The Longest Night

by K. M. Gibson

  “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 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 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’s edge. Eyes wide, 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 to tear his hands 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.

  She kicked him in the teeth.

  “Fuck!” he cried, staggering backward and falling on his backside. She scrambled back over the counter and landed in a heap on the other side. To breathe was to keep screaming. The butt end of the shotgun was sticking over the edge of the counter. She got to her feet 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 air 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. When she found what she was looking for, 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. A transaction. But 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 upon the floor. 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, with the dead staring at her. 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 morning 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 with a scream, 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.

  She stopped in front of the gas station. She stared through the open door, the inside shrouded with an impenetrable black, waiting for Dave to stumble through, his chest blown apart and his eyes still watching her. That gleam.

  The man groaned and she started, giving the doorway one last glance. She snaked through the cars carefully, putting it away. Keep it dead.

  She had to stop for the night. Fort McMurray was only hours away, but the roads were too obstructed she could not move any farther without more light. She had to gather her strength to walk right down the main road into the city. It was a ridiculously futile task, but she had to. She had to.

  He wasn’t conscious enough for her to feed him, so she tried to help him relieve himself instead. She eventually was able to get him to move. She held him down a slight slope by hooking her arms under his, but she almost dropped him down the snowy hill. Getting him back to the tarp was even harder, and she almost thought she wouldn’t make it. She tried to keep him warm through the night, wrapped tight around him. The sweat started to soak through his coat. He shivered copiously. Every time he moaned, it was long and drawn out.

  Near morning, she set out again. Another grey day, with meagre snowfall, as if there was no urgency to their pilgrimage. The pain in her hips and legs was overbearing but what was worse was what she imagined waiting for them at the end. Nothing at the hospital. They would be ambushed before they could get there and be eaten. He would die (No no no don’t think like that). She would have to walk right down the middle Fort McMurray and she would die. If she was successful in the hospital, though, then there was getting back out unseen. It was bleak. It was all there was.

  I will not stop now. I will never stop.

  Then they were there.

  With each step she took she l
ooked in every direction. They were in the middle of the road, with vantage points everywhere, from where they could be being watched now. There was no way to go around the outskirts to the hospital because the river blocked the way and the only bridge across the Athabasca was through the middle of the city.

  He shouted as if surprised in a dream. He jerked violently and pulled on the tarp. She slowed and looked over her shoulder but did not stop. “Where are we?” he asked hoarsely.

  “We’re outside of Fort McMurray.” She had to swallow to wet her bone-dry throat. “How do you feel?”

  “Is there a hospital nearby?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to take me there.”

  She nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see. She was afraid that if she spoke aloud, she would let her fear show, and both of them would share the unspoken truth about it.

  When she crossed the bridge she slowed down significantly. Without having to tell him he tried to muffle himself. She saw no signs of life. The same cars were still there from years ago, and although the bodies that had floated in the river were long gone, it was as if she were looking into an eerily accurate painting. The snow had grown thick over the winter, but it only made it easier for her to drag the tarp along the debris-ridden road.

  With each passing minute his resolve diminished, he grew louder. Her pulse raced. Someone would hear them and they would die. She looked around frantically the entire way. She saw no one but she felt as if hundreds of eyes were upon her.

  The green signs above the highway read “Hospital Street.” She pulled hard on the rope, breaking into a slow jog to make it up the off ramp. She could feel new wounds break under the rope, blisters burst and blood ooze with each step, but it was easier to ignore the sting the closer she got to the hospital. Once she cleared the off ramp, she turned left at the intersection and headed down the street.

  There was a crowd in the distance on the farthest end of the hospital. Her heart dropped through her stomach and she dropped to the ground with it, quickly finding cover behind a vehicle. She waited for a moment, then dared a peek around the corner of the car. They didn’t seem to have seen her. Whatever they were talking about had them engrossed. The ambulance entrance was closest to her, farthest from them. She kept to cover of abandoned cars. She didn’t dare stand until she had passed the wall, then jogged to the garage.

  She turned on the flashlight and clutched it between her teeth. The garage was full of derelict ambulances. The tarp scraped against the dirty ground loudly, making her wrought with worry. Her light panned over a decayed body hanging halfway out of one of the ambulances. Beyond that were two swinging doors. As she braced against them and pushed, a gale of dust hit her in the face, giving her fleeting hope that no one had been here in a long time, and more hope was waiting for her farther in.

  The windows were dirty but enough daylight passed through them for her to see the beds lining the walls carrying corpses years old. Most of them had sheets covering their faces, but some were left naked and open, and she had to point her eyes to the floor. She put her flashlight away in her pocket again and looked into each room she passed, searching for something she could use for him.

  “Take me to an ER,” he begged.

  “I’m trying.” She turned down the first hall on a chance. The doors at the end were stained with blood on either side. As she passed through them she had to shut her eyes tight. Someone has been through this before.

  She turned into one of the first rooms. An operating table sat in the middle, cabinets lined the walls. She pulled the tarp next to the table and dropped the rope. Oh, her hips. A fresh wave of blood flowed down her thighs, soaked through her jeans.

  “I need you to find a syringe and some penicillin.” He gasped and held his breath, knuckling the tarp.

  She rushed to the first cabinet. It was locked. She let her equipment slide off her shoulders and grasped the shotgun in her hands. Ensuring the safety was on, she beat the butt end against the lock. She started to snarl with each strike until the lock gave way and broke. The gun clattered to the ground as she tore open the doors.

  No penicillin. No penicillin. No fucking penicillin.

  She shoved bottles out of the cabinet, letting them crash against the ground when she deemed them useless. Near the back she found a bottle with a series of codes and formulas on it, with the word Adrenaline written near the bottom. All that there was.

  Please.

  She tore open drawer after drawer, some flying out of their spaces and spilling across the floor. The second last one had several syringes wrapped in paper, and she took a fistful and returned to his side.

  “Help me take my coat off,” he whispered faintly, struggling to sit up on an elbow. She grabbed the collar of his coat on either side and slid it off him. He groaned viciously, trying to keep himself raised enough for her to take the coat off properly. When she pushed it off of his shoulders, he fell back on top of it.

  “Now, I – I need you to poke the needle through the top of the vial…and pull the plunger back.”

  She hurriedly unwrapped the needle and did as she was bid. When it was about half full, she stopped, looking to him. Sweat trickled down her brow.

  “Push the plunger a small bit and”—he hissed, his face gleaming with sweat—“make sure there are no air bubbles in it by tapping it.”

  She did so. “Now?”

  “Do it.”

  She hesitantly slipped the needle into the crook of his arm, not a clue what she was doing. Did she hit a vein? An artery? Would this work? Regardless, the air seemed to soften noticeably as she injected it, even though he kept shouting while she did. A little relief trickled into her, and she felt her hope coming back in droves. He is safe now.

  “Don’t stop,” he said. She didn’t.

  The syringe was inevitably empty then, and she pulled the needle out, covering his arm with her hand, putting pressure on it. Her eyes squeezed shut as she thought intently: We did it, you are safe, it is over.

  His eyes rolled around the room. She held his shoulder to anchor him so he could regain his bearings. She hovered, uncertain. He tried to roll to his sides, but he was too weak, and he always fell onto his back again. As her reserve began to slip with each passing second, her hand went from his shoulder to his hand, almost subconsciously, and she squeezed it encouragingly as her heart pounded.

  Suddenly, his breath shuddered, and he lay still. Ice filled her, head to toe. Her eyes grew wide and unimaginable pressure clamped down on her spine. But he took in a breath slowly and held it, opening his eyes to stare into hers.

  She squeezed his hand. A broken smile crossed her lips. She hadn’t realized tears had pooled in her eyes until she felt them spill forward down her cheeks.

  He gasped and flinched but did not look away. The way he was looking at her…all at once, he was returned to her; there was no virus, no earthquake, nothing stopping her. She was revived.

  “Catherine.” He sighed quietly. “I remember you, Catherine.”

  It was slow, spreading out from the cavity of her chest, but at the same time the feeling was so sudden that she couldn’t register it at first. Her eyes widened and her mouth parted, breath stolen, belief compromised, just like when she found him there, out in the open, waiting for her to see him again after two long years. More tears fell from her eyes as a sob escaped her. A smile stole its way into her face. Everything he had said with those words…she was unbound.

  She bent and let her lips brush against his briefly before kissing him. She shut her eyes and shook to hold back her tears. Then she felt the barest of movements and he was kissing her too. It was too fleeting. His last breath slipped from him, warming her face briefly before leaving her with cold.

  She froze. Dread. Dread when she realized what had happened. The fact was there but the meaning was nowhere to be found. Like a winter that quietly and carefully ends a life as the nights grow longer. She opened her eyes slowly, keeping her parted lips resting on his
. The look of his face. The floodgate opened. No more pain. Free.

  “Come back,” she wanted to say, but there was no strength to draw upon to speak. Her hands slid gently across his shoulders, up his neck, through his hair, over his face. Come back, come back. He was there, but he was gone. She had lost him again.

  She cried out, a sound so laden with despair that she felt she had struck herself. She drew in, her centre a black hole, and collapsed. She clutched at his collar, rubbed her cheeks against his cheeks, his eyes, his lips, his chin, spreading her tears over his stubble-ridden face. Please come back. I remember you too.

  All the times that her words were left unsaid…If she had come across him sooner, if she had just taken him directly to the hospital, if he had never left the park to do his work…each passing second amplified the last, for she knew death would never come when beckoned, only when baited.

  She shook her head vehemently, as if someone stood next to her narrating the events. Her hands clutched his face, trying to cling to her memories; seeing him at the station, finding him wounded in the forest, huddling for warmth. Shaving him. Kissing him. They were moments all so recent, so close, but they were gone. Gone.

  “Come back,” she finally managed to mutter. She gripped onto him desperately, crying into his shoulder. “Come back…”

  She opened her eyes slightly. How long had that man been standing in the doorway?

  She bolted upright with a choked gasp. He stood with his hand poised on the open door, his eyes trained on her with a wild, primal hunger. She was the doe and he was the hunter – he took a step, her hand shot to her boot and yanked at the knife but it caught on the inside and she pulled it again until free. He was there before she was ready – he swiped at the knife, sending it across the room, then punched her hard. The time between being struck and landing was nonexistent. She woke on the floor, sparks flying behind her eyes. They cleared to reveal the shotgun lying before the cabinet, not six feet from her. She reached and kicked but went nowhere. He stood over her, wrapped her hair around his fist, and lifted.