There was a flash of light, and an explosion. The ground shook, and they screamed. She tried not to hear, but of course the helmet didn’t block out very much. She stepped back out again, and found several more bodies on the floor. In close quarters, almost every bit of shrapnel had bounced around until it found a soft target—there were over a dozen of them on the ground. Very few looked dead, though from the sounds they made they probably wished they were.