The satnav chimed once, polite, almost apologetic and then went silent. Adam noticed because the silence felt heavier than it should have, as if the car itself were holding its breath.
He glanced down at the screen. The map had frozen mid-scroll, the familiar blue route thinning into a grey thread before dissolving entirely. In its place was a blank field, the kind of empty that suggested not absence but erasure. No roads. No labels. Just a pale grid fading into nothing.
"That's not right," he said aloud, though there was no one to hear him.
The motorway curved gently left, three lanes wide and freshly tarmacked, the white lines crisp and reflective. Overhead, a gantry loomed with green signage—EXIT 14B, it had said a moment ago—but when Adam looked back through the rear-view mirror, the gantry was gone. Not receding. Gone.
He slowed instinctively, easing off the accelerator. The engine responded with a low, even hum, obedient and unconcerned. The fuel gauge caught his eye. Just under a quarter tank. Plenty, he told himself. Enough to find the next services, reset the satnav, laugh about it later.
The motorway stretched on, smooth and empty. No other cars. No lorries. No tyre hiss from the opposite carriageway, because there was no opposite carriageway—just a concrete barrier to his right and a grass embankment to his left that rose too steeply to climb.
Adam checked his phone. No signal. Not even a flicker. He toggled airplane mode on and off, then again, harder this time, as if force might persuade the screen to comply. Nothing.
"Fine," he muttered. "Fine."
He drove.
At first, the absence of exits registered only as a mild irritation. He passed one mile markers that counted upward without reference to any known place. The numbers were wrong somehow too high, or perhaps just unfamiliar. He told himself this was a new bypass, unfinished, not yet mapped. Governments loved building things and forgetting to tell anyone.
Ten miles later, the irritation had hardened into unease.
There were no slip roads. No signs for towns. No blue "Services" panels promising fuel, food, or toilets. The gantries that appeared every few miles carried only speed limits always the same number and warnings about hazards that never materialised.
The sky had taken on a uniform quality, a flat grey that seemed painted rather than clouded. Adam realised with a start that he hadn't seen the sun since he took the exit. He couldn't remember when exactly it had disappeared.
He rolled down the window. The air was cool and smelled faintly of rain and hot asphalt. No birdsong. No wind. Just the sound of his tyres and the distant, constant rush of something like breath.
The fuel gauge dipped.
"Okay," Adam said, more firmly now. "Okay."
He tried the radio. Static. He switched stations methodically, AM to FM, local to national. Nothing but the same thin hiss, like sand poured slowly onto glass. When he turned the volume down, the silence pressed in again, thicker than before.
He considered stopping. The thought came unbidden and lodged itself in his chest. Don't stop. He didn't know why, only that the idea of pulling onto the hard shoulder felt wrong in a way he couldn't articulate, like lying down in deep water.
The motorway began to repeat itself.
He noticed it first in the lampposts: tall, unlit, spaced at exact intervals. One had a dent halfway up, a shallow concave mark like a thumb pressed into soft metal. Ten minutes later, another lamppost bore the same dent. Identical. Same height. Same angle.
Adam's hands tightened on the wheel.
The next gantry displayed the same speed limit as the last. Beneath it, a smaller sign warned of "CONGESTION AHEAD," though the road remained empty as far as he could see.
His fuel gauge slipped below a quarter.
"No," he said. "No, no, no."
He accelerated, then slowed, testing the world as one might test ice. It held, indifferent to his panic. The motorway neither narrowed nor widened. It did not rise or fall. It simply went on.
Time began to blur. The clock on the dashboard still ticked forward, but Adam could not reconcile the minutes passing with the distance he seemed to cover. He felt as though he had been driving for hours and moments simultaneously.
When the low fuel warning chimed, it sounded far too loud.
The icon glowed amber. Adam stared at it, willing it to be wrong. He drove more slowly now, conscious of every press of the accelerator, every unnecessary movement. The motorway offered no comfort, no promise of relief. It did not acknowledge his predicament at all.
He laughed then—a short, brittle sound that startled him. "You've finally lost it," he told the empty car. "That's all this is."
As if in response, the first exit appeared.
It emerged without fanfare, a simple slip road peeling away to the left. No signage marked it. No town name. Just a narrow lane disappearing into a shallow cutting.
Adam hesitated for exactly one second before taking it.
The slip road curved sharply, tighter than any motorway exit had a right to. Trees closed in on either side, their branches bare and dark, knitting together overhead. The road surface degraded rapidly, the smooth tarmac giving way to cracks and patches.
After less than a hundred metres, the slip road ended.
Not in a junction. Not in a roundabout. It ended in a wall of earth and roots, as if someone had simply stopped building and walked away.
Adam slammed on the brakes. The car lurched to a halt inches from the dirt. His heart hammered against his ribs, loud enough that he thought for a moment he could hear it echo.
He sat there, breathing hard, staring at the dead end.
Behind him, the slip road was gone.
Where it had been was now a continuation of the motorway, three lanes wide, empty, inevitable.
His fuel gauge dipped into red.
Adam reversed slowly, eyes flicking between mirrors. The car rolled back onto the motorway as though it had never left it. The trees vanished. The wall of earth dissolved into grass embankment.
The exit had never existed.
He drove on, tears blurring his vision, anger and fear tangling in his chest until he could no longer tell them apart. He screamed once, a raw, wordless sound that vanished into the car's upholstery.
The engine began to sputter.
"No," Adam whispered. "Please."
The car shuddered, coughed, and then the engine died. Momentum carried him forward in a long, silent glide. He steered onto the hard shoulder—when it had appeared, he could not say—and let the car roll to a stop.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Adam sat very still. He did not reach for the door handle. He did not turn the key. He waited, though he had no idea what he was waiting for.