But Dorran had to come with her. She couldn’t leave him alone in the wilderness, not even for an hour.
An uneasy prickle ran across Clare’s back: the awful, instinctual knowledge that she was being watched. She turned carefully, trying not to make any sudden moves. A figure stood between the trees just twenty paces away. With the sun behind it, Clare couldn’t see its face, but the halo of fine blonde hair was familiar. Clare’s pulse jumped. She reached for the knife.
“I’m not here to apologise.” Beth took a step nearer.
The knife’s wooden handle was damp with early morning dew. She flexed her fingers around it and tilted the blade so that Beth could see the light shining off it.
Beth stepped closer. Her eyes were emotionless as she stared down at Dorran’s body. “It didn’t seem wrong at the time. Even now, it makes more sense than a lot of things ever do. He’s a burden. He’s been sick for a long time, and you’d be better off without him.”
Clare rose into a crouch. Her hands shook. Beth was close enough that a few long paces and a well-aimed strike would hit her. Still, Clare couldn’t make herself move. She knew she had to. But she couldn’t.
Beth tilted her head as she watched Dorran, then her eyes flicked up to meet Clare’s. “No. I’m not here to hurt him. It’s easier to think during the day. Easier to remember how I used to feel and what I used to believe. And I’m not here to ask to stay with you. I realise that time is gone. But I want to make some amends before I leave.”
She reached towards Dorran. Clare lunged forward, the knife aimed at Beth’s hand, but the blade stopped short an inch away from her fingers.
“Don’t touch him,” Clare hissed.
Beth didn’t shy away from the blade. She tilted her hand over to show Clare the bright-red line, already knitting closed, from where she had been cut the night before. “I’m here to help. You need to get him into the bus. You need to keep moving.”
Clare glanced towards their waiting vehicle. Beth was right; she needed help. But she was terrified of what might happen if she trusted Beth, even for a second. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “We’re close to Evandale. We can’t be more than an hour or two away—”
“No. You’re not close at all.” The eyes, familiar and alien at once, blinked slowly. “I did wrong by you. I wanted more time. We have been driving away from Evandale for more than a day.”
Clare opened her mouth. Her tongue felt heavy, like it had been recast in lead. More than a day… Beth had to mean the aftermath of the shopping mall encounter. When she’d brushed Clare’s hair, before things had started to go wrong, she told Clare the only thing she wanted was more time together. She’d wanted more time, so she’d made sure she would have it.
Beth hooked her arms under Dorran’s shoulders. Clare felt paralysed. She stared, knife still clasped in shaking hands. Her mind was too tired, too stressed, and too frightened to think, and the cognitive dissonance was brutal. Beth was a monster but also her sister. A murderer but the person she had once trusted more than any other human on the planet. She’d hurt Dorran. Now she’d promised to help. And she was dragging him away from the fire, towards the bus.
“Get his legs,” Beth said.
It took a lot of willpower to tuck the blade back into the waistband of her pants. Clare’s subconscious was screaming at her, telling her she was in the presence of a predator and that lowering her defences would end in her being hurt. But she felt robbed of any other choice. She wrapped her arms around Dorran’s feet and, at Beth’s nod, lifted.
Beth went first as they carried Dorran up the steps and into the bus. She bore almost all of his weight, but her face stayed eerily impassive.
Clare was breathless by the time they lowered Dorran into the bed. He was white enough to be a corpse. Clare held her hand over his mouth and felt the thin flow of breath. She draped blankets over his prone form, trying to keep him as warm as she could. Footsteps echoed behind her. Clare stayed hunched over Dorran as Beth strode out of the bus.
Was that it? Is she really leaving? Clare brushed a strand of dark hair away from Dorran’s face then folded her arms around her torso as she followed her sister to the bus’s door. Beth stood outside, early morning sunlight shining off her hair. She faced the mountains in the distance.
“I wish I could help you more,” Beth said. “But I think, right now, the most help I can give is to get myself far away from you.”
Clare stopped on the edge of the step. She unfolded her arms, felt too vulnerable, and crossed them back over her chest.
Beth turned. There was no sadness in her features. “Until now, I always thought you were safer as long as I stayed with you. I could protect you, guide you, shelter you. I thought I could control my anger and my hunger for your sake. But I was losing my humanity a piece at a time, and the longer I stayed with you, the more danger I put you in.”
“Beth…” She felt that she needed to say something, to try to reconcile, to give some parting words. Nothing sounded right except for, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Beth smiled. It was like looking through a veil to catch a glimpse of her old face and the person she had once been. Then the smile faded. “Drive east to reach Evandale. Don’t stop for anyone. Don’t take risks. Your friend will die, and you’ll need to grieve, but keep moving. Pass on that code so that we can end this mess, then do whatever you need to in order to build a new life.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” She stepped away, head held high, spines flexing under her top. “Good luck. I love you.”
“Goodbye,” Clare whispered. Her heart felt like it had been filled with ice. Beth walked past the remains of their campfire and stepped in between the trees, moving towards the mountains. Clare wished she could stay and watch for longer, but she had already lost too much time. She pulled the door closed behind herself and slid into the driver’s seat.
She hadn’t driven the bus before, beyond the few seconds she’d been in control after they went off the road. It felt surreal to sit in the seat she’d come to think of as Beth’s, almost as though she were intruding. The key hung in the ignition, waiting to be turned. The rearview mirror was positioned to face the bus’s occupants rather than the windows. She could see Dorran, half hidden by the shadows at the back of the bus.
Beth had said that Dorran would die. She’d stated it as a fact, as though there were no hope left. Clare couldn’t believe that. She was afraid of what would happen to her if she did. At least, for the moment, Dorran was still breathing, which meant there was still hope, and she had to hold on to it harder than anything else. She turned the key in the ignition and heard the motor rumble.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The tiredness was unbearable. Clare had hoped it would become easier to cope as the sun rose, but instead of abating, the sensation merely changed, transforming into something heavy and grating, in which every speck of sun dancing over her face and every bump felt like it was breaking her down.
Clare pushed them to speeds that bordered on reckless. Now that she had time to think, it was all she could do. She was responsible for what had happened. That was an underlying truth, no matter how she tried to approach it. Dorran was dying—because of her.
He’d left Winterbourne for her sake. He’d followed her down the path towards Evandale, even though he was unwell. And he’d been vulnerable to Beth because of her.
Beth had believed Dorran would turn on her when he discovered she was half hollow. And maybe he would have, Clare realised, if she hadn’t pleaded with him to be kind. He’d struggled with the discovery, but he’d ultimately done what Clare asked. To make her happy.
If he hadn’t… If he’d told her to leave… If he’d chased her off, like the other survivors had…
Guilt choked Clare. She’d failed him by ignoring the multitude of red flags in her path. She should have prioritised Dorran’s safety. I should have believed Beth when she said she wasn’t human.
I thought I could make them become friends. They were grating on each other this entire trip. Would Beth have coped better if I hadn’t been pushing them to get along? Maybe, without Dorran to flare her frustration, she never would have lashed out.
Clare’s foot was falling heavier on the accelerator. The bus rocked wildly as it passed over a fallen branch. Clare clenched her teeth and glanced into the rearview mirror. The jarring bumps would be bad for Dorran. She let her speed coast back down a fraction.
There was no need to look at the map. The road was straight as Clare retraced the path Beth had taken them. She would need to drive until that evening, but then she would need to pass through only a few towns to reach Evandale. She didn’t intend to stop at any of them.
She was putting all of her hope in the research centre. The last few times she’d put her trust in anything, people had been hurt. Ezra was dead because she’d trusted in Helexis Tower as a refuge. She’d nearly died because she trusted the hollow that had hidden in their bus. Dorran was dying because she’d trusted in her sister. It seemed like goodness was spread thin in the new world.
The common denominator here is you, Clare. At every turn, you made the choices that hurt the people you love. Ignorance isn’t an excuse. You should know better. You should be smarter than this. You should have listened to Beth when she told you to stay at home and not take any risks. Because it’s fine to risk your own life, but it was wrong to risk anyone else’s.
She blinked and saw Beth crouched over Dorran, teeth sunk into his arm, her eyes alight with bliss as he twitched under her hands.
Clare screamed. The bus shuddered, throwing her against the window as they careened off the road. She tasted blood. Dust plumed around the bus’s front window, and when she opened her eyes, she saw the dizzying motion had stopped. She’d hit a tree.
You fell asleep. Hopeless.
The internal voice had taken on Beth’s cadence. She tried to shut her mind to it as she scrambled out of the driver’s seat.
A crack ran along the front window. The tree had been small and supple enough that it bowed under the bus’s pressure, but it was a miracle the vehicle was still upright. Clare staggered down the aisle to reach Dorran. The swaths of blankets had kept him immobile, at least. She bent close to his mouth. He was still breathing. Clare released a breath of her own and pressed a hand to her thundering heart.
The collision had jostled packets of supplies down from the overhead baskets. Clare threw them back then dragged down a box she’d seen several days before. Inside, she found instant coffee. Clare dumped tablespoons of it into a mug and mixed in cold bottled water. It didn’t dissolve properly and turned into an angry black sludge. She forced herself to swallow it, gagging between mouthfuls. Then she filled the mug again and slammed it into the cupholder beside the driver’s seat.
The engine still ticked over. Clare put the bus in reverse and pulled away from the tree. The wheels scraped over small rocks and loose gravel as she pulled them back on the road, then she resumed the drive, counting on the adrenaline to keep her conscious until the caffeine could kick in.
She needed sleep, but that couldn’t happen until she reached Evandale. Beth’s detour was a crushing setback, but she thought she could still reach it that evening, as long as she didn’t take breaks and drove quickly.
She worried at her nails, chewing the skin around them until it was raw and stinging. The road was straight, painfully dull, almost hypnotic. Her eyes blurred until the path looked hazy.
Wait. It’s not my eyes. It’s—
Smoke rose from the bus’s front and fresh panic forced the tiredness away. “No, no, not now—”
The smoke was growing thicker. Clare scanned the unfamiliar dashboard and saw a red engine light. She grit her teeth as she eased the bus to a halt.
She glanced at Dorran through the rearview window. He would know what to do. He’d fixed her car, which she’d believed might be unfixable. He was good with his hands and good at solving puzzles. Clare had to hunt to find the button to open the hatch over the engine.
Ever since she’d known him, Dorran had worried about not being enough. Not being enough for her. Not being enough for the world.
The irony was that he was one of the most capable people Clare had ever known. As she climbed out of the bus and bent over the smoking engine, hot tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto the metal, where they fizzled away in seconds, leaving small salty deposits in their memory.
Even if he hadn’t understood the technology behind the engine, he would have known enough to guess where the problem lay. To Clare, it was nothing but a maze of unfamiliar metal twisting in convoluted shapes. She knew basic car maintenance, like how to replace tyres and change her oil, but complex repairs were beyond her. She touched one of the exposed pieces of metal and sucked in a breath as she burnt herself.
Beth’s voice returned, full of cutting sarcasm. Congratulations, you ruined everything. Again.
“Shut up,” Clare hissed. She looked down the length of the road. The path was dirt and had been rarely used before the stillness. She couldn’t see any abandoned cars. She would find one eventually, she knew, if she just walked far enough. And, if she got lucky, it would be unlocked. Then she just needed to hope it would still have its keys inside and hadn’t been damaged when it went off the road and that its fuel hadn’t been scavenged by other survivors. If, if, if…
Clare rested a hand on the bus’s side. It might take her hours to find a working car. And Dorran would be left alone and vulnerable the entire time.
What are the chances of a survivor passing the bus? Stopping? Looking inside? It’s a valuable resource with its food and medicine. If they wanted to take it for themselves, what would they do to Dorran?
Before, Beth had always been careful to park their bus somewhere hidden whenever they needed to stop. Now, it was stranded on the side of the road, in clear view. Clare’s skin crawled. They didn’t pass other vehicles often, but she couldn’t deny that other survivors were out there, searching for any supplies or advantages they could find.
I can’t leave Dorran. But I can’t just stand here either. We need to keep moving.
She turned back to the engine as emotions tightened her throat. It was just as incomprehensible as it had been before.
A faint droning noise made her lift her head. The sound, oddly familiar, seemed unreal in the stretch of empty wilderness. Clare stepped out from behind the bus and squinted down the length of the road.
A silver shape moved in the distance. A car, coming towards them.
Clare ducked back out of sight, one hand at her throat. Beth’s warnings ran through her mind. Don’t trust strangers.
Five quick steps brought her to the bus’s open door. She snatched the hatchet out from its cubby beside the driver’s seat. She would kill them before she let them hurt Dorran.
The car’s drone grew closer. Clare, still hidden from sight, stared at the metal weapon in her hands.
They might be able to help. Dorran lay less than ten feet away. She needed to get him to Evandale. She was incapable of achieving that on her own.
Beth said not to trust anyone. But she was out of choices. Dorran needed more help than she could give him.
He had to be her priority. She’d ignored his needs before, and he’d suffered for it. She squeezed the fear into a tight little ball in her stomach and tucked the hatchet out of sight inside the bus’s door. Her heart pumped like it was preparing for a marathon, and her mouth was dry. The engine was close, and it didn’t sound like it was slowing down. She couldn’t afford even a few seconds to gather her courage. She needed to move.
Clare stepped out from behind the bus. A silver sedan came towards her, frosted with dust, light reflecting off its windows to hide the occupants from view. Clare raised a hand as a frightened smile twitched across her face.
The car shot past her. Clare slowly lowered her hand, the smile fading as she watched the car vanish down the road.
; No. No. Please, don’t leave us.
As the engine faded and cold air snapped around Clare’s form, she clenched her teeth, trying to hold the despair inside. Trying to hold herself together.
She slowly moved back inside the bus. Dorran lay unmoving in his swath of shadows in the rear seats. She wanted to apologise to him, but apologies wouldn’t fix what she’d done. Instead, she picked a small toolkit off one of the racks and carried it back outside.
The car’s rumble hadn’t entirely faded from hearing. Clare frowned as she stepped back from the bus. The silver sedan was still visible in the distance. And it was growing closer.
They turned around. Fear and hope collided in her stomach. She dropped the bag and moved towards the hidden hatchet then reeled herself back. If they planned to help, she wouldn’t be fostering any goodwill by greeting them with a weapon. Clare’s hands felt horribly bare, so she clenched them together as she stepped around the bus.
Coming from the opposite direction, the sedan no longer had the sunlight reflecting off its windshield. Clare caught a glimpse of the vehicle’s insides, and a sense of surrealism flashed through her. She’d seen the car before.
A man sat behind the driver’s wheel, his fawn-brown beard grown too long, his steely-grey eyes intense. A golden wedding band glinted from where it was hung below the rear-view mirror.
We passed him days ago. He must be criss-crossing the country.
Clare didn’t know if she trusted in luck any longer. Coincidence couldn’t encapsulate it, and providence seemed too much to hope for. But it was something. Maybe a little of all three.
He gave the bus a wide berth as he pulled the car to a halt. He didn’t turn off the engine or open his door, but he wound the window down and leaned into the opening. His eyes flicked from Clare to the bus’s dark doorway. “If you need fuel, I don’t have any to spare.”
“I don’t need fuel.” Clare knit her hands together and took a step closer. “There’s something wrong with the engine. I hit a tree, and it started smoking, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three Page 23
