Part One.

Angry faces. Shouting. Chanting. The English Pride march through the village of Nenbury had courted a lot of controversy in its planning, and in execution had proven to be little more than a couple of dozen self-righteous arrogant wannabe alpha males storming down the high street, ridiculous slogans scrawled across cardboard signs in still-drying paint, whilst a counter-march hurled abuse at their pomposity. From his vantage point on the balcony of the King’s Head, Yorrick Hunt had already snapped a good sixty or seventy shots of red-cheeked racists booming their dogma through spittle-flecked lips. He lowered his camera with a sigh. His editor, who to be honest wouldn’t have looked out of place amongst the overweight protestors demanding the ‘return of English society to the English people’, had sent him here with his Nikon to get the story. He’d been there for the best part of two hours, watching the police set up their barricades and ‘safety measures’, then the protestors gather at the Bull down the road, to finally realise the whole thing was going to be an enormous anti-climax.
“Fuck me I’m bored.” He muttered under his breath as he clicked another couple of shots of a man with his face painted red and white in a crude resemblance of the cross of Saint George. Click! The camera was fully digital, only making the noise to let him know he’d pressed the trigger. Click! Fat man, face streaming with perspiration under the mid-summer sun caught in mid-chant. Click! Copper with a riot helmet, his visor up making the universal hand sign for ‘wanker’ behind the backs of the protestors. Click! Scrawny student, his spectacles askew screaming anti-government propaganda. Click! Bored housewife with sprog in pram smoking a fag between two fingers, waiting for the protestors to fuck off so she can carry on with her shopping. Cute kid, bet it’ll turn out a right brat, thought Hunt. Click! Another shot of a chubby-cheeked angry bloke moaning about “muslimists”.
Lowering the camera, Yorrick reached down for his beer, taking a long draw from the bottle. Swilling the liquid round his mouth, he swallowed. “Welcome to middle England, enjoy your stay.” Hunt often talked to himself when bored, and on jobs like this he found himself increasingly bored most of the time. He fired off a couple of wide-angle shots of the crowd single handed, finishing his Becks. “Time to make things happen.” He flipped the bottle in the air, catching it by the neck and stood up. The march was almost at the police frontline, their fury still unabated. A few mental calculations, and he hurled the bottle in the air, to come down with a startling smash right in front of the lead protestor.
It was the catalyst they’d all been waiting for. The English Pride marchers roared, hammering into the police lines like a tsunami of fat and righteous indignation. On one side, batons swung from behind plastic shields, on the other the signs were quickly adopted into impromptu weapons. Behind the police the counter-protest, jealous at not getting in on the act surged forward, some breaking through the police lines to tackle their immortal enemy, others just attacking all comers. Yorrick Hunt grabbed up his camera again and started snapping again with gusto. That’s more fucking like it! He smirked as his finger worked the trigger like a mad gunman. Click! Riot copper with his baton raised high, a split-second before the weapon came crashing down on a face-painted skull. Click! Dreadlocked hippy in mid-flying kick at a copper’s head, the officer in question halfway through turning round to face the threat. Click! The same man with the cross of Saint George, his face contorted with rage, three teeth smashed from his head and blood streaming from a broken nose, wielding a broken shard of sign with tatters of cardboard still nailed to it.
Hunt let a wide smile creep across his face. Now things were getting interesting. A moment’s pause to change the memory card in his camera, and he carried on. Click! Click! Click!