I woke to a profound silence. It was thick and heavy, lingering in the air like a held breath. No sound, no life, no feeling. Throwing back the covers, I called out, but my voice was instantly swallowed by the quiet. A sudden panic rising, I ran from room to room in a frantic search for my brother, utterly perplexed by the eerie atmosphere that had grasped the day. The silence was deafening. Needing to escape the suffocating walls, I threw open the front door and stepped outside with bare feet. I fully expected to feel the cool, damp grass and see the familiar blue skies that usually defined a normal morning in Meadowbrook. Instead, the sight that met my eyes was completely unrecognizable.
Suffocating black smoke filled the air; blocking my airways and causing me to cough. Destroyed cars lay on the road carrying dead corpses which no one could revive. No signs of life were anywhere to be seen with the thriving nature of the setting being completely diminished by soot, fire and darkness. Pitch black. The kind of black that makes you wonder if daytime could ever come again. The kind of black that blanketed the whole atmosphere with no specks of light to be seen whatsoever. It was 9 am. Light was supposed to be flooding the streets conveying happiness and love. Instead, the life in Meadowbrook had gone… completely gone.