scum.

A dozen of us officers fall into rank and line, a modern day testudo with plexi-glass replacing the wooden scutum. We march through the decadence and desolation that has plagued the streets. We march through the debris on the roads and we march through the shadows of the alleyways. A physical presence, a physical deterrent.  A long forgotten silence surrounds out without notice, the calm before the storm, the consecutive holding of breaths ripples down the wave of soldiers.

Like ill-disciplined barbarians, they descend towards us in flash. Bouncing off our wall of law like stones against a mountain, their initial line's crude weapons have little to no effect and their lack of tactics shows early, with the most gutless and craven fleeing before danger can even get sight of them. A shower of rocks rain down on us and the first shots ring out down the canyons of the city. The hate and passion in their fury can be seen through their eyes, burning as bright and red as the flames. Poisonousness, painful, possessed.

For the first time in my service, I felt scared. The rats had surrounded us, scuttled to the top of the buildings, enclosing and trapping us like, well, like rats. They outnumbered us badly, quantity against quality, chaos against order. Our superiority severely questioned and now challenged. Makeshift missiles plunge down from above, wounding several and confusing our senses. The first fallen brethren of the night collapses near my feet, a pool of blood rushing out to join the destruction laid ground.

A lumbering metal angel appears in the air, our rotating-blade saviour. Panic seeps through them as relief elevates us. We pack tighter together, reform and hold steady as the helicopter shoots down the ants that have swarmed around us. Victory seems imminent; another battle won in the civil war and morale reaches heights as high the armoured chopper.

Then, in a split second, the winged machine erupts into flames and starts to thrash around helplessly in the air. Confidence drains from our faces and our souls sink to a new record low. Falling, diving, crashing like a stray comet towards the earth, it makes its final decline into a crowd of people, impossible to tell which side they are on. Not that it matters, historically the grim reaper has never cared much for picking sides. There is no right or wrong to death, the victors write history and it is they who will decide who was morally correct.

Spontaneous and instant fear takes over and we are fleeing, ranks destroyed and completely broken mentally. Hopeless hypocrites, we dart towards the shelter of the shadows, too ashamed to look one another in the eye. The pied piper chased out of town by the rats. Scum.