The green thing in the road was a root.
It came up out of the split asphalt as thick as Jin's arm, dark and wet and twisting, and it kept coming. It rose higher than his head, curled over, and slammed down into the road on the other side of the crack, splitting the asphalt open in a second long line. Then another root burst up beside it. Then a third, further down the street, punching straight through the hood of a rusted car and flipping it onto its side with a screech of metal.
The ground was shaking hard now. Not little shivers anymore. Big, rolling heaves, one after another, like something enormous was waking up underneath the city and stretching.
Jin took a step back.
