As two medics raised Deion’s stretcher up to the wheeled trolley, the one at the back felt his heel slip on the foamy floor.

It wouldn’t have mattered with a normal-sized patient, but Deion’s bulk hung off all sides. As the guy holding the foot end swung the stretcher towards the trolley, the medic who’d slipped didn’t follow. The lift was supposed to be smooth and pain free, but the jolt left strips of Deion’s burnt skin stuck to the stretcher and his spasm of pain tilted it sideways.

Cops cursed and charged in, as Deion rolled off, crashing the side of the trolley and slapping the wet floor. Harry knew he’d filmed something big as Deion howled in agony, lashing furiously and sprawling the guy who was trying to pick him up off the floor.

‘Can’t you be careful?’ Deion boomed as he stopped flailing and let the medic close in with a respirator mask. ‘I’ll be suing all your asses!’

‘We’re doing our best, son,’ someone said.

‘Deep breaths,’ the medic soothed as she held the mask over Deion’s face. ‘Slow, deep, breaths.’

3 A THOUSAND BUCKS

The dining hall smelled of lunch that would never get eaten as Harry cut between tables, wet Nikes squeaking the glossy floor and phone clutched like a bar of precious metal.

‘Why you ain’t evacuated?’ a chef shouted from deep in the kitchen.

‘On my way, sir,’ Harry said obediently.

But instead of going out he pushed through double doors into the main part of the school and bounded stairs two at a time. The upper floor hallway was dim and empty and the second door he tried came open. It was a science room, with no sign that anyone had bailed in a hurry.

‘OK,’ Harry muttered as he took a deep breath. ‘Think.’

He knew what he wanted to achieve, but there were a lot of steps and he needed to get them straight in his head. After kicking the door shut, he strode to the back of the room. If he sat at a desk he might be seen through the classroom door, or from outside. So Harry crouched in a space between a desk and storage unit. If anyone came in, he’d act scared and say he’d been hiding.

Harry rested his back against the wall below a window, tilted his phone to cut reflections and started flicking through photos. The first shots with the rainbow looked cool, but lacked drama. The abandoned classroom pics were poignant, but again not the wow factor that would excite the webmaster of a news website, or a local TV channel.

His best shots were a pair taken after they’d carried Deion out: a grim pic of the bloody floor where Deion had been lying, and another of the locker with what looked like …