Brian Freeman - Marathon

And so did Joni. Wade’s wife. Ex-cheerleader. Joni had always been the ultimate proof of what life could bring a short, scrawny, C-average kid who knew how to work his butt off. She waved at him and whistled, and her blond hair bounced, and so did everything else. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Wade! Wade! Wade!”

“Cross the line! Cross the line!”

That was all he had to do, but Wade wasn’t moving. He’d stopped. His limbs became rubber. He bent over, his hands on his thighs. Mouth open, panting, he stared at the finish line. He stared at Joni, Travis, and Shelly, wildly waving him on. Dozens of others in the crowd took up the cheer.

“Cross the line! Cross the line!”

But he couldn’t move. His heart beat crazily. His chest heaved as he tried to suck in a breath, but tightness grabbed his ribs in a choke hold. He swayed and crumpled to one knee. He grabbed his wrist. The world spun.

The finish line teased him, with the race clock ticking off second after second after second. He was so close.

“You can’t stop now!” someone said, and he realized it was his own voice. He’d come too far to quit now. He staggered to his feet and took another step toward the end of the race.

He was almost there.

Almost there.

It was 12:32 p.m.

@runnerbae81 tweeted:

Oh, shit.

@edbrown_cpa tweeted:

Saw it on the finish line feed. OMG.

@mrrdevlin tweeted:

Something happened at the Duluth Marathon a few seconds ago. Anybody got details?

@talkischeap_mn tweeted:

Got this screenshot before the feed went down. Bad.

126 people retweeted @talkischeap_mn

@sallybrl tweeted:

Bomb.

@luvicecaves tweeted:

My sister lives up there. She says bomb.

@duluthnative55 tweeted:

Sirens going crazy. #marathon

@shirleyctate tweeted:

Still nothing on the news? WTF?

#marathon

@mndude_msp retweeted The Associated Press:

Explosive device detonated near finish line of the Duluth Marathon. Multiple injuries reported. Details to follow.

@kimberlyandjohn_fl tweeted:

Prayers.

#marathon

@asweetsole tweeted:

Anyone killed? Prayers.

#marathon

@duluthcity tweeted:

All residents/visitors asked to remain indoors and away from Canal Park to allow access for emergency responders.

@zenithcityguy tweeted:

Runner friend was picking up her sweat bag when it went off. She thinks several dead. #marathon

@marythechurchlady tweeted:

Lord, when will this madness stop?

#marathon

#prayers

@peteclay_noex tweeted:

Now we get to hear “Don’t leap to conclusions” for a week. Yeah, right.

#marathon

#islamismurder

84 people favorited @peteclay_noex

@dawnbasch tweeted:

Tragedy is no time for political correctness. We all know what this is and who did this.

#marathon

#terrorism

#islamismurder

#noexceptions

1604 people retweeted @dawnbasch

Stride sprinted down Lake Avenue against a wave of hundreds of people pushing back in the opposite direction. As he headed toward the clock tower at the threshold of Canal Park, smoke grew like a giant spider against the dark sky. The stench of sulfur hung in the air. Emergency chatter exploded over the radio. He heard shouts for triage and trauma units at the finish line.

Multiple victims down.

“Everybody out! Everybody out! Clear the area!”

Parents carried children on their backs. Runners pushed seniors in wheelchairs. Some of the crowd headed east toward the lakeshore, some toward the convention center to the west, some toward the streets downtown. A few gawkers lingered, taking photos and video. Stride jerked a hand toward the nearest officers to herd those stragglers away. Where there was one bomb, there could be two. Or more.

Glass crunched under his shoes as he ran the last block, the way thousands of runners had already done today. The entire street was a field of glass. Ahead of him, people tore at the metal barricades lining the street and heaved them into a pile to clear space for the victims. Fallen balloon arches draped across the pavement like multicolored snakes. All the joy of the day had popped like the balloons and morphed into fear.

Stride stopped where it had happened. The blast site. He was outside the Duluth Outdoor Company shop, yards from the finish line. He looked down. The mottled cobblestones were soaked with blood that the light rain couldn’t wash away. Bricks had been torn up and scattered. He saw severed body parts and torn flesh. Dozens of victims lay on the street and sidewalk, some with clean white bones protruding from their limbs. He counted five people who appeared to be fatalities. Others, the lucky ones, sat against the walls of the shops, their faces cut, their clothes shredded, their legs bleeding.

He didn’t have time for emotion, but he couldn’t completely swallow down his anger and sadness. The marathon was a day of oneness for everyone in Duluth, and to have it violated like this made him furious to his core.

Overlapping sirens wailed, drawing closer from the downtown hospitals. Everyone had trained for the worst-case scenario, and with the worst case in front of them, the emergency responders went about their business with dead-serious determination. Police. Marathon workers and volunteers. Firefighters. EMTs who’d been on hand to treat exhausted runners but now were pressed into service as battlefield medics.

Stride grabbed one of his men by the shoulder. The man’s face was dotted like a constellation with pinpoint shrapnel wounds.

“Are you all right? Get yourself bandaged up.”

“I’m fine, sir. Others are worse.”

“Where were you when it went off?” Stride asked.

“Across the street on the hotel side. The force knocked me to the ground.”

“Suicide bomber?”

“I don’t know, sir. With the rain, so many people had bulky coats and slickers. Somebody could have been hiding something, but we didn’t get any warning from the dogs.”

“Okay. Have someone tend to your face.”

“I will.”

Stride added, “Have you seen Serena? My wife?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t.”

Stride’s eyes swept the street. The shop windows for half a block were shattered, and the dark interior of the Duluth Outdoor Company revealed a smoking ruin. Across the street, all the windows in the nearest hotel had been blown out, and he grabbed an EMT to make sure emergency personnel were going door to door inside to check for guests in need of medical attention. He was sure people had been standing at those windows when the bomb went off.

The trees on the street had been sheared of leaves and stripped of bark. They looked naked. Most of the nearby cars in the hotel parking lot had been damaged by the impact of the blast. Car alarms blared through the still air, like wailing puppies who’d been left alone. Six feet away from him, Stride saw an EMT crouched over a tattooed blonde in the street. The woman wasn’t moving; her blue eyes were fixed. The EMT looked up at Stride, and the man shook his head.

Dead.

Not far away, another woman awakened from the blast and screamed as the pain caught up to her brain. Her legs were a mess of blood, bone, and tissue. Stride felt a wave of anger again, hard and deep.

He heard Maggie on the radio over his headset.

“We’re evacuating the entire route,” she told him, “but nearly everyone bolted as word spread through the crowd. Buses are en route to pick up the runners. I’ve got people driving the course to make sure we don’t have any other devices left behind.”