Sweat slicked her skin as she vomited up the vile.
Weeping, she crawled away, then just curled into a ball, waiting to die.
But she didn’t.
Chills racked her so her teeth clacked together, and, when they passed, more sweat poured, ran down her body like a river. The sickness cycled back until there was nothing left, and she lay exhausted, throat burning.
And somehow she slept.
She woke burning with fever, racked with chills, and this time prayed to die.
Without sense or purpose, she managed to gain her feet, took a few stumbling steps. When she fell, she waited for the sickness to come again, but there was only pain and that terrible heat.
So she pushed to her feet again. She saw nothing to tell her where she was, which way to go, so she walked blindly.
She couldn’t say how long she walked, forced time and again to stop and rest. She feared she walked in circles. She saw birds, squirrels, knuckles of trees poking out of brown water. And the things that swam in it, silently.
But not another human being.
She knew she was a human being, a girl, a woman, but beyond that she had nothing to anchor her.
She didn’t remember driving into the lake, or the sudden wild panic that had her fighting her way out of the submerged car, swallowing water, thrashing her way to the surface.
She certainly didn’t remember a little boy left sleeping and alone in front of an empty church.
She was alone, and too sick, too tired to think of before.
She fell asleep again, and woke in the dark, woke freezing this time.
The air—so thick—seemed to clog her lungs so her breathing wheezed. And the wheezing led to horrible spells of agonizing coughing.
Insects buzzed around her, biting until every inch of her skin burned and itched. She scratched and scratched until she bled, and the blood drew more to bite and swarm.
She tried calling out, but her voice was a croak, no louder than the frogs.
She walked and wept, walked and wept. And finally just walked, shuffling like a zombie, and jolting at each sound.
The hoot of an owl, the rustle of leaves. She waited for something to leap out of the dark and consume her.
She thought she heard something else, something familiar.
A car.
She knew there were cars in the world. She knew she wore red sneakers, sneakers coated in mud. She knew, because she’d run her hands over it, she wore her hair short. But she couldn’t bring an image of herself into her mind.
If she had a mirror—she knew what a mirror was!—would she know herself?
She tried to walk in the direction she thought she’d heard a car. Someone would help. If she could find someone, someone would help. Water, someone would give her water. She was so thirsty.
She had no sense of time, of distance.
She followed snatches of moonlight.
She knew the moon, the sun, flowers, buildings, trees—why were there so many trees? She knew cats and dogs and hands and feet.
Her feet ached and ached. Her head felt as big as the moon and pulsed with pain.
Delirious, she muttered to herself things she remembered and found the word for the body of water she nearly fell into.
Swamp.
She wanted to drink it, but knew the things that swam in swamps.
Alligators, snakes.
She walked the other way. What did it matter? She’d walk until she died.
And then, like a miracle, she stumbled out onto a road.
She knew what a road was, and cars traveled on them.
She walked, limping now, as her shoes rubbed blisters on her feet. But no car traveled this road. Maybe she was the only person left in the world.
Maybe there’d been a nuclear war. She knew what that was, sort of. Everything blew up. But there was still a road, and trees.
As dawn began to break, she gave up, gave in to exhaustion, and simply dropped down on the road. She curled into herself and let the darkness come.
* * *
On his way home from a graveyard shift at the ER, Dr. Joseph Fletcher had the top down, the radio blasting. Both ploys to keep him alert after a long, hard night.
He loved his work, had always wanted to be a doctor, and he’d chosen emergency medicine. But there were nights he wondered why he hadn’t listened to his parents and gone into private practice.
Of course, he knew why. He helped more people, often desperate people, on any given night than he might have in a week in a posh office.
He was thinking about a long cool shower and his big soft bed when he rounded the final curve before home and nearly ran over the figure crumpled in the road.
He had to slam the brakes, swerve. He nearly lost control of the BMW Roadster he’d treated himself to when he got his degree. Gravel spit from the wheels when he hit the shoulder, and he fishtailed but managed to stop without ending up in the gully.