Читать книгу Allied Zombies for Peace - Craig Nybo - Страница 20

Chapter 13

By the time Smash, Fern, and four other officers made it to the ruckus, Schecky lay on the ground, his nose broken and bloody. A lot of pent up frustration had come to effervescence in the Nam veteran ranks. Soldiers took turns kicking the poor kid, laughing and jeering the whole time. The beating didn’t stop the kid from unraveling a thread of insults and insidious protestor slogans, all tied together by gales of insane laughter. His taunting only fueled the Vets’ penchants for violence.

Smash felt virtually helpless. On one side, a crew of unruly veterans rocked, pumping fists and shouting profanities; on the other side, a gigantic throng of hippie NRPL protestors stirred, the beginnings of a fire broiling in their guts as they watched their star-spangled friend get beaten to a pulp. “Okay, gentlemen,” Smash said, resting one hand on the butt of his retractable baton. “Lets break it up now. We got families here.” Smash’s words peeled away unheard through the back and forth insults shouted by the Veterans and NRPL protestors.

Fern watched the hippie kid reach into his hip pocket and fumble around for something. Reacting as he had been trained, Fern unsnapped his holster and put a hand on the grip of his service pistol.

“Hold on, cowboy,” Smash said, raising a hand to stop his partner. “Serge said, no heat.”

“But I think that kid’s got a gun.”

With a single, shaky hand, Schecky drew out of his pocket the little zip gun he had made in his father’s tool shed. The gun was no more than an L of galvanized steel pipe. On the back end of the barrel, he had attached a plunger that accessed a spring-operated apparatus inside the barrel. He had loaded the gun with a single .30-06 round, a bullet he had taken from his father’s hunting bandoleer. He raised the little gun, pulled back the plunger on the back of the weapon, and aimed into the mob of Nam vets. “I’ll show you my second amendment rights,” he said under his breath.

Veterans scrambled, running in a bewildered scatter, trying to get out of the kid’s aim. Schecky shouted a visceral cry and let the plunger snap. Rather than reporting with an earsplitting KABLAAM, the homemade gun merely popped. The sound could have been the backfire of a Comet station wagon. As crude as the weapon was, the single bullet it shot that day sparked a wildfire of violence that burned a gaping hole in civil rights history.