“That guy is packing,” said Sol, nodding into the crowd. “I am concerned.”

Cora looked down at the guy who was “packing,” and he was pretty easy to spot—a white guy in a denim biker jacket with a big beard, he looked like a half-assed attempt at a biker, a Heck’s Lesser Divine Entity, and he had a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag sprouting up from his vest, flapping in the breeze.

“He is concealing—poorly— and carrying, but I’ll eat my hat if that guy has a license,” said Sol.

“How can you tell?”

Sol tipped his aviators down to look at her as if she had asked him an insultingly simple question, like if he knew where Canada was.

Then she noticed another face in the crowd, one that was staring right at her with a look of unmistakable hatred, even from a hundred feet away. He had thick, curly black hair that draped over his head like a lion’s mane, an olive skin tone, and short black facial hair blanketing a long, triangular face. He was wearing a black jacket over a black sweater and black slacks, hands jammed in the jacket pockets, and he was looking at her like he wanted her dead, and was trying to figure out the quickest and most efficient way to do it.

“Where are our leaders?”

Cora looked away from Murderguy toward the source of the voice being carried through a loudspeaker. A man had hopped up on top of a Winnebago some three hundred feet from where she stood, using it as a makeshift stage. The crowd immediately responded to him, turning their aimless churlishness into cheering.

“Where are our leaders?” said the man again, now surer of his footing. The crowd roared their response, agreement, indignation. “And where is the truth?”

It was Jano Miranda.

“The biggest scandal in American history,” cried Miranda into the loudspeaker, “and they stay silent!”

The crowd roared their agreement.

“Two celestial objects fall right next to a major American city, and they stay silent! Mysterious power outages all over our country and territories, and they stay silent! A light in the sky, the likes of which we have never, ever seen in all of human history—” At this, the crowd positively bellowed, and Miranda had to wait a few seconds before he could speak again. “And still they are silent! And here we are again, barred from the truth! Whatever is happening, out there, down here, it is clearly not over!”

God, but he was charming. Not in a big, boisterous way but in a vulnerable way, like he could make you feel that he cared about how your day went just by looking at you. He genuinely appeared to be afraid for the people in this crowd, radiated solidarity with them, the “us” united against a nameless, formless “them.”