One palm was skinned raw, but it was whole. He counted his fingers to make sure.

When he tried to stand up, his spinal column felt like a fracturing icicle.

But Guiterrez got up. He had to. His clearing sight showed him the corner he had just passed.

The first thing he saw was the woman on her back. Her mouth was open as if she were screaming. Something very red and uncertain was foaming up from it. Her eyes stared glassily. Guiterrez couldn't tell if she was ejecting blood or viscera or a jellylike combination, but he could tell she was all but dead.

Not far from her, a meaty naked leg lay scorched and smoking.

The silence in the aftermath of the explosion seemed to last a long time. The screaming soon followed it. Guiterrez was running to aid the wounded by the time they were swelling into a chorus of agony.

He found the man who had lost his leg around the corner. A black man. He sat up against a building facade looking down at his missing leg. Guiterrez could tell he was seeing what had happened to him but he wasn't getting it. Not yet. Then without warning, he did. He let out a bellow like a wounded bear.

Guiterrez was barking into his shoulder radio. "Central, send X-ray and fire apparatus. Corner of Eighth and Thirty-fourth."

The Dodge pickup was on fire. The driver behind the wheel didn't have any head. He didn't have much of anything from the shoulders down. A monster might have taken a bite out of him.

If it was a car bomb that had done this, Guiterrez realized, it wasn't the pickup.

Other cars were shattered and broken. One was flung over on its side.

Whatever the bomb was, it had been big.