“Josh!” Her voice was little more than a whisper. She staggered forward, bending to pull back the apple-printed cloth, stealing herself for the horrors it may reveal.
Joshua’s fingers curled as though he were clutching at something. His body appeared intact, and he mouthed words like a goldfish gasping for water.
“Josh! Are you alright? Can you hear me?” As she crouched beside him, he shifted, attempting to pull himself up. “Wait, let me check you.” Her voice felt thick, the words heard as though spoken through cotton wool. She began a search of his body. He held up a hand to stop her. The words ‘I’m fine’ penetrated through the deafness as he held a hand to his forehead. Ignoring him, she searched for injury and, on finding none, helped him to sit.
“Bomb!” she said.
He nodded then forced himself to stand. Leaning against each other for support, they made their way to the front of the shop. The shop assistant stood in the doorway with a t-shirt held against her bloodied nose.
After ascertaining that the woman was only lightly injured, Vicky’s attention turned to the carnage in the mall’s hallway.
A large and potted palm tree stood as a shattered matchstick with its trunk splintered and fronds ripped and blown across the hall. The bench was no longer moored to the tiles and rose to the ceiling, twisted and mangled, on one leg. The body of the woman with the grey curls who had sat beside the bomber lay beneath a covering of glass, her wig dislodged to reveal thin grey hair. Objects protruded from her naked scalp. Vicky recognised a nail standing to attention at the woman’s temple. “The bastard! Nail bomb.” Filled with objects, the bomb had been built to cause maximum injury. One of the woman’s legs was missing below the knee. An arm was at an impossible angle beneath her back. Blood pooled beneath her body, staining the wool of her old-fashioned coat. That she was dead was obvious, and a blessing.
Thick dust eddied in the wide hallway. Vicky limped forward, blood oozing from her thigh wound. To the right was the mother who had pushed the grubby toddler in its pushchair. The woman was slumped against the wall, unconscious, mobile still gripped in her hand. The pushchair was upturned, the child’s bottle of cola several feet away. Only the back of the pushchair’s seat was visible. The child, still strapped into the chair, was hidden from view although a pool of blood was spreading from beneath. A cry of pain for the child welled in Vicky’s throat, but she bit back the tears; now was not the time to fall apart.
As people began to gather their senses and run, hobble, or crawl for the exits, a figure appeared at the doorway of Greg’s coffee shop. Startled, staring out from the doorway, face and hair covered in dust, was the young red-headed woman.
“Anna!” Vicky rasped. “Anna!”
The woman stared in Vicky’s direction, just as another boom rocked the mall.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As Vicky took hobbling steps from the shop, Anna leant up against the café’s doorway, her mind unable to comprehend what had happened. Glass crunched at her feet as she stared out. Somewhere at the periphery of her awareness another boom shook the building and the doorframe vibrated beneath her hand. A man ran past, startled eyes staring ahead. Blood trickled at his temple, cutting through the dust on his face. An older woman held a younger one, both seemed confused, but were heading in the same direction as the man. Slumped against the far wall, the young mother lay dead. The upturned buggy she had been pushing swimming in a pool of blood. Anna’s head thumped, but she fought against the pain and confusion. Something had exploded. Her thinking cleared. She had stepped into the café walked through to the area of seating at the back to find Jem when an enormous boom shook the entire place and she had been thrown against the wall. Everything became black in that moment, and now, seconds, maybe minutes later, she stared from the doorway and into the mall’s avenue.
Jem!
She turned back into the café. The man, Callum, was picking himself up from the floor, using the counter at the till to pull himself up. Blood stained his cropped blond hair and trickled down his face. With ears ringing, Anna walked past him to the area of seating at the back of the café. An old couple sat staring at one another, both with startled expressions. A young mother sat at another table, her toddler screaming in the buggy beside her. As Anna scoured the area, the woman seemed to gather her senses and rose to leave, grasping the buggy’s handles. There was no sign of Jem.
“Jem!”
As Anna crouched to look beneath the tables, the pounding in her head making her unsteady, the door to the ladies’ toilets opened and Jem stepped out. With a cry of relief, Anna pushed her way through skewed tables and chairs to wrap the startled girl in her arms.
“What’s happened? There was a bang and then the lights flickered.”
“Explosion,” Anna replied, picking up on some of Jem’s words. With a protective arm around her shoulder, Anna guided her sister towards the exit, thankful that she was unhurt. At the counter, Callum held his hand to his head. Blood seeped from between his fingers.
“That man’s hurt!” Jem said, tightening her grip around Anna’s fingers. “Oh ... my ... God! What happened, Anna? Did a bomb go off?”
Anna hadn’t considered a bomb, her only thoughts had been to find Jem. “Maybe.” There had been multiple explosions. Did that mean there had been multiple bombs? “Some sort of explosion.”
“It was a bomb, wasn’t it! A bomb. We have to get out of here. What if they’re still here? Oh, my God! Anna! What if terrorists are out there with guns. Are they going to shoot us?”
Anna’s heartrate had climbed with the pitch in Jem’s muffled voice. “Calm down, Jem,” she wrapped an arm across her shoulder and led her to Callum. Blood flowed down the side of his face, wetting his hand and soaking his sleeve. “You’re hurt.” She grabbed a wad of serviettes from the counter and offered them. “Blood,” she said. “You’re bleeding.” He only nodded. Taking the initiative, she placed the wad over the blood, then manoeuvred his hand to hold them in place.
“We should leave,” Callum mumbled.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes, I think so. It’s just my head that hurts.”
Glass crunched underfoot as they stood in the doorway. The young mother remained slumped against the far wall, the buggy on its side. Jem stiffened beside her. “Don’t look, Jem,” she said. The space was a cacophony of noise; people shouting, crying, some screaming. To the left, further along the hallway, a woman knelt over a man who lay on his back in the middle of the walkway, shoppers ran around the pair, ignoring the woman’s cries for help. To the right the woman with stiffly curled grey hair and old-fashioned coat lay in a broken heap. Anna swallowed down the scream lodged at the base of her throat. The woman was dead, obviously blown apart. Grey objects were scattered across the floor and, as she stepped out of the doorway, she realised they were nails, bolts, and screws. It took a moment before she realised that they had probably come from the bomb that had been detonated only seconds after she had stepped into the safety of the café. It could have been her laying broken and bleeding!
As they passed the woman, Anna tried not to look at the damage to her body, but it only took a second for the image of her face to become imprinted in Anna’s mind. The wig had slipped to reveal an almost hairless pink scalp. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, but one had been destroyed by the blast.
“This way to the exit,” Callum said leading them forward.
“Anna!”
Startled to hear her name being called, Anna turned to look. The police officer who had confronted her at the ATM was staring straight at her. The exit was about fifty feet behind her.
“It’s that copper again!”
“Is there another way out?”
Still holding the pad of serviettes to his head, Callum led them into a store. Like the doors and windows at the café, the shop’s plate glass front had been shattered in the blast. Display mannequins seemed to be crawling from the windows.
“There’s doors to the outside on the
other side of the store,” he said as he began to weave through the carousels of clothes, picking up his pace as the policewoman called ‘Anna!’ again. “This way!” Callum led them further into the store. The shop front and exit to the street were visible across the racks and carousels of clothes. The plate glass windows still intact. A quick look behind, confirmed Anna’s fears; the woman was approaching the shop. She appeared to be in pain, her leg obviously injured, but the look on her face was one of gritted determination. Anna wanted to shout at her to leave them alone.
Without warning, the lights failed, and the store was plunged into a grey light. Jem yelped.
“Shh!”
“Anna!”
“Go away,” Jem hissed.
“Just stay low and go towards the door.”
“It’s dark!”
“There’s enough light. Just go forward.”
With only feet to go before they reached the exit, the room darkened, and Jem screamed. Veering from the road, and heading straight for the store, was a bus.
It bumped over the low central reservation, hurtled across the road, and mounted the pavement. In those seconds, Callum grabbed her jacket, pulling her with intense force to the side. As she stumbled, the bus crashed into the double doors. Glass shattered, and the doors buckled then gave way. Anna scrabbled to the left as glass sprayed across her back, pulling Jem with her. The bus driver gripped the steering wheel, eyes staring, jaw slack.
For several seconds, Anna crouched with Jem, Callum’s fingers still gripping her jacket. The policewoman stood at the store’s entrance. The bus driver continued to stare whilst behind him passengers gathered. A woman leaned in to speak to him, and then the bus doors opened. The passengers began to filter from the bus.
Anna pulled Jem down as she tried to stand. Between a wall lined with shoes, and a rectangular display of clothes, they were hidden from the policewoman’s view.
“Was that another bomb?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“We can go out through the window,” Callum said gesturing to the now empty window frames at the front of the store as the bus driver staggered from the bus.
Remaining in a crouched position, Anna shuffled to the window. The bus filled the space in front of the doors, but there was a big enough gap for her to easily step through. She followed Jem, then waited for Callum, taking a quick look back into the shop. The policewoman stood at the entrance to the shop, her silhouette in relief against the backdrop of the mall’s hallway still brightly lit by the natural light flooding in through the windows in its atrium roof.
“This way,” Callum urged with a tug at Anna’s sleeve. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The scene that greeted Anna as she stepped through the empty window filled her with confusion. Cars sat stalled in all four lanes of the main road that ran past the shopping centre and on through the town. Others sat at skewed angles, filling the junction that managed the feed of cars. Its traffic lights were out. One of the cars lay on its side. A group of people had gathered round and were pulling the passenger door open and helping an older child out over what had become a six-foot wall.
Callum retrieved his mobile from his back pocket and thumbed the screen. “Damn!”
“Did a bomb do this, Anna?” Jem asked taking in the chaos of stalled and crashed cars.
She scanned the scene, pondering the question, her head still buzzing. “I guess it could have.”
“My phone’s dead,” Callum stated. “What about yours?”
“I don’t have one-”
“Some girls stole our phones!”
Callum eyed Anna for a moment as though waiting for confirmation.
“It’s true,” Anna said. In the chaos that had followed her visit to the ATM she had completely forgotten about the attack in the park. “We were attacked by a group of girls in the park. They took our phones and all my money.”
“Bitches!” he muttered. “Tell me about them later,” he demanded with authority. “Dominic will know who they are. We’ll get your phone and money back.” Anna experienced a flicker of hope, feeling drawn to the man’s confidence. Surrounded by carnage, Callum’s certainty was compelling. He frowned and scanned the area. “Where is Dominic?”
“The guy who was talking to those schoolgirls in the mall?”
For a second their eyes locked, then his flitted away. “Yeah,” he replied, and quickly changed the subject. “What the hell has happened?”
“Maybe the traffic lights went out, like the ones the mall, and that’s why the cars crashed?”
Callum scanned the area. “That would explain the traffic stopped at the junction, but not the cars further down the road. Look,” he said pointing to where the road curved up and over a bridge, bending out of sight between an avenue of trees, and a row of huge Victorian houses set back from the road. The massive trees were the only barrier between their once private gardens and the busy road. An ugly, brutalist, office block sat on the other side. “The traffic’s stopped all the way round.”
“Maybe it was a power cut that caused it all? Maybe that’s why there were the explosions too—something shorted. I don’t know, maybe a gas leak. You hear stories like that where a house explodes because of a gas leak.” She said this more in hope than belief.
He mumbled about blackouts not stalling cars as he checked his mobile again. “Phone’s still not working!” He scanned the area, the deep frown returning. “And so is his.” He gestured to a man standing at the open door of a black BMW, stabbing at his phone then swiping at the screen with irritated movements. Shaking his head in dumbfounded annoyance, he replaced the mobile in his jacket pocket. The scene was repeated among the crowd: a young girl held a phone to her ear then angrily stabbed at the screen, an older woman, obviously crying, stared at her mobile with incomprehension, a teenage boy stared dumbly at his. Callum moved to the pavement, urging Anna and Jem to follow.
The scene was bizarre and difficult to comprehend; cars filled the road, some bumper to broken bumper, some crashed into the central barrier, or mounted on the grassy slope that curved around this side of the shopping centre. The bus that had crashed into the shop disappeared into the empty frame as though being devoured. People milled around, some crying, some arguing, gesticulating their anger with fingers jabbing at their damaged cars. Other simply stared with dumb confusion at their mobiles. Anna watched as one driver slipped back into his seat. From his angry thump of the steering wheel it was obvious the car wouldn’t start. Anna shivered and her breath billowed white. Jem stood close. Callum, still holding the serviettes to his head, turned in slow circles, taking in the carnage that surrounded them.
“A bomb didn’t do this.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t, not for sure, but it doesn’t add up. There was an explosion inside the mall, but the traffic lights are out, my phone’s not working, nor is hers.” He pointed to the tearful woman still stabbing at her phone. “And his car won’t start.” He gestured to the man in the black BMW. “And there’s something stopping traffic down that road too, so it’s not just these lights that are out.”
“What is it then?”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “I know this sounds crazy, but I think we’re under attack.”
“Terrorists?”
“Maybe, but did you see the news earlier?”
“No, well, yeah, they said that we are at war with Iran.”
Callum nodded. “Maybe this is part of it?”
Nothing seemed real. “... Maybe.”
With an arm around her sister, and the cold sinking into her bones, Anna’s attention returned to her need to find a safe place to stay. “Listen, Callum ... thanks for helping us, but we’ve got to go now.” She sounded as awkward as she felt.
“Where?” was his blunt response.
“Well ... I ...” Anna had no answer to that question. Where should they go? She had no money a
nd no way of getting any.
“Come back with me.”
“No, we have to go home.”
“But we can’t go home, Anna! She’ll find us!”
“Who?”
“Shh, Jem!” Anna warned as Callum’s eyes burned into hers. “No one,” she answered. “It doesn’t matter.”
“So, you can’t go home? It’s ok. I get it.”
Anna remained silent, unsure of how much to share with Callum; he may have helped her get away from the woman inside the mall, but he was a stranger after all
“Listen,” he continued. “I have no idea what’s going on with you, but it’s something bad, I can tell. You need to get off the streets. It’s cold, you have nowhere to go, and we could be under attack.”
“Well ...”
“Anna! Let’s go with him. I’m freezing. Please?”
But he’s a stranger! “I’m not sure ...”
“Just come back with me for a cup of tea. We can talk things over. I may be able to help. Maybe I can lend you enough money so that you can get a room for the night?”
She remembered the thick wad of notes in his wallet. “Why would you do that?” Her eyes locked to his, suspicious. “We don’t know you.”
“Sure, I know that, but girls shouldn’t be out on the streets on their own.” He scanned the streets as though searching for someone. “It’s not safe, especially at night.”
The edge of panic that had been closing in around Anna began to squeeze as Jem tugged at her sleeve. “Please, Anna. Please can we go back to his house. I’m scared out here.”
Chest tightening, but with a sigh of relief she was unable to hide, she said, “Alright, let’s go.”
Under his breath Callum exclaimed “Yes!” and then a woman screamed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Anna turned to the screaming woman, following her gaze into the sky. Hurtling towards them, growing massive within the second that her brain made sense of the scene, a plane, far too low to be safe, was descending at an impossibly steep angle. The woman shrieked. A man bellowed, and then the road came alive with movement as people ran from the huge and hurtling missile.
Dark Winter Series (Book 1): Dark Winter Page 7