The Few Part 10: Trial by Fury

The courthouse's holding cell was crowded to the point that its occupants couldn't move at all beyond an occasional scratch of the nose.

Initially, John's thoughts centered around his family. Were they alive? Were they in this cell with him? It was crowded enough that they certainly could have been. Unable to move, and thus unable to seek answers , he concentrated on the sound of the chaos to distract himself.
The jumble of words that came from Judge Fanning and the army of prosecutors melted into a hollow roar, muffled by the mass of bodies that surrounded and crushed each listener. John stretched his neck up and turned his head to catch glimpses of the room outside.

It had once been a nice building, with marble tiles on the floor and oak trim lining the walls, but, like everything else in Sidewood, it had decayed through years of neglect into a mere echo of its former self -- a dirty, decrepit monument to greatness lost.

The small lobby which bordered the holding cell had doorways to both the main courtroom and an empty office which, until it had ceased its regular operation, had been the office of the resident judge.

Most of the office's carpet had been pulled up in segments over the years, leaving sweating concrete dotted with unraveled, mildewed threads and carpet tacks.

In most of the lobby and the courtroom, the wax finish that had coated the marble and oak had puckered and washed away through years of weather, and in its place had settled a thin layer of dirt, dampened into a light mud by the condensation from the dank air.

The crowd settled down as the judge ascended to the bench. "How many at a time?" he asked, detached from both the excitement of The Others, who stood anxiously to see their nemeses brought to justice, and The Few, despairing in the holding cell.

"How many seats do we have?" a lone voice yelled from the crowd, to a handful of nervous chuckles. The judge, not amused, said nothing. He descended from the bench and led the people from the holding cell, one by one, into a mass of people crowded around the defendant's table.

It was only a table in the academic sense, as the wood was close enough to rotten that any amount of weight placed on it would have caused it to collapse. One of the legs had already buckled in the middle, and in place of the lower half was an aged stack of leather-bound volumes from the "Harvard Encyclopedia of Legal Terms, 1928 Edition".

Only about half of the captives could be led to the table at a time, and John remained in the refreshingly less crowded holding cell as those unfortunate enough to have been near the cell door were tried.

The prosecution began as self-appointed litigants listed their grievances against The Few. John could not understand the exact words used over the constant cheering of the trial's audience, but he could identify key phrases:
"Women and Children"
"My best friend"
"Massive property damage"
"Stole our Property"
"Murdered in his home"
"Disregard for Life"

After the initial shock of hearing their crimes put so bluntly, John's thoughts returned to his family. He couldn't see them in the group around the table, so he pushed his way through the cell, looking each person in the eye, trying to identify a few of these dirty, disoriented people as his wife and children.

Finally, as he approached the back corner of the cell, he found Eddie, keeping himself busy by etching patterns in the dust that had accumulated on the ground. Eddie abandoned his drawings and embraced his father, who was about to say something when a voice from the front of the cell called back to them:

"It's time for the defense!"

John gripped Eddie's wrist and pulled him as near to the barred front of the holding cell as they could get, and the two peered intermittently between the wall of other bodies as the men spoke up to defend themselves.

John, who was himself curious what defense his comrades could offer, strained to listen, but the words were drowned out by the screams and jeers from the populace of the courtroom.

Because there was no direct line of sight from the holding cell into the courtroom, John couldn't tell exactly what happened next, except that it began with shouts and ended with gunfire.

He caught glimpses of his friends falling under the bullets before people began to emerge from the courtroom, The Few in a combination of defeat and fear, and The Others in victorious cheers.

Desperately, he charged the bars, along with the group of untried Few lining the inside of them. As he pushed them against the railing, they clung to it, and together their weight pulled at the bolts, which, over several seconds, stripped from the rotten wood. The bars fell, and, without thinking twice, he and Eddie ran.

Once outside they stood in the alley, frozen by the dark music of death and chaos.

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