The Longest Night

It was the squeaking springs that broke her sleep.

She sat up from the floor so quickly she saw stars. His face was contorted and he made a constant low groan, that single tune of pain. She hovered, shaking him. “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer. She pulled the blanket off him and yanked up his shirt. The skin around the stitches had swollen to twice its normal size. Pus leaked from the stitches profusely. More than half of his stomach had turned black.

She collected their equipment as if the cabin was on fire. She grabbed his bag and her first aid kit, throwing them on the foot of the tarp outside the door. She had reached a bottleneck; what to do, how to be prepared, what else she might need, where to go, why now, why now, why? With shaking hands, she stuffed the last item in her pack. This couldn’t be happening.

She stomped out the fire as she turned on her flashlight and stuffed it hastily into her pocket. She had no idea how much battery power she had left, or for that matter how much time she had until daylight. Would she be able to get him to stand? Whatever strength she had before had been sapped. She could no sooner carry him than she could move a mountain.

The tarp scraped on all the debris she dragged it over. It snapped when she fanned it out beside the couch. She first grabbed his feet, sliding them onto the floor, then she hooked her hands under his armpits and hoisted his upper body up off of the couch (to which drew a loud scream from him) and lowered him onto the tarp. “You’ll be okay,” she repeated to herself in short breaths. “You’ll be okay.”

Through the darkness, she began to pull the tarp across the field towards the highway. At the brink of it she stopped. North to the park was their only option. But she didn’t know where the park was, or how long it would take to get him there, especially with the uncertain trails, or lack thereof, that lay ahead for them. No, she had to find a hospital which may or may not have supplies for them. She would have to head south. Back to the place she swore never to set foot in again.

She wasn’t sure if he faded in and out of consciousness, or if he was awake for the entire trek, but his calls of pain were distinct, and they rang out over the tree tops. She travelled south alongside highway 63 until she passed Fort MacKay, then quickly passed over the bridge on the Athabasca. The burning in her hips stretched all the way to her toes. She pulled fiercely, inviting the damage. A blockade of old cars forced her to backtrack and leave the highway but she kept it in her sights. It was a sure sign of muggers. None descended on them. Then she was forced to make a long detour around Mildred Lake, which may or may not have been occupied, and it drained hours from their day. However, once she knew they had passed Tar Island just a few kilometres away, she was on the highway again, her speed restored.

No good guys, no bad guys.

With each step it grew louder. She hadn’t taken this route since she fled. All it once it flashed like lightning. The corner store. The cannibal. Batteries flying everywhere. The forest. The road. The gas station.

She walked into it like braving pitch black.

“Come back HERE!”

Her chest burned as she ran faster than she thought she could. When she came out of the trees, she found an empty field and ran and ran and ran. She couldn’t feel her legs or see through her tears, but still she fled. Even though she was sure she had left the bulk of the city behind, and the people in it, she could not stop. As she weaved through the dark, her knees folded, delivering her on her face.

It was her chest that gave agony. The burning subsided when again she found her breath. Then the biting on her cheek. When she stood there was blood on the dirt and fallen leaves. It oozed down her face. She touched it and felt nothing.

Nothing.

Was it worth it? They were lucky to escape the disaster with their lives, but they were unfortunate enough to survive. Isolated in a world that was no longer fit for them. She had watched as slowly, day by day, people fell apart and succumbed in a bottomless, heavy hole, the only thing life had left to offer. It would be hard. It would be painful. It would be fine to cease.

But she didn’t die in the earthquake. She didn’t let herself be eaten or beaten. She had escaped. She had survived. She was surviving. But why? Why, in a time of absolute desolation and despair, did her humanity give her preservation, an instinct to fight and live? She would never see anyone who held importance in her life ever again. Her gran. Her mother. Dave. She thought of him.

He was dead. Why wasn’t she?

The barren forest pressed from all sides until she stood and wandered. Out here she could starve or freeze. It wasn’t death that horrified her so much as dying did. She could not allow it to be slow and unbearable. Nor could she go back the way she came. Indirect, instant, painless, weightless, empty.

It was still gloomily dark and grey when the sun rose. She made her way back onto the highway. She had no idea how far she was from Fort McMurray; she could not hear a single soul. All remained still. To the north was a collection of ruined cars blocking passage on the road. She floated between them. The road curved behind some trees, and there she spotted the largest huddle of cars yet, all parked around the entrance to a gas station. It was huge, made for semis and cargo convoys. There was a flaming barrel just outside the door. A beacon. Or a warning.

It could be here.

“Hello?” she called weakly as she approached.

“Don’ move!” a man shouted. She halted in the middle of the pumps.

He stepped out of the dark doors, training a shotgun on her. He hesitated. Her heart fell.

“Dave?” She stepped forward.

“Stop!”

He trained the gun on her and approached. When he got closer, he lowered it a bit. She realized he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking around wildly.

“You alone?” He sounded like he had a cold, his voice was so strained. She nodded meekly. As he moved forward, she felt relief, thinking he was coming to embrace her. But then he stopped her with a heavy hand on the shoulder and began patting her down.

“Have any weapons?” He ran his hands over her methodically. She whispered his name again. He pulled the bag off her shoulders roughly, paying her no heed. He rifled through it. She heard some of the battery packages slap against the ground and her flashlight click on and off. He slapped his hands down her back, down her legs, against her pockets.

“Dave. I’m scared.”

His hands stilled. “Catherine.”

She couldn’t read him. It was not soft or sad, just her name spoken through a cloud of frenzy. Then: “You ain’t a cannibal, are ya?”

“No,” she choked out. Are you?

He heard him pick up her bag, then he walked past her slowly, giving her a quick glance. “Come in.”

She followed him slowly into the building. Part of the wall near the back had been torn apart. She could imagine him doing it, viciously tearing drywall apart with his hands, using the shotgun as a cleaver. Pink insulation had been pulled out by the handful; a pile of it lay in the corner, depressed in the centre. An empty C-shaped counter sat at the far wall. Little light reached the inside, and everything looked dim and dark, like night had fallen again. The floor was littered with dust, pieces of insulation, laminate boards. He’d been pulling everything apart piece by piece. He dumped her bag on the counter and stayed awhile, his hand lingering on it.

“I used to think those government fuckers were the only evil left in the world,” Dave said so quietly, it was almost a whisper. “All those suits who sopped up all the tax money and charitable donations. We always thought things were stable, that someone else was always taking care of shit, and we hated them all the while. They were all despicable fucks, and we always had to rely on them to take care of business.

“But you know what I’ve learned over the past couple months, Catherine? We’re not the good guys, because they’re not the bad guys. Good and bad doesn’t exist. You know why?”

She shook her head but he missed the gesture, keeping his back to her. He placed the stolen shotgun on the counter, leaning against it. “There’s no black and white, not without a system. It’s all been mixed into one colour. We’re not living anymore, we’re surviving. No good guys, no bad guys. Just trying to keep ourselves breathing and shitting.”

It squeezed down her throat. No living, just surviving. There was a hole in the floor, and she sank into it.

The stomps came quickly. He was hurrying towards her so fast—

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “They sent you after me, didn’t they?” She thought her arms may break under his grip, and she cried out sharply, recoiling. “They’ve sent you to shut me down, you fucking bitch! You’re here to kill me! To kill me!”

He pivoted with her in hand, then shoved her to the counter. The impact shook from her tailbone up. She clutched the lip of the counter, white-knuckled. He paced in front of her like a feral animal in a cage.

“I hate those fuckers.” He ran his hands through his unruly hair. “They’re just out to take our stuff, take what’s ours – dead! – but I won’t let them. I won’t let y—ou…Catherine…” He stopped, his face like melting wax.

“What happened to you?” She still clung to the counter like the edge of a cliff. The tension left his shoulders as he stepped up to her. She let go of the counter. When he got close, he held her face and he brushed a few errant strands of hair behind her ear gently.

“Catherine,” he said softly, then bent to kiss her.

She veered away, digging her back into the counter. Eyes bugging, she whispered, “What are you doing?” He clutched her head and he tried to pull her closer to him again, his lips parted and his eyes glued to her mouth. She struggled, her hands going up to grab at his hands and tear them away. “Dave!”

His hands left her face and clutched her bottom, hoisting her up onto the counter. He pushed her over onto her back and held her down with one hand as the other went to undo her belt. A drop like being pitched off a ledge.

“No!”

His hand covered her face, squeezing tight. “Shh.” He tore her coat open, grabbing a greedy fistful of her shirt.

She screamed her throat raw. Every which way she could move, she did. He got the best of her and pinned her legs against the counter with his knees, tearing her shirt down the middle. His mouth was on her chest. No no no no this isn’t how it’s supposed to be please don’t do this please don’t!—

He slid down her body and hooked his hands into the waistband of her jeans, then straightened to yank them off her.

It was less than a second: She saw his face level with her feet and reflexively kicked him in the teeth.

“Fuck!” he cried, staggering backward and falling on his rear. She scrambled back over the counter and landed in a heap on the other side. To breathe was to keep screaming. She looked up to see the butt end of the shotgun sticking over the edge of the counter. She got to her feet quickly and grabbed at it.

Dave was hunched over, his hand clenched over his mouth. Blood oozed out between his fingers, spread over his shaggy beard. His eyes bore holes into her, gleaming black before he lunged.

She yanked.

Aimed.

Pulled.

The sound was severe but the kick to her chest was excruciating. When next she opened her eyes, she was crumpled on the floor, limbs curled in around her chest. Had she just been hit by a car? She couldn’t breathe. She tried to suck in a bout of breath but coughed up blood breathlessly instead. She writhed for air. When she finally could breathe again it was shallow, as if through a straw, but the sharp cutting sensation started to dull to a distant sting.

Then he moaned and she remembered. She stood on watery legs.

Dave lay in an ocean of blood, half his chest gone. In the firelight from outside, it looked like black oil. She stooped to pull up her pants haphazardly then rounded the counter, watching him closely like he could still get up and do it again but he didn’t do it she did she shot him it could have been fixed oh God oh God her anchor lying dead in a pool of black.

She sank to the floor next to him. His hands were propped up at the elbows; his left hand twitched subtly as he looked at her. His eyes were intense; all he had left was in that stare. Her insides turned to stone. She had done it without thinking. Without thinking.

“Dave.” Her voice had a distant feel. It came from someone else, his murderer, away from her. His eyes fluttered as he made weak, strained sounds. She moved to touch him and halted, hovering over the wound in his chest. Her hands shook like leaves.

He died watching her.

She eventually went to her pack on the counter, looking through its contents to find the knife. When she found it, she pulled it out gently and held it in both hands, turning it over slowly, getting to know its details. She trembled all over as she held out her left arm and pressed the blade lengthwise against her wrist. The metal was cool but also felt instant, painless, weightless, empty. She sobbed as she tried to press harder, tried to swipe it down her arm. There was an impenetrable barrier there. Preservation.

Not living. Just surviving. And she could not die.

The knife slipped through her hands with a great clatter. She began to cry great, heaving sobs that drove her to her knees. No good guys, no bad guys.

It was loud in that room. She sidestepped the body and traipsed through the pumps and cars to the road. It had started snowing at some point – gentle white flakes drifted down from the dark, grey afternoon sky, touching ground softly. She moved out from under the canopy that sheltered the empty pumps and let it fall on her. Each flake burned.

She could still taste the blood between her teeth. She was surviving.

She filled her chest and screamed the first and last thing she had ever said to whatever god there may be; a sound so haunting it laid a scar on the land that no one could see but everyone could feel. A hole with no bottom, too heavy to ever climb back out.