Shots went off—the police were firing into the crowd. Kierk hit the ground, rolling away as the screams began to ring out. Looking up, he couldn’t see anything, but people had stopped running. Kierk was one of the few on the ground. Mike was gone. Standing, he saw a haze of dissipating yellow gas, and realized that it was the sound not of bullets but pellets of tear gas. As the gas cleared people were falling over themselves trying to get out. A girl was too slow and the cops descended on her, binding her wrists as she screamed and her friends made confused half steps forward, yelling at the cops to let her go but keeping their distance as the girl was dragged by her feet back behind the lines. The last thing Kierk saw of her was her head bouncing along the concrete sidewalk as her body slipped from view.

Something in the crowd broke. It grew more vocal, more collectively responsive; it shifted with more unity, it roared with more certainty. An agreement was implicitly reached. A single plastic water bottle was thrown in an arc, splattering onto the clear riot shields and then spinning away fizzing under booted feet.

—“You call yourself citizens!”—“That was someone’s daughter!”—“Take off your masks!”—“Show your badge numbers!” More water bottles created a rain of objects, most plastic but some metallic, chrome, along with balloons filled with paint. In response the army of police began to do snatch-and-grabs, performed in a regimented, almost ritualistic, manner. First the heavily armored ranks in the front would open up and out would sprint a pack of more lightly armored cops bearing batons. The crowd would react like all prey throughout life’s history has reacted, surging away as those nearest tried to outrun not the cops, but the other fleeing people. The pack of police would home in on the unlucky, the unwary, the slowest, or one of the really hard-core professionals who wanted to be arrested and so stood waiting, making a peace sign, and then the baton would take them behind the knees, or at the shins, and the protester would be swarmed over like an obscuring pride of lions swarming a gazelle. A moment later the handcuffed protester would become visible again as they were dragged back behind the police army’s line. Then the crowd of protesters that had surged away would refill the gap, moving right back up against the row of shields. Maybe on the thirtieth or so snatch-and-grab Kierk and Mike literally bumped into each other as they ran from a raid. They had left objectivity a while back so they ended up right at the front, chanting and screaming in a chorus with all the others.

—“SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!”