Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three

by Coates, Darcy

  They laid the blankets and pillows across the floor. Johann volunteered to keep watch and resumed his seat beside Niall. Dorran finally dropped into a proper sleep, his arm thrown over Clare as she dozed at his side. Unathi napped against the opposite wall. As Clare drifted under, she was aware of the steady tapping coming from Becca and her laptop in the corner behind her.

  When she woke, she felt like she’d barely closed her eyes, but the tackiness in her mouth and the fog in her head told her she must have slept for hours. Dorran was gone. She reached out, searching for him, then caught his voice coming from behind her. She rolled over and saw he was at Niall’s side, re-wrapping one of the bandages on his arm. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes and sat up. Becca’s laptop was silent. She and Johann slept along the wall Unathi had occupied.

  “Hey,” Clare whispered, rolling to her feet to join Dorran.

  He smiled as she neared him. “How is your shoulder feeling?”

  “Fine.” The pain tablets were wearing off, but she didn’t think she would need another dose for a while yet. “How’re you doing, Niall?”

  He gave her a bandage-swaddled thumbs-up. “I’m feeling really good. Thank you so much for asking. Morphine is amazing.”

  Unathi came up on the bed’s other side. She’d managed to clean up, washing her face and tidying her hair, though her shirt was still creased. She nodded to acknowledge Clare. “Becca stayed up until nearly two, watching the cameras. There is no sign of motion in any of the hallways.”

  “Two… in the morning or the afternoon?”

  Unathi blinked, quietly stunned. Then she began to laugh. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  Clare chuckled, shaking her head. “I guess it won’t matter much unless we go above ground.” Her laughter faded. “We’ll need to do that anyway. Sooner, rather than later. One hollow realised the gate was compromised and got in. I don’t want any more discovering that same trick.”

  Unathi’s lips twitched. “What if they’re already in the compound? The cameras don’t see behind the entrance or on its roof.”

  “We know their weak spots now. We can be prepared.” Clare squeezed Dorran’s arm. “Dorran, Johann, and I will go up.”

  “Johann and I will,” Dorran corrected. “You went last time—”

  “All three of us will go up,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes at him.

  He sighed and tried to look irritated to hide his amusement. It didn’t work completely.

  “Safety in numbers,” Clare continued. “We’ll make sure the compound is empty before locking the gate. Do we have any more chains?”

  Unathi nodded. “We should. Johann will know where.”

  “What?” Johann stirred against the wall as he heard his name. “Johann will what?”

  “Sorry,” Clare said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. You must be tired.”

  “Nah, nah, I’m up now.” He got to his feet, staggered, and pressed a hand against the wall as he rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. “Whatcha need?”

  “Chains to lock the gate.”

  “Oh, hell, I forgot about that.” His head snapped up. “Yeah, we gotta get that secured. Can we go now?”

  Clare glanced at Dorran for his feedback. He tied off the bandage on Niall’s arm and nodded. “I’m ready.”

  Just minutes later, carrying chains retrieved from the garden’s storage, they set off to reach the surface. Clare, Dorran, and Johann all carried weapons as they moved through the ship, though Clare hoped they wouldn’t need them. She pressed the back of her hand across the lower half of her face, breathing through her mouth as her eyes watered. The stench from the hollows was growing worse. She’d never been trapped in enclosed quarters with dead hollows before; they smelled so much more than their living counterparts. She guessed that would only grow worse as decomposition set in.

  Dorran made sure Clare hung at the back of the group as they stopped before the massive metal shutter that led outside. Johann spoke through his communication link to Becca, who activated the door. They hunched, muscles tensed for an attack. A sliver of sunlight poured through the growing gap.

  Fresh air rushed around Clare. Sounds—the sounds of the real world, birds, leaves, and insects—reached her. The air inside the bunker had never felt stale, but now she realised how much she had been missing out on. The outside air tasted real. She moved forward, slipping around Dorran’s protective arm, desperate to feel the sun on her skin.

  Heaven help any hollow that disturbs this moment. She tilted her face up towards the sky. A feather-light blanket of heat rested over her as the sun hit her skin. Dorran released a deep breath beside her.

  The field of long, weedy grass swayed ahead of them, its edge marked by the chain fence reinforced with slabs of metal at its top. Beyond that was the forest. A bird sang somewhere in the branches.

  Focus, Clare. Make sure you’re safe before you lose yourself too much.

  She turned to face the concrete building and backed up, looking for any creatures on the roof. She couldn’t see any, but she knew they could be hunkered down, hiding.

  “Dorran, can you lift me?”

  He crouched and wrapped his arms around her legs. Clare gasped as she rose off the ground and clutched at his shoulders to hold onto her balance. He chuckled as he lifted her higher. Dorran was tall to begin with. Their combined height was plenty to let her see the building’s flat concrete roof.

  “It’s empty.” Clare gasped again as Dorran dropped her back down. Her arms shot out, prepared for the impact against the ground, but he neatly hooked a hand across her back, swinging her until he held her like a child. He kissed her forehead then set her feet back down.

  Clare couldn’t stop the smile from entering her voice. “Okay. We’ll check around the back, then we’re good.”

  Johann swung his shovel in arcs as he led them around the concrete structure. Fifteen feet away from the building, almost completely disguised in the long grass, was a metal grate opening into some kind of faintly whirring machine. Johann swung the grate up, and Clare saw a mash of limbs underneath.

  “Ugly beasts.” Johann crouched to pull the hollows’ bodies free. There wasn’t enough room for all of them to work at clearing the intake, so Clare paced in a slow circle and watched their sides. Once the last torso was hurled aside, Johann shut the grate, and they circled back around the building, picking up their length of chain along the way, and aimed for the fence.

  Clare’s attention was pulled towards the ground nearby. A patch of the long grass had been crushed. Her step faltered as her mind connected the events from the previous day. Brown stains marked the damaged plants, sticking to them like an abandoned painting.

  Her skin prickled. She forced her face to maintain a neutral expression as she turned back to face the fence. She didn’t want Johann to see. He was struggling enough as it was.

  He’d noticed her falter, though. His squinted eyes roved from Clare to the crushed grass. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again. When he spoke, it sounded less like a word and more like a croak wrenched out of sick lungs. “Oh.”

  He swallowed, swayed, then began to move towards the tainted area. Dorran reached out, as if to pull him back, but stopped short of touching him. He sent Clare a helpless glance. She shook her head in return.

  Johann came to a halt at the edge of the churned-up ground, his features slack as he gazed across the uprooted grass, the claw marks in the dirt, and the dark stains.

  “There’s nothing left.” He sounded incredulous. “They didn’t even leave us anything to bury.”

  Dorran placed a hand on Johann’s shoulder. His voice dipped into the more formal style that he tended to adopt under stress. “Come now. Let us secure the fence. We will see to a funeral after.”

  “A funeral?” Johann blinked furiously. “Can we?”

  “Of course.” Clare came up on his other side. She and Dorran helped Johann away from the scene. “We won’t forget West just because he’s gone.”

&n
bsp; “’Kay.” Johann swiped his arm across his eyes then set his features into something fierce as he stared at the gate. “Gimme the chain.”

  It took them less than a minute to secure the fence. Dorran and Clare stayed outside, surveying the area, while Johann returned to the ship. He emerged fifteen minutes later, carrying two additional shovels. Becca and Unathi followed in his wake.

  There was nothing to bury except the blood stains, but Dorran and Johann turned the dirt over, entombing the grass in a shallow grave. When they stepped back, the scene of violence had been transformed into a layer of fresh dirt.

  Clare held Dorran’s hand as the survivors stood around the grave. Johann spoke, his voice choked. “I hope your dog’s waiting up there for you, buddy. I hope he’s as happy to see you as you’ll be to see him.”

  Metal clattered behind them. A hollow, attracted by the noise, had emerged from the trees and begun to climb the chain-link fence. Motionless, the group watched as it scaled the twelve feet towards the slats of metal installed after the stillness. It reached the flat surface, hands splayed as it fought for purchase, then tumbled back to the ground. It stayed down for less than a second before beginning its climb again. A second figure moved out from the gloom behind it, chattering through a fractured jaw.

  “We should return inside,” Unathi said.

  Slowly, they moved back towards the open shutter doors. Johann lingered behind. Clare and Dorran stopped by the door, watching as he pulled a wooden spoon out from the folds of his jacket and embedded it in the fresh dirt.

  “Best damn cook I ever met.” Johann put his head down as he followed them back inside the ship.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The half hour Clare had spent outside, with sun on her skin and fresh air around her, had been a beautiful reprieve. As the shutters ground shut behind her and the howls faded, she let herself sigh.

  The bunker was an excellent invention. It served its purpose well and had protected its occupants impeccably until they had opened the doors. But the fern walls and soothing paintings were no substitute for the outdoors.

  “I’m going to check on the garden,” Johann said. His voice still sounded tight, and Clare guessed he wanted to be alone more than anything.

  Becca rubbed at the back of her neck. “I have free time now. Should I keep working on the code?”

  Unathi looked from Clare to Dorran, silently asking their approval. Clare indicated her head back to her, signalling it was Unathi’s choice.

  Unathi nudged Becca’s shoulder. “I would say so, yes. Make it a priority.”

  “I should go back to Niall,” Dorran said. He glanced at Clare. “Will you come with me?”

  “Actually…” She wrinkled her nose at the nearest hollow one. It was starting to shrivel as its body dehydrated in the air conditioning. Hands turned into talons, jaw gaping wide, eyes melting into their sockets. “These delightful additions to your home are getting riper. I thought I’d start on the clean-up efforts.”

  His eyebrows pulled up. “Are you…”

  “Sure I want to do this?” She laughed. “I decidedly don’t. But I’ll regret not doing it more.”

  “If you wait a few minutes, I’ll check on Niall and then come to help.”

  “I’ll do my share as well,” Unathi said. Her cool eyes surveyed the bodies around them. If they revolted her, she didn’t show it.

  Clare asked, “We decided to incinerate them, right?”

  “That’s probably the cleanest option. There are degradable bags in the kitchen. I’ll find some gloves.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent attempting to purge the ship of hollows. Six chutes spaced around the building fed down to the incinerator. Clare, wearing plastic cleaning gloves that rose up to her elbows and with a roll of bags tied to her waist, set to removing the bodies.

  The smaller hollow could be bagged and shoved down the chute whole. To her disgust, though, some of the taller, more spindly ones needed dismantling. A saw from the gardens cut through their brittle bones, and the bodies had been dead long enough for the blood to congeal.

  Dorran seemed to have a sixth sense to know when she needed to hack apart a body and moved in to take over the work in most of the cases.

  “You’re a saint,” she said the third time he intercepted her.

  He slipped in long enough to steal a kiss then pulled back, grimacing. “Sorry. Not the most romantic scene. I’ll wait until we’ve both showered and no longer smell like death.”

  Clare chuckled as she shook out one of the black plastic bags and let Dorran drop severed arms into it. She was coping better than she had expected. The sickening, overpowering smell was everywhere. Some of the bodies—the ones filled with more fat than lean muscle—had started to ooze.

  The bodies they had fought and killed before escaping to the surgery were worse. They had crushed heads, severed limbs, and blood and bone fragments that were scattered across walls and floors. Clare could only handle them for a couple of minutes at a time before backing off, bent over and breathing through her mouth as her stomach threatened to revolt.

  But, for all the horror the scene contained, it was not as bad as Clare had expected. Music—probably controlled by Becca—piped through speakers. It had a quick, upbeat tempo, and Clare was surprised at how much it helped to keep morale up. Every cleared hallway was a small victory. Piece by piece, the ship began to look more like the calming environment it had been before the invasion. And, with every bag dumped down the chutes, Clare repeated a small truth inside her head.

  We survived. The hollows sent the worst they had, but we still survived.

  The evening shower was the best part of the day. Clare stayed under the hot water so long that her fingers and toes began to wrinkle. She shampooed her hair three times in an attempt to scrub the nauseating stench out of it and mostly succeeded.

  She could have slept in a proper bedroom that night, except that Dorran was staying in the surgery to watch over Niall. The soft, clean blankets looked almost seductive, but Clare hated the idea of being alone. She compromised by dragging blankets and pillows off a bed and carrying them into the surgery. The smell lingered there, just like it lingered everywhere, and the lights were a little too bright, but at least she was near Dorran. He chatted with her and Niall, and the gentle talk soothed her raw nerves until she fell asleep.

  They cleaned the last of the hollows out of the building the following day. Some had tried to hide, crawling into narrow chutes or wedging themselves behind doors, and Clare had to go through the building three times to be certain there were no more corpses waiting to surprise her. She became well acquainted with the maze.

  Then the scrubbing began. The hollows’ stench was finally muted under the burning odours of bleach and soap. The scrape of bristles against tile became a familiar song.

  Dorran joined her shortly after lunch, pulling on his own set of gloves and a face mask. As he knelt beside her and dipped a brush into a bucket of discoloured, soapy water, he said, “I changed Niall’s bandages this morning.”

  “How’s he looking?”

  “Horrifying. But improving.” His dark eyes followed the sweep of his brush as he erased blood splatter from the floor. “Do you remember how Johann was worried his nails were growing faster than they should?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “There may have been some truth there. Even though the bunker was airtight, I suspect its occupants had a heavier dose of thanites than you or I did. That is why their blood transfusions improved me so rapidly. And it is helping Niall begin to heal.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Clare said. “He might not have lived through the night without them.”

  “No, I suspect not. While changing the bandages, we stitched some of the largest lacerations to help them heal. And I mean we. He wanted to do it himself.”

  “Was he able to?”

  “Surprisingly well. We sat him up and numbed the areas, and he did the bulk of the work himself. He has sensat
ion in his legs and some motion, which I believe is a good sign. He was particular about how we stitched them.” Dorran laughed through his mask. “I would prefer to do it the way I was taught, but I cannot argue. They are his legs, after all.”

  Clare dunked the brush back into the water then returned it to the tiles. “So he can treat himself. That’s helpful.”

  “Yes. And it is what I came to tell you. With Niall’s condition stabilised and the ship’s threat averted, we could leave at any time. If you wanted.”

  Clare set the brush aside and sat back on her haunches. They had already stayed longer than they had intended. It had been unavoidable: the bunker couldn’t have afforded to lose them without risking its safety and increasing the burden on its surviving members. But now, the environment was stable. Cleaning would probably continue for weeks until every last trace of the invasion was purged, but none of it was urgent.

  She didn’t know what the food situation was like. Johann had been splitting his time between cleaning, cooking—he had taken over West’s role, though he wasn’t as talented at it—and working furiously in the garden. Whenever she asked him how the plants were doing, he gave vague, non-committal answers. That worried her.

  Clare suspected that if they asked to stay in the ship, the others would make room for them. But that half-hour taste of the outside while securing the fence had told her something. She didn’t want to spend weeks, let alone months or years, underground.

  She stripped off her gloves and pulled down her face mask. Dorran mimicked the motion, and she was glad to see the rest of his features. She wanted to make sure she was giving weight to his feelings too. “Do you still want to go home?”

  Yes, his eyes answered, even though his mouth said, “Only if you do.”

  Clare grinned. “I’m calling it home. That probably tells you how I feel.”

  He took her hand. Warm fingers massaged hers then threaded through them as he held her hand against his chest. His smile dropped. “The trip back will probably be dangerous.”