The Next Morning

I woke at 6:30AM, just as dawn was reaching up over the horizon with her rose-red fingers.I had made it to my house uneventfully the night before. The city had seemed the same as it always had. Or was it? Were the patrols just a bit more hurried and nervous? Were there more dogs barking? Or less? It had all blurred overnight, mostly due to my stress over merely getting to my house without being spotted by the police patrols. As I sat up in bed, I thought about the events of the previous night, trying to parse it all. Certain things kept coming back to me. Mostly the dead man, and the helicopter. Two of the strangest things I had seen in a very long time; dead men walking, and the fall of a government chopper. Were the two connected? I had no idea, but I could likely find out. One of the best things about living in a slum in a police state, is that there is always a thriving underground business on both news and goods. There was no way that Xeno and I were the only ones to witness the helicopter's demise, and it was a near certainty that all the details would be in that day's Freedom Rag, the closest thing to a free press we still had. However, the dead man walking, was an interesting story, albeit one that wasn't terribly believable. I could certainly bring it forth to try to sell, but as it simply sounded too fantastic to be true, I doubted its worth. I got dressed, and headed out to the streets.
A friend of mine helped write for the Rag, and he was my contact  for my daily issues. I tracked him down on a street corner, and slipped him some of the photographs I had taken the night before. Ralf was an amateur astronomer, but was in no physical shape to go hunting dark places in the middle of nowhere. We had a little agreement running, he would keep me up to date with a steady supply of political information in return for a daily Rag, which he now handed over, wrapped around a hot dog. You can never be too careful. I nodded to him, and went on my way. The city seemed normal for this time of day, that is to say, empty. Most people didn't emerge from the broken woodwork where they lived until often 9AM at the earliest, giving me the closest I could get to peace and quiet as I read the latest Rag.
What I read scared me.
It scared me so much, I jumped up and ran back to Ralf, still on the same corner with his hot dog cart, whereupon I asked him how accurate the information was, and the response to which was a look of mild disapproval at my outburst, along with a quiet assurance that everything was completely accurate, and in most places transcribed from military radio transmissions.
The Rag looked exactly as I had expected it to; the helicopter crash was the main story, and there were no stories about dead men walking. But one detail about the helicopter stood out, making everything I had been through suddenly come rushing back, along with a certainty that I had not been seeing things the previous night. The helicopter had been dispatched to help a patrol reporting an attack in the forest; most of the patrol had been killed, and one member got away with minor injuries, and was picked up by the helicopter, which then began attacking the people which had attacked the patrol. I could only assume that this is what I had witnessed, when the dead man was slain. However, a few minutes later, radio transmissions had shown the wounded patrolman acting strangely. A minute later there was a single scream, and crunching noise, and the chopper lost control immediately afterwards.
The Rag fell from my limp hands. I went up to Ralf and told him I had a story.

Note: People reading this, comment! Let me know how I'm doing! Do you like the style? Should I use actual dialogue instead of these passive descriptions of conversations? What do you want to see more of?