The wheels of the buggy kicked up clouds of dust as Wang pushed the gas pedal with everything he had left. The shotgun lay in the seat beside him, crusted with dried blood. The hunter's knife still hung awkwardly at his waist. His stump of a right arm was wrapped in blood-soaked rags, now stiff and blackened in places. The pain hadn't gone away. It had just... dulled. Faded into a constant roar in the back of his mind, like static on a dying radio.
The sun dipped low in the sky, casting the world in fire-orange light. The trees behind him were long gone. The jungle had faded into patchy scrub, and then even that gave way to the real fucking nightmare.
Desert.
Red, endless, uncaring.
The once-lush greenery turned into scorched earth and cracked stone. No grass. No trees. Just hard-packed dirt and towering rock formations that loomed like the broken bones of ancient giants. Rust-red sand blew across the landscape, kicked up by the hot, dry wind that never stopped whispering death into his ears.
Wang squinted through the blur of dust. His eyes were bloodshot, dry, and burning. Every time he blinked, it felt like sandpaper grinding against his corneas.
His lips were cracked.
His throat felt like it had been sandblasted.
The buggy rattled over uneven ground, jostling his mangled body with every bump.
"Fuck," he muttered, barely able to recognize his own voice. "Should've died back there... would've been easier..."
The dashboard fuel gauge had been flirting with empty for the past hour. Now it hovered at the red line. The engine gave a low choking cough, like it was clearing its throat for the last time.
And then—
Put-put-put... clunk.
Dead.
The buggy coasted a few more meters on inertia before rolling to a slow, whining stop atop a dune.
Wang slumped over the steering wheel, forehead resting on the cracked plastic.
"No," he muttered. "No, no, no, don't fucking do this to me..."
But the engine was silent. There wasn't even enough juice left to play dead.
He sat there for a while. Could've been minutes. Could've been hours.
The sun finally slipped beneath the horizon, bleeding into the sand like it had been shot in the gut. The temperature began to drop—fast. Desert nights didn't fuck around.
Wang climbed out of the buggy, legs shaking like wet noodles. He stumbled a few feet before collapsing onto his knees.
The sky above him turned indigo, then purple, then pitch-black. Stars came out in scattered patches, cold and distant.
The silence was suffocating.
No birds.
No bugs.
Just wind and sand and pain.
The horizon was infinite in every direction. A flat, miserable graveyard of dunes and rocks. No lights. No buildings. No hope.
Wang tried to walk. Got about five steps before collapsing again.
His head hit the dirt.
He didn't get back up.
His good hand twitched slightly, then curled into a fist, digging into the red dust.
"Fuck... you..." he whispered to nobody. "Fuck this place..."
The pain in his side flared, then faded.
He couldn't feel his legs anymore.
His thoughts were disjointed.
Drifting.
Images flickered across his mind like old film reels melting under a projector bulb. A blurry face. A girl, maybe. Someone crying. Flash of a fist. Sirens. A courtroom. A cell.
All swallowed by the sand.
His eyes fluttered. The stars above began to spin.
He let his body collapse completely, lying on his side in the cooling sand, half-buried, half-bleeding out.
He felt like a discarded thing. Trash the world didn't even care to bury properly.
"...Shit..." he whispered one last time.
And then darkness took him.
Q: Have you been to Australia before?