by Darcy Coates
Clare nodded. Hex’s frown stayed fixed in place as she dropped into her chair. She looked like she might be even younger than Clare. Although the roots were starting to show, they weren’t long enough to have grown for more than a week. She must have raided the shopping mall for hair dye. It felt bizarre that there were still people with enough security and free time to spend hours on cosmetics, but in a strange way, it was also comforting.
The man was even more of an enigma. He struck Clare as the sort of person who would become embedded in middle management: competent enough to be promoted, but without the charisma or ruthlessness that would get him to the upper levels. His whole face seemed heavy, his eyes drooping at their edges like a basset hound’s, and he looked displaced in his navy jumper with a tie tucked under its collar.
“Is Dorran your real name?” His voice was missing the inflection it needed to sound truly alive.
Clare answered on Dorran’s behalf, feeling oddly defensive. “Yes. It’s a family name.”
“Okay.” It quickly became clear he wasn’t trying to needle Dorran, as he turned to the woman at his side. “Guess you’re still alone on this movement to adopt new-world names, Eugenia.”
Hex’s cheeks lost their colour. Her gaze fixed on him, filled with unspeakable threats.
John raised one weathered hand, eyes closed as he seemingly fought to hold on to his patience. “Let’s give that topic a rest for today. Especially in front of our guests.”
“Who shouldn’t even be here.” Hex spat the words at him.
Patty moved around the table, dropping off two new mugs for Hex and Alden, her voice sweet. “We don’t turn people away. You voted for that, too, remember?”
“I voted on mandatory body checks,” Hex snapped. “Before entry.”
John sighed. “She was half dead. I wasn’t about to make her jump through hoops. And anyway, we kept the door locked until she could wake up.”
Clare shuffled, feeling awkward. “I can take my jacket off again…?”
Patty rested a hand on her shoulder as she sank back into her seat at Clare’s side. “Don’t you worry. You’ve already been checked. Keep the jacket on so that you don’t freeze.”
As Patty turned towards her husband, Clare again glimpsed the scars around her neck. She felt a cold pit in her stomach: grief, guilt, or something in between. She wanted to apologise but swallowed the words before they could emerge. If she was right about her theory, bringing up her relation to Beth wouldn’t just be a bad political move; it could be deadly.
Hex looked like she wanted to push the topic, but John raised his eyebrows at her, a silent challenge. She backed down, folding her arms as she leaned back in her chair. Four mis-matched bracelets circled her wrist, jingling with each movement.
“I’d be interested to hear your story.” John sipped his drink, and Clare, who had seen the cups all come from the same thermos, finally felt comfortable enough to try hers. “Where you’ve been. Where you’re going. How you ended up with no food, water, or fuel.”
The first two questions were difficult to answer. Clare and Dorran had promised Unathi that they wouldn’t disclose the institute’s location, to protect it from being overrun by refugees. They wanted to keep their destination a secret for the same reason; the greenhouse was only large enough to support the two of them at that time. She looked to Dorran for his approval, then answered the third question.
“We were doing okay for supplies until yesterday. We saw smoke from a fireplace and stopped. It was a really bad decision. They stole almost everything we had.”
Hex leaned forward in her seat, suddenly interested. “Where was this?”
“I don’t remember much after it happened. Dorran?”
“Six hours to the south,” he murmured.
Clare nodded. “It was called Mother Gum’s Nest.”
“We know about them.” The lines around John’s mouth tightened. “Old woman and a group of youths she calls her children. Holed up inside a wooden fortress. People go into there, but not many come out.”
Clare’s heart sank. “Yeah. That was her.”
“Did you go inside the fortress? What did you see?” Hex asked.
“There were three buildings. The woman, Mother Gum, gave us some tea in her home. She… seemed sweet. She was being generous, too—said she had fuel we could take because they had no use for it. She sent us to get it from the barn with one of her children.”
“Was there anyone trapped there?” Hex asked. “Anyone alive?”
Clare swallowed and shook her head. “I’m sorry. When you go to the barn, they kill you. There was something in the tea—some kind of poison that made it hard to think or react.”
“A sedative, I believe.” Dorran frowned at the table, reluctant to make eye contact as he forced himself to speak. “I avoided having any. But it hit Clare badly, and then I had no water left to give her.”
Patty ran a hand over her face. “Those poor souls.”
Hex turned to John, her eyes blazing. “We have to do something.”
“My answer stays the same. There’s nothing to be done, ’cept to warn people.”
“How many’s she got? How many more?” Hex turned back to Clare. “She keeps changing her name once she realises we’re warning people. Always something familial that preys on emotions. It’s Mother Gum now. A Cottage for Lost Children last week. Grandmother Goose before that. She’s like one of those mantises that pretends to be a flower to lure its prey in.”
Clare’s mouth twisted. “She’s sick.”
“She’s a witch—that’s what she is.” Hex switched back to John. “We’ve gotta purge that place.”
He sighed. “It’s a fortress. I’m not sending my people on a suicide mission.”
“I’ll go myself. A couple of Molotov cocktails would do the trick.”
“You’d be shot before you even got close enough to throw one.”
Hex heaved back in her chair, its metal legs scraping over the floor. Blotches of colour had appeared on her pale cheeks as she re-folded her arms. For a moment, the meeting room was quiet.
Alden scratched pale stubble on his chin then said blandly, “It’s a bad situation.”
“Understatement,” Hex scoffed.
Patty rocked her mug on the table, swirling the contents. She seemed almost apologetic. “We knew about her before the stillness. Her fortress was a few hours’ drive from our homestead. She was called just Annabelle back then. She said she ran a camp for wayward teens, but it was widely known that it was closer to a cult. Back then, she would have her… followers work the fields around her property. Since that is no longer safe, she seems to have turned to luring and attacking anyone who passes by.”
“Oh.” Clare thought back to the high wooden walls. They had been greased to keep hollows out. She hadn’t actually considered that the walls had been constructed before the stillness, but looking back, that seemed obvious. They had been too high and stretched too far to be built in a day or two.
“Those people she calls her children?” Hex lifted her eyebrows. “Half of ’em don’t even want to be there. But they know what happens if they try to dissent. And they think they don’t have any choice, y’know? They can’t talk anymore.”
Clare frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She cuts their tongues out. Stops them talking to each other… and now, I guess, it stops them from warning any visitors. The witch took a very literal approach to stopping gossip.”
Clare shook her head, remembering how sullen and unhappy Henry had appeared as he led them to the shed. She felt painfully grateful to have escaped. But her mind and heart ached as she thought of everyone else who had not been so lucky.
Hex’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “If we don’t do anything to stop her, we’re just as bad as her.”
John scratched the side of his nose with a chipped fingernail. “We’ve been over this so many times, it’s exhausting. We have a job here. An important job. People need safe hav
ens to stop, to heal, to learn about the road ahead. How many lives have we saved by being here?”
Hex mumbled something that Clare couldn’t quite catch.
“We fight the witch, chances are we die trying to bring her down. Then no one can be helped.”
“It’s not right,” Hex said, but there was a note of defeat in her voice.
John drained his cup then passed it to Patty, who rose to refill it. “We have a job here,” he repeated. “You want to help people? You help me keep the lights on and the shelves full of food. And maybe don’t throw a fit if I occasionally bring people in without checking them.”
Hex lifted her middle finger towards him.
“If you’re accepting feedback, you could tone down the edginess,” Alden said. “Blue hair doesn’t make you cool.”
The finger swivelled in his direction. He shrugged sloped shoulders, unconcerned, as he sipped his coffee.
“As much as I would enjoy it, this meeting isn’t about Eugenia’s real name or her fashion choices,” John said, mildly ignoring the finger as it turned on him again.
“Or the fact that she was a small-town checkout girl before the stillness,” Alden added.
There were now two fingers, one waving in each direction.
“No. We have guests.” John sighed, stretching, before turning to sit sideways on the chair and draping one arm over its back. “Here’s the situation. They need supplies. They don’t have much of anything to trade. And we should figure out what we’re going to do about that.”
Clare swallowed. She’d begun to relax, lulled by the banter between Hex and her companions. They seemed to know each other well, like a family that exchanged barbs every evening over dinner, but never with any real malice behind them. She’d almost forgotten about her own situation.
She looked at Dorran and was surprised. He rested both arms on the table ahead of himself, away from the knife, attentive to the conversation but no longer wary of it. He doesn’t think we’re in danger any longer.
Clare had learned to trust Dorran’s instincts. He always deferred to Clare when they had to speak to strangers, but Clare knew that between the two of them, he was more skilled at picking up on subtle cues. His mother’s treatment towards him had ensured that. Clare did her best to trust him again then. “We’re low on… everything. They took our water, food, and petrol. We still have clothes and blankets, though.”
Hex pulled a face. “We’ve got more than we’ll ever need of that. There are a hundred and twelve stores in this shopping centre. Out of them, sixty-two are either clothing or homewares.”
She recited the numbers so easily. This isn’t the first time she’s had this conversation.
“West Hope is a sanctuary,” John drawled. “We don’t turn away anyone who is in need. If you’re starving, we feed you. If you’re hurt, we’ll give you medical treatment. And when you move on, we advise on the road ahead and do what we can to give you a solid shot out there. But we also have to look out for our own survival—you understand? More than sixty souls live here full-time, and we can’t give away our food if it means our own will starve.”
“I understand,” Clare said.
Patty spoke, her voice soft and a little sad. “That’s especially true for the fuel. It’s getting harder and harder to find, and fewer people want to trade it. But it keeps the parking lot lights on, and those lights are the only things stopping the hollows from swallowing us.”
“West Hope can’t last forever,” Alden said. “We all know that.”
John nodded. “But it’s about extending our time as long as possible. Giving as many people a chance as we can, before we run out.”
Clare bit her lip. “Actually—with some luck, you might be able to outlast the stillness.”
John tilted his head. “People who travel through like to tell us that the end is coming. They have all types of reasons. Raptures, the hollows dying under their own weight, some secret government military bases hidden under the arctic… which theory is yours?”
“None of them. And it isn’t a theory.” She took Dorran’s hand. “We know how the stillness began. And we’ve met people who are working to make it end.”
“All right, I’ll admit, I’m intrigued.” John chuckled. “Any time a new soul comes through, we like to hear their story. It’s how we know what’s out there, who’s surviving, what tricks and tactics are working. And it sounds like you have a hell of a story. Let’s hear it.”
“Okay,” Clare said. “But first, you said you give medical treatment. And Dorran’s hurt.”
Chapter Twelve
Patty brought a first aid kit out of the room’s corner while Alden boiled a kettle. Clare tugged the blanket off from around Dorran’s shoulders and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“It’s fine.” He spoke quietly, looking uncomfortable. “Just leave it. I can take care of it later.”
She narrowed her eyes at him as she undid more buttons. He just sighed.
Patty returned with the first aid kit and shook her head as she saw the shirt. “They’ve torn through it. May as well cut it off. It’s not like it can be salvaged at this point.”
She passed Clare a pair of scissors, pushed stacks of paper aside, and laid out utensils on the table.
“I treated most of our animals on the homestead,” she said, setting out two pain tablets beside Dorran’s mug. “It’s not quite the same as working on humans, but it’s enough.”
Clare cut through the shirt with painstaking care. She felt guilty for letting Dorran sit like that for so long; shreds of cloth had become tangled in with dry blood. The matted mess ran across his shoulder and upper arm, near the old wound where Beth had bitten him. She should have asked for someone to look at it as soon as they entered the meeting room. It must have been hurting him, no matter how well he hid it.
He flinched as she pulled the fabric out. Fresh blood began to ooze. Clare swallowed, feeling sick.
“It’s really fine.” Dorran spoke calmly, even as perspiration shone on his forehead. “They’re not deep enough to require stitches.”
“They are,” Patty said. “You’ll also need some antibiotics. Hollow bites don’t seem especially prone to infection, thankfully, but you would still be courting sepsis if you don’t take it.”
Dorran shook his head. “They would be a waste now. Save them. Clare, would you like to explain?”
“Yeah.” She shuffled back to make room for Patty, who drew her seat up to Dorran’s side, dampened a cloth in the boiling water, and began to wash the dried blood away from the bite marks. Clare licked her lips, trying to centre her thoughts.
It was the second time she’d told the story. Like when she’d shared it with Mother Gum, she avoided revealing that she and Dorran had experienced Ezra’s experiments first-hand. She also omitted any trace of Beth.
Unlike with Mother Gum, Clare had her companions’ undivided curiosity. Hex leaned forward, chewing on her thumbnail, eyes bright and keen. Alden was unreadable with his drooping features and lacklustre expression, but his eyes remained on her as she talked. John occasionally interrupted with questions.
Clare finished her story with, “So we left the USB with the people at the research institute, who will be activating the code as soon as they can make sure it’s safe. It might be a few weeks, or it might be longer. But they know how precious time is. I don’t think they’ll leave it too long. If you can keep the safe haven open until then, you won’t have to risk moving the survivors here to a more remote area.”
“Huh.” John continued to watch her as he mulled over the story.
Hex’s rapt attention had morphed into disappointment, and now her eyebrows were pulled low under her blue fringe. “She’s making it up.”
John held up a hand. “Well now, hold on, Hex.”
“No, there’s no way she’s telling the truth. Nanobots and underground bunkers… It’s about on par with that guy who said the Aztec god of death was punishing the world. I mean…” She shrugge
d at Clare. “It’s a nice story full of hope, but come on.”
John shrugged. “Possibly. Possibly not. Extraordinary situations can require extraordinary explanations.”
Hex switched her attention between Clare and John. “What? You actually believe them?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m more inclined to than not.”
Alden lifted a finger to catch attention. “I can’t see much of a reason for them to lie. If it’s a delusion, it’s affected both of them equally. And if it’s a lie, what do they get out of it?”
John shrugged. “Either way, it doesn’t change our plans. We keep West Hope running as long as possible. If this code is real, and if it works, we’ll know about it when it happens. But we don’t bank on it.”
“What do we do now?” Clare asked. She couldn’t stop fidgeting, but kept her hands in her lap, where they wouldn’t be as visible. “Our bus is low on fuel. Probably not enough to get us somewhere with more.”
“No,” Alden agreed. “The cars and houses around here have been pretty well emptied of their stores.”
“We don’t do loans, either,” Hex added. “Too much of a risk you won’t ever come back.”
“Does that mean we just have to… stay here?”
“’Fraid that isn’t doable, either, dove.” John sighed. “We have a rule at West Hope. If you’re capable of surviving out there, you have to move on. Only the people who are physically unable to fight can stay. Otherwise, we’d be out of food in a week. No. Now that you’re up and alive again, we’ll be looking to move you on within the day.”
“We’re not going to send you out to starve,” Patty said, seeming to sense Clare’s growing stress. “There are options. You can try to trade with other people who stop here. Though, if the witch took everything of value, that will be difficult. Or you can hitch a ride with another traveller who’ll take you somewhere with more supplies.”
“Do you need any work done?” Clare asked. “I can do repairs or cook or…”
