Somewhere around mile 20 of last week’s Boston Marathon, Karl Fenske slowed down.
His change of pace nearly proved fatal.
Six miles later, the Morristown lawyer and his girlfriend, Julia Scales of Sparta, were in sight of the finish line when the first bomb detonated about 30 yards ahead of them, spewing a thick white cloud in their path.
“Don’t look!” Karl told Julia, turning her away from the carnage he saw on the sidewalk. It was littered with bodies. Blood was everywhere. A leg “was not attached to a body.”
Seconds later, the next blast went off behind them.
The shock wave hit them like a hurricane, Karl recounted on Monday, a week after his fourth–and final–Boston Marathon.
“No more big-city marathons for me,” said the 62-year-old tri-athlete.
His ears still are ringing. Every time he tries to sleep, “I see the white plume of smoke. I see the chaos. And unfortunately, I see the bloodshed.” The other night a truck thundered outside his Morristown window. “I jumped halfway up the ceiling,” he said.
BURNING MAN
The second explosion pelted Karl “with crap” and set a man on fire, he said. He saw police dashing to extinguish the flames.
Dazed, Karl and Julia sought refuge in a sidewalk alcove, as wails of pain and anguish echoed around them. Fearing more bombs, they left Boylston Street and ducked inside a mall near the Prudential Center. They were shivering in running clothes damp from more than 26 miles of racing.
Boston was chaos. Nobody knew what was going on. Rumors abounded. Mobile phone service was extremely spotty and Karl’s battery was low. One glazed runner asked how to collect his race medal.
Luckily, Karl was able to exchange text messages with his brother in New Hampshire. The brother surfed the web and directed Karl how to navigate a city of closed streets, and how to find a working rail line to take the couple to Karl’s parked car in Wellesley, a suburb at the halfway point of the race.
It took four hours to reach the vehicle, Karl said.
Now, he reports a sense of anomie, a vague feeling of listlessness and disorientation. All he had desired on April 15 was to complete the Marathon.
“Every molecule in my body wanted to get through that finish line,” where food, water and blankets were waiting, he said.
NO STRANGER TO TERROR
Though generally no fan of the death penalty, Karl said it should apply to bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19.
“People who will do something like this are not fit to be walking this earth,” Karl said.
Three people were fatally injured at the Marathon and nearly 200 were hurt. An MIT police officer was slain three days later, and a transit officer was seriously wounded in a shootout that killed the other suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26.
Karl immediately sensed that the first blast was not Patriots Day fireworks; he knew because he has encountered terrorism before.
As a Drew University student in the early 1970s, he studied for a year in London… where he nearly was killed by an IRA car bomb, he said.
“I think I might have used up a little of my good karma,” said Karl, who is grateful for escaping harm once more.
He also expressed gratitude to Boston strangers who fed and clothed he and Julia after the race.
“I’ll pay it forward ,” Karl said, smiling. “I’m saying it publicly.”
ON THIS VIDEO:
0:50: The last mile
1:25: The 26-mile marker
1:51: ‘There was this explosion’
2:06: Smelled gunpowder
2:21: ‘Don’t look!’
2:36: The second explosion went off
3:01: ‘I knew something was very dramatically wrong’
3:11: A hiding place
3:44: Blood and carnage
4:08: ‘People’s bodies were not the way they should be’
4:14: Black dots from second blast
4:38: Man on fire
5:11: Gruesome sight
5:23: Expecting to die?
5:40: ‘Get away!’ More bombs?
6:19: ‘Every molecule in my body wanted to cross the finish line’
6:36: Had to get away
7:07: Second wind
7:52: Nobody knew anything
8:35: Getting out of Dodge
8:55: Boston again?
9:23: Hearing damage
10:03: Not his first close call with terrorism
10:28: Not the Fourth of July
11:04: The karmic bank
11:23: Paying it forward
11:30: Bad dreams
12:15: The death penalty
13:20: Grasping for medals, and normalcy
15:12: The future
