Joe Thomas Fights Back
Joe Thomas never thought that anything remotely like this could ever happen to him. Never. Not even after the insanity and horrors he’d witnessed in Afghanistan. It still hasn’t completely sunk in, like a nightmare that relentlessly repeats.
Joe walks into the convention center at National Harbor on the Potomac. He walks up to the security detail and the metal detector. They’ve seen him countless times so now they just nod him past. And why should they not? After all, he is an integral part of the security team, a former US Marine.
But things have been tough for Joe. After Afghanistan, he’s had trouble adjusting back stateside, bouncing from job to job, much to the vexation of his wife, who divorced him. Fortunately, he recently landed this gig as a security specialist for the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference. What at first seemed like serendipity turned out to be fate.
As Joe walks through the checkpoint, one of the security guards puts a hand on Joe’s shoulder and stops him. The two men face each other and the guard says, “Sorry about little Lisa.” Joe nods, but he doubts that anyone could even remotely know how he feels.
Joe takes the elevator up to the mezzanine, where he unlocks a door and enters a small room overlooking the convention floor. His job at the convention — as a former Marine sniper — is to locate places where bad guys could make bad things happen.
He glances around the room. He extracts a carbon-fiber gun barrel from his pants leg. He feels relieved. He knew that this would be the most difficult piece to get inside. And if discovered, there would be no explaining away.
Every night Joe wakes up thinking about the phone call. The policemen on his doorstep. The confusion and the abject denial. It wasn’t until he had to identify the body that it became crystal clear. Her little face had been blown away; he could only recognize her clothes. At that moment he knew what he must do.
Joe stashes the gun barrel in a trashcan beneath the plastic liner. Perhaps an unnecessary precaution. Nobody but Joe will be permitted in this room until it’s all over. Tomorrow, when the convention is in full swing, he will re-assemble all the pieces. This will be no problem. He has been around high-tech, black-ops weapons his whole adult life.
He thinks: She was just a little girl. Just a child! My child! Slaughtered along with so many other innocent children. Joe knows that the opposite of innocent is guilty.
Joe knows exactly what he is doing. And he doesn’t care what happens to him. With each school shooting those false Christians become more rabid. They castigate and blame the survivors! Where are the real Christians? The followers of Christ? Joe can’t believe that he was duped into voting for such snake-oil peddlers, and that asshole in particular.
These hypocrites are blind and they cannot understand. And Joe knows they will be out in force on the convention floor tomorrow, all those bastards spouting off about the Second Amendment. And they will learn how he feels the moment it hits them in the face.
​
-30-
​