//------------------------------//
// Deadhorse Rising 
// Story: The Longest Highway 
// by Jay911 
//------------------------------//

	Max Morley was not a dreamer.
This is not to say that he didn't have aspirations or goals. It's what he told his co-workers at North Slope Fire Rescue, during one of their rambling conversations about anything under the sun. Protecting the region of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and the industrial complexes surrounding it, there was all sorts of down time, and they used that down time to chat with one another, and shoot the proverbial... stuff. And once, the topic of dreams and nightmares came up, and Max said to his colleagues that he simply went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning, with nothing in between.
At the moment, Max was not with his co-workers, shooting anything. He was watching over a tremendous plain, filled with lush, green grass. In that seemingly borderless meadow, there were hundreds - no, thousands of horselike creatures, of all colors of the rainbow. No, they were unicorns, judging by the horns on their heads. One by one, and then quicker, row by row and section by section, the creatures shut their eyes and appeared to fall into a state of deep concentration.
Then one creature's horn began to glow. Then another, and another, until a mass of shimmering light was visible over the crown of each being gathered there. It was a veritable cloud of energy, the colors merging with one another until the entire thing was bright white - brighter than the sun in the sky, too brilliant to look at, and too dazzling to dare turn away from.
At once, Max became aware of four more creatures, similar to the others, but watching - overseeing? - from the same precipice from which he bore witness. Shoulder to shoulder were a quartet of unicorns - though these also had wings spread wide from their sides. Pegasi unicorns? They ranged in size from the slightly-larger-than-the-average-creatures-below purple one nearest him, to the medium-sized pink one beside it; then a midnight blue one of an even larger size, and finally, at the end and towering over all, a giant, porcelain-white mare, with an impressively long unicorn horn, and shod and trimmed in golden accessories. Come to think of it, all the four pegasi-unicorns had various bejeweled decorations adorning themselves.
The four, and all the other unicorns in the meadow, opened their eyes suddenly, but instead of big expressive orbs full of life, every creature there had the same searing white light emanating from within. It shot forth and enveloped Max in an instant.

"Ungh," he moaned, blinking as he took in the visage of the fire station bunkhouse ceiling. Whatever I ate, I better not do that again.
Kicking the sheets free, he sat up on the edge of the bed, nearly falling over. The station was dark, probably owing to the blackout shades in the dorms. It was late May, and Midnight Sun had commenced - from May 20 until July 30, Prudhoe Bay and all the North Slope would see the sun 24 hours a day. Using thick, opaque curtains was the only way anyone could be assured sleep in such conditions.
He swatted for the light switch by the bed, but couldn't reach it and fell on his face, smacking his chin on the thin carpet by his bedside table. Cursing, he put his hands under him to raise himself up, and found that they weren't there.
He was able to support himself, though, and stood there on all fours, on his hands (wrists?) and feet, wondering how he'd gotten so hung over he couldn't feel his hands. The station chief was going to draw and quarter him.
Lifting an arm, he flailed it about until he found the edge of the bedside table and his watch. He pressed the Indiglo light button and blinked a couple times to focus on the luminescent dial.

8:37A
16 OCT

"What the fuck," he mumbled in disbelief.
The only explanation was that somebody had screwed with his watch, setting it months ahead - after they'd spiked his coffee at dinner last night. And then cut the breakers to the bunkhouse this morning so the power was out.
"Which one of you clowns did this?" he called out. But instead of the expected snickering and giggling from around the corner, he heard only silence.
He lunged back onto the bed, sitting back up again, still feeling unsteady on his feet. The feeling in his hands hadn't returned either.
"I'm gonna remember this," he shouted. "And put all'a'yer underwear outside during Christmastime." Still there was no reaction. He wouldn't really do it; temps in the minus-forties in December at the top of the world were serious business.
Fumbling to fasten his watch around his wrist, he couldn't get the strap to cinch tightly enough. Just another thing to mark down against these chuckleheads. They were definitely going to pay for all this. Finally he managed to get it to stay put, and tried to get to his feet again, once more falling forward. This time he threw his arms out to save him, and once again landed on all fours.
He wasn't about to give those idiots the satisfaction of seeing him crawl around in his shorts, so he threw himself back to a standing position and staggered to the wall at the end of the corridor, going by memory and feel. He fumbled to find the blackout drapes and tried to grip the cord to raise them, but still couldn't wrap his fingers around anything, so he trapped the cord in between his hands and pulled down.
He heard the blinds raise, and saw very faint light outside, but it was the light of pre-dawn - the light which made sense at twenty to nine in the middle of October hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle.
"What the fuck!" he said again. It was impossible for him to have slept 5 months. Wasn't it?
Still there was no reaction from anybody in the station. He turned and stumbled the twenty-five feet to the door at the end of the hall, which led out to the hallway that connected the bunkhouse, kitchen, offices, and apparatus floor. Feeling his way along the wall, he made it to the doorway, trying the light switch there as well, and finding it out. His brain was starting to flicker to life, and telling him a couple of things:
One, he was fricking cold. Almost as if the HVAC was off too.
Two, the window had seemed a lot higher than it should have been - it was supposed to be at chest height for him, but he could barely see over the sill.
The light switch his not-hand was on was also far too high up. It was at chin-level, instead of being more in line with his elbow - or where his elbow should be.
I'm really fucking drunk, he decided. The doorway was open, as it was supposed to be during "night" hours, so that the crews leaping up in the middle of the night for a call wouldn't smack into a door on their way to the trucks. Max found the hallway, kitchen, offices, and bays all dark as well, even though there were no blackout shades in the rest of the building.
"Is anyone here?" he shouted out, now less convinced he was the victim of a colossal prank. His voice echoed through the empty building.
Not even the emergency lights are on, he realized suddenly, looking up to the battery-backup lamps he couldn't see in the dark. Something profoundly bad had happened, he was starting to believe.
In the dim dawn light sneaking in through the windows from other parts of the building, he could see his breath. So it wasn't that he just felt cold - it was cold. If his watch was right and he'd somehow missed all of summer, it was already below freezing outside. And yet he was just feeling a little chilly, standing in his boxer shorts in the middle of the dead fire station.
He fumbled his way to the kitchen, lurching to the stove and countertop for two purposes. One, there was a flashlight in the second drawer to the right of the sink. Two, lighting the gas stove would provide some warmth and some meager illumination.
Luckily, the battery-powered ignitor on the stove wasn't affected by the cold; both front burners lit promptly. He held his hands over the stove, figuring that the reason he couldn't feel them was that they were frigid. Hopefully they weren't frostbitten - he didn't know what he'd do if he lost any digits.
Looking down as he took in the warmth from the stove, he blinked and then yelled the same epithet for the third time.
"What the fuck!!"
Instead of hands at the end of skinny, hairy arms, he found himself looking at orange furry stumps.

Okay. I can adapt. I'm a quick thinker. Good on my feet.
If only I still had feet.
Max had spent the past fifteen or twenty minutes freaking out about what had happened to him. A quick stagger to the bathroom with the flashlight to shine on himself as he looked in the mirror told him all he needed to know about what he looked like.
He was convinced that he had been drugged, or was somehow in some kind of hallucination, but the senses that were reporting in were telling him otherwise.
So, standing on all fours in the kitchen, shortly after the sun came up at six minutes after 9, an orange miniature horselike creature - similar to the ones he'd seen in the dream, sans unicorn horn - with spiky red, yellow, and orange hair and a similarly-colored bushy tail - tried to catalog what was still good in the pantry.
With no power for God only knows how long, the fridge was a lost cause. It reeked the instant he pried a hoof against the door and opened it, so he slammed it shut just as quickly. It needed a stripe or seven of biohazard/hazmat tape, but he had other things to do at the moment.
The bananas the Captain had brought in the night before - at least, as Max remembered it - were withered black husks on the counter. That told him there was nothing wrong with his watch, and he'd somehow Rip Van Winkled his way through the entire summer. And seemingly the entire station had been abandoned around him, with nobody either rousing him or carrying him with them to wherever they'd gone to.
Looking at the ruined fruit on the counter, Max thought of the supply delivery that was flown in once every six weeks. Cap had had those bananas because they were fresh off the plane, brought up from CONUS - the continental United States, and he was looking forward to having some on his cereal the next morning.
Evidently the next morning never came.
Neither did the three more supply drops that should have happened while Max was sleeping. That meant that whatever happened most likely happened that night - May 22 into May 23. Or May 22 into October 16?
What would cause them to pick up and bug out? Max wondered as he rummaged through the cupboards. Briefly the scene from The Hunt for Red October played in his mind - "How do you convince a crew to want to leave a nuclear submarine?" - but there was no indication things were contrived or nefarious. Whatever happened seemed to have been orderly and just caused them to leave at a moment's notice.
Come to think of it, even the trucks are still here.
Things were steadfastly continuing to make no sense within North Slope Fire Station #3.
Into the apparatus bay Max went, to confirm his last realization. Through the faint light coming in the windows in the roll-up bay doors, two engines, an aerial ladder truck, a water tender, a brush truck, a utility truck with trailer (housing two quads and two snowmobiles), and last but not least, a large semi-truck, all sat covered in a thin layer of dust. Between the trucks he walked, going on all fours since it seemed natural to his body and was without discomfort. All the sets of turnout gear were hung on their racks as they should have been, with the trucks plugged in to their 'shore lines' - umbilical cables carrying electricity and air to them while they were parked. All of them were dead, though, having evidently sat for five months with no one to tend them.
Max went back inside the living spaces, able to maneuver now that there was some light and he was using his new form properly. The offices were dark and unoccupied, the washrooms the same; the training room and lounge were also barren. The bunkroom was as he'd left it, with no signs of life except himself.
Oddly enough, the other beds looked slept in, but the covers weren't tossed aside as they would have been had the crews jumped up in the middle of the night to run to a call. And everyone's personal effects remained in place in all the dorms.
Finding no explanations within the building, Max decided he needed to attend to his immediate needs. It was crunch time, so to speak, and he was down to the very basics necessary for survival.
First things first - he had to do something that people always think as weird for a firefighter to do.

Wrapped up in his turnout coat, over his 'top half' - that is to say, torso, neck, and forelegs - and with his Nomex protective hood over his head, at least as good as it would fit, he was standing in an inch or two of snow, shoving wood scraps under the emergency generator's engine block. The temperature was minus 6 outside, according to the thermometer stuck to the kitchen window, and the oil in the motor was surely a gooey chunk of cold sludge.
Once the wood was in place, Max managed to light a piece of kindling from the gas stove in the kitchen. Luckily, the large propane tank that supplied the station with gas was still over half-full. Three tries later (the kindling blowing out from being carried too quickly the first two times), Max had set a fire under the generator.
As the generator began to warm up from the flames underneath it, he rapped on the external fuel tank with a hoof, getting a hollow sound all the way to the bottom of the vessel. Of course. That meant that the generator had probably automatically kicked in when the power first went out, and ran until it used up all its fuel - at least 72 hours' worth.
Fifteen five-gallon jerry cans of diesel scavenged from the trucks later, and smelling of the foul fuel as he'd invariably spilled some from every can, not being very adept with hooves instead of hands, Max huddled beside the generator, watching the embers of the fire as they dwindled. Once it went out and he felt safe he wouldn't catch himself on fire from the fumes he was soaked in, he'd pull the manual start and hope for the best.
Five agonizingly chilly minutes later, he trapped the pull cord of the generator between his forehooves and yanked, using his hind legs to propel himself upward and backward - where he simply lost grip on the cord when it reached its limit, and fell backwards into the snow.
Cursing, he got up, shook himself off, and tried again. It ultimately took four tries, but the machine coughed into a smoky, unsteady rhythm, and some of the lights inside the building began to come on.
Max dashed inside and lit and powered up the furnace, turning it on full blast, hovering near the stove while he waited for the HVAC to bring the indoor temps up to bearable levels.
By about 10:30, the temperature was warm enough to shed the turnout coat and balaclava; he also doffed the undershorts, because it seemed silly to be wearing them alone (and they were getting in the way of his tail). He powered up the office computer, but it refused to connect to the town's local area network, and thus there was no Internet access either.
Max wondered if there was an Internet to speak of anyway. That would depend, probably, on whether or not this phenomenon was local to him or more widespread. Figuring that out would necessitate a trip out of the station towards the town office. And I can't drive anything like this. So I guess I'm walkin'.
He fixed a breakfast of cereal, dry without milk as the milk was trapped in the confines of the fridge, probably halfway to developing language skills at this point. He was glad no one was there to see him eat straight from the bowl like an animal.
The trip outside, even though the sun would be warming things up, would not be nice. He had to figure out a means of keeping himself warm.
The turnout coat and hood was a good start, so he laid them out, making sure they were dry. For the bottom half, he'd need to make a few adjustments.
Going into the apparatus bay, he chose not his own turnout pants - the fire-resistant trousers with suspenders - but that of Royce, the shortest guy on the department. Less leg length to deal with was probably in his best interests.
Propping himself up in a semi-sitting-semi-standing position, he managed to wriggle into the pants and pull them up his hind legs. He fiddled with the suspenders for a few minutes, trying to find a way they'd work, but ultimately decided they were a hassle and just unsnapped them from the waist, letting them fall off to the floor. Instead, he cinched the hook-and-D-ring fastener around the waist as tight as it would go.
His tail would have to ride uncomfortably down one leg of the pants, he decided with a frown.
The hood went on next. Somehow, it managed to fit fairly decently. The face opening fit his equine muzzle from his eyebrows to below his chin with little hassle - and perhaps a little bigger than necessary, but he had no need for as tight a fit as normal, because he wasn't intending on going into any fires today.
Finally the coat. Shrugging it over his foreshoulders again, he took the time this time to fumble about with the hook-and-ring fasteners and then the Velcro strip, closing it around his midsection - what did they call it again, a barrel? - and protecting as much of himself as he could from the elements.
Suited up, he made sure the back door of the station was unlatched so he could get back in after his exploring, and then stepped outside.

Max tried to picture himself from overhead or afar as he walked down the gravel road, in his bare feet. Hooves. Whatever. A four-legged creature wearing firefighting gear wandering around a town all by itself.
This is like some screwed-up version of the opening to Northern Exposure. Or The Walking Dead, without Rick Grimes on top of the horse.
Max was letting his mind wander to distract himself from the mounting evidence that he was the only person - creature - left in Prudhoe. The light snow covered the normally-muddy roads, as well as everything else. Even one service truck, crew van, or rig hauler passing by would have made the road a soupy mess - the daytime temp was 28 degrees below freezing, but the friction of the wheels on the roads turned the snow there to mush.
Not today, though, it seemed. There were even drifts, despite the small amounts of snow, up against the buildings' doors, indicating nobody had tried to go in or out of anywhere.
The whole thing was starting to give him chills - far more than he could attribute to the climate he was in. Being this far from civilization was bad enough, but being alone in such a place?
This is unsurvivable. Not like this.
He began trudging back towards the fire station, formulating a plan as he walked.

Station 3 had the most room of any of the fire stations, being the newest, and had therefore extra space to store some things not typically associated to fire departments.
Because the fire department had to respond to virtually any kind of emergency without backup, this far from civilization, North Slope had a semi-truck with a custom-built trailer. Inside the 60-foot-long van, there was a portion set aside for cargo and supplies, fuel, and an onboard generator, taking the rearmost third of the vehicle. In the middle was a shower and washroom, adjacent to a rudimentary medical/exam room with storage for drugs and medical supplies. Up front, over the attachment to the semi-tractor, was a combination kitchen and dining room/conference room. Crews could subsist at a fire or other emergency for protracted periods using the full resources carried in this particular trailer.
And Max was planning to steal it.
Does it really count as stealing if I'm the only city employee left? he wondered, circling the machine, checking the air lines and attachments, as he would were he preparing it for any other trip. He certainly wouldn't be returning to Prudhoe with it, especially if this phenomenon was widespread. He would head south, down the haul road - the Dawson Highway - to Fairbanks, and then if he found the same situation there as he had in Prudhoe, keep going south through Canada and eventually into CONUS.
Surely somebody must still be alive somewhere.
With the generator at the station going, he'd tried the radio, on both the fire bands and the commercial channels the oilfield and trucking crews used. No response came back.
Fuel for only a couple of days. Supplies that were half-rotten and not getting replenished any time soon. Water probably won't last, and would be hard to get at once the genny quits again. And then there's the temperatures, going steadily down with the shorter days - soon enough, the sun would go down and not come back until mid-to-late-January.
This is a no-brainer, Max tried to convince himself. He couldn't even fly out of here like the bug-out plan in case of industrial disaster suggested; while he was literally right next door to the airport (called 'Deadhorse', he thought with wry amusement), he was no pilot, and getting a plane off the ground was exponentially more complex than getting the semi he was trained to drive ready to go on a long road trip.
He looked up at the hulking red Peterbilt 579 tractor, silently charging its batteries from the building generator's power. He had to figure out how to maneuver it with short stubby horse legs, but if he was to survive, he'd have to make it work, and fast.

The next thing Max knew, it was after 8PM. The sun had long set - he had worked tirelessly inside the apparatus bay, where the generator was providing light and warmth. He was caught off guard by how he'd worked through the day without rest or even a snack break, but pleased that he'd put together what he figured was a working solution.
A pair of 'ram extensions' - cylindrical pieces of metal - from the rescue gear, duct-taped to the gas and brake pedals of the truck, and topped off with the soles of some old boots (so he wouldn't hurt his hooves pushing on bare metal), made starting and stopping doable. Thankfully the truck had an automatic transmission - the idea of working a clutch in this fashion was something Max didn't want to think about.
The steering wheel would have to be manipulated by hand - er, by hoof. Oddly enough, he seemed to have some dexterity, more than he thought a normal horse would. Then again, he'd seen very few horses try to take up a hammer or roll of tape and manipulate it.
Pushing buttons was another task entirely. He decided the simplest thing was the best answer in that case - a hoofful of pens, pencils, and other relatively pointy items (but not sharp, so as to avoid damaging the buttons) were tossed into the center console.
The rest of the evening was spent stuffing the trailer with anything and everything Max could think of. The fuel and water tanks were full, and he put extra glycol and other such supplies on board, to ward off the below-freezing temps he'd encounter. Portable radios and chargers were put in the conference room/kitchen, along with all the edible supplies that hadn't gone bad (and some that were looking like they were on the borderline, truth be told). Spare fuel and other random junk was the last to go on, except for all the clothing and bedding he figured he'd be able to use, which was jammed into the passenger side of the cab and the cab's sleeper.
He'd wait in the station until the generator ran out again. That would give him enough time to satisfy his conscience that he'd waited long enough for somebody to show up and say 'sorry for abandoning you, and by the way we found a cure for what you've got'.
Since he'd packed everything into the truck, he decided to get in the sleeper and get his sleep there, getting used to what would become his home for the foreseeable future. So he climbed into the truck, making sure the station radios were loud enough that he could hear any calls coming in. The only other noise was the distant droning of the generator outside the back door.
He found that the easiest way to bed down in this body was to actually curl up like a dog might. So on the sleeper's bed he lay, taking up a third of the space he would have in his human form. Shutting his eyes, he hoped that he wouldn't wake up and find that it was March - or, that if he did, he'd be back in his human form again, and this whole day was just some wild nightmare.
Nearing midnight, sleep finally overtook Max Morley, and his last coherent thought was to wonder if he would dream of the unicorns again.