Liam Hall
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 (The day of the Shutdown)
Liam was used to seeing weird things. With Nick as his roommate at college, he’d grown unhealthily accustomed to it. But the sky turning red? That was up there.
Seconds ago he’d been courtside on the bleachers, contemplating how to break the news to his childhood friends that he was finally moving out of the neighborhood after years of his family trying. In the next, he stood alongside them, eyes glued to the sky.
The concrete beneath their feet was bathed in red light, a morbid display that evoked images of horror films. More confused than anything, he looked over to David who’d been sitting courtside texting his girlfriend instead of playing hoop in their local park.
“Fucking hell,” David hissed under his breath.
Turning to Liam, the big man showed him a dead screen. “I bought this shit yesterday. The dealer fucking scammed me $300 saying it’d been used lightly. How the fuck is this lightly?!”
Shrugging indifferently, Liam sighed. “That’s why I told you to save up and get a new one.”
“Well, Mr. I-Got-A-College-Degree, I would if I could afford it, aight? Shit, I don’t think I can return it. Maybe I’ll be able to exchange it?” David proposed pleadingly.
“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Nia to gave you some money?”
“My mother?! You know what she’s like, man! I’d prolly get my neck snapped and have the money spent on my funeral. No thank you. I’d much rather suffer in silence.”
What the heck is going on though? The sky hadn’t changed, getting darker if anything. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he saw another childhood friend, Carter, pointing across the basketball court.
“It might not be that type o’ problem, though. Ol’ Faithful is dead,” he remarked. “Check your phone, Liam.”
Liam studied the old lamp posted across the basketball court that Carter was talking about. A few years ago, he and his friends, tired of having their late-night games stopped due to a lack of light, had rigged the streetlight to always stay on. Residing in the poorer districts gave fruit to some unexpected advantages, namely the fact that no one had ever come to check on any of the communal services such as the parks. Yet, after surviving every Canadian winter storm, the light had gone out.
His phone was the same; cold and dead like the battery had drained out. Holding onto the power button, his eyebrows knit in frustration when it didn’t power up. As he struggled with his own, the neighborhood he’d grown up in was shutting down. Streetlights sputtered out and porch lights of surrounding homes were quenched like they’d been hit by a blackout.
It was silent.
Without the hum of machines and the glow of artificial lights, nature reasserted itself. The trees stood as silent sentinels, the wind a whisper of things to come. A few of his friends excused themselves and left hurriedly to return home while the rest of them wordlessly waited for something to happen.
Coughing awkwardly to break the tension, David smirked. “Ha, fuck that scared me over. Oi, there isn’t anything—”
“SHHHH! Don’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Shut up and listen.”
They all listened in silence.
Raising an eyebrow at Carter, David let out an exasperated breath. “There’s nothing. What are you—”
“Shhh…”
Straining his ears, Liam heard it. A humming sound like the ones he used to hear when he lived near the airport. It’s a plane. Studying the sky he finally saw it swimming in the sea of red above them. But something was off. It’s losing altitude. Is the pilot asleep or is it… shit, he thought, a sudden idea occurring to him. The fucking sky. Did the sky take it out as well? Liam watched the plane’s uncontrolled descent like a trainwreck in slow motion.
“Pull up, pull up,” David whispered beside him, his eyes not leaving the plane.
The typical droning of the engines was nowhere to be heard as it passed over them. Crossing the trees that ringed the park, it vanished from sight. The crowd of students waited in horror at what came next, certain of the plane’s fate and what awaited those on board.
BOOM!
A ripple of sound swept across the basketball court, sending flocks of birds fluttering past them in panic. From afar, Liam could see a gale of force coming towards him and beyond the trees, a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke rose against the red horizon; a warning of more dire things to come.
“Holy cow…” Carter gasped, swallowing hard at the sight of the fireball. “Liam.”
Liam tore his eyes away. “What?”
“That direction… that direction is south.”
“And? Oh…” The realization hit him like a dump truck.
The location of his new home, the one that his parents had bought after sweating their asses off late at work for years was in the south of the city. The pieces slowly clicked inside him.
“Liam, wait—”
Liam was running before David could finish, his growing anxiety supplying a sense of urgency. Wait? For what? His destination rose above him, a towering pillar of smoke scarring the sky and that’s all that mattered.
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Running through his former neighborhood where he had only planned to spend the evening, people were milling outside of their homes, pointing at smoke like it was a spectacle. A few of his old neighbors caught sight of him and waved in greeting but Liam ignored them, desperate not to waste a second.
His legs pumped against the pavement, propelling him forward. Out of the side of his eye, he could tell that the streetlights still hadn’t turned on. Stalled cars blocked the streets and the confused owners were standing by the side of the road, marveling at the sight above them.
It was a world in which time had slowed.
Exiting the suburbs and entering the city, Liam witnessed more scenes of chaos. The streets were clogged with cars and screaming pedestrians rushing away from the plane crash. Fires had broken out in some of the local stores and residences. Even if they were still working, there was no possibility of the firetrucks reaching the buildings in the traffic. Escaping outside, the owners gaped as their livelihoods went up in flames.
Cutting through the oncoming wave of people, he looked up at one of the buildings on his left. The brick store was ablaze, forks of the flames licking the air greedily, threatening to consume the neighboring buildings. As he passed by it, a part of the roof caved in and smothered the surrounding area with its intensity. A group of people futilely tried to extinguish the flames using buckets of water, the fire hydrants behind them forgotten as panic gripped their minds.
Breaking away from the stream of people, he entered a small alleyway. The cries of people and the sound of glass shattering faded away as he cut across the city, using alleyways and tunnels, one after another as he tried to make his way to his neighborhood on the other side. Whenever he was lost, all he had to do was look up at the sky and use the plume of smoke as a beacon.
Cutting onto Laurier Avenue, skyscrapers lined both sides of the main street, overshadowing the street below. Sweating in exertion, his lungs began to burn up as he pushed himself to his physical limit.
A bit further, a bit further.
After another 10 minutes, he broke out of the city and reached the entrance of Half-Moon Bay. Pushing to the crowd that gathered to get a glimpse of the destruction, he flinched at the road that passed in front of the walled community.
An impromptu field hospital had been set up to tend to the injured. The screams of patients filled the air, their silence was brought about when their wounds claimed them. Many of the injured faces were contorted and warped by the pain that racked their body. Still, none were familiar. They aren’t here, he realized, a wave of relief flowing through him. They might be safe.
“Can I help you?” a solemn voice asked from behind him.
He wheeled around to see a stranger approach him with a clipboard.
“I-I… uhh…” he stuttered, taking another glance to check if he’d missed their faces by chance. “I… uhh… live here. I wanted to see if my parents were here.”
“And are you sure for a fact that they weren’t out shopping or anywhere outside of Half-Moon Bay?”
“T-They might’ve been. I d-don’t know.”
“Alright, calm down for a second, young man. I’m just going to check. Which street is your house on?” he asked, flipping through the sheets on the clipboard.
“17 Danforth Crescent.”
Catching sight of Liam staring at the board, he explained, “Volunteers have been helping clear some of the streets. I’m just going to check if we…”
His face grew weary like he’d been tired of delivering the news. “We haven’t yet cleared that street.”
Liam pushed past him and ran towards the entrance.
“Wait! We can’t have people blindly charging in!” he yelled from the ground, having fallen backward.
The closer he got to the epicenter of the crash, the clearer the signs of damage were. Debris from the plane had detached during its plummet and crashed into unsuspecting houses. Liam continued running, his hopes slowly rising. After the first few, he hadn’t seen any other signs of the wreckage this far east.
Turning the corner onto Danforth Crescent, that all faded away. A wing had broken off from the plane, leveling the first few houses in the street. The fire it had brought with it now burned out the rest of the buildings.
“13… 15…” he murmured as he counted up to his house. No… no, no, no…
17 Danforth Crescent was wreathed in flames.
His body froze, seeing the beat-up family truck stuck in the driveway. Wearing only the basketball jersey he had been playing in and a film of sweat, he battered the front door until it gave way. Already weakened by the fire it crashed onto the floor sending a cloud of hot ash scattering into the hall.
“MOM! DAD!” he hollered, running in.
The flames had spread past the living room and dining area, reaching the kitchen. Pulling his jersey over his head to protect himself from the fire, the sweat on him instantly evaporated.
He continued to yell his parents' names, pleading with them to reply. Yet all he heard was the crackling of the fire as another part of the ceiling crumbled.
The fire brushed against him, the pain causing him to grit his teeth. Endure it. As he was about to lose hope, a whimper, barely audible through the roaring of the fire, caused him to spin around. The kitchen! The ferocity of the flames at the entrance leaped out at him, forcing him back. Jumping over them, he entered the room and found his mother struggling to remove a fallen beam.
“Mom, what are you doing?! We have to go now!” he screamed, trying to pull her away.
“No! Your father… h-he’s stuck. We have to help him!” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Liam looked over at the unrecognizable body on the floor. A wooden beam had crushed his father’s head, and the blood that flowed from it bubbled in the heat.
“W-We’ll come back for him,” he promised, refusing to believe it.
Pulling her away, they stumbled through the inferno, ducking falling embers. Feet away from the front door, a large part of the roof came crashing down, blocking off their escape. Fissure lines spread above them as the integrity of the house deteriorated.
We won’t make it.
Hearing the cracking of timber, his eyes flicked up in time to notice a crack opening up above his mother. Knocking her backward in the nick of time, the cinders spread across his back and arms, degenerating his mind to a spark of consciousness.
“T-The back.” Her words were interrupted by a fit of coughs.
Hearing her voice, he pulled himself back to reality. Screaming as he struggled out from under the blazing debris, they began limping to the back. His mother was becoming increasingly sluggish. Scooping her off her feet, he made it outside and set her down on the pavement. He was acutely aware of his situation but none of that mattered.
His mother’s chest wasn’t moving.
“No… no, no, no, nooooo! Mom!” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “FUCK!”
Starting chest compression, anger and sadness boiled in his stomach. Please. Please. Please. Please, he kept repeating to himself. Anything but her. Not her as well, please.
His burns were sapping his strength. Jamming his thumb into a burn wound to force himself awake, his body could no longer bear the searing pain. Fuck. He collapsed beside her, his hand still on her chest trying to force out one last compression. Her heartbeat faded away under his fingertips.
Blubbering for anything to help him, a black silhouette stepped out of the burning house, its forms wavering like a mirage. Kneeling next to Liam’s head, it considered him before standing up and smiling.
“Help…” Liam rasped, his voice contorting in his throat.
But he blinked and it was gone. No, come back, he pleaded.
Distant figures were running towards him, the heavy feet making the ground shake beneath him.
Oh.
“Found him! Bring the stretchers!” a familiar voice cried to the men behind him.
His mind went blank.