The impact of fifty tons of hard dark metal steel striking the solid bedrock doorstep of the Grand Bypass Channel was an event of deep-rock finality.
The wooden brake bands were released for the final ten feet. Then, the gate plunged through the brown floodwater with the suddenness of a meteor. It sliced through six feet of churning silt, crushed gravel, and driftwood as though the water were thin air, its bottom knife-edge driving straight down toward the dressed dark rock groove.
Then it struck.
THUUUUMMMMM.
The sound was not a crack. It was a deep, underground thunder that traveled through the bedrock of the mountain before it reached the air. The bone-shaking blast wave hit the soles of Tomas’s boots through the granite coping stones. It shook up through his shin bones, his knees, and his spine with the force of an earthquake.
In the office pavilion two miles to the east, window panes rattled in their lead cames, and half a dozen unused goose quills jumped from their pewter stands.
A geyser of brown water, crushed shale, and steam erupted from the bypass trench, shooting eighty feet into the freezing air. The spray engulfed the center overhead frame narrow high walkway in a blinding downpour of cold mud that coated Tomas’s coat and face.
