Elegy by Tara Hudson Read Free Book Online Page B

like some macabre ring, and I just stood there for a blind second, watching it.
    Suddenly, instinct took over. I felt my grenade arm pull back behind my head and then propel forward. During the forward arc of my arm, I had the briefest flash of memory—a sunny day; my father, adjusting the throwing position of my elbow while I clutched a grass-stained softball.
    The memory faded into the darkness and, without another thought, I released the grenade.
    I heard a small snick as the safety lever snapped back out. Now armed, the grenade continued on its trajectory above the bridge. I watched, temporarily dumbstruck by how small it looked in comparison to the tall support girders. Then another instinct took over: one of self-preservation.
    I spun around on one heel and pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could. Although I moved fast, a fuzzy, molasses feeling sank into my thighs, making me feel as if I had to run harder if I wanted to escape.
    Once I finally reached the end of the bridge, I threw myself at the shoulder of the road, rolling down the steep embankment toward the river.
    The ground hurt me badly each time it connected with my shoulders. But that didn’t hurt half as much as the painful boom that suddenly rang in my ears, or the pieces of blasted bridge that began to rain down upon me. I dug my hands into the ground to stop my rolling and then curled into a protective ball. Just before I tucked my head under my arm, I caught a glimpse of a piece of concrete flying toward me. It was huge—the size of a small car, with bits of sharp wire poking out from its edges—and I knew I wouldn’t survive when it hit. At least, I wouldn’t survive like this .
    So here was the moment. The one I’d been dreading and anticipating in equal measure since December. I steeled myself for it as best I could, summoning up my brightest memories to wrap around me when it happened.
    By the time I’d relived those memories twice, I knew that something was very wrong. Like the fact that a thousand-pound chunk of concrete was taking minutes instead of seconds to fall, for starters. After waiting a few more seconds, I had to look up.
    What I saw made me uncurl instantly and skitter backward like a crab along the embankment.
    There, about ten feet above my head, the enormous block of concrete looked just as it had when I first glimpsed it, all brutal rock and shredded wires. Thick and sharp and very lethal. But clearly lighter than air, too. It floated, suspended impossibly on the breeze.
    As did every other piece of High Bridge. Chunks of concrete, strips of asphalt, even slices of the metal girders—they hung in the night sky like unnatural constellations.
    Apparently, the only things that actually made it to the ground were the smaller rocks that had initially rained on me. Road debris and gravel, by the looks of it; pebbles that had no structural connection to the bridge. Everything integral to the bridge itself—every bit of foundation, of support—remained in its strange stasis in the sky.
    Until the rubble did move again. Instead of falling toward the earth as it should have, it started to drift slowly back to where the bridge originally stood. Once there, rock and metal began to link together like pieces of a puzzle, moving of their own will to re-create the structure I’d tried to destroy. Within the span of only a few minutes, the dark outline of High Bridge began to reform.
    I watched, openmouthed, as a tangled set of wires straightened and then slipped into corresponding holes in an upright wall of concrete. A girder set itself upon the newly stabilized wall, as if placed there by an invisible carrier.
    But not quite invisible, I realized.
    If I looked closer, if I squinted just right, I could make out the occasional inky trace of black smoke drifting beneath the individual components of the bridge. Yet the smoke wasn’t insubstantial. Though thin and nearly transparent, this black smoke could evidently carry hundred- and