09: Boston

The sky was dark with clouds but it had not rained yet, and strings of lights dangled between Victorian lamp posts on the pedestrianised Boston street. The pubs and bars around Beacon Hill were crammed and office workers huddled in doorways smoking cigarettes. Teens gawped into boutique stores well out of their price range and they were full of miserable-looking men buying last-minute gifts.
Shoppers and drinkers ignored a rectangular pen made from metal crowd barriers as they shuffled past, though some noted the irony that two dozen police officers in fluorescent jackets lined up to face thirteen protestors inside the barriers.
Noah De Haan was one of the thirteen. Sixteen years old, he was dressed in a bulky army surplus jacket and twenty-four-hole Doc Marten boots. His hair was shaved down to a number one on the sides and a shaggy, green-tinted Mohican ran from his forehead down to the collar of his jacket. He banged his gloved hands together to fight the cold as cops gave him stern looks.
Matthew Risman stood three metres away. Well built, Risman had scruffy brown hair, a baggy hoodie worn with the fluffy lining on the outside and two cameras filming him. One was held by a cop, who walked the perimeter with a titchy handheld device. The other was a more impressive beast. It sat on the shoulder of a WBZ cameraman and a lamp mounted on top shone its light in Risman's face.
"So, Mr Risman," WBZ correspondent Simon Jacobi said. He had a silk scarf tucked into his overcoat and a microphone in hand. “Today's turnout must be a disappointment. Many people are saying that Humanity First is on its last legs."
Under the previous President Humanity First and other hate groups had pretty much had free rein. But after several public demonstration turned into riots, public support was waning, and after police were attacked and injured support from that side had diminished too.
Meanwhile Risman's green eyes bulged and his shovel-sized hands shifted towards the correspondent's lapels. "Who's been saying that?" he growled. "Gimme names and addresses. It's always certain sources, but who are they? I'll tell you who - it's people who are running scared of us. Mutie loving scum."
Jacobi was delighted. Risman's combo of slight menace and Southern accent always made good TV.
"So how many protestors were you expecting to see here today?"
Risman snatched a glance at his watch and bared his teeth. "Trouble is, most of our crew are still in bed at three o’clock in the afternoon. I guess I set the kick-off time a little too early."
Jacobi nodded with fake sincerity. "You sound like you're taking this lightly, but you must feel that the wind has been taken out of Humanity First's sails. Especially when you compare the turnout here with the thousand-plus people on the streets of Los Angeles last summer?"
Risman batted the plastic hood over the camera lens. "You wait and see, Mr WBZ," he snarled, sticking his face right up to the camera. "Muties breeds hatred. If you're sitting at home in your nice house watching the likes of me on your thirty-two-inch LCD, you might not see the mutant threat rising up from the streets. But you mark my words: they're coming to get you."
Jacobi could barely contain his smile. “Do you have a timescale? When can we expect this mutant uprising?”
“Next month, next year, who knows? But it is coming," Risman shrugged. “Things’ll change radically before the end of this decade, but if you only watch the biased rubbish the media churns out, the first you’ll know it is when some mutant scumbag blows up your kids’ school."
The correspondent nodded. "Matthew Risman, thank you very much for talking to me."
"Cram it," Risman sneered, as the cameraman turned off the light and moved the weight of the big camera off his shoulder. Risman refused Jacobi's offer of a handshake and skulked towards a lonely-looking woman on the opposite side of the pen.
Noah overheard Jacobi telling his cameraman to take some footage from outside of the pen before they left. The policemen lifting up the barriers to let the WBZ crew out asked when the story was likely to be on the news.
“Don't hold your breath," Jacobi said drearily. I’m down here in case something kicks off, but I told my editor before I left: Humanity First is yesterday's news."
"Hope so," the policeman said. "Those officers over in LA were trying to protect these assholes. Got killed for their trouble. Same thing at the Capitol."
Jacobi nodded sympathetically. "You take care of yourself, officer, and have a great Christmas."
"You too," the officer smiled.
As the cameraman filmed the barriers and lines of police, Noah raised the hood of his jacket and pulled the drawstring tight so that it covered most of his face. Harry Rutherford’s cloaking spell, as it had become known, effectively hid his mutant status and could have been used to change his appearance. But long term use made it tricky to maintain the illusion, mistakes could be made. He knew he had to keep away from the media and he gained further anonymity by taking out his mobile and staring down at the screen, and made out he was typing a message.
Two metal barriers were lifted away, opening up one end of the steel pen. The petite Captain in charge of crowd control bawled out, "It's three-thirty, people. Time to march on City Hall." The Captain knew she'd been heard, but the protestors ignored her. She grabbed a megaphone from a colleague before repeating herself. "This demonstration was scheduled for three-fifteen," she blared. "You've already been allowed an extra fifteen minutes for assembly. Anyone not leaving the assembly point now will be arrested. Now MOVE IT!"
Risman stepped towards the officer and glanced at his watch. A lone press photographer snapped a photo as the big man faced the squat officer with her fluorescent jacket and megaphone.
"Come on, missy," Risman said, turning on the charm and tapping the face of his watch. "We're waiting for a few more folk to arrive. I've sent my man up to the station. The subway trains must be delayed, or something."
"Don’t ‘missy’ me. You've had your time," the Captain said, shaking her head resolutely. “My men want to get home. So you can march, you can disperse peacefully, or you can take a ride in the back of a van. What you can't do is waste any more of our time."
Risman spat on the pavement, before turning towards his pathetic gathering. "You heard the nice lady. Let's roll, people." The photographer's flash popped as thirteen protestors filed out of the pen with fluorescent police jackets surrounding them. The cops exchanged grins, amused by Humanity First's pathetic showing. Shoppers watched curiously as the march filed past and kids gawped as if it was a continuation of the street entertainment and human statues in the covered market a hundred metres away. As the police led the protestors briskly over the cobbles towards Garden Street, Noah began eye- balling clumps of people in the uniform of the anti-mutant sub-culture: a mixture of Purifier supporters, ‘non-college voters’, the right wing disenfranchised and army surplus similar to his own. Some joined the back of the march, quickly doubling its strength, while others tracked its progress from a distance.
Risman sidled up to the Captain as they turned left onto Irving heading towards Cambridge Street. This was broad avenue of shops, theatres and hotels.
Noah was near the head of the march and Risman gave him a wink as two dozen youths dressed in sportswear emerged from a side street. "Looks like someone turned up after all," Risman said to the Captain. "Someone must have written the wrong address on our invitation cards."
The Captain didn't give Risman the satisfaction of an answer, but Noah could tell she was on edge. She grabbed her radio and ordered backup as she realised that the Humanity First protestors had made a mockery of the police's attempt to assemble all the demonstrators in one place.
"Humanity First!" Risman shouted, punching his fist in the air as the tracksuits and trainers merged with the dreadlocks and donkey jackets of HF activists. "Humanity First!" the crowd of close to a hundred chanted back.
Noah’s heart sped as a fellow protestor caught the heel of his boot. "Sorry friend."
The crowd was tight and the cops now had bodies swarming around them. HF had assembled the same toxic combination of hardcore anti-mutant supporters and local youths looking for a fight that had kicked off the riot in Los Angeles seventeen months earlier.
Risman shouted, "Humanity First, Humanity First, Humanity First!" The crowd shouted the chant back.
Another fifty marchers had joined the fray by the time Noah stepped on to Cambridge and turned right. A huge drum was booming across the street and the shaven-headed drummer was leading a crowd of protestors out of an alleyway that ran through from Joy Street. The cop nearest to Noah had spit running down his back. His baton was drawn but the officers were afraid to break formation and lash out because they were heavily outnumbered.
An amplified chant went up through the police megaphone. "We’ve just nicked your megaphone doo-dah doo-dah; we’ve just nicked your megaphone, doo-dah, doo-dah day."
Everyone laughed as the drummer and his crew cut through snarled traffic and moved to the front of the march, but the next chant had a nastier edge. "Let's stab all the pigs; let's stab all the pigs, doo-dah doo-dah."
A vast roar blew up as Noah glanced around and saw that the cops had changed tactics and dropped behind the protestors. Sirens wailed in the surrounding roads as the march merged with another large group of Humanity First sympathisers pouring out of a bendy bus. There were more protestors than the pavement could hold and bodies spilled into the road and mingled with the crawling traffic. Horns blared and an impatient cab driver lost his door mirror and got his side window kicked in.