And then a strange unearthly silence. After the boom and searing flash and shockwave had died away, it settled over the wreckage of broken bodies and falling debris, illuminated by a single stuttering fluorescent tube hanging crazily from its bracket. It lasted a couple of heartbeats, this dreadful silence in the flickering semi-darkness. Long enough for the horror of what had happened to sink in, for the brutal fact of it to penetrate the numbed brain of the injured and the dying. Not as bad though, nowhere near, as the screams and moans and cries for help that now went up, a shrill, piercing, endless cacophony of human anguish.
A tongue of yellow flame licked. It lapped up the walls, touched the curtains, turning to orange, and raced upwards in a sheet of bright crimson.
As if this was the signal, the real panic started.
CHAPTER 2
'Come on, Malone, get back in there!'
In a white fury, Dillon wrestled with the big man who had burst from the cubicle, all around them was mayhem, and Malone, even after swearing the pub was clear, seemed frantic to save his own skin, pushing Dillon backwards, as he tried to do a runner out the side entrance to the carpark. Dillon screamed at Malone to follow him back into the pub, but Malone was herding the crush of people jamming into the narrow passage, all of them struggling hysterically to get out. His bellowing voice yelling, 'Move… move keep it moving. This is my bloody job, Frank,' and he pushed and half carried out the screaming teenagers, as Dillon gave up on him, and now fought against the tide, pushing bodies aside in a frantic effort to get back inside. His lads were in there – maimed, mutilated, perhaps even dead. His head still rang with the tremendous boom of the explosion, which had sounded in Dillon's ears like a door slamming in the bowels of hell. And then, even worse, the terrible screams and moans and cries for help.