The Fiery Trial

by Adam Yoshida

  "Yes," conceded the Democratic commentator, "I mean, we can get our blood up in this town, but some of the stuff that's flying back and forth between ordinary Americans this evening... it's... well, it's pretty horrifying stuff."

  "I have to interrupt," said the anchor. Signaled by the control room staff, the cameras all turned to face him.

  "A statement has just been released by the White House. President Henry Warren was pronounced dead at shortly after 9:12PM Eastern Standard Time."

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Widening Gyre

  Washington, DC

  The nation's media had already begun the predictable process of canonizing the dead President and deifying his successor. In death, President Henry Warren's uncontrollable sexual promiscuity was blurred into a, "warmness and desire to connect with people." President Kevin Bryan's sometimes rapid-fire delivery of speeches and penchant for constant gaffes became his, "passionate and fierce desire to serve the American people, often by being on the leading edge." In the days leading up to the funeral of President Warren, the media was filled with wall-to-wall coverage of the suddenly-martyred President who, many mainstream outlets claimed, had given his life in a titanic struggle to ensure that pensions were still paid to aged veterans, widows, and orphans.

  "Henry Warren lived his life for the sake of others," the new President began his eulogy, "and that is how he believed that we all should live. He was not an apostle of greed and selfishness. He was a defender of the common American."

  The new President spent much of the ensuing twenty-seven minutes deploying every method that his speechwriters had found to accuse Republicans of being evildoers who had personally killed Henry Warren so that they could take money from the poor and use it to buy diamond-encrusted Rolex watches for themselves.

  "The life of Henry Warren has been bought to an end: suddenly and unjustly, but definitively. We cannot change that. What we can do is worth to fill his life and death with meaning. Let his legacy be that we bring an end to the hate and to all of the greed. Let the legacy of his life and death be that we all come together and work for all of America," the President concluded, as every Republican in the audience sat and ground their teeth: one could hardly walk out of the funeral of a President.

  Across the nation, the words had their intended effect.

  Seattle, WA

  "We can't let the fuckers get away with this," said Harris Folsom as he wiped the back of his heavily-tattooed hand through his greasy hair.

  Some of the people in the fair trade coffee shop were in tears, even though most of them had had little use for Henry Warren while he was alive.

  "The only response left to us is direct action," Folsom emphasized.

  "We know that the Republicans and the Democrats aren't all that much different. But we know that at least, in many cases, the hearts of Democrats are in the right place. They believe the right things, even if they aren't willing to go far enough to make them happen. Republicans are just plain fucking evil. They're destroying this country and we have to put a stop to it."

  "That's why we want to go and join the demonstrations!" one of the other members of the "leaderless collective" shouted.

  "Is that really enough?" Folsom rhetorically asked, with a smirk.

  Seth McLean had been determined to go ahead with the fundraiser, even though a few people had advised against it with tensions running high and the funeral of the President just a few hours earlier.

  "I'm not going to be intimidated by threats from those who want to eliminate opposition," he said.

  The Seattle-based lawyer had spent the last several years rising through the ranks, eventually securing for himself the Chairmanship of the King County Republican Party in preparation for running a campaign for the House of Representatives from one of those districts on the outskirts of Seattle that a Republican might plausibly win. He was a little pudgy and going bald, but he was an engaging speaker with a logical mind. This has helped him in his day job as an attorney specializing in helping corporations to fight back against the organization efforts of unions.

  "We all regret the loss of any life," he had told the sparsely-attended dinner, "but we reject categorically the idea that we ought to concede any political point or reduce our opposition to the extra-Constitutional usurpations of this Administration because of the act of a single madman. Tragedies do not alter facts. Knee-jerk emotionalism does not wash away reason.

  "The course of this Administration, both under the late President Warren and now under President Bryan, has been one in which the Constitution of the United States has been deliberately subverted in the name of their policy goals – the primary goal of which is, quite plainly, to make enough Americans dependent upon the government to assure their permanent re-election. They aim to use the force of law – laws as enacted by a mob – to deprive others of their property in the pursuit of their own selfish ends.

  "We Republicans are often accused of selfishness. I will make no apology for what I am. I was born to a middle-class family of no particular distinction. Just ordinary hard-working citizens who'd lived for three generations up in Whatcom County. Teachers, local bankers, grocery store owners – the kind of ordinary people who get up every day and put in the work that made – and make – America great. They're people who worked for everything that they ever got and all they wanted to do was, in exchange for their infinite labors, to make their own lives and the lives of their children a little easier by the sweat of their own brows. They asked for no special favors. They asked for nothing to be taken from others. They wished nothing more than to keep a little more of what they themselves had made. Is this selfishness?

  "And what are we to make of their accusers? It is not remarkable how often those most eager to cry out that others are selfish are those who do no work for what they have, who wish instead to support themselves by taking from others? I ask you, who is selfish: the man who works and wishes to keep what he produces or the man who does not work but believes that he is entitled to the benefits of the work of others?"

  When the speech was finished and the dinner was over, a Seattle police officer took McLean aside.

  "There's a large protest going on outside of the hotel," he said, "there's already been some property damage."

  "Property damage?" asked McLean.

  "Smashed windows, burned cars, and the like," replied the cop.

  "Burned cars? Where?" asked McLean.

  "Under the hotel. In the garage across the street."

  "Fuck!" said McLean as he turned towards the coat check to grab his jacket.

  "We're advising that no one leave the hotel," the police officer shouted after him.

  The first movie that McLean had ever seen was Back to the Future , a film that his grandmother had purchased for him for some reason when he was just three years old. The movie had remained a favorite of his over the course of many years, so much so that he had even stood in line to see the unsuccessful remake (where Marty McFly travelled back from the year 2015 to the distant past of 1985). As a result, he'd jumped at the chance to buy a carefully-remanufactured all-electric DeLorean DMC-12 from a company down in Texas. The car itself had cost $102,000 – never mind the $50,000 he'd put into customizing it. Never mind that the DeLorean itself was almost irreplaceable, he fully knew that he'd never get back the money he'd thrown at those customizations out of any sort of insurance claim.

  "I'm leaving," he said firmly. "I'm not going to let any fucking communist punks stop me."

  With a single swift move, McLean put on his jacket. As he walked away from the futile protests of the police officer, he felt the special pocket that he'd had sewn inside of the bespoke overcoat to make certain that its contents were still present.

  As soon as McLean exited the hotel, he could smell the smoke.

  "Sir, I recommend that you stay away," said the police officer outside of the entrance.

  "Fuck that!" shouted McLean as he began to jog across the street.

 
The entire street was closed by the protestors, who had formed some sort of human chain that the Seattle police were loath to clear. From his vantage point on the street he could see that there were fires burning in the multi-story parking structure that sat across the street.

  "THE PEOPLE. UNITED. WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!" shouted the crowd of protestors as McLean, keeping his head down, attempted to push his way through.

  A red-faced protestor charged up towards McLean, his hand outstretched. He attempted to shove some sort of leaflet into his hands.

  "Stand up to corporate oppression!" he shouted.

  "Fuck you," said McLean coldly as he attempted to move forward. The protestor continued to walk towards him, attempting to obstruct his path.

  "Fascist!" spat out the protestor as he tried to block McLean from moving forward.

  McLean, thinking back on a youth spent playing hockey, dipped his right shoulder and continued forward. When the shouting protestor failed to move, he drove his shoulder into him, sending him flying backwards.

  "Assault!" screamed one of the crowd.

  "He assaulted him!" shouted a dirty, shrill woman as she furiously pointed at McLean.

  "Fuck you!" yelled McLean in response, "get the fuck out of my way!"

  One of the protestors attempted to grab him, perhaps in a futile effort to make a "citizen's arrest" for the crime of having dared to knock down the obstructive miscreant. McLean shook them off and continued forward.

  As he walked through the first level of the parking structure towards the elevator, he passed several cars that were already burning. Striding purposefully, McLean made his way to the elevator and pushed the button to take him to the fourth floor.

  The moment the elevator opened, he could smell the smoke emanating from the nearby fires. As he walked forward, he reached inside of his overcoat and undid the zipper on the secret pocket. Walking past a Bentley that was on fire, he turned the corner and spied the sight of his car. He could see that two of the rioters were approaching it.

  "Get the fuck out of here, you freaks!" he shouted at them.

  "Fuck you!" one of them shouted back.

  From a distance of fifty feet, McLean noticed that one of them had a bottle in their hands with a rag stuffed into the top of it. In response, he reached back into his pocket and grasped the Desert Eagle pistol that sat inside.

  "Get the fuck out of here, now!" he shouted as he continued to step forward, in the direction of his car.

  "Which one is yours?" asked the protestor sneeringly.

  The first protestor turned to his companion.

  "He looks like a nerd," he said, "I'll bet that he owns the fucking DeLorean."

  "That fucking sickens me," said the second man, "millions of people in this country don't have enough to eat and can't afford health care, but these people spend more than most people spend on homes on their cars."

  "Get the fuck out of here!" shouted McLean again.

  The protestor with the Molotov cocktail laughed in response.

  "Fuck off, dude!" he yelled in response as he pulled a lighter from his coat and moved to light the rag.

  McLean, watching as the flame made contact with the rag and the man flexed his arm to throw, thought quickly.

  That's a weapon, he thought, and how do I know that he's not going to use it to kill or do grievous bodily harm to me.

  Without further deliberation, McLean raised his gun and shot the protestor. When questioned about it later, McLean would insist that he had – as is standard training when one practices for self-defense – aimed for the body of the man and simply missed but, in reality, years of firing range practice and video gaming had made him a crack shot. Both of the .50 caliber bullets struck the protestor squarely in the face, transforming it into an utterly unrecognizable pulp. As the man shrieked horribly, he fell to the ground, crashing down upon and crushing the bottle he had been holding. The gasoline within splashed across the ground and up onto him in the seconds before the flame that he had lit caught up with it. Within seconds the flames covered the whole of the man who, in his final suffering, proved something about the endurance of the human body by shrieking for nearly one full minute before falling coldly silent.

  McLean, still holding the gun out, moved forward towards his car. The second protestor, after standing motionless for several seconds, suddenly took in all that had happened and began to sprint off into the distance.

  "You'd better run, motherfucker!" McLean shouted after him before he had a chance to really take stock of the situation. Seth McLean's brain gave him just a moment to view his handiwork with pride before other thoughts kicked in.

  Olympia, Washington

  Mitchell Randall had not managed to get himself elected as the first Republican Governor of Washington State in a generation by being inflexible. You didn't win 45% of the vote in King County in a statewide race running as a dogmatic conservative. Yet, at the same time, there were some things that he just couldn't bend upon.

  "I've reviewed this case from one end to the other," he told the reporter from the New York Times , "and I back the decision of the King County Prosecuting Attorney. Who is, I might add, a life-long Democrat, for those who wish to bring partisan considerations into this matter."

  "Governor!" shouted another of the mob of national reporters who had descended upon the state capital.

  "Yes," said Randall, pointing towards a youngish man with curly hair.

  "Is it really your position – as the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Washington – that a man can shoot dead someone engaged in an act of civil disobedience and then walk away without any consequences whatsoever?"

  "My position," the Governor replied as the flash of multiple bulbs caused him to squint, "is that the King County Prosecuting Attorney has looked at this case from every angle and has elected not to charge Mr. McLean in this matter."

  "Governor! Governor!" the reporter from MSNBC continued to shout in his direction.

  "Ok," said Randall.

  "But, Governor, what do you think of the underlying principle? Isn't there a more fundamental principle of justice at stake here?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact I do," said the Governor, "I think that when you are confronted by a man carrying an explosive device that you have an absolute right to defend yourself and I am glad that the local prosecutor concurs with that. Alright? Thank you."

  Fox News National Broadcast Center, New York City

  "Alright," said the Fox News anchor, "it seems that Governor Randall has left the stage over there in Olympia. That was an exciting cap to what has been a dramatic day."

  "Yes," agreed Fox Senior Analyst and former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Owen Larson, "I think that most people, especially here in Washington, expected this decision to be pretty much automatic. Indeed, most of the speculation among those violently opposed to Mr. McLean had been whether or not the King County Prosecutor would seek the death penalty in this particular case despite the fact that he is known to oppose it on a personal level."

  "Indeed, I have to worry about the reaction to this across the country," noted the former Congressman, who was the single Democrat among the panel, "there have, of course already been a number of violent clashes since the murder of President Warren last week. There was hope in some quarters that these events in Seattle, being the only death to arise out of these clashes, would do something to shock both sides back into sanity."

  "Look, the prosecutor made the right call here. The rioter here had a weapon – a weapon that could absolutely have been deadly and McLean had a right to defend himself against its use."

  "Oh, come on," said the Democratic panelist, "I'm not saying that Harris Folsom was an angel, but was there any indication that he was a murderer? He clearly intended to use that thing to destroy property, not lives, and we shouldn't take people's lives to defend cars."

  "Prove that," shot back the former Attorney General of Idaho.

  "That was cited," said the anchor, att
empting to cool things down, "by the King County prosecutor in his statement earlier today. He noted that the question was whether he could convict Mr. McLean of this crime given the evidence available, not whether or not he was absolutely guilty or innocent. Folsom had a dangerous weapon with him and the only witness said that he was getting ready to throw it. How could McLean have determined what he was going to throw it at without, well, potentially waiting to be burned to death?"

  "They were only damaging property," insisted the Democratic panelist, "and, anyways, McLean would never have been put into that position if he hadn't charged into the middle of a protest in defiance of the orders of the police."

  The Oval Office, The White House

  "Why haven't we seen any action against the criminals who instigated the murder of the President?" raged President Bryan as he paced in circles around the perimeter of the Oval Office.

  "This is a very complicated matter, Mr. President. We've never tried anything like this before. I mean, not in living memory at any rate," answered Lea Kensington, the Harvard Law graduate who, in addition to serving as the Solicitor-General, had been elevated to Acting Attorney General when the President had dismissed the former holder of that office along with her deputy.

  "It isn't complicated, I want it done," replied the President.

  "We're working on it, sir. But we've got a lot of work to do if any of this is going to hold up in court. We need to practically invent a new application of the law."

  "It doesn't need to be clean," said the President, "it doesn't even need to result in convictions. At least, not immediately. I just want to get those fuckers hauled in front of a Grand Jury and I want them walking in front of cameras. Is that clear?"