Night is falling fast. The police helicopter flies circles above the plaza but ignores us. It points its searchlight at a cluster of hoodie boys that Free and I hadn’t noticed, huddled beneath a tree at the other end. When the light hits them, they run.
“Look,” Free says, pointing toward the Cinq Mille.
A chimney of orange-black smoke rises from between two of the buildings. Two fire trucks zoom past, sirens blaring, followed by a CRS bus. We dodge behind a tree.
“We got to get out of here,” Free says. “The RER, bus, something.”
“Cops were all over the RER earlier,” I say. “And will it even be running?”
We both take a knee beneath the tree.
“City hall?” I suggest.
“Cops will definitely be all over there.”
“But it’s where the march was supposed to end up. And the mayor will be there.”
He doesn’t look convinced. Still, we start walking that way, fast but not running. Voices and odd noises fill the air. Spurts of laughter—one a high-pitched cackle. Glass breaking. Dogs barking, one baying. Down the street, Free and I see two cars side by side, burning. Four or five guys, hooded and with bandannas over their faces, dance around them. The windshield of one car explodes as we watch.
A police minivan arrives, and the hoodie boys dart away into an alley. The van slows to turn and follow them in. But it’s an ambush! A larger group, maybe ten hoodie boys, encircles the van and starts hitting it with sticks and metal pipes. And I’m like, Wow.
The van shifts into reverse, peels out backward, but it hits one of the burning cars.
A cop fires a Flash-Ball from his window into the hoodie boys—pop!—and a boy carrying a metal pipe takes a direct hit; he comes straight off his feet.
Another shot. This time the Flash-Ball splits a green plastic trash bin in two.
“Jesus, Matt, wake up!”
Free is screaming at me, tugging at my sleeve.
“We gotta break!”
We sprint away from the ambush as other police vans arrive. We hear a siren coming from the direction we’re moving in. Free cuts hard toward the Avenue des Quatre Routes—which leads away from city hall—but we’re sprinting like crazy, no time to discuss it. We’re just running.
The avenue is jammed with people going in every direction. There are thudding explosions and, before long, the smell of tear gas. A green municipal bus burns, orange heat and black smoke rising from it. People—passengers—stand huddled off to the side under the awning of a bakery, coughing, shielding their faces. A woman in a long coat lies on the ground. Two other passengers tend to her. She looks burned pretty bad.
A little farther on: a white tank-like thing, with a cannon in front. I only recognize what it is as the cannon fires full blast on us. The jet of water knocks me off my feet; it’s like getting rammed by a tree trunk. Free collapses backward too.
CRS charge from behind the tank. I help Free up, but there’s nowhere to run, nowhere without cops or water spraying or people falling over each other.
“This way!” I scream, indicating the alley between the bank and the pharmacy, but there are people everywhere and suddenly no Freeman.
“Free?”
People pushing, running.
“Free! Freeman! Free!”
Cops swinging.
I can’t just stand here. I take the alley, Allée Victor Hugo, hoping this is the way he went, as it leads to the Cinq Mille. Somewhere familiar. That’s where we’ll find one another again.
But I end up face-to-face with a cop in full riot gear. Before I can dodge or duck or even flinch, he flips up the dark visor of his helmet.
“No,” he tells me, “that way,” pointing with his baton.
But it’s like a disconnect. I can’t make sense of his familiar face inside the dark helmet or fit the directions his mouth speaks at me with my immediate task, which is finding Free.
His hand is grasping my arm. “Listen to me, Quebec!” he says, and I recognize him finally: the cop with a brother in Montreal, Lieutenant Petit. “This isn’t a game. There’s a corps of CRS up there. Go that way instead. Now!”
And I do. I run toward the alley. It’s long, all the doors and shutters closed. I run past a burning car. The heat singes my cheeks.
Right, onto Rue Berlioz. There’s hardly anybody on the street, so I slow to a jog but keep moving. I try to call Free on his cell. Straight to voice mail.
Left, onto Rue Malraux. And there, just ahead, is about a dozen CRS, marching in the other direction. I stay far enough behind that they don’t notice me. They turn the corner—and five hoodie boys with bandannas and scarves tied bandit-style over their mouths spring out from between two buildings! They pelt the cops with rocks, then run.
Toward me.
I’m running too.
The first of the hoodie boys catches up. We turn the corner together.
Helmeted CRS with dark visors masking their faces are there. They’re firing guns. At us!
The hoodie boy ducks behind a car. Me too. Gunfire pop-pops off the side of the car, off the wall behind us.
“Rubber bullets,” the hoodie boy says. “Don’t sweat it.”
Karim. I recognize his voice.
A helicopter whoosh-whooshes above, its searchlight looking for us.
Riot police beat their shields with T-batons and march to the cadence.
People at windows above throw pots and pans down at the police.
Karim pulls his cell from his pocket and flips it open, reads the screen. “C’mon!” he says and takes off. And I do too.
We’re scaling a padlocked gate two buildings down. We cut through a deserted lot, climb a brick wall and jump into an alley. I have no idea where we are.
Karim’s path leads to a parking lot. He stops and plops down on the ground, his back against the tire of one of the few cars remaining. I slide down beside him.
He pulls down the bandanna and reaches a hand toward me.
“Got a smoke?”