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Staring at the choppy, frantic broadcast that he couldn’t believe was true – a monster? No, surely, surely it wasn’t true – Gottlieb watched the Golden Gate Bridge reduced to ribbons of shredded support beams and unraveling cables, cars and chunks of concrete falling into the water. Surely this was some ridiculous American publicity stunt, some horrific War of the Worlds-esque transmission that would be revealed as fiction after the appropriate amount of horror had been inspired.
His colleagues stared in the same silent disbelief as he did at the screen, flinching at every sound, every roar, every explosion of fighter jets that swarmed the beast being swatted out of the air. But it was the cars and the jerky, static-riddled shots of the bridge that kept drawing his attention. It wasn’t just cars falling off the bridge, it was the stream of people. Terrified, fleeing people, pushing through rubble and fire and falling, falling into the water. Gottlieb stared in horror, feeling bile rising.
Animal panic forced the crowd to flee, stampeding to escape before the monster came back – how could it be real? How could something like that exist? – and decided to finish the job. He found a hand clamped across his mouth and his eyes stretched wide as a man slid between twisted support beams and fell, flailing as he hit the water. None of the people who had fallen had resurfaced. The fall would certainly have killed some and injured others, and they were all sinking beneath the water.
Gottlieb tried not to imagine them drowning. He tried not to think of terrified, screaming people struggling to get out of cars flooding inch by inch with water, sinking to the bottom of the bay. He felt his breath constrict in his throat and had to look away, eyes squeezing shut. The beast’s howls rang in his ears and suddenly the newscaster was screaming as well, and Gottlieb opened his eyes to see the news chopper plummeting in a tailspin into the water.
The sudden jumping static where the live feed had been was even more terrifying. Gottlieb jolted as though shocked when someone endeavored to change the channel, trying to find another feed. Gottlieb imagined the helicopter sinking into the wreckage at the bottom of the bay, and cold sickness rose in his heart.
“It’s only been half an hour,” he said. “And it’s done this much already.”
On the screen, the beast roared.