Godzilla sort of scene – snippet

This is from late in April past where I will snippet chapters. It deals with Home making war on North America. I hope I get the epic disaster flavor right-

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Martin Crain was seven hours into his work day. Tired and sucking down some coffee to carry him to the end. A little more than another hour and he’d drop his road train of three trailers at a routing yard in St Louis, and get a room. He was almost to the Mississippi bridge when a East St. Louis cop car and an Illinois State Trooper both passed him going flat out. They didn’t have their lights on but traffic was light and the two left lanes mostly open.

His dashboard display worked for GPS, but the satellite based traffic warning system had been down for a couple weeks. His eyes flicked up to it anyway out of habit. The traffic coming the other way was about the same as his side so that was a good sign. He thought he’d get past whatever the cops were responding to until he got another mile and saw the backup. There were about two dozen road trains and big rigs stopped in the two right lanes. A handful of private cars could be seen in the third lane about two hundred meters ahead right at the edge of the bridge. He flipped on his flashers and braked to a stop in the second lane.

Martin shut his engine off quickly to conserve fuel. He waited until two more trucks were stopped behind him so he knew nobody would be plowing into his stopped rig and locked his cab and walked forward to see what was wrong.

The Illinois State trooper was parked across the left lanes, and the city cop across the right. There was some kind of pounding coming from the river, like a jack hammer but slower. When he got all the way to the front the cops had reflective tape draped from the center divider to their cars in turn and to the last reflector on the shoulder before the bridge abutment itself.

The drivers were four deep around the city cop and he couldn’t even get close so he asked a fellow driver hanging back if he knew what was going on.

“Somebody is tearing up the cable support delta tower on this side of the river. I’m from the second rig there in the right lane. When I stopped you could see the concrete dust drifting out from under the bridge deck.”

Martin looked around. There were no aircraft in sight, and no sounds like a gun firing. It didn’t make any sense.

“If it’s serious why aren’t they blocking off the bridge from the Missouri side?”

“Damned if I know,” the other driver told him. “The cops said they called them over there. I guess that’s why they call it the ‘Show Me’ state.”

Just then the constant crack, crack, crack was drowned out by a long shriek of tortured steel tearing. The near tower fell, thankfully away from them, falling straight along the highway. The cables sang like giant guitar strings, then tore out of the nearby foundations and whipped high in the air following the tower. The deck of the bridge was smashed down into the water out well past the center of the river. The rigs like Martin’s still filling the eastbound lanes crushed like toys. Water from the river fell all around them like a sudden heavy rain. The delta tower on the opposite bank was pulled toward them briefly in seeming slow motion, and then rebounded and fell on the Missouri approaches the same direction the near tower had fallen.

When all the noise finally died down Martin looked at the other driver standing mouth still hanging open and staring in horror.

“Well I guess that showed them,” he agreed.