The Longest Night by K.M. Gibson

silent. She held her breath, needing to pee. Tips of her toes and fingers tingled like they were being bitten. Not in here, not in here, please don’t let that thing come in here.
    He groaned, “I think I’m—”
    “Shut up,” she hissed more harshly than she intended. She gripped the front of his pyjamas and held on for dear life. “Don’t make a noi—”
    The door to the house opened. Muscles clenched and lungs shrank.
    Pitch black in the garage, but she could still hear where it was. Tripped and fell over, knocking over the garbage cans. A squeak left her when they clattered and she trembled with fear that it had heard her it had heard it’s coming to tear out her insides.
    It got to its feet somehow and wandered about the car. It knew they were in there. She strained her eyes to see movement in the dark but saw nothing. Only felt that awful shuffle like half its foot was missing.
    The car shook as it threw its weight on the back door. Oh fuck oh fuck it knows we’re in here it sees us!
    Accidentally ripped the buttons off his shirt as a scream tried to leave her. Made no noise—couldn’t breathe. He held onto her tight and she squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for it to break in and drag them to Hell.
    Nothing came.
    He breathed into her hair as the creature slipped off the car and shuffled away. Back into the house. An hour ticked by; now she could see everything in the garage, could hear every move it made in the house. It was in the half bath upstairs.
    And it let out a long roar that chilled her blood. It spoke of death, pain, destruction, of all the reasons God had sent them to do His will.
     
    “Jesus,” Dave said from somewhere behind her.
    Fatigue was a heavy weight on her shoulders, like she’d spent twenty years in a dark prison, and this was the first moment she had seen the outside. It certainly seemed that way.
    “They’re all dead,” someone whispered. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God .”
    She looked north. She could just make out the highway. She started walking towards it.
    “Where’s she going?” some man asked as she departed. “Hey, where’re you going?”
    I don’t know. Where are any of us going?
    She kept wandering, thinking of food and water, perhaps some blankets. She wound her way through the neighbourhood and found her way to the highway. There were others wandering slowly through the forest of abandoned vehicles. Survivors. She had no inclination to be with them.
    She could see the river from where she stood. It looked so still. After a few moments, she realized that she had been followed.
    “What are you doing?” someone asked. She turned. The girl couldn’t have been any older than Catherine herself. She looked like someone who had slowly been eaten away by her own fear: small, cowering, hollowed.
    “There’s a grocery store across the river,” Catherine answered. “I want to see if they have any food left.”
    “We’ll go with you.” There were plenty more people behind her. In fact, it seemed almost everyone from the community hall had followed her. To separate now felt like abandoning family. They had only known each other since The End.
    “Okay.”
    They made their way up the highway in a mass. The people who were wandering up and down the aisles between the cars paused to watch the horde of people flood onto the bridge, flowing through the crevasses towards them. One of them turned and ran. The others seemed to drift to the edges, watching like hawks.
    Then came the bridge. A few bodies were caught in the rocks below, floating belly-down. Someone paused to throw up over the railing, trying her best not to soil any of the dead. Catherine looked over the side only briefly, for she could imagine the bodies turning over onto their backs and screeching at her. She closed her eyes.
     
    “Come on,” she urged him, “we need to get inside before the sun sets. Once the sun goes down, we’re in real trouble. Up you get.” Her voice broke as she half dragged her