Chapter 1 Excerpt
Like many other explosions I'd experienced before, this one rocked me just as hard as the worst of them. Boooom. The ominous, deep thud followed by the growing rattle and receding pressure. It happens fast. A high-order detonation; supersonic blast that instantly creates a void and slowly contracts back on itself. It’s a horse-kick to the chest that flows through to your back. The whole body pushed up and away, then thrown down carelessly. You might have lost consciousness. You might have only blinked. You can’t tell if you’ve been out for a microsecond or minutes. Your body doesn’t hurt but it’s not from lack of pain. You don’t hurt because you’re in shock. You don’t hurt because you don’t feel anything. Either your central nervous system instinctively shut down to avoid dealing with the total trauma at once, or it was forced to do so as a byproduct of shockwaves across fragile nerve bodies. Then it’s suddenly cold and your mouth is tingling. Senses are returning. Awakening into the aftermath. The ringing comes out of nowhere. Perhaps it has always been there, you've only now noticed it. And it's all you notice. It's all you know. That high pitch whine while your eyes try to refocus and your blurred vision loosely observes the dust falling slowly back to earth as the nerves in your limbs flicker to restart and get you back on your feet from utter will to survive. The body rolls over now, almost on its own, and up to your hands and knees. You are slower to your feet, slumped over for a moment as your back muscles ache to remember their job. You want to take a step forward but your feet are heavy. Is everyone around you alright? Your head begins to sink into a pit and the farther down it goes, the more pressure piles on top and around it...headache...migraine. Its a full gamut of symptoms for a traumatic brain injury. TBI.
