“Eoin? Eoin?”
Nothing.
He was gone.
Ten
Eoin
The screech of tires.
Shouting.
Light reflecting off metal and glass.
Curses.
A jarring impact sending vibrations through every bone.
Crunching.
Breaking.
Dizzy.
Falling.
Pain.
The flashes going off in my head were like individual snapshots I didn’t only see, but heard and felt. Each one was barely a second in actual time, but they all seemed like an eternity.
Logically, I knew every minute contained sixty seconds, and every properly run clock counted a second out the exact same way, but experiencing time wasn’t always like that. It changed depending on the circumstances. I knew that from too much experience.
And then I was hurtling back in time.
A loud bang and flying through the air, tumbling, crashing.
Gunfire sending little sparks into the air, the sound echoing, filling my head. It was so loud.
And hot.
Smokey.
My lungs burned, and every breath just made it worse. Burned through my mouth, down my throat, filling my lungs with fire.
The world was hazy, edges blurred. Bodies were shadows and outlines running across my vision. Legs moving, running. The sound of boots on sand and rock.
Loud popping. Gunshots. Semi-automatic. Handguns. Rifles. Automatic. Everything.
An explosion rocked the world, shook the ground.
No, the roof. Not the ground. I was upside down. Blood rushing to my head. I couldn’t move. I could see everything. But I couldn’t move.
My ears were ringing. The world was muffled and loud.
I could see everything.
Bart, lying there with his eyes fixed on the sky. Mouth wide open, as if he’d been screaming. In pain. For his mother. That he didn’t want to die. But he was dead. Neck clearly broken.