Madison Square Garden—
Sarah couldn’t hear herself think over the deafening roar of the crowd at Madison Square Garden. The sea of people, all clad in Ranger blue, waving their arms and screaming in excitement. A mixture of popcorn, hotdogs, and the sharp tang of spilled beer lingered in the stands.
The stadium lights glinted off the ice rink, illuminating the players as they skated back and forth, exciting the crowd into a symphony of enthusiasm and anticipation.
All she could focus on was the Rangers as they dominated the game. They were up by two in the third, and the energy was electric.
She high-fived Mike, his howls mimicking a victorious battle cry carried upon the waves of the crowd’s deafening roars. Like some Viking claiming his bounty, he grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her in. “I told you these seats were worth it!” he shouted over the noise.
A wide grin emerged as he sought her approval. He’d been trying to impress her all evening, and she had to admit it was working.
Only fifteen rows up from the ice, they could see every expression on the players’ faces, every spray of ice from the players’ skates when they shifted their bodies sideways to skid in a sudden stop. The Rangers flew across the ice, swift and powerful and set up for another run on the goal. Excitement built, and Sarah’s throat burned from screaming with the crowd, a sea of ecstatic faces, their arms waving, carrying her along with it.
Her hands stung from clapping, but she was too excited to care. Spilled beer, gum and snacks made the floor sticky under her boots and sweat from the heat of the packed arena beaded on her forehead despite the ice below.
It was a chaotic and glorious scene, a whirlwind of energy and passion that made Sarah feel alive and fully present in the moment. The euphoria of the game and the electric atmosphere of the arena swirled around her in a dizzying display of sheer adrenaline fueled frenzy.
Mike’s eyes were bright and focused, completely engrossed in the game. Like a kid, Mike cheered for his team.
“Watch this, watch this!” He grabbed her arm, pointing as their center drove toward the goal. His touch was electric, warm through her jersey sleeve, sending a jolt of excitement through her body. When he leaned in closer, she caught a whiff of his cologne, a mix of musk and spice blended perfectly with the scent of him. Her heart raced with the intensity of a thousand horses as he looked at her. She liked him more each day. As she gazed at him with adoration, she couldn’t help but dream of a future together, full of these exhilarating moments and the warmth of his touch.
The puck moved at lightning speed, hurtling through the air and slamming into the net, hitting the pole at the back with a loud clank. Like a thunderclap that shattered the air, jolting her back to reality, the crowd erupted in a crescendo of wild energy.
Sarah was on her feet with everyone else when the first siren ripped through the cheers, creating a cacophony of sound and sensation. Sarah’s ears rang with the roar of twenty thousand voices becoming one. Despite the cold drink dripping down her neck from the big guy slinging his cup around like a victory flag, Sarah was caught up in the electric moment and didn’t care. Mike pulled her into a hug, and she tasted the salt of sweat on her lips when he kissed her. She laughed, flinging her head back as he spun her around.
But the noise didn’t stop, and Sarah’s fists clenched as she searched the sea of people for the source of it. The siren blared, its shrill tone sharp and piercing, like a blade slicing through the ecstatic roar of the crowd into the depths of a sudden feeling of dread. It shattered the moment, leaving only a ringing in Sarah’s ears and a primal fear clawing at her senses.
As she looked for the source, she could see a mix of reactions in the faces that turned toward the sound, searching. Some looked concerned, others annoyed, while most kept celebrating with raised arms and wide grins.
New York lived with sirens. Sarah had stopped noticing them years ago. But this one… this one pierced something primitive in her brain. The wailing siren rose and fell, an unsettling undertone to the pulsing energy of the crowd.
The first siren was quickly joined by another, their ear-piercing wails filling the arena reminiscent of a thousand anguished souls crying out in unison. A tumultuous duet, one siren echoing the other in an eerie chorus that quickly drowned out the cheers and clatter of the crowds as their roar faltered.
The vibe changed, shifting direction on a dime. The cheers and celebration suddenly replaced by fear and panic. A momentary silence filled the air and the siren’s wail repeated. Expressions changed as, one by one, they began to recognize the sound. The players on the ice slowed, and the screech of the referee’s whistle became lost in the chaos quickly emerging when confusion overtook them.
An announcement crackled over the arena’s speakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, please proceed calmly to the nearest exit—”
From the corner of her eye, she saw a hand reach out motioning to them urgently toward the aisle. They were near the end of a row and the long set of stairs leading to the top. A sea of bodies emerged onto them like a tidal wave. A chaotic tangle of limbs and voices, urging and pulling, like a nest of snakes writhing towards the stairs.
“What the fuck is that?” someone behind Sarah asked. The words carried in the quiet murmurs of confusion.
The arena’s speakers crackled to life and a voice, more urgent this time, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I say again, please proceed calmly to the nearest exit. This is not a drill. Repeat: this is not—”
Static swallowed the rest.
For one heartbeat, the crowd froze, their eyes wide with confusion and fear. The chaos and commotion around them seemed to slow down, and for a moment, it was as if time had stopped.
The sounds of terror ripped through the air, shattering the brief moment of stillness and sending it crashing into a frenzy of chaos and fear. A wave of panic consumed the crowd and drowned out all other sounds, including the urgent announcement blaring from the speakers.
The crowd surged, pushing her; surrounding and moving ahead, taking her with it like a flood. Sarah’s feet left the ground as bodies pressed against her from all sides, a maelstrom of panic and desperation. A chaotic tangle of limbs and voices besieged her from all sides and she cringed with the hot, moist breath of strangers on her neck. The sharp edges of objects jabbed at her body, and Mike’s fingers locked around her wrist, holding on to her felt like her only lifeline.
“Move!” he shouted. “We have to move!”
They pushed forward with the crowd that swarmed like a colony of ants, each individual body melding into the mass as they pressed forward in unison. The temperature around her rose with each passing second, the air thick with the heat of thousands of bodies squeezed together. Sarah’s jersey clung to her skin, drenched in sweat from the press of people. In the frenzy, someone’s watch caught in her hair, yanking her head back before the links gave way under the force of the crowd.
They made it about ten feet before the real chaos started. Someone screamed. This was not an excited sports kind of scream, but something guttural, terrified. The push of bodies surged again. Sarah felt herself being swept along, her grip on Mike’s hand slipping away like sand through her fingers.
A child wailed somewhere to her left. “Mommy! MOMMMMY!”
“Emma! Where are you?” A woman’s voice screeched over the deafening roar, desperate and raw.
Sarah strained to turn toward the sound, but the crowd carried her forward like a mere leaf in a raging river. The crush of bodies forced them up the stairs and she felt powerless to halt their progression.
“Mike!” The noise of panic swallowed her voice.
A man in a Rangers jersey shoved past her, his elbow catching her ribs and knocking her off balance. Pain shot through her side. She stumbled, her hip hitting the edge of a seat. Someone stepped on her foot. Another elbow caught her shoulder. It was like an assault from all sides, stuck in the midst of a violent storm, being battered where she stood gripping the back of a seat.
Ten feet ahead, a fight erupted. “You pushed my kid!” A heavy-set man had another by the throat, slamming him against the seats. “You fucking pushed my kid!”
Blood sprayed as fists connected with flesh. The crowd writhed around the violence like a living thing, everyone trying to get away and going nowhere. The sheer volume of noise and cries for help overwhelmed her senses. And those damn sirens kept wailing in the background. The crowd continued its crawl forward, parting around the fighting men like water, everyone focused only on escape. She felt lost as fear immobilized her, leaving her clinging to the seat like a lifeline.
Sarah’s foot slid on the slick surface of spilled beer. Her knee hit the concrete floor, sending a jolt of pain through her body. The impact of the boot against her side felt like a heavy weight crushing her ribs and driving the air from her lungs. Her mouth gaped as the taste of copper overwhelmed her. More feet pressed close, some trying to avoid her, others not caring. A woman’s stiletto heel caught her thigh, tearing through her jeans. Above her, the mass of legs and feet seemed endless as she was battered by the swirling currents of panic and violence.
A designer purse hit the ground next to her face. Calvin Klein leather, probably three hundred dollars. Its contents tumbling out in a curious display of what mattered to people. Lipstick rolled under the seats, car keys slid across concrete. A hand darted down, snatched the wallet, disappeared into the forest of legs. The purse’s owner never even looked back.
Fingers dug into Sarah’s shoulder as someone used her for balance, pushing themselves forward and forcing her back down. Her eyes watered from the pain. The hard cement floor vibrated with thousands of running feet and the air grew thicker with fear-sweat and desperation.
“Help!” She tried to push herself up, but bodies pressed too close. “Please!”
A boot came down on her hand. Bones ground together. She screamed, yanking her arm back, curling into herself and trying to cram her body under the seat she saw as her only lifeline while feet continued to flash past her face. The concrete scraped her cheek raw in the grinding of her face as mindless panic threatened to end her.
Somewhere close, glass shattered. A man’s voice: “Fuck you! I’m getting out!”
More sounds of fighting. A woman sobbing. Fabric tearing. The crack of another window breaking.
The lights went out.
The darkness hit like a physical thing. The crowd’s panic found a new gear. Sarah felt debris raining down on her, though she dared not even look up. Phones, bags, jewelry torn away by unseen hands. The sirens wailed. The temperature kept rising while her hopes fell.
Green emergency lights sputtered to life, casting everything in a sickly glow while shadows twisted across frightened faces. Sarah saw a man yanking a gold chain from a woman’s neck, another person trampling a fallen child to reach the exit.
Strong hands grabbed her arms. She fought, kicking out, but then Mike’s voice cut through her panic.
“I got you!” Blood ran from his nose, matting in his beard. A cut above his eye had already begun to swell. “Come on!”
He hauled her up.
Pain shot through her ribs, her crushed hand. They pushed toward what looked like an exit, but the crowd had congealed into an immobile mass. Three rows ahead, someone had fallen. People climbed over the trapped person, stepping on their back, their head. Sarah just stared in horror, thinking about how only moments ago that was her.
Her phone vibrated in her back pocket. She pulled it out without thinking, the screen’s light shining harshly in the dim arena. It was a text from her mother.
It simply said I love you.
The words made no sense. Time seemed to slow. Why would her mom…?
The man was a blur of motion, his face twisted in anger as he shoved her aside. In slow motion, her phone slipped from her hand and crashed to the ground, the screen cracking and shards of glass flying in all directions.
Before she could retrieve it, light bloomed through the high windows. Not emergency lights. Not lightning. Something else. Something wrong.
The brightness intensified impossibly, painfully white, burning away all shadows.
Mike turned toward it. Sarah watched his face change, shifting between confusion, realization, terror. The light consumed everything.
And then there was nothing.