Peter Hernon - 8.4

He was driving on Tennessee Route 51. They’d skirted Dyersburg, passing within six miles of the largest town in extreme northwestern Tennessee. The sky in that direction had a strange orange glow.

Atkins knew what it meant. So did Elizabeth.

Dyersburg was on fire.

They picked up Route 412. They were about ten miles from the Mississippi and the bridge. The rolling, wooded countryside was slowly flattening out, becoming delta bottomland the closer they got to the river.

Elizabeth lowered her window to get a blast of cold air to help her stay awake.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

Numb with fatigue, Atkins was concentrating on keeping the Explorer on the twisting, two-lane road. He hadn’t heard a thing.

He rolled down his window. The air had a strong sulfurous smell. He suddenly had to grip the wheel hard as the vehicle pulled sharply to the right. They almost swerved into a ditch.

Another aftershock.

“Listen!” Elizabeth said.

Slowing down, Atkins heard it. Loud cracks that sounded like cannon shots.

He realized what it was. Trees were snapping.

The ground shook harder. The odor of sulfur was stronger. There was a strange whistling sound, loud and piercing, almost like a steam kettle.

“The ground’s liquefying!” Atkins shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here.” As far as they could see in the darkness, the fields on both sides of the highway looked like they were boiling. Jets of black water shot up from holes that had opened in the ground, some with a distinctive cone shape.

Monster sand blows, the larger ones were fifty yards across and were spouting off like geysers, blowing clouds of muck and hot vapor into the sky.

A gaping sand blow opened directly ahead of them, swallowing a section of the highway. Braking hard, Atkins tried to get around it. The Explorer’s rear tires sunk into oozing mud and spun.

Atkins slipped into four-wheel drive and punched the gas pedal. The tires pulled free.

He floored it.

They risked getting stuck repeatedly in the heaving earth. The ground kept erupting. Heavy, carbonized fragments of long-buried trees blasted into the air. Some shot out like missiles. Chunks of hardened peat flew up, peppering the roof of the Explorer. A piece of wood the size of a suitcase cracked the windshield.

They had to keep going. Atkins barreled down the road. The Explorer bounced hard, slamming into a dip. The ground was shaking and bursting open. Muddy water kept shooting up from the sand blows. Trees continued to splinter.

Atkins didn’t think they were going to make it. Then, suddenly, they were out of the worst of it. The road was firmer. Despite the open window and cold air, Atkins was sweating heavily.

A few miles later they came to a sign for Interstate 155 and the bridge. The approach was just up ahead. A sign showed the turnoff for a ferry. Two cars with flashing blue lights blocked the road. Tennessee state police.

“The bridge is out,” one of the troopers said. His voice was subdued, strained. He stepped up to the mud-splattered Explorer and Atkins got a better look at his face. A young man, maybe mid-twenties. He looked scared. “The center span fell into the river.”

Atkins saw where the main span had collapsed. It looked like a half-mile section was missing. Most of the superstructure had fallen into the river. Incredible. Severed suspension cables dangled from one of the support towers that remained standing.

The wind changed and Elizabeth heard something, a strange new sound.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“That’s a waterfall, lady,” one of the troopers said.

LAUREN CLENCHED THE STEERING WHEEL WITH both hands, the siren of Lou Hessel’s patrol car blasting as they approached the outskirts of Paducah. They had to cross the Route 60 bridge over the Tennessee River. Lauren dreaded the passage. The old, narrow two-lane bridge with a dogleg halfway across was nearly a mile long. She’d never liked driving on it, especially at night.

Bobby sat in the rear seat, trying to catch a glimpse of the flood heading toward them. So far, they’d managed to stay in front of it. Paducah was the end of the line.

Lauren thought the crest was a couple miles behind them and coming fast. She was focused on a single thought. She didn’t want to be out on the bridge when the water hit it.

“Bobby, can you see anything?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He blinked and stared into the darkness, looking upstream for what he knew was coming.

The bridge was just up ahead, the black superstructure outlined against a smoky haze. As they roared up the elevated approach ramp, Lauren got her first good look at Paducah, a city of twenty thousand residents, the largest in western Kentucky.

Fires had broken out in the central business district. But the real inferno was raging on the Illinois shore, just below where the Tennessee flowed into the Ohio. It was a solid sheet of fire. An oil storage depot had gone up in flames. The tanks were burning fiercely.

Lauren’s mind raced. Her plan was to skirt the downtown district, cut over to Interstate 24, and take the Hinkeville Road exit, going west. Her parents lived ten miles out in Heath. All she wanted to do was find them and get away.

They were almost up on the bridge. The span was separated into three sections supported by concrete pilings driven deep into the riverbed. The car’s high beams bored down the middle of the two-lane deck.

“I see it!” Bobby cried out.

Lauren glanced to the right, looking upriver.

It’s huge, she thought.

The leading edge of the flood had swept around a bend in the Tennessee. It was going to hit the bridge broadside. The surging water had covered the last ten miles downstream a lot faster than she’d expected.

Lauren was doing fifty miles an hour when she reached the sharp bend where the deck made a jog to the right. She was going too fast and clipped a guardrail, smashing out a headlight before she got the car back under control.

She took another glancing look at the flood and froze. The wall of water was nearly as high as the deck of the bridge and no more than fifty yards away. It looked like it was going to wash right over them.

Lauren punched the gas pedal. They’d passed the halfway point.

There’s no way we’ll make it, she thought.

The roar of the water resonated in her ears.

The bridge shook sideways as the flood smashed into the concrete supports. Amazingly, it withstood the initial shock. Water poured across the roadway, causing the car’s tires to lose traction. The rear fender banged against a railing.

Another heavy blow rocked the bridge’s superstructure. This time the supports buckled.

“Roll the windows down!” Lauren screamed to her grandson. “If we go into the river, try to get out of the car.”

Give me another twenty seconds, Lauren prayed. Please. Just twenty seconds.

There was another sharp vibration. Something heavy had slammed into one of the supports like a battering ram.

The roadway sagged and started to pull apart. A gap opened in front of them. Lauren hit the brakes, the tires spinning on the wet steel surface. She steered the car into the guardrail, hoping to slow it down. The heavy patrol car bounced off. She turned into the railing again, shearing away a fender. The car spun around a full 180 degrees and stopped.

“Get out!” Lauren yelled to her grandson, who scrambled out of the back scat. She opened the glove compartment and snatched the pistol Sheriff Hessel had told her about, slipping it into a coat pocket.

The car had stopped within yards of the gap that had opened in the roadway. The bridge had pulled apart at one of the places where the steel sections that comprised the roadway were bolted together. The opening was about five yards wide.