Clara Mitchell To Peter

The Apocalypse Tales: Sammy Makes An Arrest

Alexander Weinstein

Newark National Airport and Detainment Center Newark, NJ

So this guy gets up and leaves his water bottle and I'm thinking, first and foremost, "Aw, Jesus." 'Cause it's not like we don't give travelers fair warning. We got the announcement going every five minutes. And it's not like there ain't signs posted all over the goddamn place. And so, yeah, my first thought is, "Come on, asshole." But then I see he's getting up 'cause his kid, who's probably three, has gotten himself tangled in the Ralphie Rabbit interactive station. I mean he's all wrapped up in the i-headphones, and I'm thinking, this fucking kid's gonna break the machine. I mean, I've got a four year old, and whenever he gets near one of those stations he goes ape-shit. You can actually hear the wireless chips in his teeth buzzing. So I can't blame the dad for running, 'cause I'd run to untangle my son too, but I'd sure as shit take my water bottle with me. So I give it one beat. I'm thinking, just turn back and get your fucking water bottle. But sure as shit he doesn't and so what choice do I got? We can't go having another Chicago.

So I call Tom in for backup and we go to make the arrest. And this guy, he starts going ballistic. He's yelling and resisting and that's when I hear he's got this accent, couldn't place it, but whenever he yelled, "What are you doing?" he couldn't say the w right, kept saying vat. That's when I knew we had trouble. So I taze him and he goes down. Tom arrives with the courtesy cart, and we load him on, take the kid, and ballistics arrives to contain the water bottle.

Well, turns out the water bottle's safe, but when we get the guy down to detainment and get the finger-prods on him, some pretty interesting information comes out. Jim, from central, was there, and you know him, he