It was hard to tell if the figure that she had moved into her lap was a man, but she assumed it was by the body shape. The hair was gone, and the face was a haggard phantom mask, with sinking eyes and a livid red rash that danced over his face. He wheezed and coughed as she gingerly held his head up and asked what his name was.

“You should have left me here to die,” the man said. His eyes flickered open and shut before focusing on her face. “Shoulda just walked on by. Now your kindness will be rewarded by death.”

He gave her a grin and she fought the shudder that moved along her spine. His teeth were stained red from blood. His gums were bleeding. He looked like a pitiful monster, like a skeleton, as he grinned and wheezed. Unwittingly, the words floated in her mind: And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. Her skin crawled and it was by sheer willpower that she didn’t dump the small, feverish body back on the road and run.

Where was Charlie? Had he gone back to the car? Had he called 911 by now?

But who would find them in the middle of nowhere, nestled between two cliffs, on a back-way road created by dynamite and sweat.

Her eyes roved over the landscape, as if to find a savior staring back at her, but there was only the fading light and darkness, the heat creeping out of the concrete road, and the taste of dust on her tongue.