A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [69]
A blast from a factory whistle caused Innes to glance up. Two streets away, a tram stopped. A woman on a bicycle was passing just under his window.
A brilliant, blinding radiance, a flash of light brighter than anything Innes had ever seen, obliterated everything beyond the glass and had the effect of a blow to the face. In one fluid movement, Innes dropped the papers, raised his arm to shield his eyes, and turned his back to the window.
Innes heard a low rumble, an explosion of great magnitude, and then the sound of glass shattering. He arched his back against the pain—he was being shot—and was blown through the air. He heard the screeching of metal and felt his clothes being torn from his body. In a protective gesture, Innes tried to keep his arms over his head.
He felt a great sucking wind of such ferocity, he thought he might lose his limbs. He was aware of movement, of twisting in the air. He hit what seemed to be a vertical wooden beam and fell. His shoulder took the brunt. He lay stunned and lost consciousness.
When he came to—a minute later? five minutes later?—his nostrils were clogged with dust. For one panicky moment, Innes was certain he was suffocating. For how long had he been unconscious?
He coughed. He blew his nose. He tried to stand, but he couldn’t. What had happened? Where was he? He couldn’t remember.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was both outside and inside a building he didn’t recognize. It was as though he had been put through to another world, a hellish place covered with dust. Not ten feet from where he was sitting, the floor had buckled, its wooden boards jagged edged. The air was thick with smoke. The wall next to him was bent inward at an impossible curve that Innes thought could not hold another second. Through a blown-out window, he saw that he had landed on an upper story of a home. Not a house at all, Innes thought, surveying large cones of cotton and wool that had been tossed into a jumble. A textile factory?
Innes looked above him. The entire roof was missing.
For long minutes, Innes heard no sound. It was as though the world had simply stopped.
He could remember a flash of light. Before that, a fire.
He felt a biting pain in his back. He reached to the place where he was hurt and cut his finger on a shard of glass. A splinter had hit him in the back just below the shoulder bone. Removing a sock from his foot—his trousers and shoes were inexplicably gone—he padded his fingers with the sock and tried again to reach the splinter of glass. He pulled it out and flung it, pressing the sock to the wound.
What in God’s name had happened?
He remembered the Frasers then. He thought of Hazel. Had he been blown out of the Frasers’ home? And, if so, where were they?
Innes reached out with his foot, trying to snag a cone of rag wool. The movement inadvertently pushed the cone away. Innes darted forward with his hand and snatched it, bringing it back onto his lap. He could feel the blood running from the wound on his back and soaking his undershirt. With speed, Innes pressed his other sock up against the wound and tied a length of the rag wool around his body, pulling as tightly as he could without breaking the wool. He must get himself to hospital. He had no idea how deep the wound was.
Oddly, he had little pain, though he was aware now of the cold. He scanned his small corner of the floor that was still intact, looking for a garment of any sort. All this wool and no clothing. He had an image of his mother knitting. A woman from below screamed, a sound that chilled Innes and