She darted down the sidewalk, twisting her torso sideways in order to squeeze between stricken spectators. She passed through the crosswalk, pressing between a disastrously crashed dump truck and Prius. Skipping over broken car plastic and bent metal, Harper tried keeping her mind on running, the simple idea of movement. The smoke expanded in the distance, overtaking grass and a screaming bystander sprinting with a body stained in blood and soot.
Harper prayed silently as she drew closer to the cries from hell and the ever-blooming cloud of smoke. The silver inferno beckoned.
Tourists stepping out of the Art Museum of the Americas gasped and blocked Harper’s path. She bowled through them and weaved between the clusters of cars that clogged Constitution Avenue. The smoky mass continued to spill out from in front of the Washington Monument, eclipsing the building and the blinding sun.
Harper’s boots trampled the crunchy grass. Planting her palm on a black metal post, she vaulted over a fence linked together by a lazy chain. She landed a few dozen yards from the Lincoln Memorial.
The noise intensified. Far down the reflecting pool of water, soot, debris, and bleeding bodies scattered in all directions. Like frenzied ants, men and women burst forth from the mist. They clamored and shoved one another, pushing and falling and thrashing in the extensive rectangular pool. The weak stumbled and swiftly became the victims of a violent stampede. The police charged into the pandemonium riding gallant horses and shouting forceful commands. The people didn’t slow.
While trying to save a bleeding woman, an officer was rammed to the dirt and trampled by a dozen unruly men. Another was pulled from his horse. When the man struggled to mount the stirrups, a second officer fired and sent him tumbling to the dirt. The horse cried and twisted about, trying to find an opening in the ocean of panicked people. Unable to find an escape, the desperate animal drilled through a herd of people. A woman screamed for her child as a stroller was pushed and dragged under unrelenting feet.
Harper did not have time to think. She plunged into the madness. Like a quarterback instigating a Hail Mary, Harper exceeded her physical limits by jumping, bending, and juking through the oncoming mass of bodies. Elbows, knees, and shoulders smacked against her collarbone, arms, and chest, but she continued her onslaught.
The stroller was twisted and bent and was still being kicked by single-minded runners when Harper came into view. She zigzagged around a charging blood-soaked woman and reached her arm low. Like a bird of prey, Harper snatched the child from the stroller. She clenched the infant’s warm body to her own, leaving the spent stroller to be further trampled.
Cries of a hurting child filled her ear, but a screaming man with a red stump for a hand out-sung the baby boy. Harper craned her head through the mass, no longer seeing the wailing mother. People blurred as they swayed around her. Come on. She looked at a police officer helping up his comrade from the stomped grass. Blood spilled down the man’s mouth and nose, saturating the sky-blue uniform with crimson burgundy. She scanned again, turning to the sight of a large man and beautiful woman playing tug-of-war for a purse. The bag ripped, and its contents spilled out: a wallet, feminine-hygiene products, knickknacks.
The baby’s shrieks grew ever stronger, and anxiety smothered Harper. She did a final scan and spotted the mother wandering aimlessly and sobbing amidst the sea of raging people.
“You’ll be with your mother shortly,” she whispered to the child.
Without warning, a large shadow overtook Harper as she prepared to run. Her emerald-green eyes widened with horror as she stared up at the towering horse, neighing and drawn back on its hind legs. No time to run. She sucked air into her lungs and clenched the baby close to her chest. Its warm body pressed against her raging heart. Just as the beast was about to drop, loud popping sounds and multiple splits in its skin forced it to topple on its side. Thumping against the ground and kicking wildly, the majestic creature convulsed, in the throes of death. Harper found it hard not to pity the animal and even harder to not look away. She shifted her attention to the dark-skinned police officer lowering his firearm. He gave Harper a curt nod and returned to the fray.
The gunfire scattered the surrounding people but did a horrid job of lessening the overall chaos. The panicked bystanders became more aggressive in their tactics. They showed no regard for the arriving law enforcement, cursing, disobeying, and beating those who tried to contain them. There were no enemies, no allies, only desperation. Harper dashed to where she last saw the infant’s mother but only saw a yellow lump.
The woman lay facedown. Dirty footprints painted her yellow sundress. Harper hesitated to turn her over, fearful of what she would see. Breathing rapidly, Harper knelt beside her and rolled her body over. Blood glued dirt and grass to the woman’s face. Beyond her caved cheek and missing teeth, Harper could tell she was in her thirties, more youthful and prettier than Harper. Discolored blades of grass stuck to the woman’s semi-parted and busted lips. Her eyes were shut.
“Ma’am?” Harper shook her shoulder. She still held the infant, whose shrieks had turned to a whimper. “Ma’am, you need to get up.”
The woman remained still.
“I have your baby boy. He needs you.” Harper placed her fingers on the woman’s pulse. Please, get up.
“She’s gone,” a voice behind her said. Harper reared her head back to the black cop. She didn’t have words.
Harper felt sick, physically and mentally. She forced herself to stand and face the man. She read his name tag. “Officer Taylor, this kid…”
“I know,” the man replied, signs of fear and bravery mixed on his dark face.
She handed him the infant, whom he received with delicacy amidst the fray.
Before the officer could respond, Harper was already sprinting to the fluffy smokescreen that still lingered before the Washington Monument. She’d delayed long enough. It was time to find her son.
Taking a final deep breath of crisp air, she plunged into the haze.
The dense mist clawed down her throat, and a sharp, hot stinging made her eyes wet. Black shreds of clothes and other charred scraps bumped against her skin and scratched her nose with the smell of fire, dirt, and cooked flesh. Using the collar of her camo uniform, Harper shielded her mouth. Coughs and cries and moans sounded in the bubble of lingering smoke. Small bonfires cast orange-and-yellow glows all around. Harper’s foot snagged something hard. She stumbled and reared back her head, introducing herself to the blackened body she’d tripped on. The only tell that it was human was the shape. It was all charred flesh. Moving on, Harper squinted, noticing dozens of charred lumps across the upturned grass. Weeping came from unseen locals.
“Eli!” she shouted. The barbequed meats were all unrecognizable.
Distorted silhouettes of monstrous and incomplete humanoids materialized in the smog. A man stumbled toward her. His meaty fingers grasped her shoulders. The explosion had eaten half his youthful head and left a black, bloody smear where his ear once was. One eye was shut, and the other poured tears. His fingernails raked against Harper’s skin. Tatted and with a thick ear gage, he wasn’t Eli. Harper shoved at him, but his grip dominated her.
“Please!” he begged hoarsely.
Harper yanked her shoulder away from his grip and snatched his palm. In a movement, she twisted him and put his arm behind his back. “Get to the police! Now!” She pushed him in the direction she had come. He stumbled that way, and the unnatural mist consumed him.
Harper pressed on to where the smoke was thickest and the corpses piled high. Slews of recently amputated men and women shambled mindlessly. One groped the ground furiously for the part he’d left behind. Another convulsed like an epileptic. The woman nearest her sat cross legged and jerked her head around at the sound of the slightest footstep. Nothing remained of her eyes.
Harper’s attention shifted quickly from one horror to the next. Soon it melded into a blurry picture of smoke and death, coughs and screams. The dirt beneath her feet had softened f
rom the explosion, and with a fell swoop, Harper was falling. Her bottom slid down tousled dirt, and she soon realized that she sat in a deformed circular dish. The impact zone. Its diameter ran a few yards across and a foot deep. If it was a suicide bomber, nothing was left.
“Eli!” she wailed, even louder this time.
The concert stage, its front chewed back from the explosion’s bite, became visible to her. Tall vertical trusses were toppled on its deck. Glass and sparks leaked from the hanging lights that swayed to one side. The forty-foot metal cube that encompassed the stage moaned as its metal support piping bowed in odd directions.
“Take my hand!” a man commanded.
Harper forced herself to her feet. Her knees felt like noodles, and her head bubbled. She hacked, coughed, and reached her hand to the stranger. The calloused palm was not familiar. Past her smoke-seared vision, she noticed the man’s black hat and dainty police uniform. “Ma’am. Keep calm. We’re getting you out of here.”
No! Help the others! My son needs me! She wanted to protest, but her voice was too crusted and dry. The police officer pulled her from the ditch. Putting an arm around her shoulder, he led her farther from the bodies. Farther from where she hoped to find her son.
“Mom!” A faint shout from a shrouded place.
An illusion? She didn’t risk it. Breaking from her wall of meekness and the man’s grip, Harper shot back into the smoke.
“Mom!” The voice faded.
Forcing her numbing legs, Harper darted to the stage. She craned her head in all directions. The sound of struggle drew her closer to the stage. The world and the smoke spun around her. Her eyes burned. She covered her mouth to mask her cough. Then she saw her son, digging himself out from under a body.
Dirt and soot clung to his thick brown hair and smudged his pale, youthful cheeks. He pushed against the thick corpse with the palms of his hands. The obese man rolled but only enough to remove him from Eli’s legs.
“Eli!” she bellowed out. Her eyes watered with joy. Within the heart of the thick cloud, Harper ran to her trapped son.
Her boy turned to her, mouth agape from shock and pain. The stage cast its shadow upon him like Lucifer’s wings. The metal cube groaned as it bowed under its own weight. Her son’s handsome eyes widened as the massive structure snapped and collapsed upon him.
Chapter Five
Estranged
With a metallic roar, the aluminum piping smacked against and jabbed into the soft dirt, creating a maze of twisted spires and warped hurdles. Dirt and dust shot into the hazy air. Harper strode to the right, dodging a falling light casing larger than her head. It exploded into plastic splinters upon impact.
The smoke thinned, but Harper didn’t breathe. Her maternal instincts thundered in her heart and mind. She forgot her fear, her doubt, and herself. The only things that mattered were the heaps of metal that covered her son. She charged into the calamity that was once a stage of music, joy, and passion. Lifting explosion-charred flooring, she only found shredded cables. She spotted a tennis shoe ending on a pencil-thin leg buried by metal. Using her might, she rolled the metal aside. It was a woman beneath, very much dead. She called for her son. Only the wind and muffled conflict outside of the cloud replied.
A lump of truss caught her eye. Harper yanked at the first piece. Something contested her grip. A familiar man looked back at her. His bloodshot eyes met hers. A large smudge of dirt curled around his left brow and down his stubbled cheek. The stink of sweat and soot overpowered his strong cologne.
“Harper?” The words tumbled from his lips. She saw surprise and guilt on his face.
She hardly recognized him, but there he was: James Murphy, her estranged husband.
No time for introductions. Without a word, Harper yanked the piece away. It slid across the tossed dirt. James didn’t need it spelled out for him. Her mere presence commanded him to keep digging. And so they did.
With haste, they drew out the links of truss and threw them to the side. The dirt-covered fat man revealed himself. Tracks from the aluminum piping stained his polo shirt with thick lines. Blood caked his balding head. Eli came into view. He wasn’t moving.
“Together,” Harper ordered.
James grabbed the arms, and Harper grabbed the legs. They lifted the large body and, on the count of three, slung it to the dirt. Their attention turned to Eli. He lay across the ground with his arms and legs spread in all directions. The side of his face rested in the dirt, and a trickle of blood leaked from his chapped lips.
Harper dropped to her knees. She cradled his drooping head in her arms. His blue hood fell between her arms and landed on her lap. The idea of strength fled far from her. Tears, snot, and soundless cries ruled Harper. She rocked her son in her gentle grip.
James lowered, facing his son and wife. His face was still, but his eyes screamed sorrow. He reached his hand out, aiming for Harper’s. With ugly tears over red skin, she shot him a glance of contempt. James retracted his hand, sliding it in his jean pocket. He averted his auburn eyes to the dirt.
Oh please. Please. Please. Please! Harper begged behind her sobs. With a trembling touch, she ran her knuckles down Eli’s soft, warm cheek and to his neck. She placed her index and middle finger against his jugular and waited.
James sniffled. The blood had left his long face, and a frown weighed upon his chiseled jaw. “Babe, I…”
Then Harper felt it. A pulse of life in the boy’s vein. Then another and another. “Help me get him up,” she barked.
Startled, James obliged. They both took an arm and looped it around their necks and on their shoulders. Eli screamed in pain. Harper caught sight of the knob under his skin. The bone inside his forearm wiggled as she moved. James took up the slack as Harper slid out from beneath her son’s broken arm.
With awkward fingers, Harper unbuttoned her uniform jacket, stripping to her tan T-shirt beneath. “Get his arm up.”
“Don’t worry, buddy,” James said with calm determination as he assisted his son to an upright position. “We’re going to get you to the hospital.”
Eli groaned painfully as James elevated his broken arm. Harper fashioned the camo jacket into a makeshift sling around his arm.
“No. We’re not.” Harper looked around the dispersing smoke, trying to get oriented.
James belted out a quick burst of angry laughter. “Harper, are you kidding me? Look at the boy. Look at me, for heaven’s sake.”
“This way.” Harper led them, taking long strides over the corpses.
Eli groaned as James shuffled around a body. “His arm may not be the only problem. Who knows what sort of internal injuries he could be experiencing.”
Harper clenched her fist by her side and halted. She turned back to James, deliberately not masking her annoyance. “Did you notice your phone cut off? Or power in the street die? Maybe your little band went silent all of a sudden? You know, the one you took my son out of school to see? Yeah, well, that whole thing was the result of an EMP blast that just fried nearly every electronic device in the city. Even the hospitals with reserve power are too understaffed to deal with a broken arm.”
“It could be more than that. We just witnessed a bomb go off in a crowd of hundreds of people. I don’t mean to complain, but my ears haven’t stopped ringing since I woke up next to a dozen frickin’ dead people!”
Harper frowned. She couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to see the explosion firsthand. The simple thought made her shiver. “We’re going to the reserve center. He can get help there.”
Eli burst into a fit of painful coughs.
“First things first,” James said while looking at his son. “Let’s get our boy out of here.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
The sounds of panic and shouting bled into Harper’s ears just as she passed through the smoky haze. The three of them escaped the suffocating cloud and looked out at the chaos before them. A massive crowd swarmed around the police, who separated them with a semi
circle of riot shields.
“One at a time!” an officer yelled. “One at a time!”
In the back of the line, a middle-aged man held the limp body of his six-year-old daughter in his arms, begging to get into the ambulance on the other side of the riot police. No one gave him room. The medical staff couldn’t have been from any local hospital, Harper deduced. They must’ve been parked here for the concert. They were heavily understaffed, more than ten to one. The bleeding and battered bomb survivors struggled to bust through.
Through a megaphone, an officer announced that the ambulances were low on medical supplies, and to follow an officer to the nearest hospital. People jeered, put their children behind them, and then charged the riot shields. Their shoulders smacked against the durable plastic. Nine times out of ten, they would bounce back. However, there was always that one who hugged the shield and tried to pull it away from the officers. The assault ended when a baton clubbed someone’s back or head.
Harper gave James a look. He was engrossed in the scene. His eyes watered as he watched good people become desperate animals.
The police led a man missing an arm through the crowd. They tried to part the sea of people to get to the ambulance. The man died before he arrived at the wall of riot shields. Cursing, they still brought his limp body through.
“We are officially out of supplies,” the megaphone-wielding officer explained. “Please proceed to the nearest hospital in orderly fashion.”
She didn’t see who threw the rock, but the police retaliated. Officers stepped out from behind the line of shields and fired cans into the crowd. With a hiss, yellow gas exploded into the streets.
“Go! Now!” she shouted to James and Eli. Arms around each other’s shoulders, the two boys started sprinting. Harper lagged behind them.
Bystanders ran in every direction. One tackled an officer, yanked off his gas mask, and proceeded to beat his face with his fists. The horse-mounted cops trotted around the area, clubbing suspicious figures that escaped the explosion. Harper directed James and Eli down a certain street. Suddenly, her chin rammed against the concrete. Her teeth felt loose, and a large man sprinted by her. Then a woman. Then a child. I need to get up. She lost sight of Eli and James. She pushed against the earth to rise and was shoved back down. A throbbing pain soared up her back. She saw the running man, who didn’t even bat an eye at her. Another boot stomped her spine, this time from a woman.
EMP No Power Omnibus Page 3
