Тринадцать пуль

“Christ,” Caxton said. The Amish man across the aisle shot her a nasty look for taking his Lord’s name in vain. She resisted the urge to show him her middle finger.

Elsewhere in the state you saw billboards for Penn’s Cave or the outlet malls clogging up every roadside but here they disappeared. In their place you saw smaller, less colorful signs sponsored by the local churches with messages like: “WORSHIP Your LORD In Fear” and “How did you SIN today?” This was the zone of central Pennsylvania called “Pennsyltucky” by outsiders, and they didn’t mean it as a compliment.

She shivered and her teeth chattered and her skin stood up. Proud flesh her mother used to call it. Her father called it goosebumps.

Caxton knew some cops turned their fear and disgust into rage. It helped them do their job.

The new assailants (the report listed them as Actor #1 and Actor #2, police-speak for the person who “acted” upon the victims)

They had the equipment and the tactics for mass arrests and crowd control and they had a sizeable budget for less lethal weapons. Which Caxton knew used to be called non-lethal weapons, until somebody got accidentally killed.