Loss Of Reason

Off in the distance, what seemed like somewhere south, two sounds blended into one — both coming simultaneously: one low and growling, one high, like the howling whining wind of a hurricane. They turned — only a confused, beginning fear in each other’s eyes. Their bedroom faced south. The television sat to the right of the bed on the corner of the dresser. As the first pre-shock hit the building, Steve and Cynthia were drawn to a fantastic thing: their three-month-old daughter bounced high into the air in the nursery, falling into the open file cabinet drawer beside her crib. The fireball dwarfed the brilliance of what had been Broadway and fired the nighttime sky beyond the sun. In the first five seconds, the shock wave travelled one mile. By the time it reached East 60th, it still moved at the speed of sound. To those far enough away with time to hear, the maelstrom roared, then sucked all sound to vacuum.

Out Penobscot’s slanting window — as the sonarman tried desperately to cling to anything, a bulkhead, a doorway — he watched the horizon tilt. The cutter’s stern rose like a surfboard on a water cliff, straight at the George Washington Bridge. And then the nose dropped straight down the face of the cliff. Of the people in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Jersey City, Long Island City, and especially Manhattan, no one had time to think about getting their car out of the parking lot to somehow make it across the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge and out into Long Island. Those bridges were disintegrated within moments of that sound. No one had time to consider getting a cab to take them through the Lincoln Tunnel. Giant balls of fire blew through all the tunnels within moments of that sound.