“Yes sweetheart,” Reedy said over his cellphone. “Everything’s under control now, so I should be able to leave in an hour. We can do that thing we were talking about.”
Sitting in his car, Reedy propped the phone between his ear and shoulder. He typed furiously on his laptop, finishing a report for his superiors while his wife chattered in his ear. He was barely listening to her as the alert came over the network. His eyes went wide. “Fuck,” he said.
“Babe, I gotta go. I just got another—Hello? Shit,” he muttered, shifting his car into gear with sirens blaring. “Never fails.”
Reedy pulled up to the parking lot of the Ole Towne Bar, but had to stop in the street.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he said, smacking his hand down on the steering wheel.
The bar beneath the underpass was gone; leveled into a mess of splintered wood and shattered glass. People stood outside with that familiar look of awe, fear, and confusion that he had seen earlier in the day. Pulling up onto the sidewalk, he shifted his car into park and got out. He checked his gun and badge, then walked towards the scene.
“I’m definitely going to need assistance down here,” Reedy said into his walkie.
“Copy that,” came the voice of the dispatcher over the microphone.
“Thank god you’re here,” said a man, storming up to Reedy. “This shit is fucked man. It’s just fucked.”
“Calm down. Tell me, what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. You’re the cop. Do something!”
“Whoa, sir. Slow down and tell me exactly what happened,” Reedy said, digging through his pocket for a pad and pen. “I can’t help you unless I know what actually happened.”
“Some asshole knocked the goddamned building down! Scariest shit I ever seen!” the man said.
“Please, Mr...” Reedy said, writing on his flip top note pad. He eyed the man up and down and saw the grass stains running up his legs and shirt.
“Siegel… it’s Joe Siegel,” he replied, as Reedy wrote it down.
“Alright, Mr. Siegel. I need more details,” Reedy said, glancing at the wreckage.
“My buddy Jerry and I were playing pool, about to head home, when this guy walked in—naked. Just... naked. Everyone freaked out. Jerry and I, we figured it for a prank, like an internet comedian, but this guy was weirder than that. He was confused and stumbling about, asking for something to drink. The bartender gave him some water while Nancy, the waitress, went in the back to get him a coat or something.”
The man took a deep breath.
“That naked fucker was just staring at the TV the whole time watching the coverage of the explosion today. We tried to ignore him—it’s not our first naked guy in the shop—but then the glasses started shattering all over the place. I turned to look at him—and boom! I was thrown out the goddamn window. Landed right over there,” he said, pointing to a spot on the ground where a pile of wood now laid. “Almost broke my neck.”
“I was getting up when the whole place just... exploded. I swear to God—it was him. Made it happen with his mind or something.”
“How much have you had to drink?” Reedy asked.
“I’m kinda drunk now, but I wasn’t then. After everything went down, we kind of went around scrounging what was left off the ground. But this isn’t like a… drunken vision, or whatever. I saw this shit happen. So did they,” he said, looking over at the other people. The group stood there like you would at a camp fire. Hovering about, waiting for nothing to happen.
Reedy shook his head. “First mutants and monsters, now superpowered nudists? What is happening?”
