Sirens. Burning homes. Fires, fires, fires. Smoke curling into the sky, black and thick. Fog. Choking. Coughing. Sirens and fire and smoke and coughing and fog. Destruction and pain and people crying. Little babies in their mom's arms, as she bounced them up and down. Sirens wailing. People wailing. Fire and smoke and plane crashes and crushed cars and people walking around in a haze, blood dripping from their foreheads.
Ryan woke up with a start.
His heart pounded fiercely in his chest, and as he curled his fingers into his sheets, he gasped. The air from his vent blew against his neck, and he shivered, pulling the covers over his head.
The sirens were over now, as far as he could tell. The only thing he could hear was the hum of the air conditioning and his blood rushing through his ears. He rolled onto his back, grabbed his phone from its hiding spot under his pillow, and headed downstairs for his breakfast.
There were exactly three occasions when Ryan was ever a morning person: 1) when he was staying at Raymie's house, 2) Christmas, and 3) when his mom came back home after picking Dad up from the airport.
So when he yawned into his fist and checked his phone for any messages – nothing new, except a text from Dad saying how excited he was to see Ryan and hang out with him – and saw that it was half past noon, he wasn't particularly concerned about his lifestyle choices. He would have brunch instead of breakfast, and everything would be fine.
Ryan opened the refrigerator door to grab his grape juice, and as the door swung shut, he caught sight of the sticky note plastered to the door.
Ryan,
I left to go pick up your father. I'll be home soon.
Love you,
Mom
He smiled softly and tossed the note onto the counter. Grabbing his favorite cereal and a bowl, he slid into his normal spot at the table.
Wait. He yawned again and looked around. It was half past noon, and Ryan had known for the past several days that Dad's plane was coming in no later than ten. Unless there was a major delay or a cancellation, his dad should be back. And Mom, too.
He frowned and quickly unlocked his phone, pushing aside his cereal.
Amber alerts. News notifications. Safari only loading the most recent articles. Sports referred to smaller teams. Global news reported catastrophes. Reporters questioned biowarfare.
Ryan furrowed his brow. "What the…?" He clicked on an article from The Washington Post, and even though it was hard for him to understand what they were saying, this soon after he had woken up, and with the panic that was clear even through the screen, he could tell it was something bad.
He didn't really want breakfast anymore.
As he swiped out of the Safari app, and just as he was about to turn off his phone, he saw a notification on his phone. The only people who ever bothered to call him were his parents or solicitors, so he pressed the button and went to his voicemail.
"Ryan, I'm stuck in some crazy traffic here, and I don't know if I can get to O'Hare or back home. There must have been an accident up ahead or something. I'll just keep trying, and I'll be back with your father soon enough. There's cereal in the pantry and some leftover spaghetti, if you want it. I love you."
Though this wasn't the first time Ryan had ever gotten a message like this from his mom, it was the first time she sounded worried. Maybe he had picked it up from being around her and watching the news with her and hearing about the mounting concerns of World War III. Or maybe he picked it up when Mrs. Steele would come over with Raymie and Ryan would stand at the edge of the kitchen, where they couldn't see him, and Mom would mention that she was scared she and Dad would get a divorce.
The point was, Ryan did not know how he had picked up her "I'm worried, but I don't want anyone else to know" tone, but he picked it up nonetheless.
And when he checked the time stamp on the voicemail, his frown deepened, and he pushed himself out of his chair.
That message came in five hours ago, and she should have been home by now.
He opened the garage door and poked his head around. Only his dad's car was left, and that was because Mom had driven him to the airport in the first place.
As he stood by the garage door, chewing his lip, Ryan figured that the news would be the only thing that could tell him, really, what was going on. Something held Mom up even while she was driving to the airport, to the point where she wondered if she could even get back home. An earthquake? The possibility made some sense to him, though he wondered how isolated earthquakes could be, if the airport was just about twenty minutes away and he still hadn't felt it.
"The sirens," he murmured to himself, and he pivoted so quickly that his foot slipped out from under him and he crashed to the floor, knee connecting with the hard wood. He pushed himself up, grimacing against the pain, and threw himself over the couch to grab the remote.
He thought it would take him forever to find the right channel, seeing as how he never watched the news by choice, but when he turned it on, he didn't have to turn the channel.
(Later, he would find out that,
In a crisis,
The world will stop, and the truth will face you.
Fiction was an escape, not
A means to an end.
The truth hurt,
But he needed to face the music.)
A news anchor stood in front of the camera, helicopters floating in the air behind her. Several cars were piled up on the road, crushed and totaled in their entirety. White sheets that covered dead bodies littered the ground as EMTs dug through the rubble, placed a new corpse on a gurney or slab of wood, and carried it to the field behind the lady. One EMT knelt by a golden retriever, whose leg was all crushed and bloody. Ryan had never seen a dog so bloody. The anchor moved to stand in front of the view of the dog getting its leg amputated.
"Today, many woke up to find destruction on a scale that the world has never before seen. As you can see from our bird's-eye view, many planes have crashed. The car wreckage was caused by drivers disappearing right out from their clothes, and we can only assume the same happened with these planes. As of yet, there is no way to definitively know the extent of the destruction, but we can say it is monumental."
Ryan's heart leapt into his throat. Plane crashes. Dad– Mr. Steele–
Dad promised him that they would go camping together soon. Mr. Steele promised to teach Ryan how to chop wood.
But the anchor said that people disappeared, right out of their clothes. That…wasn't possible. It shouldn't be possible. Like, Ryan had always entertained the idea of aliens, if only so that he could fight one and become a Jedi, but now that it could be possible? It seemed too far-fetched, too unrealistic.
"Raymie's gotta know what's been happening." He fished his phone out of his pocket and pressed Raymie's contact. Knowing his best friend, Raymie wouldn't answer a text just yet, not when this was going on and would need a lengthy explanation.
The phone rang and kept ringing.
Ryan shook his head, ended the call when he got to Raymie's voicemail, and pressed his mom's contact. Still nothing.
He tried Raymie again, and every time he did, he got the same voicemail, where Raymie attempted his best Darth Vader impression while Ryan cracked up in the background. The voicemail cut out when Mr. Steele stepped inside Raymie's room, saying, "What is going on in here?" just as Raymie yelped and hurriedly said into the receiver, "Anyways, please leave a message, please and thank you."
Raymie hated hearing his phone buzz, and even if he loved the ringtone he had set for Ryan that week, he would have picked up by now, if for no other reason than that Chloe and his parents would have gotten onto him for letting it ring when he was perfectly capable of picking it up himself.
Ryan shrugged and tried his mom again, but she didn't pick up. Maybe her phone died. The charger in the car wasn't all that reliable in the first place. He couldn't really blame her, if he were being honest.
The news droned on, and the reporters kept mentioning the disappearances, how people had disappeared right out of their clothes. They showed video clips, too, of proud parents recording their children at basketball games on the other side of the country, only for the camera to immediately fall to the ground while screams filled the background.
"…there are no definitive answers, of course, since there is no way to tell who disappeared and who was killed in some of these instances, but experts estimate that about half of the world has disappeared."
Ryan dropped his phone.
About half.
A chill raced up his spine, and he leaned over the back of the couch to fish his phone out from between the cushions to type in world population into the Google search bar. When Google glitched, as a result of these new numbers, he grumbled, backspaced, and typed world population 2019.
There were 7.53 billion people in the world as of 2019, and the number had only grown since then.
He frowned. Unless there were more deaths in the past couple of years than there were births, that is. Then maybe the number shrunk, but either way, it was a big number, and when he calculated how much half would be, his jaw dropped.
"There are staggering reports of suicide. Police and other investigators are unable to help with people in danger of committing suicide, so we have been asked to tell you all, in the midst of this emergency, to wait until we have answers. Your loved ones may return. The cause of these disappearances is still unknown at this time."
The television cut out, and Ryan's head snapped up. He tucked his phone in his pocket.
"The cause of these disappearances is still unknown at this time."
The anchor lady's face contorted and twisted to the side, red and blue bars splitting her head in two. The television blared, and before an emergency alert system could come on, her voice floated throughout the living room.
"The cause of these disappearances is still unknown at this time."
When the television went back to normal, the anchor lady was no longer there, but there was a lot more blood than there had been a minute before. A man stood up and pocketed her necklace, lifting his gun.
The screen went black.
After witnessing what he was pretty sure was a murder on national – or international – television, Ryan bolted out of his house, running for Raymie's. Someone had to be there, someone had to be able to tell him what had just happened.
It wasn't aliens. Aliens couldn't have done this, and besides, maybe Raymie was right, maybe aliens didn't exist. Except right now, the only thing that made sense to him was aliens, and he felt like he was missing some very important information that would hand him all the answers.
Ryan pounded on the front door to the Steele's house, clamping his mouth shut. A few men with bandanas tied around their faces lifted baseball bats to the windows, and when the glass shattered, they crawled in. He heard people screaming, and then it would get silent, and he would pound even harder on the front door with one hand while frantically pressing the doorbell with the other.
"Hello?" he screamed, his voice scratching against his throat. He pulled his fist away from the door, and it shook. Whether it was from the fear or the force of pounding it against a wooden door, he didn't have a clue. Closing his eyes, he took a quick breath and continued to pound on the door. "Hey, I know you can hear me, let me in! Chloe?! Mrs. Steele?!"
No one answered.
Ryan checked over his shoulder, and there were still people looting the neighbors' houses, and they crept closer to his house. He didn't want them to take anything, especially if Mom was coming back soon, but he didn't want to be in there all alone when something happened.
The Steeles had a key in their backyard, hidden underneath a potted plant. Ryan had been told to use it only in extreme emergencies, like the type of emergency where he was more in danger if he called the police right then. And, based on what Ryan had heard about today, calling the police was going to result in a day-long wait at best.
Ryan glanced over his shoulder and slipped towards the backyard. The looters had gone inside, so he grabbed the top of the fence and pulled himself up. He dropped to the ground and rolled in the grass.
The Steeles used to have a dog. Her name was Daisy, and she was a border collie. Ryan and Raymie would take turns taking care of her and playing with her. Sometimes she would accidentally bowl Ryan over, and when he first met Daisy, it would make him cry, but as he got older, he and Raymie made it a game to see who got bowled over by Daisy the most.
Daisy had died about two years ago, and Mr. Steele still hadn't taken down her kennel outside. Her toys still littered the grass.
Ryan bit his top lip and hurried towards the back door, his head ducked low in case the looters came around to the Steele household. He grabbed the potted plant from its spot on the patio table, grabbed the key taped to the bottom, and unlocked the back door.
He slipped inside and closed the door behind him, pocketing the key. Ryan knew that Mr. Steele had imposed some "in case of emergency" plans, but he didn't know what the plan would be for "everyone is trashing the neighborhood, half the world is gone randomly, and a ton of people are dying, not to mention the fact that emergency services are so overwhelmed that police can't do their job, fires are burning down entire neighborhoods, and hospitals are so full that people are dying on the streets."
Ryan didn't go to all of the Emergency Rehearsals, but he heard about them from Raymie. Usually.
He figured that there would be some relation between this current situation and a deadly shooter situation, or this and a tornado. If he had to bet, they were hiding in one of the bathrooms – probably Mr. and Mrs. Steeles' – and they would be mad at him for a little bit until he told them that his mom still wasn't home, last time he checked.
He crept up the stairs, wincing when he put his weight on the creaky step. It groaned beneath his foot and he grit his teeth, braced his hand against the wall, and lifted himself to the step after that. The step groaned again when his foot left it.
Ryan had originally planned to go straight to Raymie's room and check and see if he was just avoiding him or if he got in trouble, but before he could push Raymie's door open, he heard someone crying.
It didn't sound like Raymie or Mrs. Steele.
Ryan turned from Raymie's room and gently stepped closer to the sound of crying, stopping just outside Mr. and Mrs. Steeles' room. He licked his lips and lifted his hand, still shaking, and gently knocked on the door frame.
"Raymie?" Mr. Steele's voice was thick, filled with tears.
Ryan poked his head inside the room. "Um…no, it's– it's not." He glanced around the room, noticing shards of glass on the floor and how Mrs. Steele's Bible laid face down on the floor amid the shards of glass. The sheets were unmade. Mr. Steele's eyes were red and puffy. "Are you okay, Mr. Steele?"
Mr. Steele choked on a sob and gestured for Ryan to come in. Ryan stepped inside the room and sat across from him.
"Um, Ryan…" Mr. Steele rubbed his palms on his slacks. "Uh, Raymie's disappeared. So did Ir– so did Mrs. Steele."
Ryan furrowed his brow. "What?" He shook his head and rocked onto his heels. "N- no. That can't be. R- Raymie's fine. I was just talking to him last night. Like, late last night. He's gotta be fine."
Mr. Steele cleared his throat and squeezed Ryan's shoulder. "I checked, Ryan. He's gone. He's– His phone was dead when I got here. I think it happened right after he was talking to you." Tears fell down his face, and he reached with his free hand to swipe at them. "I really wish I didn't have to be the one to tell you this, son."
Ryan's face twisted in pain, and he felt like a little kid again as he reached for Mr. Steele. Mr. Steele leaned forward and wrapped Ryan in a hug, and Ryan buried his face into Mr. Steele's shoulder and he cried.
He felt like a little kid because he was a little kid. He was twelve years old, and he would crawl into his parents' bed at night whenever there was a thunderstorm or whenever he had a nightmare, and he couldn't watch a lot of PG-13 movies because some of them had too much cursing or sex or violence or they scared him too much, and he liked mac-'n-cheese and he couldn't usually be left alone at home. He was still short, and he would ride his bike around the neighborhood every day, and sometimes, he would ride around Mount Prospect with Raymie and Chloe, and he would get scared when he went to Chicago and he would lose his mom in the crowd, and he would shout her name until she shoved her way through the throngs of people and grabbed his hand.
But through his entire life, all twelve years, he had known Raymie. They shared the same birthday, were born mere hours apart from each other, in the same hospital, and from the day Mr. Steele met Dad, they were friends. Raymie had been there through everything. Raymie was closer than a brother to him, and Raymie always told Ryan that he was closer to him than his own sister.
Raymie was gone now, and Ryan was left alone.
Ryan bunched his fingers in Mr. Steele's jacket. "Why didn't I disappear?" he choked out. "I– we're the same age, we do everything together, why didn't I disappear too? Why did he go?"
Mr. Steele cupped the back of Ryan's head. "I don't know for sure, Ryan. I don't know for sure."
Ryan followed Mr. Steele back downstairs. He felt tired now, like he didn't have a whole lot of tears left to cry – though a select few situations could change that – and he didn't know if Mom was home yet. Mr. Steele offered to get Ryan a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while he called his mom.
"I thought you were supposed to be in England tonight, Mr. Steele." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
Mr. Steele's steps faltered. "I was," he said. "But the disappearances happened before we reached the halfway point, and I felt that it would be better to turn back. People were focused on getting back to their families." He cleared his throat. "I was focused on getting back to my family."
Ryan pulled up a barstool and sat at the counter while Mr. Steele set the bread, peanut butter, and grape jelly on the counter. "Where's Chloe?"
Mr. Steele grabbed a butterknife from the drawer. "Don't know. She– she was supposed to be going back to California for school. Just swooped in to say hi for a few days and go back. I don't know if she's okay, and I can't get ahold of her."
Ryan twisted his lips and accepted the sandwich Mr. Steele offered him.
As he ate, Mr. Steele glanced at the living room. "You said your mom wasn't home when you were there?"
Ryan nodded.
Mr. Steele drummed his fingers against the counter. "I don't want you going back there alone. I don't think I want you going back there at all unless your parents are home. You can stay here for now, but I hope you don't mind if I turn on the news."
Ryan gestured to the living room and hopped off the stool.
When Mr. Steele turned on the tv, there was a new reporter standing in front of the screen, and at a different place, too. This reporter was young, could almost pass as a college student, with unruly hair and rumpled clothes. His eyes, however, were wide awake.
The reporter folded his hands and leaned forward, staring directly into the camera. "We are about to play a list of people who were in planes that currently have unknown whereabouts. Again, we would like to warn our viewers that, just because your loved ones may be on this list, there is no cause to worry. There is no evidence to suggest that these disappearances are permanent.
"Under normal circumstances, we would not be allowed to do this, but considering the havoc that has wreaked the planet, we have been given permission to release flight lists. It comes as the following: the flight name will be listed first, along with its place of departure, location of arrival, and finally, the people onboard. Be advised that these were the people who bought tickets; there is no way to know if they boarded the planes or not."
Ryan leaned forward, barely registering Mr. Steele's hand on his back. He bit his thumbnail and scanned each flight list, groaning internally at how slowly they played the passenger lists. He understood, though. There were a lot of people, and he was even having trouble placing his father's place of departure with the location of arrival.
Mr. Steele leaned forward. "Your mom told Irene that your father's flight was 7893 from Madrid."
Ryan nodded.
Flight 7893 from Madrid-Barajas Airport to O'Hare International Airport
He gasped and reached for Mr. Steele's hand. Ryan hoped and prayed that his father wouldn't be on this list, that he had canceled his flight or gotten on another one, that he wasn't there, but Todd Daley flashed on the screen, and Ryan choked on a sob.
His father was dead.
Mr. Steele sighed sadly and pulled him into a hug, and Ryan shrank into himself, crying openly and harder than he had before. He lost Raymie and his dad, all in one day – how could it get any worse?
"He can't be dead." He swallowed past the pain, past the fear, and turned his face into Mr. Steele's shoulder. "He can't be dead. I won't let him."
"Maybe he disappeared," Mr. Steele whispered, gently rubbing Ryan's arm. "Disappearing would be better, don't you think?"
Ryan shook his head. "He didn't disappear. I just– I just know, Mr. Steele, I know that my dad is dead." He reached up and rubbed his eyes with his fist. "I just wanna go home."
Mr. Steele nodded. "Okay. Okay, son, we can arrange that."
They waited until Ryan was calm enough to say a coherent sentence without crumbling into tears, then Ryan took his phone from his pocket, his hands shaking the whole time, while Mr. Steele continued to sit beside him.
He secretly hoped his mom never picked up. That he wouldn't have to be the one to tell her that Dad was dead, or that he wouldn't have to hear her try and tell him herself. He secretly hoped that today was just a terrible, awful nightmare, and he would wake up and crawl into his mom's bed, and he would tell her that he just had the worst nightmare of his life, that Dad had died in a plane crash and Raymie was just gone, and she would smooth his hair back and tell him that he had nothing to worry about.
But the phone stopped ringing.
"Who is this?"
Ryan furrowed his brow and pulled the phone away from his ear. "Um…I– I called my mom's phone. Who are you? Did you steal it?"
"Is your mom Marjorie Louise Daley?"
Ryan nodded, though he knew the person on the other end of the line couldn't see him. "Yes, that's her, but can you answer my question? Who are you?"
The person on the other end sighed. "I'm Officer Flanigan. Um…is there anyone with you? A relative, maybe? Where's your father?"
Ryan clenched his jaw. "My dad is dead, and we don't have any relatives in the city."
Officer Flanigan sighed. "Son, um…what's your name?"
Ryan grit his teeth and gripped the phone tighter in his hand. "My name is Ryan, now can you tell me why you're the one answering my mom's phone?"
"Ryan, your mother is dead."
(He had hoped that she wouldn't answer, but he had never dreamed of this. He had never dreamed that she would be dead.
He wanted this to be a dream, something he could wake up from.
But he could feel the pain; it wasn't a dream.)
"No! She can't be dead!" He stood quickly, Mr. Steele reaching for him. The officer on the other end of the line tried to say something more, that she was killed in a car crash, but Ryan bowled over him. "I won't let her be dead! I won't– she's not– my mom isn't dead!"
Mr. Steele stood and gripped Ryan's shoulder. "Ryan, I think it's best that you–"
Ryan shrugged off Mr. Steele's hand and hung up the phone. "Don't even talk to me," he seethed.
Mr. Steele furrowed his brow and followed Ryan to the front door. "Ry- Ryan, come back in here!"
But Ryan didn't listen. He ran down the street, grabbed his bike from his front yard, and sped out of the neighborhood. Mr. Steele ran out the front door and called his name, keys in hand, but Ryan knew shortcuts, knew how to avoid being seen by Mr. Steele or his parents.
Tears blurred his vision, and as the wind blew past him, he choked on another sob. I want my parents, he thought.