“There are a couple of bigger bridges in the world,” he finished proudly, “but none more beautiful. Take your time with pictures but save some film, because I guarantee that the view from the Marin headlands,” he pointed up the road ahead, “will take your breath away. It’s the shot you see in all the movies, but take it from me, the reality is even better!”
“Are we there yet?” Georgina wailed, delivering a pretty solid kick to the back of the driver’s seat, and for the umpteenth time since they’d hit the road, all of twenty minutes ago, Allan Ryerson wondered why he’d taken the plunge when the salesman had suggested the Mercedes SUV with the integral video-game monitors and DVD player—it seemed to be no help at all with keeping the kids quiet.
He tossed a glance at Blair, who returned a semihelpless shrug and twisted around to remind her daughter yet again not to bother daddy when he was driving, which Allan very much appreciated, as the bridge was a bit more crowded than usual. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Tim huddled in his own seat, taking refuge intermittently between his Playstation controller and his stash of comics, wanting nothing to do with his kid sister’s demands for attention and the parental outburst they were sure to provoke.
Allan felt a bump down by the small of his back and figured for that first fleeting moment that Gee Gee had again ignored her mother, and given him another boot. But it happened again and he thought of potholes and speed bumps or that perhaps he’d drifted over a line of lane-separating cat’s-eyes.
Then, impossibly, terrifyingly, the bridge gave a sudden and violent sideways lurch. His tires squealed as Allan fought for control, instinctively stomping on the brake as he registered taillights flashing scarlet all across his field of vision as every other driver in view did the same. He fishtailed slightly—eyes wide and staring into the rearview mirror, praying the guy on his tail was just as much on the ball—and he registered a deep rumble, like a convoy of fully loaded super dump trucks passing close at hand. He skidded laterally and wailed inside as he heard the telltale crunch of contact with the SUV to his immediate right. The repair cost would likely be obscene, and even if insurance covered the bill his rates would skyrocket, assuming the company didn’t cancel his policy outright. Then he cried out in shock, Gee Gee screamed, and Blair cried his name, as a pickup on the other side collided with enough force to shower him with glass. He was dimly aware of someone in the other car calling out over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but he had more important things to terrify him as they were hit one last time, from behind.
The shaking around them was getting worse, cars bouncing on every side like toys. The constant contact was horrible; metal ground together, and sprung bits of plate and bumper got tangled so that doors torqued out of line and locks were jammed. Something whizzed across his line of sight and slammed into the hood of the SUV next to them with a terrific bang! He stared at it, uncomprehending, for what seemed like a long while, trying to place the origin of an object colored so bright a red. Then, after what had really been only a second or so, his mind made the proper connection and he paled with recognition and craned his neck around for a view of the south support tower they’d been passing when this nightmare began.
It was a rivet.
The shaking was popping the rivets that held the bridge together.
There was only one thing with force enough to do that, and from the way everyone who was able was piling from their cars and racing pell-mell for shore, he wasn’t the only one to come to such an obvious—especially for San Franciscans—conclusion.
Gee Gee gave it voice, with a shrill scream: “Daddy, it’s an earthquake!”
Allan tried his door, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked to Blair, but knew at once that hers was just as jammed. He knew the passenger doors most likely wouldn’t work either. And with the truck jammed up tight against their rear bumper, they wouldn’t be able to get out that way.
No sunroof—an option he’d passed on to chisel down the price. His own window was shattered, but there wasn’t enough clearance for him to wriggle through. The best hope, the only hope, was to smash the windshield.
Everyone around him was making noise: Gee Gee was howling in terror, Blair struggling with her seat belt, twisting herself between the seats, the better to reach her babies, while Tim was nonstop with questions—“What’s happening, Dad? What’re we gonna do, Dad? Are we gonna die, Dad?”
Allan’s breath caught in his throat—What was happening up ahead?
“I…” he started, then worked his lips and tongue, partly to moisten his mouth, partly to remind himself how to speak. He spoke more loudly this time, to make himself heard. “I don’t think it’s an earthquake.”
He craned upwards in his seat as best he could to give himself a better look, then gasped in astonishment as a Hummer up ahead bounced into the air as though shot from a catapult.
It didn’t go far, but it wasn’t alone. Allan found himself reminded of the most memorable scene from The Ten Commandments, the parting of the Red Sea—only in this instance it was cars being shunted aside instead of water. An invisible wedge was moving down the centerline of the roadway from the Marin shore, blasting aside everything in its path and piling vehicles up with the careless abandon of a kid who’s been asked to clear away his toys.
He could see people now, a crowd following the lead of a tall and commanding figure wearing a formal-looking coat that seemed to Allan some kind of uniform. The crown of his head gleamed in the waning light of day, and for a second, watching, Allan was puzzled—until he recognized it as a helmet, and then saw more clearly the kinds of people that trailed behind him. And Allan knew with an icy stab of terror who they were facing.
The man was Magneto, the mutant terrorist described on the news as the Master of Magnetism.
Close behind Magneto were two men and two women. The women, one a tall redhead, the other darker, both wore leather like it was a second skin. One of the men was slight and surprisingly young, and as he approached, Allan could see he was playing with a Zippo lighter, constantly flipping it open and shut, open and shut. The other was a mountain with limbs, so monumentally massive he put even the most powerfully built pro wrestler to shame, the armor he wore making him even more impressive.
Behind them came a crowd of mixed folks, some who looked like average people but others who were outright monsters—a hundred strong.
Around the Ryersons, everyone who could was scrambling from their cars and fleeing for shore. He wanted nothing more than to join them, but try as he might—he pounding with his fists and Blair kicking with her foot—they couldn’t pop the damn windshield. Then, startlingly, provoking more cries from the children, and a yelp from Blair as she found herself tugged off balance, everything inside the vehicle that contained even a scrap of ferrous metal began to rise to the ceiling. Blair’s problem was her belt, composed of interlocking steel links, and she dangled semi-helplessly until Allan was able to release the buckle and help her twist free. She ended up huddled in the back with the kids, and he wished he could join them.
Something heavy hit the roof, the first in a series of impacts that reminded Allan of a prairie hailstorm, until the shattering of glass demonstrated that what was falling here was considerably heavier.
He heard a terrible snap from overhead, and cried a primal and atavistic wordless protest—rage, defiance, denial, despair—as it was followed by a high-pitched and metallic twang and then a tremendous crash, as one of the great suspension cables landed alongside them.
Allan was crying, his family was crying, Blair sat with the kids clutched close, and even though he couldn’t hear a word for all the din that enveloped them, he could see her mouth forming the words of the Lord’s Prayer. She believed they were going to die. He was sure they would, too—but even as the thought occurred to him it was banished by another, just as profound and far stronger, the certainty that they would not. He would not allow it. Hopeless as things seemed, utterly crazy and impossible
as it sounded, he would find a way to save his family.
Magneto was very close. Allan could see him with perfect clarity as the man raised his arms high.
It was a grand and theatrical gesture……and it achieved an immediate, equivalent response…
…as the Golden Gate Bridge was torn free from its northern anchors.
Magneto turned to his troops, every inch a conqueror, and all of them save one cheered him accordingly.
The redhead looked bored.
On the Marin side, the tour group ran for their lives. They didn’t bother with the bus. A piece of concrete from overhead that was twice its size had squashed it flat and the air was filled with debris of every material and size, peppering both water and shore with shrapnel. Some of the group tried to pause to take proper photos, while others simply held their cellphones and digital cameras over their shoulders and shot on the run, hoping something appropriately dramatic would develop that they could use to make their fortune. The guide heard screams he knew would haunt him until the day he died, which he prayed with all his might would not be today, and was thankful he couldn’t see what caused them. He was the last up the hill, making it his business to look after his passengers, assuming the same sense of responsibility assigned to the captain of a ship or an aircraft. The ground was shaking, the air thick with a choking cloud of dust; even if he could find breath enough to speak, it was likely impossible to make himself heard over the sheer volume of noise.
Something caught him behind the legs and slapped him down, hard enough to bloody his nose. He didn’t know what it was, and didn’t care; he was being sucked and dragged downslope. He scrabbled for handholds, broke nails on tarmac, cried out with shock as he was doused in bitterly cold water, and then regretted the impulse as his mouth filled with salt water that made him gag, on the brink of drowning.
Just as suddenly, just as violently, he found himself jerked clear of the flood, his arms draped across the shoulders of his rescuers, while other hands clutched at his belt to keep him upright. Without prompting, he found the means to propel his legs into action and kept pace with the men on either side as they scurried clear of the maelstrom.
They probably climbed a hundred feet without pause, moving at a rapid, relentless clip, before they reached a bend in the road that seemed to be a safe vantage spot.
When the guide’s vision cleared, as he tried to stammer thanks to men who’d hear none of it, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d been felled by a titanic wave caused when the entire north tower of the bridge moved past them and into the bay, as though pivoting on some monumental axis.
In the distance, he saw what seemed to him like minor puffs of smoke from the San Francisco base of the bridge. Close-up, he knew, for those in the Presidio with a grandstand seat—as he and his tourists had over here—there’d be nothing “minor” about it at all. Whatever had wrenched the bridge from its Marin moorings was doing the same across the Golden Gate.
Something flicked across his peripheral vision and he caught sight of a TV news helicopter buzzing the scene, taking advantage of what little light remained to broadcast the event live.
But even as the helicopter approached, it twisted into sudden and unexpected evasive action as one impossible event was eclipsed by another. Freed of all its anchors, from both shores and the foundations of the towers, the Golden Gate Bridge rose silently and majestically into the air, to proceed in stately procession deeper into the bay, leaving in its wake a trail of tumbling cars and collapsing superstructure from either end, like Hansel and Gretel depositing breadcrumbs so they might find their way home.
Magneto placed one foot on the coaming of the bridge walkway and leaned forward on bent knee, surveying the way ahead with cool confidence and no small amount of pride, like a shipmaster bringing his vessel into harbor.
“Charles always wanted to build bridges,” he commented.
And Jean thought, It’s always about Charles. Every action, every decision, you measure against him, as though you can’t accept the rightness of your cause until you prove him wrong.
As though sensing the tenor of her thoughts, he turned to face her, indicating their fast-approaching destination—the former prison island of Alcatraz.
“Once that cure is gone, nothing can hold you back. Nothing.”
And Jean thought, Silly, foolish man, you talk as if that’s a good thing.
She couldn’t deny, though, how much she was tempted, and she knew the intoxication of the moment, the anticipation of what was to follow, showed in her eyes, on her face.
Aloud, with a smile he should have found dangerous, she said, “I know.”
She closed her eyes, released her power, took a count of the souls on the bridge, and those awaiting them on the island. If Magneto asked for their disposition, she’d tell him. Otherwise, she decided to hold her peace.
She wondered if she should tell him the X-Men had arrived.
Everyone crowded the flight deck for a view of the bridge as Ororo brought the Blackbird over the bay in a wide, sweeping turn that allowed them all to see what was happening. Further aft, at Hank’s tech station, every screen on the main display revealed a variation of the same event, pulled from all the local TV channels, plus the national and international news networks. Far more than the incidents at the Worthington clinics, this was something the whole world was indeed watching.
“Oh my stars and garters,” Hank murmured, taking refuge in a catchphrase he hadn’t used for years. It went with the costume.
Kitty, sitting in the right seat, announced in response to a flashing telltale on her panel, “We’re being painted, TraCon Doppler radar from Oakland and San Francisco International.” She tapped a control, refining the sweep. “But—I’m getting some Q-band activity, high range, reads as an E2C Hawkeye AWACS off the Teddy Roosevelt, establishing a target portrait for possible air strikes.”
Ororo tapped a code into the center control console, between her and Kitty. “Going to stealth mode.”
From outside, the great black aircraft, already difficult to see in the gathering darkness, shimmered and then vanished, both to the naked eye and to all forms of electronic detection.
“On your toes, people,” Ororo said quietly. “Everyone back to your places and strap in. Henry, Kitty,” she added, “we’re depending on you now. This airspace is likely to get more than a little bit crowded and since we can’t be seen, we can’t be evaded. It’s up to you two to keep us from any collisions.”
“A circumstance most devoutly to be avoided, ma’am,” Hank agreed with mock solemnity, while Kitty, in the midst of tossing him a slightly jaundiced look, simply nodded.
In its way, M-day, as this would come to be called when it was all over, proved as significant and memorable a start to the twenty-first century for the City by the Bay as its fabled earthquake had been for the twentieth. It was certainly the kind of thing that nobody present ever forgot, especially those “privileged” enough to actually watch it unfold firsthand.
It had been just a normal Friday afternoon, with everyone going about their average and altogether ordinary pursuits, closing out the workweek, preparing for the weekend. Most folks downtown weren’t even aware of anything amiss, at first; Magneto’s seizure of the bridge occurred so fast, and the action itself was so incredibly unbelievable, that even with a helicopter on the scene, broadcasting live, it still took a little bit of time for the word to spread, and for it to be taken seriously.
Imagine the moment, riding the cable car up and over the crest of Russian Hill, thinking about what to do for dinner, bills to pay, aching back, walking the dog, watching cable, gazing out at the familiar sight of Alcatraz—the mind perhaps not quite registering what the eyes behold, the sight of this magnificent feat of engineering, one of the marvels of human history, gliding effortlessly across the waves.
In that, appearances truly were deceiving, because for Magneto the traverse was proving anything but effortless. Lifting this mass of better than a h
alf million tons was but the first challenge, and moving it was nothing compared to the necessity of keeping the entire structure together.
Jean watched impassively, gauging the strain he was placing on his body, impressed by his determination. This would have been no small feat for him in his prime, and yet Magneto had first manifested his power in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, better than sixty years before.
She shrugged inside, tempted to let him succeed or falter on his own; if the world was truly a place defined by Darwin’s dictum of survival of the fittest, shouldn’t those same rules apply to him as to the sapien humanity he desired to supplant? But even as she acknowledged that consideration she found herself establishing a link between the two of them, on a level so slight he couldn’t possibly be aware of it, but which allowed her to share her own energies with him, granting him a sufficient reservoir of strength to complete his task.
The bridge passed Fort Mason, depositing as it did so a few more stray cars from the end of the roadway, a line of near misses across Aquatic Park, leading to a couple of direct hits smack into the belly of a Scarab cigarette boat moored at Hyde Street Pier, along with the working trawler tied up just beyond it, and lastly some dot-com zillionaire’s Lamborghini doing a swan dive right through the roof of a waterfront restaurant at the Cannery, to finish out its days as the centerpiece of the bar.
By this point, people down along the shore had gotten the message and were clearing the area as quickly as they could, especially as it became increasingly obvious that the bridge was about to make a landing.
The sound it made, and the effect it had on the city when Magneto brought it to rest, reminded many of the last great earthquake. The noise struck like a physical blow and while the ground trembled only for a moment, the shock wave was sufficient to break a fair share of windows and, far more annoyingly, trigger hundreds if not thousands of car alarms along the entire breadth of downtown.
X-Men: The Last Stand Page 21
