Clare pressed her lips together, trying to repress the wave of grief that wanted to drown her. She took a moment to breathe, just to make sure her voice would be steady. “Do you want to not go to Evandale? Because—”
“No.” Beth’s smile became a little more wry. “I haven’t changed my mind about that. If I could ask for anything, it would be to have more time with you, but… well, even that’s going to be limited. I don’t think hollows and humans are designed to cohabitate for long.”
“Please stop talking like that. You’re still human.”
Beth chuckled. “You’re trying. I can see it. You’re trying as hard as you can. And I’m doing the same from my end. But it’s like putting a napkin over a sucking chest wound. Just because we hide it, pretend it’s not happening, doesn’t mean we’ve stopped it.”
Clare was fighting not to cry. Beth’s hand patted the side of her face, where her damp hair stuck to her cheeks. “I wish I had another shot at this. More time with you. More time to make it right.”
“We—we still have some time. We don’t even know if there are scientists at Evandale. And even if there are, it will probably take them a while to unravel the code. It’s not like we have to say goodbye at the door.”
“Maybe,” Beth murmured.
Her face was still full of grief and pain. She wasn’t arguing, but her reply didn’t hold any conviction, and Clare couldn’t understand why. Reaching Evandale took them a step closer to eradicating the hollow, but it was far from being an immediate, certain end. They could still have weeks after dropping off the USB. Possibly even months. She didn’t know if she could cope with the prospect of arriving so soon otherwise.
“I’m trying to be grateful,” Beth said. “You won’t be alone once I’m gone. And that’s a good thing, I guess, even if the jealousy is eating me alive.”
“Hey.” Clare pulled Beth closer so that she was easier to hear under the pounding rain. “Just because I love him doesn’t mean I love you any less. You know that, right?”
“Eh. Whatever. You can do better than him, you know?” Beth swiped a hand across her face, wiping away the moisture. “I’ll maintain that, even in a world with a vastly reduced dating pool.”
Clare choked on her laughter. “Beth—”
“All right, all right. Be nicer. I get it.”
Glass crunched as something heavy moved towards them. A tall figure stepping through the broken front doors, barely visible in the lamplight. Dorran had washed and changed, like them, and he craned his neck as he searched for them amongst the mist. “Clare? Is everything okay?”
“Hey!” Beth pulled Clare closer, her teeth bared. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, snooping around while we’re showering?”
He cleared his throat as he stepped back. “My apologies. I thought I heard a cry. And you were gone for more than an hour—”
“We’re washing our hair. That’s how long it takes.”
Dorran held up both hands, placating. “As long as you’re all right. Clare?”
“Fine,” she called, grateful the darkness and rain would have masked her red eyes. She waved, smiling. “Sorry for making you worry. We’ll be there in a moment.”
He nodded, and the relief was evident in his posture as he backed through the door.
“What was that about being nicer?” Clare hissed.
“Eh.” Beth shrugged, swiping her arm across her eyes. “I’ll start tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Water leaked through the shopping mall’s broken doors, gradually spreading in a pool across the tile floor. The wind continued to funnel bursts of rain against the walls. The skylights lit up with frequent bursts of lightning. The building didn’t feel quite right when it was empty; echoes bounced through the vacant stores in strange patterns.
Despite the environment, Clare actually felt cosy. She, Dorran, and Beth sat near the minibus on their foldable camping chairs. Beth had found a new tank of gas in the camping shop, which meant they could warm their food and themselves. Clare, swaddled in a quilt and with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, was snug and warm.
Dorran placed his empty bowl aside and picked up a mug of tea from the floor beside him. “It’s nice to not have to worry about watching our backs. At least for a moment.”
“Mm.” Beth, arms folded and feet kicked out towards the heater, watched the skylights above them. “It’s almost tempting to stay a while longer. But we’re playing with bought time. Life will start filtering back into the area, especially since the soot is being washed away.”
“How long do you think that will take?” Clare asked.
Beth shrugged. “Another day? Two? I suspect the humans will come in first, looking for supplies, like we did. The crawlers won’t have any interest in the area as long as it’s barren and doesn’t provide much cover, but if they think they can find some food here, they’ll be back pretty quickly.”
Clare sipped from her mug. “Even if it’s just temporary, it’s still nice.”
“And we should make the most of it,” Beth added. “The shopping centre might not be large, but it’s going to be valuable. We’ll strip the useful bits from the pharmacy first, then take a look at what’s in the other stores that we can fit into the bus.”
“We have enough antibiotics, though,” Clare said. “We could grab a couple of extra boxes of painkillers, but we shouldn’t need much else from the pharmacy, should we?”
“We won’t need it, but we’ll still take it. Inhalers, blood pressure medication, anti-seizure medication. Those things will be hard to come by in the outside world.”
Clare exchanged a look with Dorran. His eyebrows had lowered a fraction, not enough to break the peace about his features but enough to tell her this new direction wasn’t sitting well with him either.
“But…” Clare adjusted her grip around her mug, speaking carefully. “The thanites should have made most of that unnecessary. Right?”
“Think, Clare. We’re the only people who know about the thanites right now. And even if other people hear about them, there will always be a group that doesn’t believe it or prefers to err on the side of caution. They might not need their old medication any longer, but they’ll still buy it. One inhaler might be enough to get you a jug of fuel or three days of food or shelter, depending on how desperate people are. We’d be fools not to take as much as we can.”
To their right, the bus glittered in the burner’s light. Despite the beating it had taken, it was still solid and reliable. They had fuel. They had food. They had spare clothes and blankets, all well in excess of what they needed to reach Evandale. Clare knew her sister was being practical, but her heart ached at the idea of them hoarding supplies like some kind of dragon when the next person to arrive at the shopping court might need antibiotics just as desperately as they did.
She couldn’t ignore how lucky they were. Travelling across the country in the bus might not be the most secure or stable way to live, but they had all of their needs met and then more. For a second, the memory of the car they’d passed flashed into her mind: the father and his two daughters, a wedding ring hanging from the mirror, a camping pack in the passenger seat. They carried so little that they had to be surviving from day to day. A lot of humans were probably doing the same—fighting just to stay ahead of the hollows, to find that day’s food and water, to find shelter that could protect them as they slept. Clare set her jaw. “We can take some, but we don’t need all of it.”
Beth, fire flashing in her eyes, opened her mouth then clamped it closed again. She took a slow sip from her tea then exhaled before speaking, her voice measured. “Here’s the thing. You might like to take the moral high ground, but other people won’t be as charitable. What would you do? Leave a sign on the pharmacy door saying, Please Take One, and hope everyone else abides by the honour system? The very next person to arrive here is going to loot everything they can carry and sell it at the highest price they can get. If someone’s going to make a
profit from this place, it may as well be us, right?”
This isn’t Beth. It’s not who she used to be. It’s the thanites, pushing her to consume, to be jealous, to be ravenous.
“Let’s talk about it later,” Clare said.
Beth drained her mug in one go, and for a second, Clare believed that would be the end of the discussion. Then Beth slammed the mug onto the floor. The sound rang out around them like a gunshot. Both Clare and Dorran jolted.
“I don’t think we need to discuss it.” Beth stood and pulled her gloves on with sharp, jerky motions. “You can do whatever you want, but you’re not my master. This is my bus and my free will and my time.”
“Beth—” Clare half stood, but her sister had already turned and stalked towards the pharmacy. She vanished in between the display tables and gloom. Clare sighed and slumped back into her chair. “Damn it.”
Dorran gave her an apologetic, tight-lipped smile. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to say something—”
“No, don’t worry. My sister, my problem.” Clare ran a hand over her face. “Maybe I shouldn’t have even objected. This place could stay abandoned for years; I was literally arguing about a hypothetical. This is such a stupidly trivial thing to have a falling out over.”
“You were arguing on behalf of compassion.” Dorran’s smile became a little warmer. “That is something you never lost, and I cannot tell you how glad it makes me.”
Clare opened her mouth, but her words died on her tongue. A rush of lightning came through the skylights and broken door, illuminating the six mannequins outside the ravaged clothing store.
Wait. Weren’t there five when we arrived?
As the sudden light faded, the figures were plunged back into darkness. Only their gas cooker illuminated the mall, and its flames barely lit the three chairs spaced around it.
“Clare?” Dorran tilted his head. She didn’t dare answer him. Didn’t even dare to move beyond lifting a finger to ask him to stay silent. His expression darkened.
Beth had promised the shopping centre didn’t hold any hollows. She’d said the fire would have funnelled them all out. The smell lingered, though, so pungent that it turned Clare’s stomach. There must have been dozens of the creatures calling the shopping centre home at one time.
What if not all of them made it out? What if the fire moved through the town so quickly that some became trapped in the stores? What if they stayed here?
Another burst of lighting washed around them. Five mannequin faces stared at Clare. Her skin prickled, hairs standing to attention as her heart redoubled its rate.
“We’re not alone,” she whispered.
They had been lax. Clare had trusted Beth’s assurance of security and left her weapons inside the bus. Their only light came from the cooker. Clare had left the torch beside her seat, but they hadn’t even gotten around to replacing its batteries yet. They hadn’t thought they would need to.
Clare moved slowly as she bent to pick up her torch. They had been in the shopping centre for more than an hour without being disturbed. The hollows were too cautious to attack outright.
She could feel Dorran tensing, assessing. The bus and its weapons were only five steps behind them, but he refused to leave her side.
Her hand tightened around the cold metal torch. She pressed its button. The light didn’t respond for a second, then it blinked on, forming a dull circle over a poster advertising half-price shoes.
Sounds came from the pharmacy. Beth, rummaging. Clare wanted to call to her, but she couldn’t risk making that much noise. The rain continued to drum across the windows and walls. A steady dripping noise came from a leak somewhere near the door. Through all of that, Clare thought she could make out the sound of muted chattering. She tried to pinpoint it, but the high ceiling distorted noises.
Clare turned the torch towards the mannequins and picked out five pale, expressionless faces. She was certain she’d seen a sixth figure positioned between them, equally pale but less stoic. She continued moving the torch in an arc across the walls. It flickered. Something moved in its periphery. Clare twisted her light towards it, and the beam failed.
“No.” She hit her palm on the torch. It came back on. The space, the entrance to a men’s clothing store, was filled with racks of shirts. One of them swayed on its hook, recently disturbed.
Dorran touched her forearm. He bent to put his lips next to her ear. “Get into the bus.”
“Beth—”
“Beth will be fine.” He tugged on her, moving slowly but using enough force to let her know he was serious. “We need to take shelter. We need to be ready to go.”
They were going to have to run. Clare glanced at their makeshift camp. Everything in it was valuable. Their chairs. The gas cooker had been intended to replace the one that had run out. A bag of food sat beside Beth’s seat. On the other side of it, farthest from the bus, was the stack of antibiotic boxes. Clare tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. Everything in the camp was valuable, but they could afford to do without it for a few days. Everything except for that.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Clare took a step forward. Dirt and broken glass crunched underfoot. Dorran’s grip tightened on her arm. “Clare.”
We just need the antibiotics. Everything else can be left. But not them.
The white boxes, small and unassuming, were stacked behind Beth’s chair, just a few paces away. Clare turned the torch across the mall, lighting up every storefront. Its glow shimmered back at her from polished metal and endless panes of glass. There was no sign of movement. She only needed a second to grab the tablets. They had time.
Clare twisted her arm to break free from Dorran’s grip. He hissed her name again. She moved quickly, weeks of built-up grime crunching under every footstep. Something shifted inside the café to Clare’s left. She aimed her light towards it. Overturned chairs cluttered the space. Red handprints, long dried, ran along the tile wall. Whatever had caught her notice was already gone.
The torch flickered then faded into nothing. That didn’t matter. She was at the chair. Clare bent, scooping up the white boxes, and shoved them into her jacket pocket. Lightning poured through the glass ceiling. That burst was closer, close enough that Clare felt the burn of electricity charge the air. Close enough that deafening thunder rolled into the building before the light even faded.
For that instant, the shopping court was illuminated. Every wall, every window, every face. Clare’s heart missed a beat.
The hollows were everywhere. They hung to the railings on the upper floor. They clustered around clothing racks. They crept around the twisted metal at the broken doors.
The lightning faded. Clare was blind. She didn’t dare breathe. She moved backwards, one faltering step at a time, towards the bus. Dorran still hadn’t left her. His hand found her arm again, painfully tight.
Clare hit the torch against her thigh, trying to shake the bulb back to life. Something hissed to her right. A shard of glass snapped under her foot. Metal clinked as clothes were knocked off a rack.
The burner was at their back, creating a narrow ring of protection but useless to help them see beyond. Clare stopped close enough to feel the flame’s heat on her thighs. The light was too weak to give more than illusionary security, but that would have to be enough. The torch blinked on for a heartbeat then failed again.
More lightning poured around them, catching off scores of eyes. Clare pressed her lips together as she tried to count the bodies surrounding them. There were far, far too many.
As long as we move slowly, as long as we stay quiet, we should be okay. They’re on edge but cautious. They won’t attack without a catalyst.
It wouldn’t take much to spur the monsters into a frenzy. Sudden movement. Noise. Spilt blood. Clare took agonizing care as she turned, circling the burner, to face the bus. The door had been left ajar; it would only take a second to force it open and slip inside. The crawlers would swarm the bus’s outside, makin
g it impossible to let Beth on. Clare’s mind raced, trying to think through their options. Would the car horn be loud enough to startle them off until Beth can get inside? If we have to drive out of the building, will Beth understand and know to follow us to a safer location?
They didn’t have a choice, either way. They had to get into the bus.
The storm seemed to be growing heavier. Clare held her breath as she inched towards the vehicle. Dorran shadowed her, refusing to let her arm go. Then Clare froze, her pulse spiking as a raspy hissing noise echoed from ahead. She knocked the torch against her thigh. The light blinked, weak and erratic, but enough to catch on the six silhouettes perched on the bus’s roof. The nearest one loomed down, a three-jointed arm extending to graze over the top of the door. The torch light faded.
We could run for the bus, but we’d be dead before we reached it. I could yell for Beth, but the hollows would paint the floor red with us before she could arrive.
The torch was a dead weight in Clare’s left hand. Her right fist, empty, flexed. She needed a weapon. She needed thicker clothes to cover her exposed skin. She needed a lot, but she wasn’t going to get it.
Work with what you have. Without moving her head, she glanced at the space around them, assessing. The hollows were moving closer. She was starting to pick up the silhouettes of thin hair and long limbs at the edge of the firelight.
The fire. Clare dropped the torch into her pocket as she inched backwards, closer to the burner. Elongated nails clicked across the floor. She whispered, just barely loud enough for Dorran to hear, “We’ll need to be fast.”
His head tilted in acceptance. He’d guessed her plan. He let go of her upper arm.
Clare fixed her grip around the burner’s handle. Fear thrummed through her, but it was just one more sensation to blend into the overwhelming array. The acrid taste of smoke. The hungry chattering that grew less patient and more eager with every second. The rolling thunder, endless and exhausting. The bitter stench of hollows that grew stronger as they closed their circle.
Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three Page 19
