Joe Victim

Chapter Sixty-Six

The explosion is almost ear shattering. There is no fire, just smoke and glass and twisted pieces of metal. The car is picked up like a child’s toy, and just as casually dismissed like a child’s toy-it’s launched three feet high and a couple of feet to the left before landing back on its wheels. The shock wave blows all the windows out. Bits of flesh hit the interior like paintballs exploding across a wall. People start screaming. Some are running from the blast, others are caught in the shock wave and thrown outward, the explosion an epicenter. Cut faces and cut clothes and a few people aren’t running at all, a few of them are lying on the road surrounded by, and impaled by, shrapnel. The side mirrors go flying, bits of tire, nuts and bolts and screws, and engine components are tossed in all directions, along with pieces of bone and tenderized body parts.

Schroder’s shoulders climb up around his jaw in expectation of an impact. Kent twists in her seat and looks behind her. Schroder keeps driving, glancing into the mirror back at the explosion. It came from a car that was only twenty or thirty yards behind them. A decoy explosion. Something to shut down the intersection and fill the streets with scared and panicked people.

“Oh my God,” Kent says. “Somebody was driving that car.”

“Oh fuck,” Schroder says.

“I know, I know,” she says.

“She was in my car,” he says.

“What?”

“She was in my fucking car!” he shouts, and he slams on the brakes. “Get out, get out,” he yells, taking off his seat belt.

“What-”

“Get the fuck out,” he shouts, and he opens his door and so does Kent. People are running toward them. Away from them. In every direction. He slams the door closed behind him, hoping it will help contain the shock wave and blast that Melissa is going to use to help her escape.

“Get back,” he screams. “Everybody get back.”

“Carl-”

He looks back over the car. “Fire some shots in the air,” he shouts. “Get-”

His car explodes right in front of him. He sees Kent ride the shock wave ten yards through the air, where she is thrown into a parked car, where she smashes the windshield and enters it. Only it looks like twenty yards because he’s riding the shock wave in the opposite direction. A lot of people are. Twisted metal. Smoke. Flesh and blood.

Then darkness.