Chapter 3
When a bomb goes off, there are several ways you can die from the resulting explosion. There's being at the epicenter, where the blast will simply shred anything in its way, blowing limbs from torsos or in extreme cases, simply vaporizing some or all of the body. There's burn potential, where the extreme heat of an explosion will scorch and destroy skin or clothes. There's being struck by shrapnel, which depending on the composition of the explosive device may be more or less likely. Fragmentation grenades are designed to shred apart and make the fragments deadly, and lots of homemade devices are packed inside of packs of bolts or nails, - anything that can fragment easily and fly out at velocity.
But one of the ways of being affected by a bomb that is hardest to see but most deadly is the compression wave. When an explosion happens, the immediate center of the blast super heats the air, and that creates a pressure wave that expands outwards. If you are close to the center, this wave can not only break bones and limbs, but also the wave passing through the body can do immense internal damage to essential body organs. Further away, and the compression acts differently, slamming the body against walls or the floor, or into other debris being blown up by the explosion. It's this that kills and injures the most people on the periphery of a blast, and it was this that slammed into April and Morgan microseconds after the backpack's detonation.
There were two factors that saved them from devastating injury or death. The first was that at the time of the bomb going off, April and Morgan were almost already horizontal. Morgan slamming into April pushed her backwards and off balance, and Morgan was on top of her, trying to cover her body with his. Both fell backwards and were almost flat on when the bomb went off, - this meant the compression wave didn't hit them flat on, but had to travel up the body from toes to head.
The second was that they were on the edge of the building, the last table at the front. At their corner was an alleyway that led down the side of the block where the restaurant was located, and Morgan's abrupt push of the two of them, making them stumble back before falling, had pushed them around the side, shielding them from the majority of the blast. They were lucky, the building the restaurant was a part of was an old Spanish building, made with stone and marble, not one of the more recent additions that were all thin girders and glass. Because of the solid makeup of the building, the blast itself bounced back off the wall, wreaking even more havoc on the other unlucky people having lunch and those just passing by.
In the aftermath, smoke and stone dust everywhere in the air, the screaming began.
April looked up at Morgan, whose body was on top of hers. She could see blood trickling down from his ears, and she realized, in an almost drunken way, that she couldn't hear anything apart from a slight ringing. Morgan was out cold, and she was trembling furiously.
She gently pushed him off, trying to get to her feet, unsteadily. She peeked around the corner and was stunned at what she saw. It was a scene from hell that would forever be burned in to April's mind. There was blood everywhere, body parts lay strewn around the area in a grisly tableau of death, where people had literally been blown apart. There was a massive burn mark where the backpack had rested, and all around where the twisted remains of tables, chairs and other pieces of debris, some burning, giving off black clouds. Glass littered the area, from the exploded windows, and people were laying in contorted positions as far as the road, along with cars pushed out of position on the road itself. There was smoke and dust in the air, making it thick and choking, and making visibility difficult. Her own handbag was gone, along with its useful contents, including her phone.
Looking back at Morgan, she crouched, to see if he was still breathing, and to check his pulse. He was breathing, she could see that, and his pulse felt steady, even if hers felt like it was racing. She judged he was going to be okay, and would recover, and so she got to her feet again, and tottered around the corner to see if there was anyone she could help. She imagined she must look horrendous and scary, - white faced from the dust in the air, her hair doing god knows what, and probably covered in blood, from wounds. That was a thought, - did she have any wounds? She hadn't thought to check. The shock she was feeling was omnipresent, - what else had she not done? What else had she missed? She quickly checked her body, but felt no telltale pains or bloody areas.
At the epicenter of the blast, there was obviously nothing to be done, - no one had survived that, - or was even in one piece. Even as far as thirty feet out, there didn't seem to be anyone alive. Further out, there were people who looked like they were moaning, if only she could hear them.
She knelt down to a couple, where the man had levered himself up, but his companion was obviously more severely injured. There were broken bones, April judged, and a wound that was bleeding copiously on her leg. April gestured to the guy who looked at her wonderingly, until April just reached out and started undoing his belt. The man was obviously as shell shocked as she was and just looked at her, uncomprehendingly, until April got the belt away from him, and then hooked it under the thigh of his woman companion, pulling the belt together as a makeshift tourniquet. Once that was completed, she looked over the rest of the woman, and noticed another wound in her stomach, that was also pumping blood. Looking around, she found a torn knitted jacket on the ground, picked it up, and then pressed it into the man's hands, then pressed them into her wound, to stem the flow of blood.
"Keep the pressure on!" she screamed, desperately trying to hear her own voice, and not even considering that the man probably didn't speak English.
He looked at her, and then down at the wound and nodded, obviously glad there was something he could do.
April felt something on her shoulder, and looked around, looking up from her kneeling position into Chris Morgan's eyes.
He stared at her, questions obvious in his eyes. She shook her head and gestured at herself, to indicate she was relatively unscathed. She still couldn't hear anything, apart from a ringing in her ears, but she could see fine.
He gestured to her, pulling at her shoulder, trying to get her to stand. The urgency he was displaying was evident, - she could see him trying to say something. Shouting even, but she couldn't hear the words.
She looked around at the scene again, mudded mind trying to work out what to do next. Morgan plucked at her again, and then he squatted down, and physically drew her up, hands under her armpits.
When she was vertical, she looked at him quizzically, and he took her hand, pointing at the corner they'd survived in. His inference was unmistakable. He wanted to leave and leave immediately.
April looked around again, desperately, as Morgan dragged her to the corner, imploring her with his eyes and shouting something. April was starting to hear again, - the sound was muffled, but she could make out words. "Go," "Danger", "Leave", "Nothing we can do".
Suddenly April realized what was being communicated. They were in danger. Morgan believed they were exposed, and wanted to leave, and, given her situation with him, she had to go along.
She shrugged, hoping he'd understand the gesture and stopped fighting him, taking one last look at the site of the explosion and whispering a silent apology at not staying to help. She could tell her hearing was slowly restoring, because she could now hear the distinctive European style sirens off in the distance, indicating impending help arriving.
And then she turned to Morgan, who was looking expectantly at her, she nodded.
Morgan reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. Giving her a quick glance, he dropped it on the floor, and ground his foot into it, shattering it. Then he reached out, took her hand and lead her away from the scene, down the narrow alley.
They hustled along the side alley, and out into another thoroughfare, with pedestrians running down to the corner, towards the main road junction that took them back to where the bomb went off. The side alley juked a few times, so it wasn't obvious from one end or the other that the alley went through, from one main road to another. Later on, April did wonder what kind of a sight they looked, caked in dust and soot from the smoke, and apparently not listening to anyone as they ran.
Morgan, obviously less shaken up than April, did a few surprising things. He ducked into a department store three roads down from the site of the bomb, and then pushed April into a toilet, after buying her a new hat, glasses, a brush, a new jacket, - taken straight off a display manikin, and paid for hurriedly, - and told her, "Get cleaned up, change your jacket."
When she got into the bathroom, April saw what he meant. She was pale and covered in white powder, eyes wide with delayed offset shock. April was a therapist, and she knew exactly the stages she was going through, and for once, she was in them rather than talking about them. She found that knowing what was happening didn't actually stop it happening, or her having a reaction to it. She'd found that once before, after events in London, where she'd been abducted and raped, both physically and neurologically, and she'd had to kill to escape. She'd known the theories behind her reactions then, too, but also found that it didn't stop those reactions from happening.
