Is The Road Dead?

The light was wrong. It was the first thing Carl noticed, even before the sound. It was spring, supposedly. The calendar in his head said April, but the sky above him looked like a fluorescent bulb burning out in a cheap gas station bathroom. Flat. Harsh. A dirty, buzzing white that offered no warmth, just a blinding glare that made his eyes water.

He stood in the middle of nowhere. Or rather, he stood in the middle of everything that had been broken.

The ground wasn't dirt. It wasn't sand. It was glass.

Millions, billions of tiny, cubed fragments of safety glass. Shattered windshields spread out into a pale, glittering ocean that met the horizon in every direction. Interspersed through the glass were twisted, jagged peaks of rusted metal. Car doors. Fenders. Half-crushed steering columns. They jutted out of the glass dunes like dead trees in a burnt forest.

Carl took a step.

Crunch.

It was loud. Too loud. The sound of his heavy combat boot grinding into the glass echoed in the air. But there was no echo. That was the other thing. The silence. It wasn't a peaceful quiet. It was a vacuum. A physical, heavy pressure pushing against his eardrums. The Shadow Mass. He could feel it sitting on his chest, a dark, heavy weight that made every breath feel like he was pulling air through a wet rag. The world felt paused. Like someone had hit mute on the universe, leaving only the isolating, terrifying sound of his own movement.

Crunch. Crunch.

He kept walking. What else was he going to do? Sit down and bleed?

His legs felt like lead pipes. His throat was sandpaper. He reached into the front pocket of his black hoodie, pulling out his phone. The screen was a spiderweb of cracks. Dead. Completely dead. No signal, no battery, no nothing. He stared at his own reflection in the shattered glass of the screen. Dark circles under his eyes. Pale skin. A smear of dirt across his cheek. He looked like a ghost.

He shoved the phone back into his pocket. It was a useless reflex. Muscle memory. Swipe, tap, check for messages. Messages from who?

Leo.

The name tasted like ash in his mouth.

He was looking for Leo. That was the point of all this. That was why he was walking through a desert made of car wrecks. Leo was here somewhere. He had to be.

Carl's mind was a mess of cognitive static. Thoughts jumped and skipped like a scratched vinyl record.

I need water. Did I lock the front door? Where is he? My boots are getting scuffed. It was a patch of black ice. Just a patch of black ice.

He pushed the last thought away. Shoved it deep down into the dark, locked box in the back of his brain. He couldn't think about the ice. Not here. Not now.

He climbed over a massive dune of glass, his boots slipping, sending cascades of sparkling, sharp cubes sliding down the slope. He reached the top, his breath coming in short, harsh gasps. His stomach churned. A sour, acidic burn clawed its way up his throat. He put his hands on his knees, staring out at the endless expanse of destruction.

"Leo!" he yelled.

The name was swallowed instantly by the dead air. It didn't travel. It just dropped out of his mouth and died on the glass.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He was sweating, despite the cold, sterile light. He noticed a piece of metal sticking out of the glass a few yards away. It was a side mirror. Silver. Smashed.

He walked toward it.

Crunch. Crunch.

As he got closer, the details of the landscape started to mess with his head. The metal wasn't just random. It was familiar. A hubcap here. A piece of a bumper there. They were all the exact same shade of dark gray.

Gunmetal gray.

The color of Leo's Honda Civic.

Carl's heart hammered against his ribs. A fast, erratic thumping that made his fingertips tingle. Panic. Cold and sharp. He forced himself to keep moving. Left foot. Right foot. Don't look too closely at the twisted metal. Don't look at the dried, dark stains on the glass.

He checked his phone again. Still dead.

"Come on, man," Carl muttered to himself. "Just... come on."

He didn't know how long he'd been walking. Time didn't exist here. The light never changed. The sun—if there was a sun behind the white haze—never moved. He could have been walking for five minutes or five years.

Then, he saw the coyote.

It was sitting on the hood of a crushed car about fifty feet away.

Carl stopped dead. The silence slammed back into place.

The animal wasn't right. It was a coyote, sure—pointed ears, long snout, scrawny frame—but its fur was completely matted, soaked in thick, black motor oil. The oil dripped from its tail, pooling on the dented gray metal of the car hood. The creature's eyes were a pale, unnatural yellow.

Carl stared at it. It stared back.

"Shoo," Carl said. His voice cracked.

The coyote didn't move. It tilted its head.

Carl swallowed hard. His mouth was completely dry. He took a hesitant step forward. The glass crunched loudly.

The coyote opened its mouth.

"You look like trash, Carl."

Carl froze. All the air left his lungs in a sudden, violent rush. His knees buckled slightly, and he had to lock them to stay standing.

The voice.

It wasn't a growl. It wasn't a bark. It was a human voice coming out of the animal's jaw. And not just any human voice.

It was Leo's.

The casual, slightly mocking, perpetually tired drawl of his older brother. The voice that used to yell at him for stealing his chargers. The voice that used to tell stupid jokes in the drive-thru line at 2 AM.

Carl's brain short-circuited. He squeezed his eyes shut. "No. No, no, no. I'm losing it. I'm dehydrated. This is a hallucination. Brain chemistry misfiring."

"You can close your eyes all you want, idiot," the coyote said. The jaw moved clumsily, like a cheap animatronic, but the voice was perfect. "I'm still sitting here."

Carl opened his eyes. The coyote lifted a paw, casually licking the motor oil off its claws.

"Leo?" Carl whispered. The word tore his throat.

"Yeah. Sort of," the coyote replied, not looking up from its paw. "As much as I can be in this dump."

Carl took another step. His hands were shaking. He shoved them into his pockets to hide it, even though there was no one to hide it from but a hallucination.

"Where are we?" Carl asked. "What is this place? I've been looking for you."

The coyote let out a short, huffing sound. A laugh. "Looking for me? Bro, I'm right here. But you aren't going to find what you want."

"I want to go home," Carl said. He sounded like a little kid. He hated it. He was seventeen, but right now, standing in front of this oil-slicked nightmare, he felt like he was five years old.

"Home's a long way from here," the coyote said. It stood up on the hood of the car. The metal groaned under its weight. It locked those pale yellow eyes on Carl. "You're stuck in the loop, man. You're just spinning the tires."

"What are you talking about?"

The coyote sat back down. It scratched behind its ear, leaving a smear of black grease on its neck.

"The steering wheel spins but the road is dead, bro."

The words hit Carl like a physical blow.

The steering wheel spins.

The memory hit him instantly. The violent, uncontrollable spinning. The frantic, useless turning of the wheel. The car sliding across the black ice. The absolute lack of friction. The sickening realization that he had absolutely no control over two tons of metal hurtling toward a massive oak tree.

Carl gasped. He stumbled backward, his boot catching on a jagged piece of a bumper. He fell hard, landing on his hands and knees in the sea of shattered glass.

The sharp cubes bit into his palms. He felt the skin tear. He felt the warm slide of blood.

He didn't care. The physical pain was nothing compared to the sudden, overwhelming crush of guilt that dropped onto his shoulders. It was a physical weight. It crushed the breath out of him.

"It was my fault," Carl choked out. He stared at his bleeding hands, the blood mixing with the sparkling glass. "It was my fault. I was driving. I looked down. Just for a second. I just looked at my phone!"

He was screaming now. The silence of the desert absorbed the sound, dampening it, making him feel small and entirely alone.

"I'm sorry!" Carl screamed, looking up at the coyote. Tears were streaming down his face, hot and fast, cutting tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. His chest heaved. He was hyperventilating. The somatic panic took over his body. His fingers went numb. His vision tunneled.

"Leo, please!" Carl begged, his voice breaking into a pathetic sob. "Please, man. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have been paying attention. I shouldn't have been driving. Forgive me. Please, just tell me you forgive me!"

The coyote watched him. Unblinking.

"Forgive you?" the coyote said, Leo's voice dripping with absolute apathy. "Bro, I'm dead. I don't care anymore."

Carl let out a raw, animal noise. He grabbed handfuls of the shattered glass, gripping them so tight his palms shredded further. He squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. The guilt was a parasite, eating him from the inside out. He wanted the ground to swallow him. He wanted the glass to bury him.

Then, the light changed.

Carl felt it before he saw it. The flat, white glare shifted. The air grew suddenly, violently cold.

He opened his eyes and looked up.

The sky wasn't white anymore. It was turning a sickly, bruised orange. Then brown. A massive, towering wall of darkness was moving across the horizon, rushing toward him at an impossible speed.

It wasn't a sandstorm.

It was a storm of rust flakes and atomized motor oil.

The wind hit him first. It smelled like a mechanic's garage on fire. Toxic. Choking. Carl coughed, covering his face with his bleeding hands.

He looked at the coyote.

The animal was standing tall on the car hood, staring into the approaching storm.

And it was laughing.

It wasn't Leo's laugh anymore. It was a glitching, horrific sound. A mechanical screech mixed with the yipping of a wild dog. It grated against Carl's skull, louder than the wind.

"Leo!" Carl screamed over the noise of the storm.

The wall of rust and oil hit them.

It was absolute darkness. Carl couldn't breathe. The air was thick with grit and grease. It coated his throat, filled his lungs. He was choking. Suffocating. The rust tore at his skin, scratching his face, filling his eyes. He thrashed blindly, his hands grasping at nothing but violent, swirling air.

He was going to die here. In the dark. In the dirt.

He opened his mouth to scream one last time, taking in a massive mouthful of thick, black oil—

Carl shot up.

His eyes snapped open. He gasped violently, his chest heaving as he sucked in a massive lungful of clean, cool air.

He was sitting bolt upright.

He wasn't in the desert.

He was in his bed.

His bedroom.

The familiar posters on the wall. The messy desk piled with schoolbooks and half-empty water bottles. The gray morning light filtering through his window blinds. It was a spring morning. He could hear a bird chirping outside. A completely normal, totally average Tuesday morning.

Carl sat there, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Sweat drenched his gray t-shirt. He was shaking violently. His hands gripped the edge of his blanket.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm the cognitive static racing through his brain.

A dream. It was just a dream. A nightmare. PTSD. The therapist said this would happen.

He let go of the blanket and looked at his hands.

They were clean. No blood. No cuts.

He let out a shaky, hysterical breath, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He was fine. He was home. He was safe.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, planting his bare feet on the hardwood floor. He needed a glass of water. He needed to wash his face.

He stood up, taking a step toward the door.

He paused.

He smacked his lips together.

There was a taste in his mouth. In the very back of his throat. Bitter. Metallic.

The distinct, undeniable taste of motor oil.

Carl froze in the middle of his room. The normal morning silence of his house suddenly felt heavy. Unnatural. The bird outside stopped chirping. The morning light coming through the window seemed to shift, losing its warmth, turning slightly more pale. Slightly more glaring.

He looked down at his feet.

He swallowed hard, tasting grit, and when he blinked, the sunlight catching the edge of his mirror fractured into a million pieces of crushed windshield glass.