Free Frankentown by Aleksandar Vujovic Page B

town few people walked around and every parking space was empty.
    Even so, he never ran a red light. When he finally got downtown Emeryville, he saw the lights in the sky. The guy on the radio reported about the hundreds of thousands of people heading to Oakland, jumping over fences, getting closer to the docks.
    There was no leaving this traffic jam.   The cars moved so slowly Frank couldn’t stand it a moment longer. He got out of the car and stood up to stretch while the Slavic lady in the car behind him seemingly fell asleep on the car horn.
Frank’s head felt thick and heavy.
    The slow onset of a crashing headache came, reminding Frank that he was dehydrated, but buying water was unlikely. The air was hot and humid and clouds swirled around the bright glowing points in the sky. When the cars haven’t moved more than several feet in the last few minutes, Frank chose to exemplarily park in the empty spot right next to him and go on-foot instead.
    The BART station was packed too; there was no going down, let alone waiting several hours for a train that he could actually get on.
Walking was now the only, and unattractive option left.
    After over an hour of walking in the direction of Oakland docks, he walked past a backyard with a bike.
    Frank’s adventurous spark ignited the stealing of the bike. After all, life owed him a free bike after his got stolen when he was 16. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to return it. Pedaling wasn’t nearly as hard as walking, and it made Frank’s feet bleed a whole lot less. After another hour and half of more and more repetitive pedaling, he realized he can no longer feel his feet, but the urge to press on had not subsided one bit.
Perhaps where he’s headed, he’ll find answers to the questions that have been plaguing him for the past four weeks. Every moment of seeing the creature was on a loop in his head, as if to learn something new about it from his fading memories, but there was nothing.
  The lack of initiative he’d taken was regrettable, and he wouldn’t stop blaming himself for not finding out more about the creature before it got stolen out of his freezer. He decided to take responsibility for the dead alien body. The only comfort to such a loss was the fact the bastard gave him radiation poisoning, so it was a good thing it disappeared. None of that mattered now.
    When he finally got to Oakland it was almost dark, but there were plenty of people, all now heading to a singular location. Second wind came over him and Frank felt energized enough to run to Los Angeles if he had to.
He couldn’t feel his legs, but they served him just fine.
    In dire situations, the human body is capable of performing extraordinary acts that defy both logic and the individual’s strength capacity.
Like a survival instinct.
      But if it was -
    -why was it serving him to go see a UFO?
    People snaked along the seventh street. Confused cops were trying to block the way but had not managed. Nobody came with the intention of harming anyone and nobody was harmed. No panic. Nobody trampled.
    People of all ages, races, colors, religions, beliefs now marched as one, eager to get front-line seats * for what might very well be the first inter-galactic greeting. The bright rainbow lights above pulsated beautiful colors and put everyone at peace, despite the anxiety of anticipation.
    A horrible thought now struck Frank square in the head; If everyone is here, if there indeed is any contact, who’s to say it will be in peace? Then it occurred to him that it felt particularly unorthodox for people to congregate in this way.
    Americans are usually afraid.
They usually fire first and then ask questions.
    As he drew near the exact unoccupied patches of light, the crowd got thicker, people were eager and pushed, held up their signs and waved them to be the first to see if aliens can speak english.
    During another forty-five minutes, Frank squeezed through the multicultural mosh-pit, getting closer