Secrets in the Dark

by Darcy Coates

  Another forty minutes would bring them to the freeway. From there, it was a smooth, straight drive of about two hours to reach her sister’s. The freeway was raised, which meant flooding shouldn’t have affected it. As long as the roads weren’t blocked, Clare thought they would be okay.

  She increased her speed as they left town. The shapes continued to scramble after them, and Clare watched them until they became too small to see. How long will they try to follow us? Until they can’t hear or see us? Longer? Is it possible the ones from the forest are still coming down that road, intent on a feast they believe they can still catch?

  She shook her head to clear it. The idea of having their nightmares catch up to them if they ever stopped for too long wasn’t appealing. Again, she filed it into the bucket of problems that had no solutions.

  Melancholy wouldn’t help them. She tried to look for the positives instead. The car was working. Dorran was with her. The freeway was looming on the horizon. She had a lot to be grateful for.

  Dorran had been quiet, but his eyes burned with curiosity as they flicked across the landscape. She remembered, with a shock, that he had very rarely seen anything outside the family’s estates.

  “Is this your first time in this part of the country?”

  “Yes.” The corners of his mouth lifted. “It is a little ironic. I finally have the freedom to explore the world, but it has all gone to hell.”

  Clare’s throat tightened. He’d been waiting for this moment for most of his life, and now that he was here, it was hollow. Everything he had been looking forward to—everything he had read about and dreamed about—was gone.

  He saw her expression and laughed. “No, don’t worry, my darling. I am enjoying myself plenty.”

  “How can you say that? You’re hurt and tired, and I know how stressful this must have been—”

  “And we are free from the house and doing something I can be proud of, and…” He brushed the back of his finger over her cheek. “I am sitting beside the best woman I have known. I have nothing to complain about.”

  Pink heat spread across Clare’s face, and she looked aside in a poor effort to hide it from Dorran.

  He might not ever get to see the cities or go to the movies or ride in a plane, but that doesn’t mean everything is gone. “Did you want to listen to some music? I have some CDs, and there’s a decent chance the car’s player still works.”

  She reached over Dorran to open the glovebox. Inside was a clutter of relics from her old life: her car’s registration and insurance details, a pocket pack of tissues, pens, a letter she’d never gotten the chance to mail, a pack of chewing gum, and a small bundle of CDs held together with rubber bands.

  Clare hadn’t listened to CDs in years, but they had been a staple in her car as a teenager, and it had felt wrong to throw them out. Now, she was grateful she’d kept them. They would help drown out the static and give Dorran a taste of the world he had missed.

  “What kind of music do you like?” She pulled the CDs free of the bundle one at a time and held them up in front of her so that she could read the names and still keep her eyes on the road.

  “I’ll trust your taste.”

  “Don’t say that, or you’ll get one of the boy bands. Here, let’s try this.” She’d found a mix of rock hits and slid it into the CD player. The compartment hissed and whirred, then the first track started playing. Clare silently cheered for her car. It might have been brought back from the dead by dubious means, but its CD player had survived.

  Dorran rested his arm against the door and listened in silence. Clare kept sneaking glances at him, trying to read his expression. As the first song ended and the second one began, he smiled. “I like your music. It has a lot of energy. Just like you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The rural road split as it neared the freeway. One passed underneath the pillars and turned south, which would eventually lead to the coast. Clare took the path that funnelled them north and entered the ramp leading up to the freeway.

  “Oh.” She slowed as they turned the corner. A car blocked half of the ramp, facing the concrete blockade, its front and side crumpled. The driver’s door hung open.

  Clare turned the music’s volume down as they approached. Keys dangled from the ignition. Three black drops—old blood, Clare thought—marked the windshield. She tried to imagine what might have happened to the occupant then immediately shut down that train of thought.

  There was enough road left to fit around the car, so Clare did, moving cautiously to avoid clipping the other vehicle. They passed it, and Clare focussed her eyes on the path ahead that would merge them onto the main road.

  We’re at the freeway. Just two hours to Beth’s.

  The on-road flattened out and straightened as it grew level with the freeway. The concrete blockades that had blinded them ended as the roads merged, and Clare finally had a chance to see the freeway clearly.

  Cars crowded the space. Some had collided with the concrete walls on either side of the road. Others had crossed over the median strip, breaking the dividing cables and tearing up the plants. They had crashed into each other, creating pileups sometimes eight or ten cars deep. Still others had ended up in the middle of the road, noses slipping out of their lane, their doors hanging open.

  How in heaven are we supposed to get through this?

  Dorran hunched forward, alert. “I see movement in that car.”

  Clare followed his gaze and saw a woman in a nearby sedan. A floral blouse still clung to her emaciated body, but parts of the fabric poked out strangely. It took Clare a second to see why. Bony protrusions extended from her flesh. Three split from the back of her skull, sticking out like spines. More grew from her elbows, hips, and ribs. She fought against the seat belt that had locked, binding her in place, but she didn’t seem to have the awareness to undo it.

  She’s been fighting in there for nearly three weeks. Clare swallowed around the lump in her throat. She looked at the path ahead and saw movement inside other cars. More trapped creatures, beating their fists against their imprisonment, clambering across the seats and cracking their teeth on the glass.

  Stress pulled her muscles taut. Clare closed her eyes and forced her breathing back to a comfortable level. When she opened her eyes again, she focussed on the road. The only hollows she could see were trapped. And despite the pileups and crashes, she thought she could see a path between the cars.

  “Maybe… maybe it’s just crowded here because of the on-ramp. Maybe it gets easier a bit farther on.”

  Dorran gave her a tense nod, encouraging her. Clare eased off the brake and let the car coast forward. They had to pass the trapped woman’s car. The gap was so narrow that Clare was afraid of scraping its side, and she forced herself to keep her eyes ahead as the woman twitched and howled within an arm’s reach.

  Her CD moved to a new song, a bright, bouncy tune that promised the world was wonderful. She hit the button to turn it off.

  Sometimes the cars were so close together that Clare had to slow her hatchback to a crawl and nudge one of the vehicles with her bumper to shift it out of the way. She didn’t want either of them to leave the car. The shadows around the piled-up vehicles were too deep to see through, and she didn’t know what might be hiding inside.

  The trapped hollows never stayed still. The hungry, anguished howling floated around Clare, and a tiny panic sparked that they might figure out the door handles. She was driving too slowly to shake any that attached themselves to the car, and all it would take were ten or fifteen hollows to coat them.

  She’d thought that the freeway would be as clear and easy as the road out of the forest. Her estimate of two hours faded into the distance as she was forced, again and again, to slow to a crawl to get around a blockage.

  “You’re doing well,” Dorran said.

  Her eyes burned, and her head ached, but Dorran’s words made it feel a little more bearable. She nodded briefly as she took a sharp turn around a toppled tr
uck.

  The clock on the dashboard crawled onwards. The car was heating in the sun, and odours from the spilled blood and stagnant water began to rise. Clare tried to turn on the air conditioning, but that part of her car hadn’t survived the crash. She reached to open the windows but stopped herself. The highway wasn’t safe enough to risk even that inch of an opening.

  Even with their jackets shed, the car was too warm for comfort. They had been on the freeway for nearly an hour. Clare estimated they had covered the same amount of ground she would have normally crossed in ten minutes. Any time she wasn’t watching the path ahead, she stared at the clock. It frightened her.

  She clung to the hope that the path would clear, that maybe they were just in a congested part. Every few minutes, she found a clear stretch where she could drive, unimpeded, for half a minute before having to slow down again. It was a tantalising promise of what might have been.

  Dorran sat forward. “What’s that ahead?”

  She pulled her focus away from the nearest tangle she’d been trying to navigate and squinted over the roofs of the cars blocking their path. She could see the road continuing on for forty meters then, strangely, a dark area. She rose in her seat until her head grazed the ceiling, trying to see clearly, but the view was still too obstructed.

  “Hang on.” She scraped close to a parked car. What had once been a teenager launched itself against the window, swaying the vehicle. Something that looked like a fragment from a gold necklace was jammed between its teeth. Blood smeared across the front seat, and the dashboard told Clare the teenager hadn’t been alone in the car.

  She corrected her course and squeezed between two other parked utes. The view ahead became clearer. The asphalt continued forward, cracked, then began to slope downwards, before abruptly disappearing.

  “What…” She leaned forward, staring at the gaping hole in the road. The path had been completely torn away. Bent metal and twisted supports jutted out of the other side of the chasm, thirty feet away. It was as though a giant had swiped his hand through the road.

  What could have done this?

  Dorran looked past Clare. She followed his gaze. Fields lay to either side of the highway. Something large and white shone in one of them.

  A plane had come down. Clare could trace its path. It had scraped across the highway, smashing the gaping hole. Luggage cases and wing fragments lay scattered over the gouged dirt, which led in a line to the plane’s final resting place.

  They became hollows. Clare pressed her palm into her forehead. The pilot. The passengers, probably. Even being sequestered thousands of feet above the ground wasn’t enough to save them.

  She faced forward again. The chasm gaped, taunting her. Clare rubbed her palms into her burning eyes.

  “Breathe.” Dorran’s fingers brushed over her hair, soothing. “We are not done yet. There are other routes to your sister’s.”

  So much time wasted on a dead end. Clare swiped her cheeks dry then set her jaw as she put the car into reverse. She hooked one arm over the back of her seat as she steered the car into a gap large enough to let her turn around, then she straightened up. They passed the hissing, screaming teenager again, his mother’s necklace trapped in his overgrown teeth.

  “Where to now?” Clare asked.

  Dorran found his jacket in the back seat and pulled the map out of the folds. He smoothed the paper out on the dashboard as he checked the paths.

  “There are alternatives. If we travel west for forty minutes, we will be at another freeway that eventually crosses this one farther down its course. But after what we have seen today, I think it might be wise to avoid the major roads.”

  Clare nodded. “Stay to the rural streets. Ones without much traffic.”

  “In that case…” His fingertips traced along the map. “The shortest course would be this road here.”

  Her stomach turned sour. “Okay,” she said, trying not to let Dorran hear how much she wished there was an alternative. They were taking the road that led past Marnie’s farm.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The car’s side scraped against a blue sedan. Clare flinched. The gap had been a tight squeeze, and she’d been too focussed on the other car narrowing their path. She put her hatchback in reverse, backed up, and tried again. Behind her, a chattering wail was followed by a loud thump as a hollow beat against its restraints.

  “I’ll drive for a stretch.” Dorran folded the map and placed it under the radio, which still crackled and hissed.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Clare, you are exhausted. You’ve been driving for hours, and the stress is breaking you.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Clare’s nerves were ragged. Her eyes burned, and her head ached. Every minute she spent in the locked traffic, listening to the white noise and staring into the broken faces that leered at her through filthy windows, made her want to scream. But she still shook her head. “Your arm. It would be painful. I can keep driving for a while. Once we’re off this freeway—”

  His hand landed over hers, and he grazed his thumb across her knuckles, coaxing her to release the grip on the wheel that made her fingers, arms, and shoulders ache. “I can drive with one hand. Move over.”

  “Really. I’m fine.”

  “Well, I’m going to drive. You can either move out of the way or let me sit on you.”

  Clare blinked at him. Dorran smiled back. His jokes were always delivered with such deadpan calmness that they caught Clare by surprise. Slowly, she began to chuckle and put the car in park. “Okay, okay. But be careful with your hand. I can take over again once we’re back on a clear road.”

  They opened their doors. It was the first time Clare had been outside the car in hours, and her leg and arm muscles cried for the freedom. She stretched them as much as she could as she rounded the car but refused to linger. They hadn’t passed any hollows outside of their vehicles, likely because the freeway was too exposed for them to linger, but the fact remained that they were still surrounded. All it would take was for one to finally find a way to break free—or a straggler lurking on the freeway who had avoided their notice—and they could be in a much worse situation.

  Dorran slid into the driver’s seat and waited until Clare had her door closed before putting the car back into drive. “Do you think you could sleep? We’ll be here for a while, and rest might help.”

  “Maybe.”

  The car bumped forward, jolting them, and Clare gripped her seat belt. Dorran made a faint noise and tried again. This time the car moved smoothly.

  “It has been a while,” he said, sounding apologetic.

  “Since you last drove?”

  “Yes. One of my uncles taught me how to years ago, but there is not much cause to drive when you cannot leave your property. I tried to keep in practice, but… well…”

  He steered them around an abandoned motorbike, and Clare began to relax. He seemed to think he needed to apologise, but he actually wasn’t bad. He kept his injured hand resting on the armrest and steered lightly with the other. Clare waited a moment, making sure he was comfortable with the car, then she pulled her jacket out of the back seat and bundled it up against the window.

  Her skull throbbed with a low-level headache. She leaned against the makeshift cushion and tried to make her muscles relax. Dorran wanted her to nap, but she couldn’t. The hollows still surrounded them, clawing at windows and skittering across seats. The best she could do was keep her eyes focussed just on the road ahead, not on any of the motion to the sides.

  The dashboard clock hit midday. They had passed the four hours Clare had estimated it would take to get to Beth’s.

  How long will her oxygen last? She watched the radio, silently begging it to give up some kind of noise except for the maddening hisses and pops. How much air does the bunker hold? Is she already dizzy? I know she kept some bottles of wine down there. Maybe she’s drinking them now, trying to steel herself for opening the door and everything that will bring.

&n
bsp; If she just picked up the radio. If she would just talk, even once, so that I know she’s still there…

  Dorran drove smoothly. Clare had thought it would be difficult to give up control to him, that the frustration and powerlessness would make her irritable. But it didn’t. His bearing was as calm and steady as it always seemed in stressful situations. He didn’t drive recklessly, but he was efficient, and soon Clare found it easy to let her attention wander, knowing he would be making the best choices he could.

  Dorran brought the car around the outside of another pileup and released his hold on the wheel to tap the CD player’s power button. Clare smiled as the bright tunes filled the car again.

  He’s a good man. The best kind of man. I’m lucky to have him.

  With the music drowning out the hollows and the car’s gentle rocking, she closed her eyes and let them rest. Time blurred together until she suddenly realised they were moving faster. She peered through half-opened eyes.

  They were back amongst farmland, racing down the rural road they had covered hours before. Clare sat up and blinked sleep out of her eyes. “We’re off the freeway.”

  “We are. We left it behind a half hour ago.”

  He’d wound the windows down an inch, and the heat had dissipated. Clare stretched and felt muscles in her back ache. “Do you want to swap back?”

  “Not at all. I am enjoying this.” Dorran was relaxed, one hand holding the wheel steady as the car raced across the asphalt. “You can rest for a while more.”

  Clare rubbed at the back of her neck. The town they had passed through earlier that day appeared ahead of them, its jagged, low rooftops interrupting the skyline. Dorran didn’t slow as they passed through it. Clare caught flashes of motion in the windows and doorways, but they were gone before she could tell what she was looking at.

  She pictured the map in her mind. The road to Marnie’s would take them through the countryside in a long, rambling loop. Back when the world still made sense, it would have taken miles longer than driving along the freeway. It was strange to think that it was the faster option.