The 4th Bomb

A strange force engulfed him.
Bits of window frame and vulcanised rubber strips smacked the back of his head as he went sprawling forward through the air. Many things entered his consciousness in an instant.
It was as if time itself yawned.
Out of the corner of his eye thousands of disintegrated fragments glinted caught by a shaft of light.
They glistened for a moment before falling like fading stars as gravity intervened.
His hands and knees bore the brunt of the impact becoming encrusted with shattered granules as he embraced the floor.
His face contorted in a grimace and pressed down, as low as was humanly possible where he remained for a few seconds until the roar gave way to an eerie silence.

Once the roar had ceased Daniel tentatively opened an eye and lifted his head a fraction.
To his left he heard the sound of clambering steps. It was the bus driver, the only one to react faster than him after the explosion, getting off and murmuring Hail Mary’s on seeing what had become of his bus. Daniel lifted his head peeking warily to where the blast had emanated.
The back of the bus had taken on a totally different form.
It was now shrouded in a darkness permeated by three pairs of eyes that stared out at him, all with the same look of fear and incredulity.
The three females huddled, writhing together on the buses floor, each trying to slide beneath the other for safety.
Their mouths were aghast with silent inhaled screams.
Their widened eyes glared at him as if imploring him to provide them with some sort of explanation.
The eerie silence that had descended began to fill with the sound of faint whimpers that escalated in tandem with their rising sense of dread.

Keeping his chin pressed to the floor Daniel crawled forward and peered cautiously through the buses centre doors that were now jutting awkwardly outwards.
Scattered amongst tangled pieces of metal, plastic and splintered bus parts, he could make out what looked like a discarded body lying motionless in a crumpled heap in the gutter. Even as this horrifying realisation ingrained itself in the recesses of his mind, the terror still seemed somehow distant.
His mind raced through a course of strategies on a tidal wave of energy that surged through him, overriding his emotions and influencing his actions.
Crawling over to his right through the sea of shattered glass, the front door allowed a clearer view outside.
He could make out some black railings, a doorway, cover!
He wavered a moment as some grim variables passed fleetingly through his mind, a secondary device, a black man running away from a bomb scene, a marksmen’s shot.
He used the moment’s hesitance to summon a deep breath and 10 seconds after the explosion had determined a course of action.
Fragments of glass showered everywhere as he leapt out and through the thin smoky haze that gently dispersed upwards from the twisted wreck.