What Goes Up...
When I heard the dull roar behind us, my first thought was that we had been spotted and one of the colonel’s trucks was in pursuit. But the sound quickly attained a low-frequency rumble that could best be heard viscerally, and when Gregg stopped the bike and our feet hit the ground we felt the earth tremble beneath them. He turned and pointed in time for me to see the top stories of City Hall tipped at an impossible angle, hurtling sideways. The rectangles set into the facade that defined the shape of the windows seemed to stretch obliquely, as if printed on a rubber sheet, until they dissolved into a cloud of dust that was nearly indistinguishable from the overcast. We continued to stare at the space where the building towered only a minute before, though the roar had subsided, the cloud of dust had settled behind the nearer buildings, and there was no longer anything to see but the contrapuntal dance of falling snowflakes.
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