Blood Ties (38 page)

Mum had been right there, exactly where the smoke was coming from. Terror tightened my throat. I had to find her. My eyes were watering from the thick air. It was hard to breathe. I pushed
through the crowds. People were rushing past me, desperate to get out of the market. Injured people, terrified people.

I forced my way past them. The smoke was even thicker as I passed the tattoo stall. The TV was smashed on the ground, the woman from the stall bent over, groaning. I held my hand over my mouth,
choking on the dust. I stumbled, unable to see anything through the smoke. I stopped for a second, trying to make myself focus. The thin, piercing alarm stopped. An announcement sounded, telling
everyone to leave the market.

‘Make your way to the nearest exit. Make your way to the nearest exit.’

I headed left, towards the free food stall. A small fire was burning out of a pile of cables. Shards of plastic crunched under my feet. Everywhere was blood and dust and metal. Hell. A shoe on
its side with a broken heel. A torn poster showing just one side of Roman Riley’s face above the words:
Future Pa—

The smoke cleared slightly. I saw the leaf green of Mum’s coat. Her arm flung out behind her head.

And I knew.

I knew but I couldn’t face it.

‘Mum!’ I yelled, and time slowed down as I moved towards her. ‘Mum!’

Nat

I felt the bomb as much as I heard it, the ground shaking under my feet as I ran. I was on the first floor, at the far end of the market. The explosion had come from below. Two
women on the other side of a trestle table stacked with bottles of half-price toilet cleaner looked up as I passed, their faces echoing my own shock and fear.

Was I too late?

‘Lucas.’ His name came out as a whisper as an alarm pierced the air. I raced to the stairs. A security guard – a different man from the one I spoke to before – was
stopping people from going down. Everyone was shouting. It was pandemonium.

‘I think my brother’s down there,’ I yelled, trying to shove the security guard out of the way.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said, pushing me back.

I swore, forcing my way past him and onto the stairs. I sped down the steps. Smoke rose up from the ground floor. Had Lucas been there when the bomb went off? Fear gripped me. It was impossible
to think. All I knew was that I
had
to find him. I reached the ground floor. Smoke swirled everywhere. People staggered past, covered in dust. Screams echoed in the air, as the alarm
switched to a tannoy announcement urging everyone to leave the market.

I ran past the clothing stalls on the ground floor. The smoke was coming up from the middle aisle near the tattoo stall where I’d seen the girl arguing with her mother. People were
shrieking and moaning, rising like ghosts through the smoke. I elbowed my way through the crowds, past the tattoo stall and around the corner, past splintered wood and twisted metal. A bag of
potatoes lay on its side, the food spilling out. Two middle-aged women were on their knees, scrabbling around in the dirt, picking up potatoes. I reached the Future Party’s food stall and
stopped. A ripped poster of Roman Riley had fallen to the ground. Just beyond it the security guard I’d spoken to earlier lay spreadeagled, face up. The man was motionless, his eyes open but
unseeing. I shuddered.

Please let Lucas not be here.

And then I saw him, just a few metres away. He was lying on his back, his legs twisted awkwardly under him. A woman was bent over his body. I ran over, choking on the acrid smoke that rose up
around me, filling my lungs. The woman pressed her fingers against Lucas’s neck. She was feeling for a pulse.

I dropped to my knees. Around me the alarm, the shouts, the screams, the smoke all faded away.

‘Lucas?’ I leaned closer. There were no marks on Lucas’s face, but his eyes were shut. ‘
Lucas
?’ I turned to the woman. ‘He’s my
brother.’

‘He’s alive. Unconscious, but alive.’ The woman looked at me. ‘I’m a nurse. He’s alive.’

I nodded, trying to take it all in. It was like a scene from a film. Terror and noise everywhere. But Lucas was alive.

A man in a suit was trying to usher people away through the smoke and the dust and the rubble. The nurse shook my arm. ‘I’m going to check on the others,’ she said. ‘Stay
with your brother.’ She hurried away.

An empty plastic bag lay on the ground beside Lucas. I stared down at its ripped handles. I hadn’t found Lucas in time. His eyes were still closed. Around us the dust swirled through the
air. The noise was indescribable: the screams, the screeching alarm. Across the market the girl with the wild, honey-coloured hair was crouched over the woman she’d been arguing with just
moments before. Her mouth was open in an agonising scream.

‘Mum!’ she was crying. ‘
Mum
!’

I couldn’t bear to see her face.

The nurse was with the girl’s mother now. She was shaking her head. I looked back at the security guard. He was still lying prostrate on the ground. I glanced at the girl again. Her hands
were over her mouth.

Firemen appeared. Paramedics. I had no idea how much time had passed since the bomb. My brain seemed to have stopped working.

The shock settled with the dust. A paramedic knelt down beside Lucas and I leaned back to give him room.

I looked around.

Blood in the dust.

The air full of death.

And Lucas there, in the middle of it.

Lucas. My brother. The terrorist.