Going Home - J. C. Laird (the best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

It was the fourth game of the basketball season for the University of New Mexico. The 16,000 seat arena was filled to near capacity when the first explosion detonated on the east side of the structure.

After a muffled ‘thrump,’ a noticeable tremor passed through the great building—a desert leviathan of cement, steel and glass—mortally struck by a monstrous hammer, the vibration somehow more terrifying than the sound itself. A second and third explosion, louder and closer to the northeast and southeast corners of the building, brought the darting basketball players on the court thirty-seven feet below to a standstill. They stood milling about, staring upward in confusion toward the alien sounds high above them.

Jenny was standing on the concourse near the top of the cement stairway of Section S, her descent down to here seat delayed as she looked in bewilderment at the far side of the arena, her cardboard container of hotdogs and cokes forgotten in her hands. Thoughts of David, her date that afternoon, were pushed from her mind.

She knew of the sixty-million-dollar, year-long renovations on the arena and the addition of the luxury suites and club seating overhead; maybe what she was hearing and feeling were the results of a construction accident? Another explosion and the cement shuddered beneath her feet as if in response to another mammoth sledgehammer strike. Jenny’s heart seemed to pause in her chest; her stomach roiled. This was no accident. The word ‘terrorist’ ricocheted through her mind

The cardboard carryall fell to the floor unheeded from trembling hands; her eyes widened in horror as she gaped at a world slowly crumbling—the great leviathan had commenced its death throes.

The entire roof-line opposite her was sagging. Seemingly in slow motion, the second level—holding the luxury suites and club seating—succumbed to gravity and joined the concourse below with a thundering roar, tons of concrete crushing concession stands, an athletic store and everyone on the walkway, as well as the upper ten rows of arena seating and their occupants.

Billowing clouds of cement dust roiled out high over the basketball court below. Then, almost incomprehensibly, the steel-paneled Behlen roof—the vast, protective covering of the immense complex—complete with lighting, acoustical tiling, multi-use duct work and massive, hidden heating and cooling units, began its long fall to the court and stands a hundred feet below, promising to turn the below-ground arena into a gigantic graveyard.

A huge, deafening explosion erupted from somewhere behind Jenny, throwing her into the railing in front of her. Despite the muffled ringing in her ears, she could hear the screams welling up from over 15,000 basketball fans, as the walls and roofing on the other three sides of the arena continued their implosions down onto the either trapped or fleeing occupants of the dying giant.

A massive support column to Jenny’s left cracked with a muted popping sound. A gigantic slab of concrete crumpled onto the concourse to her right, several people disappearing beneath its enormous bulk. It would only be a matter of seconds before the west side of the arena completely collapsed; the well-placed explosives bringing down the walls, roofing and upper story—spelling out in falling debris the fate of those below.

Panicked, shrieking people jammed the concourse, pushing and shoving, trying to escape the horror that even now they didn’t understand. Jenny was on her knees, buckled by the latest blast. She pulled herself back up by the railing and looked down, trying to locate David in the chaos of fleeing, terrified people. Several had fallen; those following climbed and trampled over them. Then she saw him. David, trying to clamber up over the bench seats along with hundreds of others. He looked up from fourteen rows below, saw her and waved her back, away, signaling her to flee.

Jenny shouldered her way into the yelling, screaming mob on the concourse, managed to maintain her balance and fought her way towards one of the exits. Her mind registered daylight shining into the once enclosed arena from the slowly opening roof; huge sections of the former ceiling had filled the court and seating areas, entombing the two basketball teams and many of their fans.

Support beams failed; steel girders groaned and twisted as the blasts started a domino effect, weakening one area and overloading another. The upper level on the west side began to collapse, hastening the fall of what was left of the steel roofing high above.

Jenny was knocked to the floor by the terrified crowd as they all fought for survival. She crawled to a wall near a ‘Domino’s Pizza’ concession stand and pulled herself up. There was one final explosion, erasing any hope that the arena’s west side would somehow survive.

The blast threw Jenny to the floor again. All her numbed ears could discern was a dull roar, her vision blurred by tears and thick cement dust, the rotten egg smell of gas and burning insulation assaulting her nose….

She regained her footing just as the raw electrical wires ignited the ruptured gas line; the blast tossed her into the debris behind her. Jenny felt a stabbing pain in her back. Then nothing.

#

It had been over a minute since the last explosion; the dust and smoke was thick, despite a now open roof and several breached walls. Occasional rumbles and crashes from shifting and settling debris, the crackling of fires and the moans and cries from the injured and dying—many buried in the rubble—combined to form a continuous background chorus of pain. Amid this shrouded carnage, silhouettes and voices in the eerie gloom were making their way through the jigsaw of broken obstacles toward hoped for exits.

On the concourse level near a destroyed pizza stand and kitchen, one of these shadows separated itself from those around it. Grim faced and dust covered, a dark-haired young man neared a steel girder that had fallen at an angle, now propped up by the remnants of an interior wall.

Entering the stillness under this partial shelter, Michael stopped and stared at the motionless body of a young woman. She was sitting against a broken slab of concrete beneath the beam, her jean-clad legs splayed out in front of her; her cherry colored sweatshirt now two-toned—the lower half a darker red—soaked with blood. But the tear tracks on her pale, dusty cheeks belied her death. That and a slight twitch from her sneakered left foot.

A feeble breeze was attempting to dissipate some of the acrid fog wafting through the immediate area. Michael knelt next to the woman. She was a pretty girl with dark hair and a pale, peaches and cream complexion. Eyes closed, chin resting on her chest, she could well have been sleeping.

That impression was contradicted, not only by the blood, but by the iron rod protruding from her body below her right breast. She wasn’t just sitting against the broken concrete; she had been impaled upon it. She had been thrown against the damaged wall and skewered by a section of quarter-inch thick, iron reinforcing rod. Somehow, she was still alive.

Her eyelids fluttered open. She looked up and stared at him with chestnut-brown eyes confused and clouded with pain. “Help me,” she whispered. “Get it out.”

Surprised, his heart leaped into his throat. He glanced at the six inches of iron rebar jutting from her body. “I’m…ah…I’m not a doctor, but I know that if I pulled you off that… you’d bleed to death before I could even get you out the door, let alone to a hospital. The internal injuries…”

“No…no,” she interrupted. “Under me.” Wincing, she bent her left leg up, her hand dropping to the floor next to her left hip. “Sitting on it…hurts.”

Michael’s handsome face went blank, dark-brown eyes questioning. Then his face flushed and grew hot as he realized the problem and what she wanted. A jagged chunk of cement was wedged beneath her and she wanted it removed. He stammered, “But I…it’s…it’s…”

“Please…it hurts.” She tried shifting her lower body slightly, moving the weight from her left hip to the right. Of course, the metal shaft transecting her chest failed to move. She screamed as the immobile iron bar inflicted even more damage inside her battered body.

Her agonized shriek spurred Michael into action. Gingerly working his hands beneath her tight jeans, he managed to work the uneven piece free and tossed it to the side. He plopped down next to her, his back to the wall and breathing heavily, not only from tension and exertion but —surprisingly, considering the world around him—an unexpected embarrassment.

“Thank you, that was hurting almost as much as this…” She looked down at the glistening-red, iron re-bar. The trajectory of the alien, metal spear passing through her was slightly downward from rear to front; blood was sluggishly coursing along the metal shaft and dripping from the end, the droplets almost like tears slowly being shed by her body.

Real tears were tracking down her cheeks, mixing with streaks of black mascara, marring her pale complexion. The young woman grimaced as a liquid cough racked her, followed by a long, drawn-out groan as her body shifted again on the impaling spit within her. A pink, frothy bubble formed at one corner of her mouth, burst, the blood tainted spittle running down her chin.

Michael felt helpless. “I’ll be right back; I want to get something,” he said. He began to push himself up, but she grabbed his arm, her nails digging in painfully.

Her expression was pleading, her eyes begging. “Please don’t leave me.”

He held her hand and smiled. “I’m not leaving you; I’m just going over there.” He indicated the demolished concession area nearby. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” She let go of his hand; he thought he detected a flicker of a smile in response to his feeble attempt at humor.

Michael picked his way through the razed and rubble strewn area, bypassing the partially buried bodies of two concession workers and detouring around a small, smoldering fire. A little farther and he found what he wanted—the sink and wash area—now crumpled like aluminum foil by a huge I-beam. Water had spread out over the floor from broken water lines, mixing with the blood and dust. Michael located two towels, soaked them and headed back.

He could smell the smoke from fires, hear the cries of the injured and trapped, see the moving shadows of the ‘walking wounded’ through the slowly wafting haze of smoke and dust. Sunlight, attempting to dissipate this miasma through the open roof and ravished walls, cast a surreal glow on the death and destruction below. He choked back a rising surge of despair.

Michael knelt next to his mortally wounded charge. “I told you I’d be back. Glad you decided to stick around.”

Her expression was the definition of gratefulness. She smiled weakly. “Very funny.”

He put one of the towels around the back of her neck, carefully rested her head against the wall and began to gently clean her face with the other. As he continued his ministrations her soft brown eyes were focused on him in abject appreciation. He lightly wiped the blood from her lips and the corners of her mouth. “You know, since we’re on a fairly intimate basis…” he could feel himself blushing again...“all things considered—I think I should at least know your name.”

“Jennifer…Jennifer Peterson, but all my friends call me Jenny,” she said. She looked at him expectantly.

“Michael, but