A FLASH OF LIGHT lit the night sky outside the windows of the Cronins' house a half mile away as the sound of the detonation thumped the air.
Boooooommmmmmm......
The shock waves then hit causing the floor to shake, the walls to tremble and the windows to rattle in their frames.
“Holy Mother of God! What was that?” Maureen exclaimed as she leapt from her chair by the fire and ran to the window. Sinead, her daughter, who had been ironing in the kitchen, was close behind her.
In the lane, a mile or so off, chaos reigned. The mine, laid only hours before had detonated as the armoured vehicle ran over it; the explosion rebounding through the hills like heavy artillery. A giant fireball marked the spot where the armoured car had once been. The soldiers within and the vehicle had all disintegrated in unison. Lives had been eradicated in milliseconds. The men's bodies were destroyed before any feelings could be registered.
Hedgerows bordering the lane were scythed away in the explosion. The more durable of the trees remained, brutally lacerated and shredded while the weaker ones were uprooted and discarded. Trees and shrubbery alike were indiscriminately denuded and raped by the tempest as it deployed debris in a wide area. Whilst the men inside the vehicle were blown to pieces, the men outside in the lane were luckier. Their bodies remained intact, as they were lifted with the blast and carried through the air. They were then dumped indiscriminately on the ground like pieces of rubbish that had been discarded as an afterthought.
Shaun landed unconscious in the remains of a hedge, which helped to cushion his fall. The captain was less fortunate, however. Just before being swept away in the shock wave, a sliver of metal on its upward trajectory had penetrated his right cheek, traversed behind his eyes, and exited above his left ear. Deposited unceremoniously at the bottom of a bank at the side of the lane, the soldier landed half in and half out of a drainage ditch; his lower body and legs submerged in water. Pieces of vehicle and body parts rained down merrily around both men. The engine block landed on top of a bank, teetered for a few seconds on the brink and then toppled down to the bottom where the captain’s body lay. It came to rest on his right thigh where it sizzled with a prolonged hiss as the water from the ditch cooled it; the red-hot metal searing deep into his flesh.
Meanwhile, a short distance away, the sound of the explosion had sent people scuttling out of a row of terraced houses that lay up the lane. Shaun lived in one of these houses and his wife and daughter now joined those that had gathered in the lane outside. Being isolated and living in close proximity, the people were all close-knit. The community itself consisted of only seven families living in this row of houses half a mile from the village of Carrickcross. Most of them had seen a small fire burning in the same spot sometime before the explosion. In normal circumstances, some of them would have gone to investigate out of curiosity but these were not normal times. Only five months before, a man from Castlewell, a village on the other side of the valley, had been killed when caught in the crossfire between British soldiers and the “Provos”. They all considered themselves to be good Christians, but they weren't about to throw themselves to the lions.
“I hope dah's all right?” Sinead whispered to her mother as they stood among their neighbours.
“He'll be all right!” Maureen replied without any real conviction. “He'll still be at the pub, no doubt.” She tried to conceal her fears but Sinead could see that she was anxious too.
“That's a mine!” Ray Kenny, one of their neighbours, declared. “Some poor bastard's copped it!”
Down the lane where the explosion had occurred, the poor bastard in question could see his own body lying below him in the ditch.
“Death, where is thy sting?” the Captain reflected.
He had always imagined death as finite, an end of things. Yet, although his body was of no further use, he still felt alive and aware. He was starting to rise now, leaving the place where he had died. As he did so, he thought momentarily of the horseman he had seen in the lane just before the end. An ancient warrior on a white horse but was that possible? Anyway, it was of no importance now. The carnage in the lane below began to diminish as he soared higher and higher. The darkness gave way to light and a multitude of colours became a kaleidoscope of dancing swirling images. A wonderful feeling of peace came over him. He knew then as all who die do that this was not the end but merely the beginning.