She shook her head.
Stay in the now.
Stay here.
Focus.
Behind Celeste, the café manager stumbled out of the doorway and down the stairs. He turned and stared at the sky. The wind slackened, the air suddenly calm. Screams pierced the eerie silence, distant booms echoing. High above, the head of the mushroom cloud impacted the layer of rain clouds, a halo of clearing around it like a door opening to heaven. It punched a hole through the clouds, then sucked them upward after it.
“Someone call an ambulance!” the woman next to them screamed. She’d pulled the man into her arms, blood soaking the both of them.
“Go help her.” Jess struggled out of her mother’s embrace. “I’m fine, go help the lady.”
“You sure?” Celeste stared into Jess’s eyes.
Her ears still rang, but Jess felt her strength returning. She nodded. “Go, please.”
From the doorway beside the café, a wood-paneled door opened. A man appeared holding an infant in his arms. Glancing left and right, he jumped into the street, then turned and looked up. His wife followed, holding the hand of a young boy. All along the street, doors opened and people streamed out and stared into the sky. Everyone began stumbling back, away from the explosion. They turned and ran.
Jess grabbed her crutches and struggled upright. Unsteadily, she stood, then swung over on her crutches to the woman cradling the man in her arms. Celeste crouched over the man, shielding him from the crowd. Jess leaned over to get a better look. The man’s body convulsed, blood spurting from a shard of glass embedded in his neck. His fingers clawed at Celeste, his knuckles white. He gagged, blood spitting from his mouth.
His grip on Celeste’s shirt slackened.
“What do I do?” Celeste turned to Jess, her face white. “Do you know what to do?”
The man’s arms fell to his sides, his body twitching. Jess knew death throes. “There’s nothing we can do,” she whispered.
“We just got married,” the woman cried, pulling her husband into her, rocking back and forth, a low keening wail rising from her trembling lips.
Another man crashed into the woman, fell onto the husband and tumbled past Jess. Slipping and sliding on the blood, the man stood, wiping blood from his hands. He glanced at Jess and Celeste, then at the dead man, but returned to staring at the sky. Shaking his head but not saying anything, he turned and ran. People streamed by, running, screaming, all of them looking up at the sky.
Jess pulled on her mother’s arm. “We need to go.”
The woman cradled her husband in her arms, rocking back and forth as the sea of people streamed past her. Celeste let go and stood, nodding. Taking one last look, she turned and walked with the flow, reaching to grab Jess.
But Jess stood still.
Her instincts told her to run. Away. To follow the herd. But the first rule of tactical decision making was to follow the plan—unless there was a good reason to deviate. Jess gripped her crutches, felt them dig into her armpits, and steeled herself against Celeste trying to pull her with the crowd. She stared up at the disappearing mushroom cloud, the rain clouds now coming together under it, a pillar of black smoke rising to meet them. Sometimes the right thing to do was the thing that felt wrong.
“Come on, we need to go,” Celeste urged, her voice desperate.
“No,” Jess said from between gritted teeth. She pulled away from her mother. “This way.” She swung forward on her crutches, straight against the flow of the crowd.
“JESS! What are you doing?”
The military Humvee on the corner, the man in the military uniform. That had to be whom her father sent. He said he told the driver to return, and not to leave, not for any reason. She glanced up at the column of black smoke. She hoped that this didn’t exceed any reason for an Italian military attaché.
“Dad sent someone to get us.” Jess pressed through the crowd. “If he’s still there, that’s our best bet on getting out of here.”
“We need to go to the American Embassy!” Celeste screamed. She followed Jess anyway.
“Are you kidding? No way we’ll be getting in there now. And if we weren’t getting out of here by ourselves before, now there’s absolutely no way.” Jess swung forward, swearing and screaming at people to watch where they were going, to get out of her way.
“Are you sure?” Celeste muscled her way beside Jess. She looked into the sky. “Was that a nuclear bomb? Should we be walking toward it?”
Jess shook her head. “It seemed too small for a nuclear blast, as big as it was.” She had firsthand experience with conventional munitions, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure. Small tactical nukes existed. “Five minutes this way, and we can see if the driver is still there. If not, then we can go your way.”