The road ahead was slick with rain, shining like oil beneath the headlights. My sister and I had been driving for hours, maybe days, it was hard to tell anymore. The sky had forgotten how to be blue, and the world smelled like rust and wet asphalt. The windshield wipers screeched across the glass, fighting a losing
The road ahead was slick with rain, shining like oil beneath the headlights. My sister and I had been driving for hours, maybe days—it was hard to tell anymore. The sky had forgotten how to be blue, and the world smelled like rust and wet asphalt. The windshield wipers screeched across the glass, fighting a losing battle against the storm.
We didn't talk much. There wasn't anything left to say. The world was ending, and we were just two more stubborn souls trying to outrun it.
Food wasn't really food anymore. Everything was synthetic—engineered, pressed, and packaged until it all tasted like chemical sludge. Even the water was a joke, filtered through layers of poison until it made your throat burn. My sister used to say the world didn't die all at once; it just starved itself slowly.
What happened?
We just ran out. Out of oil, out of crops, out of soil that would grow anything that wasn't laced with death. Too many people, not enough of anything. The rich hoarded what they could, building cities under glass domes. The rest of us were left outside, choking on what was left of the air.
People started dying in the millions. At first, it was hunger and disease, then thirst, and then despair. We didn't even bury the dead anymore. We just drove past them.
Our parents had gone months ago. Illness, maybe starvation—it all blurred together. One day, they were coughing; the next, they were still. I stopped asking why things happened a long time ago. Now, survival was all that mattered.
We were making one last escape, the kind of desperate run you make when there's nowhere left to go. Our parents used to have this cabin—way out near the northern ridge, past the old borders, tucked against what used to be a nature preserve. They said it was "the edge of the world."
Maybe that was exactly what we needed.
It wasn't much of a plan. Just drive north until the roads run out and hope the cabin is still standing. We packed everything we could fit into the car—blankets, canned food, water jugs, a hand-crank radio, and a single pistol my dad kept under the floorboards. I didn't even know if it still fired, but holding it made me feel better.
The rain thickened. It came down in sheets so heavy it felt like the sky was collapsing. My sister's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "We should pull over," she said, eyes locked on the broken white lines ahead.
"No," I told her. "If we stop, we don't start again."
She nodded, but I could tell she was scared. I was, too. We both knew the kind of people who prowled these roads after dark—the ones who didn't wait for you to die before taking what was yours.
We just needed to make it another fifty miles.
That's what I kept telling myself.
Then the world went white.
A flash. A sound like thunder cracking open the earth. The tires lost traction. The car spun, metal shrieking as it hydroplaned across the road. My sister screamed my name. I remember the weightless moment before everything shattered—before glass exploded around us like rain made of knives.
And then nothing.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't sure if they were open at all. The world was gray. Quiet. The rain had turned the highway into a river, washing everything in a film of red and silver. The car was on its side, crumpled like a soda can. Steam hissed from the hood.
I tried to move, but my body didn't listen. My legs were twisted the wrong way. My arm—God, I don't even want to think about it.
Then I saw her.
My sister. She was lying a few feet away, eyes wide open, unblinking. The rain slid over her face, tracing tiny rivers down her skin. Her mouth was open, but no sound came out. There was something about her stillness that told me everything.
She was gone. I caught my breath at the suddenness of it. A tear slipped down my cheek. Or perhaps it was blood. I couldn't tell anymore. The world blurred around the edges, color draining until everything was rust and smoke. Her eyes were still open, fixed on nothing. I wanted to close them, but my hands wouldn't move.
Something inside me cracked. Maybe it was grief. Perhaps it was my ribs.
I wanted to reach for her, to crawl to her, but my fingers barely twitched. The edges of my vision blurred, and for the first time, I realized I wasn't breathing right. My lungs sounded wet, each inhale bubbling like air through mud.
That's when I saw them—shadows moving through the rain.
Scavengers—or maybe the others. No… scavengers. It was scavengers.
Their movements were different. Sharper. More desperate.
You learned to tell the difference out here—because your life depended on it.
The infected moved in bursts, all twitch and hunger, their limbs jerking like broken machinery. But scavengers? They were calculated, quiet until they weren't. You could feel them before you saw them—the shift in the air, the scrape of metal, the soft rhythm of boots trying too hard to be silent. The infected are the monsters, but the scavengers are the predators — the thinking threat. The infected are horrifying, but they're instinctive and chaotic; the scavengers are worse because they choose cruelty.
And when you realized it was them, it was already too late.
They came in fast, their outlines flickering through the downpour like ghosts. I could hear them talking, laughing, kicking at the wreck. Boots splashed through puddles as they ripped open the trunk, tossing out what was left of our supplies. One of them crouched beside my sister, rifling through her jacket. Another leaned over me.
Rough hands pulled at my clothes, searched my pockets. Someone yanked my necklace free. Another kicked my side to see if I'd move. I didn't.
The pain was there, but distant, fading like sound underwater.
And that's when I knew.
I was dying. Soon, I'd be dead too.
For a moment, it was almost peaceful. No hunger. No fear. No cold. Just… silence.
If you've ever wondered what dying feels like, I'll tell you—it's not a flash of light or your life flashing before your eyes, at least it wasn't for me. It's a soft fade, a surrender. You stop being angry about what's ending and start being curious about what's next.
What I wasn't prepared for was what came after.
When I opened my eyes again, the world had changed.
The rain was gone, replaced by a deep, violet sky. Night. The scavengers were gone, too, but the wreckage was still there—twisted metal, shattered glass, the smell of oil and blood thick in the air.
I sat up—or thought I did. Something felt wrong. My hands didn't look right. The skin was too pale, a lighter shade of brown. The nails are too short. I looked down at myself—at legs that weren't mine, clothes that didn't fit the same.
Then I saw her.
My body.
It was still lying in the road, eyes open, blank and glassy under the moonlight.
And that's when it hit me.
I wasn't in my body anymore. I was in hers.
My sister. I unstrapped my belt, squeezing through the partially opened door.
I stood there, swaying in the middle of the highway, staring at the face I used to see in the mirror, through the cracked windshield. My hair. My lips. My everything. Except now, it was her. "Lily", I acknowledge.
The shock hit slow, like drowning in reverse. I tried to speak, but my voice came out wrong—higher, softer.
"Shit," I whispered. "This sucks."
Over the dented hood, I looked at the body I used to call mine. It was broken, gone, useless. But this—this body—was breathing. Alive.
Somehow, I was alive.
And for the first time since the world ended, I had no idea what that meant.