‘What the bloody hell was —’ yelled a man standing next to Antonello, but before he could finish, the massive span shifted. Men struggled to keep upright. The span groaned and screeched as metal scraped on metal. There was a thunderous crack, followed by more screeching and rasping. And a hailing of dust and concrete and sharp flakes of rust.
‘Fuck, it’s going to fall, the fucking bridge is going to fall…’ The voice came from behind Antonello. ‘We need to get out of here!’
Around him men were yelling and looking up, beginning to run, but Antonello was too stunned to move. He couldn’t make sense of what was happening. What was happening? Was the whole bridge going to collapse? How could they get the men down?
‘We have to do something,’ he said to the men around him, all of them staring up at the bridge. ‘We have to help.’
‘It’s too fucking late,’ someone said. ‘They’re goners.’
There was an agonising groan as the span the rigging team had spent the last few days hoisting up moved again. It was caving in the centre now, and the men were trapped midair. They stumbled, slid, and slipped. They were bashed by the flying debris; their arms reached for the sides of the girder, for something, but there was nothing. Gas bottles, drums, pieces of timber, chains, and bolts spun and rolled and fell over the edges, turning into airborne missiles.
Another jolt; the span was almost vertical now. A stiff-legged derrick loosed from its mooring catapulted towards the river, its long metal arms flaying violently, a giant possessed. And now the men: the men were falling, falling off, falling through the air and into the river below. They were screaming, but their cries were muffled by the bridge’s own deathly groans.
As soon as the span left dangling seemed to slow down, to stop, Antonello moved towards it. And towards the river, praying, Mary, mother of God, please let them be safe. Chanting it over and over again. Thinking of Sam and Slav and Bob, hoping they were in the water and that they’d surface and swim back. They were strong swimmers — he’d dived with them at the local pool — and they’d be safe… they had to be safe.
As he moved closer to the bridge, he noticed cracks forming two-thirds down pier 11. It had been a solid column of concrete, built to hold up tons of roadway, tons of traffic, but the small cracks were quickly widening and expanding. The pier was crumbling. There was a jolt and the span slipped further, slowly at first and then faster, and faster again. The pier could no longer support the weight of the collapsing span. Soon it would plummet to the ground. He was in its path.
‘Run, fucking run! It’s coming down.’ The scream came from behind him.
‘Bloody hell!’ More shouts and screams. Everywhere, men running. ‘Move. Run.’
A hand grabbed his arm. He turned and ran with the others away from the bridge, towards the road. It was difficult to see; the air was thick with dust. A sudden gush of wind smacked him hard — he stumbled, fell, his left knee bashing hard against the sharp edge of an overturned bench. His leg ached but he stood up and ran, and ran until he reached a crane and crawled behind it. Concrete and steel hurtled downwards, heavy and hard. As it struck the ground, there was a thunderous crash, the ground shook, and the crane rocked back and forth and almost toppled on top of him.
There were several explosions, followed by the roar of flames. The stink of burning diesel, of burning steel, of burning flesh. His throat stung. His eyes were gritty and sore. There was a loud, piercing buzz. For several seconds he held his breath; he shut his eyes tight and didn’t make a sound. Crouched against the crane, he waited for death to claim him. This was surely the end of everything. The tons of concrete and steel he’d spent months hoisting up were crashing down towards him. He would be crushed. This was the end. He would never see Paolina again. A policeman would arrive at their small bungalow, and she would open the door, smiling, but she would know even before they told her that he was dead, and her smile would disappear. When she was sad, her face lost its animation, her lips shrunk until they were a thin, pale line. He’d vowed to give her a happy life. When he proposed to her, on a picnic by the river, the half-made bridge behind them, he promised to make her smile every day, many times a day. He promised they’d be together forever. Please God, he prayed. Please God.
A crash. A loud and thunderous boom resounded across the neighbourhood.
In Emilia’s kitchen, the floor vibrated; a ceramic Sicilian horse and cart that had made the long journey with them on the ship slid off the edge of the dresser and hit the floor, shattering. In the cupboard, glasses clinked and rattled as they fell against one another. Emilia reached for the crucifix on the wall above the door and steadied it, made the sign of the cross, and said a quick prayer: ‘Ti prego Sant’Antonio mantenere la mia famiglia sicura.’ She turned off the gas and ran out the door.
Standing at her front gate, watching the billows of smoke and dust over the bridge, Emilia knew something awful had happened. Franco ran towards her from the back garden, a shovel in his hand.
‘Was it an earthquake?’ she asked.
‘It sounded like a bomb,’ Franco said as he threw down the shovel and they both started to make their way towards the river — neither of them mentioned the bridge or Antonello, but that’s where they were heading.
In Paolina’s classroom, the windows rattled. Children screamed, pushed their chairs back, and raced to the window, to the door, spilling out into the yard like locusts. She was powerless to stop them.
In the yard, Paolina ran over to the principal. ‘Please look after my class. That came from the direction of the West Gate — something’s happened to the bridge, I have to go.’ She didn’t wait for a response. Once outside the school gates, she ran as fast as she could, trying not to think. She could taste the bitter panic in her mouth; the foreboding, the dark future snapping at her heels. She ran past workers pouring out of local factories, past mothers with babies and toddlers on their hips, and shift workers in pyjamas standing at their front gates, all of them staring in the distance at the furious black smoke threatening to devour the city.
‘Fuck, the bridge fell!’
‘No, it couldn’t be the bridge…’
‘Was it a bomb?’
She knew the way without thinking, without looking, so many afternoons she’d walked it, alone and with Antonello. Twenty minutes, longer if they strolled, stopping to kiss, to catch each other’s eye, to admire a house or a garden, to build a fantasy life in which they might own a house of their own. Now she was running, running down through the main street of the shopping centre, running towards the bridge, towards the smoke, running around people who now clogged the footpaths and the road, who were standing still, who weren’t moving fast enough.
‘Was it an explosion?’
‘Was it the West Gate?’
‘Not that bloody bridge.’
‘It hasn’t even been finished yet —’
‘Please God, not the bridge.’
One woman, catching Paolina’s eye, called out, ‘Can’t imagine anyone surviving, can you?’ Paolina resisted the urge to stop and slap the woman. How could people say these things, how could they voice them? Her parents’ friends and relatives did it all the time when they talked about Vietnam. So many of our young men getting killed. All the ones coming back are so damaged. Did they forget her brother was one of those soldiers? Those words pricked at the fear and the anxiety, they prodded at the pain. Some days those words pierced all her resolve until she was immobilised by it.