the young man held out a hand with the ink-scrawled place name on it and tried to pronounce it smoothly in asking the question. "Clear the doorway, clear the doorway," a Beret advised.
People with cuts, bruisings, and other implement wounds staggered and dashed from every direction of the neighborhood. Shovel fight, someone reported to the clipboard. Hit with, hit on the head with an iron that holds open a door. A medical person held out a pencil-shaped flashlight. A person took it and checked eyes in a bathroom mirror.
Take them off, take them off a woman who'd had back surgery who'd been nearly stampeded and then couldn't walk pointed at the tee-shirts that said peace and tie-dyed the symbol of peace. Water in a basin, bloody.
A crew had shown up at a family's house to film an Ad. The peace plants had been overturned in their garden bed. Armed gunmen responding to a local paper advertisement for Landscapers needed. The older lady had been briefly held in a threatened way but hadn't caved to knowing the military neighbors.
People had stormed out of a General Community Meeting when the American national anthem was played. A kid had been forced to raise a spray-painted black piece of bed sheet. "That's not our flag," a previously sullen older Veteran said over the speaker playing the anthem. "What does it mean?" A woman caring for him asked.
"So," eyes swirling around the room but not focusing, "Fallujah never happened?"
"Not as a decisive battle, no son." The young man pulled at the tuft of hair on his head trying to comprehend. He got an aha! look. "Oooooh, somebody thinks it's just ongoing forever like this from now on!?!"
"It can't be. They've limited weapons."
"But not supply."
"And look at these new shipping lanes per them melting the ice." The scientists relayed to the group.
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