The road stretched endlessly, a ribbon of cracked asphalt glinting beneath the dying sun. Mara gripped the steering wheel tighter, eyes fixed on the horizon where the sky bled into rust and violet. The radio hissed static—no music, no voices—just the whisper of what used to be connection.
She had been driven for days now, guided only by the faint beeping of the tracker on her dashboard. A remnant of the old world, it pulsed every few minutes—a heartbeat in the silence. The map had long since become useless, the cities nothing more than ruins claimed by dust and vines. But that beacon, that steady rhythm, promised something. Someone.
At night, she parked beneath the husks of overpasses and watched the stars crawl across the heavens. She wondered if anyone else was looking up—if anyone still named the constellations. The world had once felt crowded. Now it was vast and empty, and she a solitary traveler cutting through its silence.
On the seventh morning, the beeping quickened. Her heart did too. Over the ridge, she spotted movement—a flicker of light against the gloom. Smoke. Shelter. Maybe even another survivor.
She slowed, then stopped entirely. The light blinked again, but something in its rhythm changed. Not a signal. A warning.
The tracker’s pulse stuttered, then went still.
Mara sat in the quiet, the weight of the sky pressing down. The world was not guiding her anywhere anymore. Perhaps it never had.
Still, she turned the key. The engine coughed, caught, and growled to life. She didn’t look back as she drove into the dusk—toward the next horizon, the next maybe.
Because hope, like the road, was endless. And she was too far gone to stop now.
Therapy Bits 
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