“They’re so low,” said the biker gal. “Whatever happened must be close.”
A third news chopper chased after the others. This one flew low enough to throw grit into David’s eyes. The biker gal coughed and hocked phlegm onto the blacktop.
At that instant, something exploded on the far side of the beltway. The sound was like a crack of thunder, only David could feel it like an earthquake in the ground, radiating up his legs. A moment later, a black column of smoke rose up on the horizon. People started pointing and shouting.
“Jesus,” David muttered.
“Jesus is right,” said the biker.
A helicopter appeared in the vicinity of the smoke. Someone asked where it was coming from and someone else said it was too far away to tell.
“It was a bomb,” said the biker. “Done my time with the marines. I know what a fucking bomb sounds like.”
David could only shake his head and watch as the column of black smoke was slowly blown westward on the breeze.
Once the large white vehicles had exited the beltway, and as the sirens began to fade, traffic started to limp along again. David nodded at the guy and his biker gal and the guy patted him on the shoulder—they had shared some brief and confusing camaraderie, it seemed—and then he hustled back to the Bronco. More horns blared. Where did all these assholes expect people to go?
Back behind the Bronco’s steering wheel, he geared it out of Park and eased forward no more than a couple of inches. The car in front of his—a sea-foam green Prius with a University of Maryland sticker on the rear windshield—seemed hesitant to make a move.
David peered out the side window again. The woman in the Subaru was frantically checking her mirrors. Clutching the steering wheel, her knuckles were white as bone. David glanced in the backseat and was startled to find the kid in the car seat looking back at him through the rear window. The kid was maybe four or five, too damn big to still be facing backward in a car seat, and he had a fresh summer crew cut. A black slick of blood trickled down from the kid’s left nostril, coursed over his lips, and had been smeared in a bright crimson streak along his chin. The kid’s eyes were strangely unfocused, the pupils too big, the whites a canvas of broken blood vessels. The irises themselves seemed to dance as if floating on the surface of rippling water. Yet David knew the boy was staring right at him.
Jesus, he thought, looking back at the frantic mother. Her panic seemed to be a result of the commotion on the road and the black smoke that still clung to the horizon, not because of the child in her backseat. He wondered if she even knew the kid was sick. Had the kid been facing forward instead of backward, she might have caught the poor kid’s reflection in the rearview mirror, but as it was—
The car behind him blasted its horn and someone shouted at him to step on the fucking gas. At the same moment, the Subaru bucked forward then sped off to join the rest of the traffic. David watched it go, noting the vanity plates— BUSYMOM—and the stick-figure family decals on the rear window, which showed she had a husband, two other kids, and a cat at home. The husband stick figure swung a golf club while the mom wielded a tennis racket.
Jesus, he thought again, his heart racing. It seemed the only thing he was capable of thinking at the moment. Jesus Christ Almighty.
The asshole behind him laid on his horn again. David rolled down his window, flipped the guy the bird, then shoved his foot down on the accelerator.
He arrived home two hours later than he should have, sweaty and unnerved. He realized he was speeding through his neighborhood at twice the speed limit when he reached the turn onto Columbus and he nearly lifted two tires off the ground. He slowed to a cool gallop until the Bronco jerked to a stop in the driveway.
“Kath,” he said, coming into the house. His voice cracked.
Ellie appeared at the far end of the hallway. Her expression was one of confusion and fear, a mixture of emotions David so rarely saw on his daughter’s face.
“What happened?” he said.
“The news,” Ellie said. She pointed toward the living room. “Mom’s watching it now on TV.”
In the living room, Kathy was parked on the edge of the sofa staring at the television. The volume was turned way up, and the image on the screen showed a stricken male reporter standing in front of a crisscross of yellow police tape. David could tell Kathy had been crying.
“What happened?” David said.
“Explosions,” Kathy said. “Bombs.”
“Where?”
“One in Towson. One in downtown Baltimore.”
“I heard one. I was stuck in traffic, saw trucks on the beltway. There was an explosion and there was smoke in the distance.”
“It’s bad,” Kathy said. Her lower lip trembled. “The one in Towson was a day-care center or something.”
David shook his head in disbelief. Ellie appeared at his side.
“The other was a hospital. Hopkins.”