BZZZZZZZ.
A powerful, industrial-grade motor roared to life right between them.
Kate jumped, a startled gasp breaking the kiss. Her eyes darted away from the road for a fraction of a second.
A shape darted out of the whiteout. Antlers.
Kate jerked the steering wheel. The tires screamed against the wet asphalt. The world flipped upside down, metal crunching, glass shattering, and then—nothing but a hollow rush of wind.
Then she woke to the taste of cold mud and sheep shit.
Kate groaned, pushing herself up on her elbows. The freezing damp soaked straight through her Gore-Tex jacket. She blinked, spitting grit from her mouth.
Check your limbs. The ER nurse in her took over. Wiggle toes. Flex fingers. Turn the neck. No sharp pain. Nothing broken.
She patted the ground around her. Her fingers brushed cold metal—her Stanley cup. Next to it lay her heavy backpack, and the silver gift box, now crushed flat in the mud. The smooth, hot pink silicone shape spilled out of the ruined cardboard. Without thinking, she grabbed it and shoved it deep into her jacket pocket.
Where was the car? Where was the highway?
She hauled herself to her feet. Her boots sank into thick, freezing clay. The fog still clung to the ground, but the asphalt was gone. No streetlights. No guardrails. Just dead, thorny bushes and a sprawling, colorless wasteland under a heavy gray sky.
Okay, she thought, her pulse thumping hard in her throat. I got thrown clear. I'm in a ditch somewhere. A really weird, rural ditch.
A heavy, shuffling sound broke the silence.
Kate turned. A man stumbled through the mist. Under normal circumstances, she might have asked for help. But the smell hit her first—a thick, suffocating wall of raw sewage, rotting meat, and unwashed sweat.
He wore a coarse, filthy tunic that looked like a potato sack. He didn't walk; he dragged his feet, his knees buckling outward. What kind of slum is this? A film set? Or some sort of immersive medieval LARP?
"Hey," Kate croaked, her throat raw. "Did you see my car?"
The man stopped. He stared at her bright red jacket. Then, a wet, tearing cough ripped from his chest. He bent double, hacking until a thick spray of dark, nearly black blood splattered onto the frost-covered mud between them.
He let out a low groan, clutched his groin, and collapsed face-first.
Kate froze. She didn't rush forward. Her boots stayed planted.
The man's tunic rode up his thigh as he fell, exposing his pale skin to the freezing air. Protruding from his groin and the base of his neck were massive, fist-sized swellings. The flesh around them was necrotic, a sickening bruised plum turning pitch-black at the edges.
Kate stopped breathing. Her medical training cataloged the visual data in a fraction of a second. Extreme fever. Hemoptysis. Necrotic lymphadenitis. Buboes.
This wasn't a LARP camp. This wasn't rural Ohio.
Her shaking hands dug into her chest pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen cast a harsh blue glow over the mud. No Service. Not even "Searching for Network."
She looked up at the dead man, then at the sprawling, desolate moors that looked like they hadn't seen a paved road in centuries. The wind howled, biting through her layers, carrying the faint, distant smell of burning wood and sickness.
The denial shattered. A cold, heavy dread settled deep in her stomach. She gripped the handle of her Stanley cup until her knuckles turned white, realizing with horrifying clarity that she was completely stranded in a world that didn't even have soap.
"Are you kidding me?" The words slipped out, barely a whisper, swallowed immediately by the wind.
She looked down at the abrasive nylon strap of the black backpack half-buried in the mud beside her knee. It was the only piece of the 21st century she had left.