The Longest Night

She woke with a start. She stared at her horn for a moment, trying to figure out where she was and why her steering wheel was there too. The airbag had deflated over her thighs. There was blood on it.

She sat up slowly, hissing. She felt as if someone had taken her apart then put her back together wrong. When she caught sight of the rest of the car, she froze. The windshield was completely cracked, opaque. A large indent in the middle of the car dwarfed the cab – her head grazed the top, even hunched over.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered to herself. Again. And again. She looked around her car to find the other windows were in similar condition and the doors were impacted.

Need to get out. She pivoted in her seat to reach her seat belt, and when she went to unlock it, the material ripped away from the base without effort and hung limp in her hands. She tried the door. It was jammed.

After a few agonizing minutes of fighting with the door, Catherine began to cry, mild hysterics taking over. Why won’t you open? she thought. Just open for me, please. You won’t believe the day I’m having.

She screamed, then pounded her fist against the broken window. An impression of her hand remained in the centre, pushed out like a wall of silly putty. She wriggled her way out of her compressed seat, placed her boots against the window, drew back her legs, and kicked. Part of the window ripped away from the sides, and when she kicked again, the entire thing crumpled and fell away. Cold air and dark grey light filtered into the car. She heard a muffled cry. Carefully, she pulled herself through the window. When she was halfway through, she propped her arms up on the dented hood, then froze once she caught sight of the highway.

Some trees in the distance were still standing, grave markers for all the fallen ones. Cars littered the ditches, caught in giant holes torn into the road; some people were trying to help others out of their cars, while some screamed in agony out of injury or of finding a dead loved one somewhere in the wreckage.

Catherine was prone to hyperventilation from crying when she was younger; she used to cry so often that she needed an inhaler for emergencies. Her mother was there to coach her through it was well. Breathe deep, she would say. In, out, in, out, in—in—in, ouuut.

Thoughts needed collecting. There was an earthquake. I was in the earthquake. I was on the highway because I was going to see my gran. She’s sick. Lots of people are sick. He said I might not get through. She looked to the road. Some people were wandering aimlessly. A man close to her was climbing over a tree trunk that had a crushed another car beneath it. Catherine pulled herself out of her car and quickly made her way to him.

They both stopped abruptly, but neither spoke, just shared limp, shocked expressions that everyone wore. Then—

“Are you all right?”

“My car,” she breathed. “My head hurts—”

“You must have hit your head in the accident.”

In the accident. There was an accident. This is an accident.

“Are they coming?” she asked.

“What?”

“The police, highway patrol, ambulance—”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you call?”

“No. Cell phones don’t work.”

“Why?”

“Towers must have been knocked down.”

Catherine could feel the burn in her nose but tried desperately to stop it. Never in front of strangers, not even now. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I think everyone’s heading to Fort McMurray. It’s our best bet.”

Everything was in shades of grey: the snow and debris slosh, the broken road, the trees lying across it, the shadows of people wandering slowly up the highway, back in the direction they had run from.

The man was just as disoriented as Catherine, for when she simply stood silently, trying to stem her crying, he wandered around her and continued shuffling up the torn highway, no comfort to give. She sank to her knees.

She wiped her eyes quickly and turned back to her car. The frame cracked and crumpled, severely dented at the roof, windows like snow from poor reception. A corpse beyond recognition. She got to her feet and marched over to it, climbing through the open window, squeezing herself under the dent in the roof and over to the glove compartment box. She took out her papers from inside, then shimmied back out of the car. She stumbled over to the back to find the trunk in even worse condition than the rest of the car – the sides of the lid had popped upwards from the blow, leaving a gap wide enough for Catherine to fit her arm through. With a careful hand, she reached inside and caught the corner of her overnight bag. She had clothes and food in the pack (which had become needs instead of luxuries now)—Oh, God, this isn’t happening—and she pulled it out.

She looked between the people grieving amongst the wreckage and the those walking north. She had no idea what to do. Somehow her feet made the decision for her, and she left her car behind with the rest of the mess. Silence reigned in the throng of people. Too much to process. This couldn’t be true. This couldn’t happen to them. First the virus, then this. These sorts of things only happened in the news, in places so far off they could hardly be imagined. A slow chorus rose, blathering nonsense with tears. A lone car drove by in the ditch and a dozen people ran after it, screaming. The driver went slow, but he still left them behind just as quickly.

As the evening darkened, the sky began to shift in colour. The grey had floated away, leaving clear skies behind. In the west was a sky of red and gold, like a glowing flame and in the east was a canvas of blue and black; calm, cold, entrenching. A few stars started to shine. A terrible and beautiful sight. War between night and day. Tears filled her eyes and the colours blended together.

The night was winning.