Titan

Fight

Eric lay in the middle of the sidewalk. He was covered in glass and cringing through a blinding headache. He noticed three things at once: One, Jim McNulty didn't look like he used to. He was taller and well-muscled. While military school might have made him more fit, it wouldn't make you taller. Also, some aspect of Jim was missing. It was not necessarily a physical thing, but Jim was only seventy percent there.

What did they do to him?

Two, Rose was too close to all of this. She backed away from the table, her eyes darting between Jim, the human leviathan, and Eric lying on the sidewalk, squirming to sit up. And three, peculiarly, Eric saw that his clothes were ripped and torn. They were ruined. He wasn't sure why this occurred to him.

"Get up!" Jim barked. His frame filled the opening that Eric's body had made in the restaurant window. His voice was deranged. "Come with me or I'm gonna break you in two."

What the hell? Eric stood up and saw Jim's eyes, yellow and bloodshot. Eric couldn't process it. "Are you with them now? The people who killed your family?"

Jim swept the table at which Eric and Rose had been sitting against the interior wall, smashing it like particle board. Rose slipped out of the way. She was on all fours, watching the surreal confrontation unfold. Jim pointed at Eric, "Don't you dare use them! They're dead because of you! I can still save Beth if you come with me now."

Beth's alive?! Eric gulped back his surprise. He looked for anything to help him get a grip. He found it in Rose's frightened face as she was crouched in the upturned restaurant behind Jim and the broken plate glass window. "I can't go with you, Jim. Whoever you're helping... they killed Sarah. They killed your parents. What do you think they'll do with you? And Beth?"

Jim stepped out of the restaurant window and loomed over Eric. He stared down at his old friend with rage boiling in his eyes. Eric didn't react fast enough when Jim snagged him by the shirt. Before Eric could think, Jim flexed his arms and Eric hurtled across the street. He crashed against the brick storefront of a trinkets boutique and the brick wall trembled with the force of Eric's body. He peeled off of the storefront and fell onto the sidewalk. A line of blood traced down the side of Eric's head into his collar and beneath his shirt. To Eric's surprise, he was only dazed—not unconscious or dead like you would expect someone to be after smashing into a brick wall at 60 MPH.

A crowd of pedestrians watched with gape-jawed surprise. Some of them backpedaled and ran away west on King Street or east towards the river. Traffic stopped at the corner.

Jim stormed across the street with long strides. A big pickup truck coming up from the river bore down on him, but he saw it out of his periphery and threw his shoulder into the grill, slamming the vehicle to an immediate stop. The truck's back end squawked into the air as Jim wrapped his hands under the bumper and rolled the truck back towards the north side of the street. A pack of young people, roughly Eric's age, passed in front and moved too slow. The truck caught them mid-stride and pinned them against the pavement. The few that survived the truck landing on them cried for help. The fleeing rabble ignored them and ran past. A father in a business suit slipped between the flipped truck and the car beside it, holding two young children, one in each arm, without missing a step. Those who couldn't run quickened their gait to escape unnoticed. The cool, calm evening was over.