02.02: The Return to Emerald city...
Marcy and the other girl--who hadn't been introduced-- went to the threesome who'd just come inside. Marcy had her cel-phone out. (It was curious that none of the three, themselves, had bothered to call emergency services...)
It wasn't far at all.
Outside, it was murky, as if a post-sunset fog had rolled in. Only it was mid-day!
Maybe forty feet away from Pompeii's, a small crowd had gathered, but it was only perhaps a dozen people, and they hadn't gotten too close to the vehicle. It was a blue Toyota Forerunner, on it's side, wheel's still spinning, the engine still running Shattered glass and metal was strewn across the road, but Alexey didn't see any bodies on the pavement.
The crowd was keeping their distance, though, because a man stood on just the other side of the Forerunner, plaid shirt ripped open to reveal an enormous mass of tentacles writhing about in the air between him and the car, as if they were blindly reaching out, sensing the area, tasting the atmosphere.
They were pruplish grey masses of rubbery flesh that seemed to expand and contract as they moved.
The man's head was thrown back, but Alexey could make out shaggy blonde hair and a scruffy beard, corded muscles that suggested he was a fitness buff or a labourer. Whoever he was, his mouth was open in an expression that could've been agony or could've been ecstacy. But his eyes were squeezed shut and his fists were clenched so hard that Alexey could clearly see the tendons sticking out along his forearms.
It was brighter where the tentacled man was, too, as if he and the vehicle were the center of a massing storm.
Another goddamned storm on the Yellow Brick Row.
A woman nearby clutched a baby to her shoulder as she ran in the opposite direction.
"Jesus Christ!" someone swore, "What is that thing?"
One of the tenacles went still then lashed out,, and though he couldn't see it from hi vantage point, Alexey heard the dull thud as flesh hit glass or metal.
The plaid-shirted man stepped forward as if drawn zombie-like, and approached the downed SUV. more of his tentacles jabbed out, until there was the sound of broken glass again.
"Are you getting this?" some nameless guy nudged his friend. They both had cel-phones up.
"Yeah, it's goinh live..."
Then all of the tentacles shot forward into what Alexey must have guessed was a shattered sun-roof.