What Hells May Come

12:43 a.m.

The last of the evening rush is starting to wind down. The Blue Jay game was a marathon affair, going 17 innings before the home team finally emerged victorious. Those few hardy spectators who had stuck with their team until the end were just now wending their way homeward along the Yonge-University subway line. Some people were buoyant; others looked exhausted. A few young toughs yukked it up towards the back of the car, using language so laced with teenage slang and profanity that it could only tentatively be identified as English. At the front of the train, a scruffy man repeatedly banged his head against a pole and said "Sheeeeeeeyit" over and over.
The subway driver was anxious for this shift to be over. His new girlfriend had promised to wait up for him, and his mind was mostly on her gentle curves as the train negotiated the long yet rather sharp bend to the west of Union Station. Even if he had been vigilant, though, he almost certainly would have missed the tiny glow of little red numbers that had suddenly winked into existence just down and to the right of the train as it squealed and roared past.

3:30 a.m.
The night watchman at Yorkdale Mall had been there forever. He could walk the place in his sleep--and sometimes did. These days, he felt redundant. If he so much as farted through the cage enclosing that jewellery store, lights would flash, alarms would sound, and the police would descend on him before he could say "just kidding".
He thought it was maybe time to call it a career. After almost two decades, he still couldn't afford to even think of shopping in some of the tony boutiques he ostensibly guarded. And nothing ever happened around here.
On a ledge above the entrance to the glass bridge that linked the mall with the subway, a black box sat silent, its display pointed inward, against a wall. It had been placed there almost sixteen hours ago by one of the painters that was redoing the decor in a charming shade of green. Unseen, the red numbers counted down: five hours to go. Oblivious, the watchman trudged on.

The next morning dawned clear and cool for the end of May. You could see your breath.
The morning rush was well underway as a man descended the steps leading to Dundas Station. He had rode into town on a Greyhound the night before, a highly illegal automatic weapon packed in his carry-on bag. Now that weapon rested comfortably against his side as he mentally rehearsed the actions he would take in the next half-hour. A statuesque blonde woman asked him what time it was. He smiled at her and said it was 7:32. She returned the smile, a little uneasily. Something about his eyes...

7:41 a.m.

Union Station was crammed. The southern terminus of the subway line linked up with a cavernous train depot; commuter trains had been scuttling in and out all morning. A GO Train from Oakville had just arrived, a few minutes early for once. A wave of humanity disembarked and flowed down into the subway.
People were chock-a-block in the Designated Waiting Area. A subway train whooshed in and glided to a stop. The doors chimed once before opening, and they stayed open for almost a full minute as the train disgorged most of its passengers and took on a new load.
The TTC trademark tritone sounded, reminding some people of a motif from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a larger number of people of the beginning to the theme from Sesame Street, and everyone else simply that the doors were about to shut. Several of the cars were standing room only, and precious little of that. The train entered the darkness beyond Union and began to bend northward, approaching St. Andrew Station. An unearthly shriek reverberated around the tunnel. In the third car, a six-year-old started to cry at the sound. Her mommy shushed her and told her that subway trains didn't like to go round corners, so they cried when they did it and that's what the noise was. Look, she said. Look out the window and you might see the subway's tears. There's one now! she exclaimed, and pointed out an orange spark. The six-year-old, whose name was Kara, stared transfixed. Her mommy told her the corner was almost over and the subway would stop crying soon.
Somewhere down and to the right, a set of numbers reached zero.

The explosion lifted the subway clear off its tracks. The train peeled open like a grape as
concussions buffeted each car, blowing out the windows: smoke poured in. The third car jumped the track, smashed through a couple of pillars and came to rest on its side on the southbound rails, four seconds ahead of the train inbound from St. Andrew.

The carnage was unspeakable.

The swarthy man hid a grin. Three stops behind the chaos, radios had crackled to life and everyone was being ushered out of Dundas Station. Most people, he noted, seemed to think somebody had phoned in a bomb threat. They were taking the unexpected evacuation pretty calmly, most of them, although one businessman in a thousand-dollar suit was braying to everyone that he had a very important meeting at 8:30, damnit, and if he was late he would sue the ass off the T.T.C.
Mohammed al-Ziri lifted a hand to his face to hide his grin, which was hideous to behold. He made sure he was at the forefront of the crowd as it jostled and pushed its way through the exit doors. As soon as he was clear of the station, he jogged up ten steps and whirled, withdrawing his machine gun in a fluid, practised motion. Then he opened fire.

Almost twenty kilometers north, at Yorkdale Station, a similar evacuation was underway. News had travelled remarkably fast. Nobody could tell you for certain what was going on, but rumours of a large-scale terrorist attack downtown were circulating among the crowd. One man had grievously overslept that morning and now found himself running almost an hour behind. He realized, with a start, that if he'd been on time today he would have found himself in Union right about now. People flocked out of the station, traversing a glassine bridge between it and the mall. A subway constable was explaining to the busker in the tunnel that she couldn't play anymore and had to leave.
Relief and disbelief battled for supremacy in every mind: the impossible terrorist attack had actually materialized--right here in Canada!--yet they counted themselves among the living.

On an unseen ledge, the numbers zeroed out.

This explosion was larger than the ones downtown. A hail of glass shot out in all directions, eviscerating everything in its path. Then, inferno.

Throughout the day, the death toll, initially reported at fourteen, continued to rise. The next morning's papers reported 111 fatalities and nearly five hundred injuries; dozens of people in hospital were not expected to live. A little girl named Kara had been found, miraculously, holding on to her mother's severed arm.
A sleeper al-Qaeda cell claimed responsibility, saying the attacks were in retaliation for Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

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--IT COULD HAPPEN HERE--