Читать книгу The Crucible - Joaquin De Torres - Страница 3

“JESUS GOD!”

Seth Jackson's battered chest heaved excruciatingly as he considered this one last attempt--one last jump.

“It’s only ten feet away! TEN FEET AWAY, GODDAMN IT! I CAN DO THIS!” But the iron bars, twisted and welded together by the flames of the first explosion, swung wildly with the giant gusts of wind. There was so much blood in his eyes from the wounds on his lacerated face and shrapnel-pocked head that it nearly blinded him completely. He swiped the blood away with the back of his hand. The swinging net of tangled steel one story below blurred in and out of clarity. He had difficulty judging the distance it would take to reach it.

He had already made two mental attempts to jump, but the steep angle and the violent movement of the ship froze his nerves; if he missed, he would plummet some 30 feet into the violent ocean. A good strong jump to the mesh, he calculated, would break his fall, swing him back to the main deck and save him from the fire that was about to engulf him. On the other side of the bulkhead behind him, an inferno was already melting the rivets that held the buckled walls together.

He looked down at his broken right leg, ripped open from the blast and hanging grotesque and swollen like a mangled log. Any movement of it shot gunned rods of pain through his body.

“SHIT!” He grasped his left leg. It’s all he had; it would be his launching pad. But was it enough? The thought of his right leg slamming into metal girders below retracted his nerve yet again. His lips began to tremble as the rain wrapped around his body like a cold blanket. Louder than the howl of the storm was the inner wail of his suffocating fear--the realization that these may be the final moments of his young life. The thought that he would die an agonizing death, alone and without anyone knowing, frightened him more than the jump itself. He crossed himself. He had to try!

He wiped the blood out of his eyes once more and refocused on the dancing metal target below. His chest heaved heavily as oxygen, adrenaline, blood and glucose bolted through his limbs. His eyes bulged; his teeth gnashed in a primordial grin.

“THIS IS IT! THIS IS IT, MOTHER FUCKER!” he yelled into the wind as if rebuking the storm itself. “THREE! TWO! ONE!” With all strength left in him, he launched himself into the air just as the bulkhead behind him exploded outward. A tsunami of molten metal, shrapnel and flames blasted towards the sea.

Seth Jackson screamed for the last time.