Louder Than Thunder

Lights in the houses down the street were turning on and people were looking out their windows in utter horror. More than one left the window to call the police. The house and lawn were getting trashed; someone was going to be in big trouble when their parents returned home.
Darlene and Mary ganged up on a rocker girl outside on the front lawn, only to have her boyfriend show up to protect her. A couple of the boys from earlier joined in, beating him up and knocking them to the ground. Michelle ran over to them then.
“I’m gonna make sure Kim is okay,” she said.
“Alright, we’ll be out here,” Mary replied.
Michelle ran inside the house. Immediately to the left, in the living room, six or seven mods had pinned down three rockers. The mods had left their jackets on the side and rolled up the sleeves of their shirts. They had cuts and bruises on their faces and arms. The sofa pillows were everywhere, and cups and bottles littered the floor.
Michelle hurried past. She had to find Kim now. She ran up the stairs, where two guys were having it out, one on one. Michelle recognized the mod as Neil from earlier.
“Hey, watch out!” he yelled, as the rocker swung at the both of them.
He grabbed her arm and jumped backwards, pulling her with him, just avoiding a slash from a switchblade.
“Doesn’t play fair, does he?” Neil asked Michelle, taunting the rocker.
“Not at all, but neither do we. Do we, Neil?”
“Who has the time?”
The blonde rocker looked between them, confused, and stepped back as well. Neil and Michelle looked between each other as well. They didn’t really have a plan to take him down. Neil sized Michelle up and realized that she was short and small enough that he could probably lift her easily. He stepped slightly towards her. The rocker still stood back.
“I’m gonna swing you and you’re gonna kick him,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked back. “Neil, that’s crazy.”
But without another moment to think, Neil grabbed Michelle by her hand and waist, using all his strength to spin around, her legs going outward in a spiral. She didn’t have another moment to think it over, so she held her legs out and waited for them to make an impact on the rocker’s body. Neil was fairly tall, and at the height he held her, her right foot made impact with the rocker’s face. He slightly pointed chelsea boot forced his mouth open, wedging itself between his upper and lower jaw through his cheek.
His head went off to the side, and he fell down on his knees. Just then, some other mods were on their way through the house. They arrived up the stairs, saw the rocker keeled over and jumped on him, pinning him down with cheers.
Michelle looked up at Neil, breathing heavily. He smiled down at her, also breathing heavily.
“Nice. Quick thinking,” she complimented.
“Thanks. Why did you come up here?”
“I’m looking for someone. Short hair, sort of dirty blonde, red and black jacket, a little taller than me,” Michelle described.
“Sorry, I haven’t seen her. I’ve gotta check on my own friends, but good luck finding her,” Neil said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Thanks,” Michelle said to him.
He nodded and headed down the stairs. Michelle turned back into the hallway. The boys who had pinned down the rocker were taunting him to stand up. Michelle walked by, ignoring them.
“Kim!” she called. “Kim, are you in here?”
Michelle looked through all the bedrooms, finding only fights, bruises and bloody noses. She checked the bathroom, and the shower and the hall closet, still not finding her.
“Kimberly! Kim!” she called, wandering around the upstairs.
“Michelle?”
“Kim? Where are you?”
“Up here!”
“Up where?”
“Just look up!”
Michelle looked towards the ceiling to see an open trap door, Kim’s head peering between the opening.
“How did you get up there?”
“There was a string to release this ladder,” she explained, dropping the string.
Michelle tugged it and a folded ladder fell down.
“Hurry up!”
Michelle climbed the ladder, entering a dusty attic. Kim folded up the ladder again and closed the trap door. Some old furniture and boxes of childhood toys, books and an old television set were placed around the attic. As the dust, unsettled by her arrival in the room, tickled her nose, Michelle coughed a bit.
“Imagine finding this room.”
“I know. Where are Mary and Darlene?”
“Last saw ‘em outside.”
“Do you think they’re alright?”
“Yeah, they’re tough. They’ll be fine.”
“Alright. You okay?”
“Yeah. I helped take one down.”
“Wow. Do they do this all the time?”
“Twice that we’ve attended. It’s not usual, though. It makes me think something must be up. How is it that the two parties we’ve attended since joining the tour were both crashed by rockers? The first time, Keith and Eric admitted it was their doing and were proud of the fact that they’d sent the group.”
“Do you think they did it again?”
“I don’t know.”
It went quiet between them. They listened to what was happening downstairs. All they could hear for a few minutes was fighting and angry yelling and grunts, but it soon changed into cheering.
“They’re running! They’re fuckin’ running!”
“They’re leaving!”
“They’re leaving,” Michelle whispered.
Kim smiled and exhaled heavily. Michelle finally relaxed, falling onto the dusty ground and releasing a laugh. Kim saw her fall and chuckled along.
“They’re leaving!” she exclaimed.
Michelle leaned over to hug Kim, unsure of how else to express her emotions in the moment. Kim, still laughing, hugged her back.
“Oh, I’m so glad, I- Mary and Darlene! We better go find them!” Michelle said, eyes open wide with worry.
“Right.”
They opened the trap door and hurried to the staircase at the same time as Mary and Darlene were running up to find them.
“Michelle, you found Kim!” Mary said happily.
“Yeah, we hid in the attic for a bit,” Michelle explained before freezing. “Mary, your eye.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said.
Her left eye had a long cut underneath it, which bled a little, but it seemed to have dried up quite a bit already.
“You should put something on it. Are you sure you don’t need stitches?”
“I’m quite sure.”
“Great. How about you, American?”
“I’m fine. Bruised a bit on the arms, but alright otherwise.”
“Great.”
“Glad we’re all okay,” Kim said, putting an arm on Darlene and her other one on Michelle.
They partook in a group hug before hearing some commotion. They broke apart to see some mods, exiting the bedrooms with worried looks on their faces, being led out by others. They began to hurry down the stairs. While, downstairs, some of them were hurrying outside. Mary grabbed one of them on the arm to stop them for a moment.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I think something’s happened outside,” the girl just said.
They went off down the stairs.
“We better go see what happened,” Darlene said.
“Yeah, let’s head outside,” Mary replied.
They trotted down the stairs and followed the crowd outside. Everyone had gathered around an area. It was hard to see anything through the crowd, though the depressing noise of sobbing could be heard.
The girls looked between themselves, a distressing sense of anxiety building. They continued their way through the crowd to the front; the disturbing crying became louder and louder as they did so. They entered the inner circle of the crowd and stopped in their path.
A boy was laying on the ground, numerous gashes in his face, arms and torso. His face was dead pale and his eyes were closed. A boy and a girl were knelt down on either side of him, both bawling over his lifelessly stationary, cold and rigid, body.
Kim gasped.
“Oh my God,” she said in a breathy voice.
“Those fucking rockers! They don’t play fair,” a boy beside them said, breaking down into tears.
A tear rolled down Michelle’s cheek as she gazed on sadly. She wiped her nose with her sleeve as another tear came down. Mary turned to Darlene and began sobbing into her side, her shoulders heaving up and down. Darlene stared downwards deep in thought as she began patting her on the back. Meanwhile, Kim refused to look and had covered her eyes.
“What’s gonna happen now?” Michelle asked.
As if an answer, sirens could be heard coming down the road. Red and blue lights soon filled the scene.

The next morning, the girls woke up around two o’clock. They silently headed down to the hotel’s restaurant for lunch, not wanting to say a word to anyone. They just sat down with their plates at a table separate from the rest of the road crew. Kim joined them a few minutes in.
Sidney noticed them and walked over to their table, taking the seat next to Michelle.
“Hey, you were all up real late. Why so quiet today?” he said.
Michelle looked up to him, gazing him straight in the eyes trying to decide if he honestly didn’t know. She trusted him to not protect the other boys with a lie if it was serious enough, but if Keith and Eric were in fact involved, would he know about what happened?
“We had a. . .long night.”
“What happened?”
Sidney was looking into her eyes seriously. He had no idea what happened, but he sure wanted to know. Michelle continued eating her meal.
“I’ll talk to you after lunch, in private,” she whispered to him.
“Alright.”
“I wouldn’t ask around the rest. It’s kind of. . .difficult.”
“What? Chell, what the hell happened last night? Why can’t you tell me? Why does Mary have a wound under her eye?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she replied through gritted teeth.
Sidney looked around at the other girls, making eye contact with them in turn. He smiled a weak smile and went back to eating his meal in silence. He looked back over to the table his group was sitting at; Eric and Keith were flirting with a couple girls and inviting them to sit down while Kurt was eating and pretending not to notice.