The Longest Night (2 page)

“Afternoon,” the officer said as she rolled down her window. He was wearing a face mask too.

“Hi.”

“I don’t suppose you know the reason behind the roadblock either?”

“I have an idea.”

“Oh, good.” He stood straight to stretch his lower back and bent eye-level again. “So you know that visitors are not being permitted into Fort McMurray.”

We practised this.
“I don’t have a doctor’s note or anything, but my grandmother is very sick. I’m supposed to stay with her for the weekend until her caretaker comes.”

“You can head on up the road then, if you want,” the officer said, glancing up the highway, “but you’re not guaranteed entry. And if you do get in, you’re not likely to come out anytime soon.”

That hadn’t crossed her mind. She didn’t need to be home for Monday, but that was Christmas Eve. And if she couldn’t make it back by Monday, what about Christmas? New Years? January?

“Okay,” she said meekly.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“I’m not.”

The officer looked her over, twisting his jaw slowly under his mask as his eyes flickered over her.

“My grandmother needs help.” She said it more for her sake than his.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, go on ahead, I’ll radio them for y—”

He stumbled. The earth tilted a bit. She jammed the brake hard and squeezed the steering wheel tight; a small noise slipped from her throat and her eyes bugged. Cars jumped and slid on the road in front of her. Everything stopped. There was an odd vibration that came from underneath her car.

“What was that?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know—”

The road shook again and did not stop. A loud
CRACK
echoed in the sky like an explosion. The earth lurched violently.

Her lungs shrivelled and she squirmed weakly in her seat. Her hands lost feeling as she tried to fumble with her seat belt.

People running. Some fled from their cars, streaming down the road on either side of the highway. They flocked past her as she turned to stone in her seat. The officer by her window had gone. The crack expanded, ripping up the pavement like paper.

The road twisted sideways and her car slid across the sudden slope into the ditch. All she could hear was her own scream.

People fell in the short gaps that were torn into the road, and snow began to mix with dirt and debris, making a grey mixture of slush that splashed over them as they ran. She kept fighting with the seat belt.

There was a loud and irritating tone on the radio.

YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THIS IS THE ALBERTA EMERGENCY PUBLIC WARNING SYSTEM. THE FOLLOWING EMERGENCY BULLETIN MAY AFFECT YOUR AREA; LISTEN CAREFULLY. LARGE SEISMIC ACTIVITY HAS BEEN DETECTED IN: LETHBRIDGE AND SURROUNDING AREA, MEDICINE HAT AND SURROUNDING AREA, CALGARY AND SURROUNDING AREA, RED DEER AND SURROUNDING AREA, EDMONTON—

Her view was tilted towards the skyline; all she could see were the tops of the trees, some of which disappeared from view as they fell. She kept tugging on her seat belt with such force that she heard it begin to tear—

A tree trunk landed longways across the top of her sedan. It hit so hard that the roof indented and –
BANG –
the airbags deployed.

All was silent, all was dark.

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 muttered. 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. 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 to open it, mild hysterics took over.
Why won’t you open?
she thought.
Just open for me, please. You won’t believe the day I’m having.

She screamed and 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 spilled 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 she saw 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 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 as 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 Gran. She’s sick. Lots of people are sick. He said I might not get through.

A man close to her was climbing over a tree trunk that had a crushed another car beneath it. She 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?” he said.

“My car. 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?”

“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 turned back to her car. The frame was cracked and crumpled, severely dented at the roof where the tree still lay, the windows like snow from poor reception. A corpse beyond recognition. She approached and climbed 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 been thrust 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 is 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. 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. Eventually 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 evening set in the grey floated away, leaving clear skies behind. In the west was a sky of red and gold, like 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.

She tried to pick up her pace, but she knew it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference.
The sun started to dip down below the horizon again. In her childhood, she couldn’t go anywhere without a lamp lighting the way. Now she was left in complete darkness. She didn’t know things could get that dark.

She could see The Cliff through the thick of trees, and she sighed in relief. It was a natural buffer between her and anything that could possibly harm her, real or otherwise.

But getting to the bottom was another issue altogether. The memory of her first fall was as vivid as if it had happened a day ago. She had a permanent limp now, and whenever seasons changed, her knee ached and demanded rest. She was keen not to make the same mistake again, or she was sure to die this time.

She slipped the doe off her shoulder and let it drop down the slope. The limbs flopped where the bones had snapped while the rest of the corpse remained stiff. Finally the doe connected with the bottom in a pulp, and Catherine situated her pack and shotgun properly to climb down.

At the base, she
found a suitable spot to camp. Within minutes she had collected enough twigs to make a fire
. She pulled a sheet of newspaper from her sack for kindling. One article remained visible. It read:

Prime Minister to Meet With International Environmental Ministers Regarding SAVS-1

She crumpled the paper into a ball and stuck it underneath her pyramid of sticks. Next she retrieved one of the lighters to start a fire. It was gaudy, an unnatural sort of purple with an unnatural sort of flower painted on it. For how precious it was, it may as well have been encrusted with diamonds.

Night was so dark that it was pitch black not five feet away from the fire, even once it started to burn brightly. Too dark to treat the doe. For how chilly it was outside, she was sure the meat would be preserved another night, and took to her rations instead. Huddled close to the flames, she ate slowly, trying to make it last. Her stomach was a neglectful master and her mouth a dog on a long leash; within minutes her dinner was gone. Finding food was becoming harder and harder, and she had to travel out farther from the cabin each time to find more. She knew she would have to relocate soon, and she worried over it.

She unrolled her blanket and lay back by her tent and the fire, watching the stars flicker. The world had eradicated its infestation of life, and most of the stars in the sky had also long been extinguished like Earth, yet light continued to travel to her distant planet, with so few to witness it. Did life exist on planets near those faraway stars? Would they ever know of what happened here? No. If she would never know what happened to her own world, no one ever would.

The universe was so huge that it became insignificant, so expansive that the amount of space and time became incomprehensible and meaningless.
A few streaks darted across the pitch black sky, the last of the meteor shower that had been going on for the past few nights. She watched as the meteorites made small scratches on the heavens, only to be swallowed whole by the sky. She fell asleep watching each shooting star, thinking of how beautiful they once were.

“Humans were designed to destroy themselves,” Catherine’s professor declared in a firm and honest voice in front of the lecture hall. “It’s a simple fact that has perpetuated itself in cycles throughout history. Like a forest was designed to burn to the ground, so that its seeds might grow something new.”

She was watching his every move, as if she would garner more knowledge from him that way. He was a very interesting man, who shared an insight that went further than facts. Unlike some instructors, he didn’t just aim to teach what would be on the tests (which aggravated more students than intrigued them), but taught in order to educate, in order to spark interest and understanding about the world. This usually involved his subjective theories and errant anecdotes about his experience, but Catherine still found herself looking up to him, despite his predisposition to conjecture. The class was supposed to be on Humanistic Psychology but the content he presented was anything but optimistic, and he usually diverted from the syllabus, changing to seemingly unrelated topics on history.