Carillon

—this is a message from the emergency broadcast system. This is not a test.

“Shh-shh, be quiet for a sec.” I stop trying to drag Sammy, screaming, off of the floor and tune my attention to the TV that’s no longer playing Disney Channel reruns.

—a message from the emergency broadcast system. This is not a test. Please remain calm and—

Sam lets out another earthshattering wail and grasps onto my ankles with her sticky fingers.

“Samantha, shut up. I’m trying to listen,”

—seek shelter immediately. Tune radios to 740.5 AM for further information.

A jolt of anxiety sparks in the pit of my stomach. I feel it trickle down, cold to my toes. Of all times for Mom to be out.

The, hair-raising grating tone follows and then the message starts up again:

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a very important public service announcement—

I pry Sam’s little fingers from my legs and grasp onto the clunky, old coffee table, hefting myself up. In a daze, I stumble to the coat closet. The door sticks, as always. I wrench it open, tugging back with all my body weight. The musty smell of old winter coats and gloves palls out in a warm gust. I vaguely hear Sammy yowling in the background, continuing on with her tantrum.

I shove the coats aside and fish through the baskets at the back of the closet. There’s gotta be a radio in here somewhere. I rip the scarves and gloves, almost moldering with age, from the bins. But they all turn up empty.

Gotta call Mom.

I haul myself to my feet and grab the yellowing telephone in the kitchen. I press the plastic to my ear and just hear intermittent mechanical clamoring. Busy. “Shit.” What’s going on?

There’s a sound at the door. A persistent, agitated knock. I drop the phone and tear over to the living room. I peer hesitantly through the peephole. Mark, our neighbor. I throw open the door.

“Do you know what’s going on?”

Mark shakes his greying head, his eyes have this wildly anxious quality. “No. No one knows anything. Your mom home?”

“No, she went out to run some errands. Left me with Sam.” I glance over my shoulder. Sammy’s calmed herself down, now sitting silently on the couch, staring at the TV as it plays the same recorded message over and over again.

“Listen, to be safe, we’re all going to hole up in the basement. Just until we hear something new. You and Sam should come.”

“Yeah… Yeah.” I nod my head slightly. “I just have to grab some of Sammy’s things.”

“You’ll be okay getting down there by yourself?” He looks behind him where his family’s waiting with these hollow, uneasy looks carved into their faces.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Be safe.”

Mark and his family head towards the stairwell and I shut the door.

“Sammy?”

She doesn’t respond. I creep slowly towards her and sit gingerly on the arm of the couch. “Sammy, we’re gonna go down to the basement until this blows over. I need you to get some of your things together and then we’ll walk down. Okay?”

“C’mon, kiddo.” I muss her slightly and, stiff-legged, she stands and grasps onto my hand. “There we go.”

I walk her to the room we’ve shared for years and snatch her little pink backpack from off the floor. There are a couple of picture books and stuffed animals scattered across her bed. I scoop them up and toss them in her bag.

“You ready, Sammy?” She’s standing in front our bookshelf, just staring. Unnerving. Like a final goodbye without knowing you’re saying goodbye at all.

The fading sun illuminates the dust motes, like tiny, slow-moving lightning bugs. Dusky purples and blues are falling over the city outside the single, barred window. I grasp her hand and tug. “Time to go, Sam.”

She cries out in a panic and grabs an old snow globe from the bookshelf. I continue to tow her out to the kitchen, where I grab a handful of granola bars and a gallon of water. I shove the granola bars in the bag and shoulder the backpack. Sam clutches the snow globe to her chest. It’s from a Christmas a long time ago.

I lock up the apartment. Sam and I jog down the hallway and I shove open the metal door to the stairwell. It makes its familiar metallic screech and then slams behind us.

Dark. How did it get so dark? The normal fluorescents aren’t buzzing passively above our heads. They’ve been replaced by the dark red glow of emergency lights.

Both Sam and I have halted at the landing, hovering above the steps. “It’s okay, Sammy. Here we go.” I keep a strong grip on her hand and lead her down the steps, down to the ground floor and then another flight down to the basement door. It’s closed. I try the handle. Locked.

“Hello?!” I shout into the door. I slam my palm against it, a hollow sound buzzing in my fingertips. “Let us in!”

I stop to listen for footprints.

Nothing.

“Hello?!” I shout a little louder and violently jiggle the handle, not that it’s any use. I let go of Sam’s hand and crack the heels of my palms into the door again.

I back away from the door and breathe out through pursed lips. Okay. Okay. It’s okay. Calm down. Just wait.

And then the door cracks open. Just enough to let a sliver of white light cut through the red gloom. “…hello?”

There’s an immense, pregnant pause that seems to thicken the air in my throat.

“Angela?” The door swings open the rest of the way and the super stands in the doorway, a lanky old man in a blue jumpsuit with thick, white eyebrows.

I push out the breath I’ve been holding. “Mr. Donoghue.”

“Come in, come in.” He holds open the door and hurriedly motions Sam and me through. The basement is immediately colder with its dark concrete walls and floors. Somehow I feel more anxious being here. A majority of the tenants are either sitting against the outer walls or are huddled in a group in the middle of the room. There’s an unspoken immensity weighing them—us all—down.

“Anything yet?” Mr. Donoghue asks the group in the center of the room as we approach.

A murmured chorus of “no’s” follow.

“Damn.”

I catch a glimpse of what’s on the little crude table—a radio.

“Why haven’t we heard anything yet?” a man who’s sitting alone against the wall demands.

“We have a right to know!” a woman resounds.

I shuffle Sammy into a corner of the basement as more join in with useless grievances. She curls into a ball around her snow globe and earnestly turns the little gold key. A truncated, plucky version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town accompanies the growing protests.

“They didn’t give us any information to begin with—“

“I just want to know what’s happening, don’t you—“

Their voices rise in waves, ever growing. A burbling stream turned raging river.

“A state of emergency and we don’t even know why—“

“Everyone be quiet!” A voice rises above the rest. Neighbor Mark. “This is ridiculous! No amount of shouting is going to help this situation. What we need to do is stay calm and—“

“Calm?! How can we stay calm?” Another voice.

“You’re gonna have to figure that one out for yourself. All I’m saying is that you’re scaring the children and that getting all righteous isn’t going fix anything. Okay?”



We’ve been in the basement for hours. The little generator hums in the corner. I’ve been drifting in and out of dreams. I don’t think Sam has slept at all. She just keeps playing the song on her snow globe. Other tenants have been sending scowls in our direction, but I don’t care. If it’s the only thing keeping her calm, so be it.

Everyone’s tired. The kind of tired I guess you get from the nation declaring a state of emergency and then not providing any further information, so you end up huddled in the basement of an apartment building. I scoff softly and look down at Sammy. She staring into the falling snowflakes inside of the globe, happy little country homes blanketed in snowfall.

She really need Mom right now. I hope she’s okay.

Then the lights flicker. Just briefly.

Everyone straightens up, spines suddenly erect. The thought of being here in the dark is terrifying.

And then there’s this sudden carillon of noise. A mixture of what sounds like guns firing in the distance and this heavy metallic ringing and the startled cries from within the basement walls.

The lights flicker again, the darkness lasting longer this time.

“What’s happening?”

“Oh god.” A stifled cry.

The darkness and the light alternate now, like camera flashes, terrified faces appearing and disappearing in black and white.

Sam desperately tries to wind up the snow globe again. The music has stopped.

The lights go dark for good. The generator goes quiet and the world does too.

The snow globe plinks its, now eerie, Christmas tune.

Stale, ragged breathing.

Bang.

Someone screams. Was it me?

The sound continues, increasing in speed. A cavernous booming, like bombs dropping in the distance, only it sounds like its coming from the door.

I can’t see anything. There’s just the darkness and the eternal thunder.

Until a thin sheath of red light strains through the doorway.

“Hello? Who is it?” Mr. Donoghue. He opened the door.

And then quick shadows pass through the red, crashing through the door, what looks like a flood. A flood of dark shapes rushing towards us.

“Oh god—“