Then, it was as if Earth’s atmosphere split like a glacier breaking in two, and there was a crack like a thunder burst from less than a mile away, but the sky was blue and crisp and clear. The crowd fell silent for only a few seconds before the second noise came, this one deep and sustained, coming not from the direction of the crash site but seemingly from farther away in the mountains, like a giant a mile tall had blown on a tuba. The sound was so loud and deep in frequency it was as though the air itself had turned to molasses. Nearly everyone threw their hands to their ears.

“What the hell is that?” yelled Sol.

“I don’t know!”

The shock wave came as the noise abated, not through the air but through the ground, rippling like a wake in water, sending little plumes of dust into the air and destabilizing everything, including the police trailer, which started to sway like this was an earthquake. Sol grabbed Cora and pulled her tight, and she grabbed him in turn, as much out of fear than for physical stability.

“Have you seen anything like this before?” yelled Sol over the din of the crowd.

“No, never!”

Then the mass panic set in, with half the people on the ground trying to run away, and the other half staying put, either too scared to move or excited to see what happened next, and in doing so becoming living obstacles to the people trying to escape. Thousands of people ramming past each other, but from what, to what? Even from her vantage point above the crowd, she could hardly tell where the epicenter of the noise was.

“Come on!” said Sol, breaking the embrace and grabbing her by the hand. She followed him without question, just as ignorant as to how dangerous it was to stay put as everyone else in this crowd was.

By the time they made it to the ground, a larger proportion of the people had joined the panic and decided to run. The direction people decided on was more or less the same direction from which they had come. Sol didn’t go the direct route, probably because there were so many people that it was well beyond a safety hazard, but instead hewed toward the housing development on the other side of the highway. There was a gully between the highway and the wall that bordered the development. Once on the other side of the gully, he stopped, perhaps not realizing how many people were directly behind them. When he let go of her hand so he could turn around to survey the situation, a surge of humanity separated them, and before she knew what was going on, he had disappeared.