Back outside the ransacked market, the air is thick with tension. More and more people are arriving to take what they can. Jonny shrinks into himself, quickstepping past the beginnings of a fight over a loaded shopping trolley. Mercifully, the car is exactly where they left it, sticking out into the empty road at an awkward angle.
Paloma winds down the passenger-side window before Jonny has pulled away, motioning that he hand her the stills camera still looped around his neck.
‘It’s carnage,’ she murmurs over a volley of shutter-fly. ‘And if it’s like this here …’
‘Yep,’ he replies grimly, throwing the car into gear. Something primal flares in the void in his chest before he can tamp it down. Paloma closes her window with a thump. It still feels like the tension outside is pressing up against the glass. They drive some more, cornering around the inner city’s one-way grid system as far as it will let them go. Jonny pulls over just shy of a roadblock.
‘Avenida Independencia,’ he mutters with a snort.
Paloma grunts back in kind. ‘Well, if independence was going to catch up with us anywhere.’
She hands back his camera before opening her door. Jonny gets out, leaving the keys dangling from the ignition. From here, they need to be fleet of foot. From here, travelling in any car other than a military vehicle will just hold them up. And Jonny hopes whoever spots this particular car’s keys also appreciates the perverse irony of finding a free ride at the blocked entrance to Independence Avenue.
232He breaks into a jog, Paloma following suit. The wide, majestic avenue is eerily empty, sky pinking on the horizon. The air is laced with far more than just tension now – the low roar of distant protest is punctuated by menacing hisses and staccato pops. Rubber bullets, Jonny thinks, camera slamming into his shirt front in agreement. Live rounds sound different, unless … He pulls up short at the sight of a line of mounted police thundering perpendicular across the avenue a few blocks ahead.
‘Here!’ Paloma is yelling, a foot or so behind him, ducking and cornering a block further north. The horses disappear from view only to be replaced by another burn of lurid pink on the horizon – flares, Jonny realises – and he’d thought he was witnessing another dreamy sunset.
Another corner, another few tense squares on the grid, another few camera thuds to his breastbone, as if to confirm they’re running towards the crack of gunfire. Live or dummy, Jonny doesn’t care anymore, he just knows they’re about to encounter a protest the size and severity of which he has never seen before. These are people who’ve been mugged by their own government. Paloma is by his side as they are borne forth into the crowd ahead on a wave of tension, anticipation and unfettered rage. They’re so close Jonny can literally smell it, the air is spiked with the acid tang of tear gas, infecting every molecule with its silent, invidious grip.
Paloma turns to him, her eyes are streaming. ‘I can’t see,’ she cries, pulling at the camera strap looped around her neck. Jonny turns out his pockets. Nothing but passports and cash. No scarves, or handkerchiefs. No tissues of any kind. He tugs at one of his cargo pockets but can’t get it loose from the trouser leg. He yanks at his T-shirt only for the cotton to spring back into his hand. And then he registers Paloma’s long sleeves, flimsy material flapping around her wrists, reaching for one almost as soon as he does. Even the full horror of the scars on her arms doesn’t slow him. Tears stream down her face as he rips off a length of sleeve 233to wrap around her nose and mouth, protecting her airways as far as possible, while his own eyes start to sting uncontrollably. Paloma’s scars blur as she yanks off her other sleeve to protect him too. And now it’s Jonny’s tears that are rolling, torching their treacherous path down his cheeks, still seeing scars on someone else. He blots his eyes with the torn fabric before tying it firmly into place. Screams are tangling with the tear gas filling the air.
Round the final corner and they’re at the back of the crowd roiling forth into the square. Jonny knows he should stay at Paloma’s back, let her camera be both their eyes, but the tear gas is making it harder and harder to focus. Further ahead, security forces on both horseback and foot are struggling to quell the surging crowd, a flood of injustice and rage at their backs. Jonny glimpses the Casa Rosada through his tears and it seems as if the mob’s collective fury has suffused the building itself, looming red-faced and impassive over the commotion.
‘We have to get forward!’ Jonny screams, but even with tears streaming out of his eyes he can see it’s no use. There are no white headscarves. Much less fluttering white flags. And now a sudden squall is barrelling the crowd back – water cannons, firing their merciless jets, forcing waves of people back. The ground underfoot starts to fall away, slick with rushing water.
Jonny’s legs buckle as Paloma crashes into him, jamming his camera into his chest. Another jet lands, closer this time, spray with the force of a dragon’s plume, pummelling bodies out of its way. A small, elderly woman is lifted off the ground, her body slamming into Jonny’s before slumping into a soaked heap beneath the crowd. And it’s impossible to help her, they’re already being swept away themselves, another relentless round of water sending protestors scattering, trampling everything underfoot, no regard to whether it is human or not.
But the crowd roars back, unabated. And the bullets fly again – crack-crack-crack, directly at those still trying to stand their 234ground, even as it slips from beneath their feet, even as the clamour drowns out their screams. The stench of gunpowder suddenly rents the air, a live rather than dummy round’s inescapable tail.
And then bodies start to fall.
Blood starts to run.
Panic takes hold, wrapping its adrenalised grip around Jonny’s already choked throat. He tries to wipe his streaming eyes, only to have his arm roughly buffeted away by another merciless jet from the water cannon, sending more bodies flying.
And time doesn’t slow. Not even for a single second. Not even to spare innocent protestors, guilty of nothing other than emotion, from carnage of the worst possible kind.
Jonny fumbles blindly with the camera around his neck, uses both hands to lift it above the melee. Fastens his finger to the button as if he is firing a gun of his own.
Somewhere beside him, Paloma screams.
He doesn’t see it coming until he’s already gone.