‘Leave me, leave me, leave me.’

The voice was young, deep, and came from beyond the downed ceiling. Harry edged to the lockers, where the puddle was shallowest, and crept up to the tangle of metal and light fittings blocking the hallway. Beyond the gloom, sun pierced the torn roof.

‘Let’s have a shot of morphine,’ a neon-jacketed medic told a colleague. Then soothingly, ‘Just need to move you on to the stretcher, baby.’

Harry pushed a dangling wad of pipe insulation out of the way, making a gap big enough to see through. The gloomy walls and sunlight through the holed ceiling was a photographer’s nightmare. Harry played with the exposure controls until the image was usable, then tapped the screen, taking shot after shot.

The explosion had taken place twenty feet beyond the collapsed ceiling. On one side, a dozen lockers had been pancaked. Across the hall, the blast had knocked lockers through drywall, exposing an outer layer of concrete breeze blocks. The floor between was littered with books and athletic gear, all smeared in the creamy fire foam.

The victims had been moved further down the hall. Harry caught drips on his head as he pushed deeper beneath the collapsed ceiling frame and switched to video. After a slight zoom, he filmed a cop helping ambulance crew roll a girl on to a stretcher. She was limp and bloody, but a breathing mask meant she had to be alive.

The other victim lay a few yards beyond, head raised on an air pillow as one of the ambulance staff prepped a morphine jab. His clothes were burnt and face bloody, but Harry knew Deion Powell from his cringeworthy school spirit; go, team; come to the game and get behind the Rockets speeches during whole-school assembly.

‘Don’t move me!’ Deion begged.

Harry had visions of some teacher or cop creeping up behind, but kept his nerve, focusing on holding the phone steady, because he wanted his footage to look professional.

‘Gotta get you to hospital,’ the ambulance guy soothed as he stuck in the morphine. ‘Lift you up, nice and slow.’

‘It hurts so bad!’

Harry kept filming, his breathing tense and drips hitting his back as a second ambulance team arrived.

‘Gimme another shot for the pain,’ Deion groaned as four medics circled.

‘Lift on three, two …’

Deion’s scream burst like a grenade as two medics lifted his arms and another raised his feet for a short lift on to a stretcher.

‘You did real good, QB,’ one medic said. ‘That was the bad part. Now we gonna put your stretcher on to the trolley.’

‘Your mama’s already on her way to hospital, buddy,’ a cop standing behind soothed. ‘She’ll be there waiting.’

‘I can beat this!’ Deion shouted, grasping the side of the stretcher with a slippery, bloodied hand.

‘Again on three.’