Rangan watched a man rise into the air, hanging limply by his neck from a rope dangling from a long pole. His mouth gaped in horror. They were murdering people. And the man’s face looked familiar…

“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he heard Oscar say.

The car lurched into reverse, throwing Rangan forward, into the gap between the front seats.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Oscar yelled, seeing Rangan, turning to berate him. “If you can see the windshield…”

The collision alarm cut him off, blaring through the car. The brakes slammed on of their own accord and the car came to a screeching halt, throwing Rangan backwards into the rear seat.

Pain burst through him. He groaned out loud with it. The whole world shrank to the agony in his guts as the deceleration pressed him into the car’s seat.

When he faded back into reality, the first thing he saw was the man they’d hung.

No. Not a man. Something about the way the figure swung back and forth was wrong. The weight was all wrong. The pole hardly bent.

Not a man.

A caricature.

An effigy.

Of John Stockton.

Someone held a flame to its foot as he watched, and the figure lit, fast and bright. The flames spread up the foot, the leg, to the figure’s torso, its head, its arms, engulfing it in seconds.

“Not real,” Rangan croaked in relief. “It’s not real.”

“Fucking real enough,” Oscar replied. He was almost horizontal in the front, his hands buried under the dashboard, digging for something.

Jesus, Rangan thought, he’s got a gun.

Oscar came up with a data fob instead, the kind that went into a car’s nav system.

“We gotta go,” he said. “Get outta the car.”

“What?” Rangan yelled in alarm. Out of the car? “Just drive back the way we came!”

“Look around, asshole! There is no way we came!”

Rangan looked. The riot had engulfed them. He turned left and saw a woman waving a DOWN WITH THE FASCISTS sign. He turned right in time to see a brick fly through a shop window. Rangan craned around backwards and saw… oh fuck.

There was another car behind them. That’s what had set off the collision alarm. A car that had been flipped over onto its back by the mob, who were now slamming bricks and boards and pieces of signs against its windows, trying to batter their way through the Gorilla Glass. In the windshield he saw a terrified face, a middle aged man in a suit, huddled on what had been the ceiling of his car, his phone in his hand, his face lit by the glow of it. He’d probably been taking his own route around the accident on the freeway. Fuck, maybe he’d even voted for Stan Kim.

“Holy shit,” Rangan breathed.

“Can you run?” Oscar asked.