“NOT YET!” I choke out the words — half-scream, half-sob. “We have to save them. Please. Just… help me save them!”
Grimly, they do as I say.
My arm muscles are screaming with pain as I begin to pull another woman up on the stage with me. With a numb sort of fascination, I note the blood spattered all across her jacket. I wonder who it belongs to. Whether they’re still breathing. If they were one of the lucky ones.
“Thank you,” the woman gasps as I heave her up.
I glance at the crowd, where a line of others are screaming for aid, and see her hesitate a beat. Guilt flashing in her eyes, she mutters an apology before bolting for safety. I don’t watch her go — I’m already turning back, reaching out for the next set of hands.
My eyes lock with a man in the crowd, the infant in his arms wrapped in a pale pink blanket. It looks so absurdly out of place here. Like finding a child’s toy in a war zone. He lifts her small, swaddled body in to the air, as if to pass her up to me, but before I can take her, I’m jerked backward with brute force. A shriek flies from my mouth as my whole body goes airborne. The world spins upside down as I’m thrown over Riggs’ shoulder like a sack of flour.
“Let me go!” I yell, pounding his back with my fists. “There are more people back there! We have to help them!”
He ignores me, running flat-out toward the back of the stage, where a narrow set of stairs leads down to ground-level. I hear Galizia’s footsteps close behind us.
“Riggs, stop! You have to go back! We can still save them!”
My ragged screams go unanswered.
I can still hear the crowd crying out as we race toward the waiting SUV. I twist my neck, trying to catch one last glimpse of the stage, praying I’ll see the man with that pink bundle in his arms following us to safety.
Instead, my eyes land on the truck — parked in the middle of the square, a dozen bullet holes in its windshield.
It’s finally over,I think vacantly.They’ve stopped it.
Barely a second later, the truck explodes.
I don’t even have time to brace for impact, to cry out, to warn those around me as the mammoth fireball erupts, incinerating everything within its immediate radius in the span of a single heartbeat. A whoosh of heat and sound ripples outward, blasting Riggs clear off his feet — and me with him.
My body sails into the air, a puppet without strings. In the instant before impact, it’s the strangest thing — the only thing I feel is relief.
Maybe dying is for the best.
Because I’d never survive the grief of today.
I’d never be able to live with the things I’ve seen.
My head slams against something hard, and then, blessedly, the world fades into darkness.