Revenger

38

A combination of soap flakes and lighting fluid makes a substance that is both highly combustible and very sticky. It is, in effect, a domestic form of napalm.

An aerosol can of deodorant contains chemicals that react under intense heat to create a violent explosion.

Fine-grade flour is, like icing sugar, a surprisingly explosive substance when suspended in air, which is why history is littered with examples of fatal explosions in flour mills. The principle is very simple. Explosions are intense chemical reactions that require an energy source and a supply of oxygen. Flour and sugar are both powerful fuels, which is why we eat them, and air, of course, contains oxygen. A full packet of tightly packed flour has relatively little contact with the air around it and is thus quite safe. But when every single particle in that bag is individually suspended in air, then the proportions of fuel and oxygen are potentially far more dangerous.

But there is still one more element to add to the mix before anything goes bang: a detonator. And that was provided by the contents of the microwave.

The heating of the aerosol deodorant in the Lion Market microwave set off one explosion that blew open the oven and projected a blazing hot spatter of napalm into the air inside the Lion Market. This in turn detonated a secondary, even more powerful explosion of the flour suspended in the atmosphere.

A deafening blast of white-hot flame ripped through the packed shop. It set light to any flammable materials. Much of the napalm was vaporized immediately by the blast, but the rest stuck to people’s clothes, skin and hair, turning them into human torches. The shock wave from the explosion, travelling at supersonic speeds, tore through the rioters’ bodies, inflicting catastrophic soft-tissue damage. Most critically it induced severe pulmonary contusions, bursting blood vessels and causing a condition known as blast lung, in which victims drown in their own blood as fluids build up in their shattered lungs until breathing becomes impossible. As ways of dying go, it is almost as horrible as being burnt alive.

The blast ripped through the open door into the storeroom, and though its effects were far less devastating than they had been in the shop itself, the deafening sound of the explosion, the flames, the screams and the terrible sight of people tearing at their clothes and their own flesh, desperately trying to pull away the napalm, which stuck to them like burning coal superglued to their bodies, were enough to end any further thoughts of combat or robbery. All that anyone who was lucky enough to be alive and more or less in one piece — temporarily deafened, perhaps, but flame-free and still able to breathe — wanted to do was to get the hell out as quickly as they possibly could.

They scrambled back over the shelves, out into the yard, and retraced the steps that had got them into this earthly hell in the first place. And meanwhile, in the shop, all that could be heard were crackles of flame from a few small fires, moans of pain from those burn-victims who were still able to breathe, and the gurgles, wheezes and desperate, futile gasps of dying looters being killed by their own blood.