A deafening boom was accompanied by everything moving, and then a wall of heat and just sheer force slammed into Shayna and threw her back and to the ground.
She blinked and groaned as debris rained down around her, some of it on fire. Her ears rang and her head spun and her arms and face burned in a million tiny places.
What just happened?
Her back and head protested as she forced herself into a sitting position on the street, the world still a tilt-a-whirl.
Time slowed to a crawl and Shayna couldn’t believe what she saw.
A wall of flames towered over the garden-style apartments that sat back about a hundred feet from the street. One whole part of the building had collapsed. People were running and screaming. A few people peered out of second- and third-floor windows and waved for help.
Dear God.
She tried to shake away the fog clouding her head and glanced down to see that her clothes were covered in tiny pieces of glass and wood and metal…and that a two-inch piece of metal had lodged in her right forearm. Dozens of other tiny cuts explained why her skin burned so bad. But otherwise she was fine.
But what about…
On a whimper of realization, she cried, “Andy? Andy, are you okay?”
Shayna forced herself to her feet and found him flattened against the side of her car. The force of his impact had been hard enough to cause a dent above the rear tire.
She went to her knees beside him. “Jesus, Andy, talk to me.”
“Are the kids okay?” he rasped.
Her throat went tight. “I…I don’t know. I think they should be. They were far enough away.”
He nodded on a groan and dragged his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call 9-1-1.” He grasped her wrist. “And you…you need to do your job.” His eyebrows rose meaningfully, asking her if she understood as he pressed the phone to his ear and started speaking to the dispatcher.
The words hit her almost as hard as the blast wave.
Holy shit, he wanted her to photograph this.
Shayna rose so fast that it made her dizzy, but she braced on the still-open trunk of her car until she could reach her bags. Her mind was racing but she knew what she needed to do.
She fished a tripod out of one bag along with a charging cell and her phone…where was her phone? She finally found it ten feet away where it’d apparently been blown out of her hand. The screen was cracked, but otherwise it worked.
She pressed a number in her contacts and put the phone to her ear. “Rose, it’s Shayna. Andy and I just witnessed an explosion in an apartment complex across from the Northeast Rec Center. Can you get me access to the Gazette Facebook page? I can stream the scene live.”
“Give me two minutes. Are you guys okay?”
“Okay enough. Hurry, Rose.” They hung up.
Shayna placed the tripod next to Andy, who was trying to get up off the ground. “Are you sure you should do that?” she asked as she adjusted the stand’s height, secured her phone to the clip, and plugged in the battery.
“I’m good. You good?” he asked, not sounding very good at all. Then again, Shayna had a piece of metal sticking out of her arm that she weirdly couldn’t feel. So maybe it was like that for him, too? She nodded. “You’re gonna stream this. That’s smart. What can I do?”
“Rose is going to call back with the login to the Gazette’s Facebook page. Do a live video. And keep an eye on the charging cell. There are three more just like it in my bags. Don’t let it run out of battery.”
“Got it,” he said.
Shayna went for her D850 next. It could fire thirty frames per second and had enough resolution to capture an incredible degree of detail. She put the strap around her neck and started shooting.
The flames. The debris. The running people. The gaping hole where a building once stood that she could just make out through the roiling black smoke and fire.
“I’m going closer,” she said. Sirens wailed in the distance, thank God.
“Wait,” Andy said as her ring tone sounded. It was Rose with the login information. “This is going to get picked up everywhere. Let’s do this like a TV intro.” Shayna immediately moved behind the camera and logged in as Andy moved in front of it. “Just tell me when you’re ready, Shay.”