Sherry grabbed her bike and hurried after Cathy, looking over her shoulder every couple of steps.
A few of the suits hurried out of Zelks' shop and faced the crowd, which flowed and folded around them and then stopped.
Sherry stopped walking and tried to hear what they were saying. Cathy stopped a few steps farther away.
She could make out two main voices, but they weren't loud enough for her to hear what they were saying. Every so often, after one of the people said something, the crowd would shift and rumble angrily.
After a few minutes, the crowd sounding angrier and angrier as time went by, it started shrinking--but nobody was leaving that Sherry could see.
Somebody shouted, and the crowd lunged inward, yelling now. The people on the outer edges were shouting and waving their fists, trying to get to the middle. Sherry heard a bang, a few screams, then more yells.
"Oh crap. Let's get out of here."
The crowd flowed outward, then back in, a fight moving toward the edges.
Sherry and Cathy started running, flinching with every bang behind them. Cathy ducked around a corner and leaned against a building, gasping. She leaned down and rubbed her ankle.
Sherry leaned her bike against the building and caught her breath. "We should get farther away. If they're coming this way." She went around Cathy and stuck her head around the corner of the building.
"What. Do you. See?" Cathy said, still panting.
Sherry hesitated. "They're, ah, I don't know. They're farther down the street, but they aren't moving. Just all facing inward again." She tried to see past them to Zelks' shop, but couldn't.
Sirens started up, and moved closer, quickly. The crowd started breaking up, a few people being helped away. As the crowd thinned, Sherry saw some people lying in the middle of the street, and she gasped.
Cathy coughed. "What is it?"
The sirens got too loud for Sherry to answer, and she covered her ears and turned around. Two cars and a van painted in Velfard police colours screamed past and stopped down the street. When the sirens turned off, Sherry looked around the corner again. The crowd was gone completely.
Sherry chewed her lip and watched the police help the suits to their feet, and a few onto stretchers and into the ambulance that pulled up from the opposite direction.
"We should go," Cathy said.
"But what about Zelks? Looks like his shop window was smashed, and I don't see him."
"Do you want to walk through that mess?"
"Not really."
"Do you want to answer some questions?"
Sherry and Cathy spun around.
"Err, hello officer," Sherry said nervously.
"Did you see what happened just over there?" The policeman waved around the corner.
"Some of it, sir."
He pulled out a notebook and took their names and addresses, checking them against their ID cards. "You were together the whole time?"
They both nodded.
"Where were you when the men out there were attacked?"
"Just leaving Zelks' shop. The su--the people there, they told us to leave. I was only half done my tekker, too."
"You were inside a shop? Could you show me which one?"
Sherry looked down the street. "The one with the broken front window. We were sitting right there, at the bench."
"Can you tell me what was said while you were inside?"
"Not really. They were using their translator program, and Zelks didn't say much. They asked us to leave, then Zelks asked us to leave, so we left," Cathy said, and Sherry nodded.
"This Zelks, do you know him well?"
"I buy stuff from him a lot, he knows what I like." Sherry shrugged. "I don't really know a lot about him though."
"And you, miss?"
"No," Cathy said. "I've only been there once before. I don't live in the city."
The policeman nodded. "And when did you first see the attackers?"
"Just as we were leaving Zelks' shop."
"And what did you do when you saw them?"
"As soon as we figured out they were mad about something, we ran here."
The policeman nodded. "Good move. You want to stay out of trouble. I suggest you clear out, go home or something, and we'll contact you if we need to ask you any more questions."
"Do you know if Zelks is ok?" Sherry said as the policeman was turning away.
"Haven't seen him, sorry."
Sherry grabbed her bike and started walking it down the street, away from the police.
Cathy hurried after her. "I wonder what that was all about."
"No idea. But I think I want to find out. We should go back once the police are done, see if we can find out what happened."
"I don't know if that's a good idea. I mean, some people got hurt there, and who knows why, or if they'll come back."
Sherry watched the road disappear under the bike tire. "Yeah, I know. But still, whatever the suits said, Zelks looked pretty scared to me." She bit her lip. "I don't know about you, but I don't like it."