The Longest Night

There was no traffic on the road besides the buses they rode in, and no one could be seen on the streets. It was as if Fort McMurray had been emptied overnight. Those who were trapped there were trying their best to hide from the danger that could not be hidden from. Catherine felt as if she were being carted to the gallows, hoping yet that someone would come to save her.

The buses soon came to a stop. Catherine looked out the back window. She could see a small playground just off to the side of a squat, ageing school. An officer at the front of the bus stood and spoke.

“In a moment, I’m going to ask everyone to step off the bus in an orderly fashion into the school. Do not try to leave the premises or step out of line, or we will have to detain you. You, ma’am, back to you – first three rows, yes.”

Everyone got to their feet slowly. Prisoners. Displaced. As soon as she stepped off the bus and touched ground, she looked around to see RCMP with stern faces stretched out in a line. People followed the wall they formed into the school. She was shoved and she hurriedly followed the crowd indoors.

Everyone huddled in the gym, where sounded a loud hum of panicked voices. A young man was slumped against the wall, staring off into the distance and rocking slowly. Others were weeping. In a matter of seconds, she found herself damming in tears, for a renewed realization that she was fucked hit her full-force.

She turned to the officer closest to her. He was wearing a face mask. She reached for his arm and he held up a hand to stop her. She held her hands to her chest. “What are you going to do with us?”

“This is temporary quarantine.”

An odd strangled sound escaped her throat. “Not all of us are sick.”

“There’s nothing we can do.” The way he said it, he didn’t like it any more than the rest of them did.

“Don’t you have face masks?”

He looked at her long and hard, but she couldn’t read what was going on through his mind with his face hidden behind his shield. “No.”

She backed away, staring at him in disbelief, and walked to the farthest corner of the gym, as far away from everyone as she could get. It was an elementary school; the gym was fairly small and cramped with lost adults in it. Catherine touched her back to the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, placed her bag on her lap, and pulled herself into a tight ball.

For a while, she merely stared at her hands on her knees, letting the tears streak down her cheeks. To her right, a man slumped against the wall, his hands locked in his hair and his teeth gritted, more likely than not over an unbearably painful headache.

It had already started to spread.

They lined the walls and the bottom of the stage all around the room, and the frantic talk had died down to a drone. No one tried arguing with the officers anymore, for they yielded absolutely no answers. Catherine sat by herself silently in the corner, oblivious to any sort of conversation, when someone’s feet appeared by hers. She looked up slowly to find Dave.

“How you doin’, kiddo?”

She looked up at him. His face made her all the more aware of how vulnerable and stricken she must have looked.

“This is a bunch of bullshit, I know,” he mumbled, then shuffled to slide down the wall and plant himself right next to her. “I was able to get a hold of a few of those grunt buckets for some words, but they won’t say much.”

“Why are they doing this?” she asked pathetically.

“Because they don’t know what else to do. They’re a bunch of fuckin’ headless chickens, and they’re runnin’ around in the dark. Makes you think a World War just broke out again and we’re on the wrong side. I’m waitin’ on some sort of spiel about our rights or some shit. Maybe they don’t have any contact with Dickweed Central for orders. I dunno how those things work. All I know is that they actually don’t know what the fuck else to do with us.”

“How do you know?”

“They said so. Well, they said so in choice words. They’re obviously not gonna come out to a bunch of scared and stranded people about how they don’t know their heads from their assess, but they said something like: ‘It’s protocol when no other action is possible.’ Not possible, my ass. How many doctors’ offices they got? If I’ve gotta sit in the hallway of some sick bay waitin’ for AMA to come peel my car off the highway like everyone else, so be it. But no. What they do? Throw us in a fucking elementary school. Blindfold us like we’re gonna be executed. This is shit Catherine, you know that?”

She let her head hang. “I want to call my mom.”

Dave looked at her sideways. “Where? Edmonton?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck…I wonder what shape that city’s in.”

Her hair stood on end. The radio was blaring it at her as the earthquake rumbled beneath her car, throwing her from side to side, destroying the road around her. LARGE SEISMIC ACTIVITY HAS BEEN DETECTED IN…

“Edmonton,” she whispered.

“I think they were hit harder further south,” he mumbled. “We caught the pretty end of it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. And I hope I’m wrong. But even the men in blue are losin’ their shit. They’re all freaked out by something, and it ain’t the bug that’s got them pissing their pants.”

She glanced at the officers standing by the doors and the stage, hard and grim with their hands linked behind their backs. Their face masks protected them from more than the virus.

Dave shook his head. “Fuck, I need a smoke.” After a brief silence, he shifted on the spot, then ran a hand through his thick, messy hair. He groaned a bit, then ran both hands over his head. He started raking his fingers on himself, then his hands clamped down on his crown.

“What’s wr…” Her mouth slowly fell open.

“This isn’t good,” he groaned, and brought his knees up to his chest, his face twisted in a fierce grimace, his hands clutching his skull like he intended to split it open to stop the pain.

“Dave,” she whispered, then grasped his shoulder. “No no no Dave—”

A sharp ringing in her ears. What had been a dull, unnoticeable ache at the back of her head bloomed, and it continued to grow hotter, wider. Too hot, too wide. It felt like her brain had suddenly inflated and was pushing up against the limits of her skull. Her face pinched and her mouth flew open in a wide yawn of pain; she dug her nails into her scalp, as if that pain would distract from the pressure and the flare, as if raking the skin off would make it stop. Oh, God, it burned, and she couldn’t get it out, couldn’t get it away—

You’re sick you’re gonna die you’ve got what everyone in Toronto had and you’re gonna die.

Slowly the ringing dimmed and the pain ebbed. She opened her eyes as much as she could and peered around the room. No one seemed to be in pain, no one seemed to even notice her and Dave writhing on the floor. The ringing got quieter and quieter, and then it muted completely.

She let go and looked about as if she would find her headache in the room, waiting to attack her again.

“Hey, you okay?” Dave muttered. He looked like a man who’d worked a full day’s labour. She felt the same way.

“Did your headache stop?”

“Yeah. Just up and quit. I thought I was gonna have that ’til death do us part, or some shit like that.”

Catherine shook her head and puzzled over it.

“Well,” Dave said in such an uncharacteristically soft voice that Catherine felt dregs of fear slide down her spine, “we’re still probably royally fucked.”