by Darcy Coates
The car’s engine roared. She heard the crack of breaking branches, then the car slammed into the hollow. The monster tumbled away, and in its place was Dorran, leaning out of the open car door to reach for Clare.
He grabbed her arm and pulled. Clare screamed as damaged skin was strained. Then she was back in the car, her legs hanging out of the door and her torso across Dorran’s legs.
“Hold on.”
On hand rested over her back, holding her in place. She gasped as the car lurched forward. A loud smacking noise told her the bumper had connected with the hollow again, then they bounced as the wheels jolted over its body.
Clare scrambled to get herself fully into the car. The open door knocked against her legs as the hatchback careened. Another screeching, wailing noise split the air, then they were back on steady ground, shadows from the trees flowing over them.
Dorran kept his eyes on the path ahead, his face grim as he swerved. Clare used her good arm to drag herself into the passenger seat and pulled her wet legs close to herself as Dorran slammed the door. She braced one hand on the dashboard, shaking, and stared at flashes of illuminated trees through the windshield. There was no road leading through the forest. The trees were thin enough to drive between, but Dorran had to weave. Grey bony shapes flitted in the side mirror, chasing after them, then the mirror disappeared as a too-close trunk clipped it off. Dorran kept the pressure on the gas pedal for a minute, until the wailing cries had nearly faded. Then he pulled to an abrupt halt in a small clearing.
“Clare.” He pulled her close, his hands running over her arms and her face. He was ghost white, and perspiration glistened across his face. “Clare, I-I—”
“It’s okay.” The pain in her shoulder wasn’t bothering her as much, but she didn’t know if that meant it wasn’t as serious as she’d thought or if she was just going into shock. She laughed, but it came out thin and oddly pitched. “We’re over the river. About time, right?”
He had one hand braced on the side of her head as though she needed holding up. His shaking fingers hovered over her shoulder, where blood stained the knit. “Just relax. This will be all right. I will get the kit. Medicine for the pain—”
“Not yet.” Distant, screeching cries echoed through the forest. She was acutely aware of how close they were to the bridge and how little space they had between them and the monsters. “Keep driving. Get us out of the trees and try to lean left, if you can. That’s where the main road is.”
He looked conflicted. “Clare—”
“Go on.” She took his hand, squeezed it lightly, and pushed it back towards the wheel. “I’ve had enough of those monsters for today.”
Chapter Thirty
“Sweetheart. Can you hear me?”
Clare jolted awake. Chilled air stung her cheeks. She blinked, disoriented, and saw the car’s door was open. Dorran stood outside, one hand resting on Clare’s arm, his eyes tight with concern.
“Sorry. Did I fall asleep?” Clare lifted a hand to rub tiredness from her eyes, and pain blazed along her shoulder and back. She grimaced.
“Shh. Come. Lean on me.”
Dorran unbuckled the seat belt, then strong arms were around her, lifting her out of the car. Clare squinted against the pale light that cut into her eyes. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, except that the afternoon was fading. An empty road stretched in both directions, but Dorran carried her off its side, to where he’d laid their blanket beside a small, crackling campfire. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe.” He lowered her onto the blanket, and Clare shivered. The fire hadn’t been alive for long, but its warmth felt good, and she moved closer to it.
“Where did you get the wood?”
“There are some small trees farther up the road.” His fingers moved around her face, gently pulling hair out of the way. “Don’t worry. They are not large enough for hollows to hide among. We can rest here a moment.”
She blinked, and the scene came into better focus. The road was long and straight. Dead, thigh-high grass filled the space to either side, interspersed by tenacious trees that had found a home in the poor soil. In the distance, at the car’s back, were the rolling, hilly mountains that she associated with Marnie’s area. They must have been driving for hours.
“I am sorry,” Dorran said. He was pulling supplies out of the car. “I would have stopped earlier, but there was nowhere safe.”
“Yeah.” Clare slowly turned her neck, trying to loosen tight muscles without hurting her shoulder. “It’s all pretty thoroughly forested around that area. Did you see any other hollows?”
“Yes.” He crouched at her side, opened the first aid kit, and began picking through supplies. “A few dozen. Most stayed off the side of the road. They don’t like the car’s noises. Several tried to charge at us, but we were too fast for them to catch.”
Clare chuckled. She still felt dazed. As a child, she’d loved visiting Marnie with Beth. They always watched for wild animals on the drive to her property. Roadkill was common, but they usually saw live animals, as well. She guessed hollows had become the new animals to spot.
“Here.” He handed her a cup of water and two painkillers, then his fingers moved around the collar of her knit top.
She flinched as the fabric was peeled back from the drying blood.
Dorran muttered under his breath. He used scissors to snip through the weave so that he could pull it out of the way.
“How’s it looking?” Clare drained the cup. She hadn’t realised how thirsty she’d become.
Dorran took the mug back and refilled it, along with a pot of water he set beside the fire to heat. “I never should have left you outside the car.”
“Mm. One of us had to drive it over the bridge. And I still think you had the more dangerous job. I was just slightly less lucky this time.”
His eyes were sad, but he tried to smile as he placed a pair of surgical pliers into the pot to sterilise. “This will hurt, I am afraid. There are… fragments inside the wound.”
“Oh.” Clare’s face twisted. She remembered feeling the teeth break out of the hollow’s jaw. “Right, yeah, get those out, please.”
Once the pot boiled, Dorran used a cloth to retrieve the pliers, waited a moment for them to cool, then began work on Clare’s shoulder.
The tooth fragments made hideous sucking noises as they came free. Clare breathed through her mouth, shaking, her whole arm on fire. She refused to let herself cry. It wasn’t any worse than the bite on Dorran’s wrist, she told herself. If he could cope with it, so could she.
“That’s the last of them.” Dorran sounded relieved as he dropped the final bone fragment into the grass. He opened the bottle of antiseptic and doused the wound. This time, Clare couldn’t smother a cry. Dorran held her still as she kicked and swore, then he stroked her hair as the agony subsided.
“That was good. You did well. Very well.”
“Thanks.” The word came out muffled as Clare let her face rest into his shirt. She didn’t feel like she was doing well. She was exhausted in a way that sleep wouldn’t fix. She wasn’t looking forward to returning to the car, but as the sun ticked closer to the horizon, she knew they had no choice. She tried to imagine where they were on the map, but her mind came up blank.
Dorran kept one arm around her as he took bandages out of the kit. The pain subsided to a steady ache as he covered the cuts then gently tugged the torn sweater back into place.
“Okay.” Feeling boneless and shaky, she spoke with more conviction than she felt. “Onwards we go.”
“Not just yet.” He ran his fingers over her neck. “We need to eat. Let’s take advantage of the fire to enjoy some warm food.”
The day was chilly, the car was missing its heater, and Clare couldn’t object to sitting in the warmth of the fire. Dorran tipped out the boiled water and used the saucepan to heat their food. They had stew again, but he also brought out a tin of peaches, which he cooked until their juice had thickened into sy
rup and the fruits were on the edge of falling apart.
They each had a spoon but ate out of the same saucepan perched carefully between them. The cuts still ached, but Clare was starting to feel more peaceful. The area was quiet—almost eerily so. No insects bothered them, though she knew the long grass must have been full of them before the snows. The sky was a deep, hazy shade of grey, and visibility wasn’t good. She could see the mountains in the horizon but none of their definition.
“Do you think it will snow again?” she asked Dorran.
He sat with his legs out ahead of himself, one arm propped behind her back. “Most likely. Before the world changed, I would have said the snow would be light, though. But now? I really cannot predict it.”
“Do you know where we are on the map?”
Dorran didn’t answer immediately, and Clare felt a twinge of panic that they might actually be lost. But then he said, “Not exactly. As far as I can tell, we went off its edge after passing the river, but I have been holding our course northwest to pull us back towards our original path.”
“That’s good.” She scooped up more of the warm peaches. “I should be able to place us if we can see a street sign.”
Dorran fussed over her as he got her back into the car; fastening her seat belt, wrapping the spare blanket around her legs, and refusing to let her help pack up. He stomped their fire out and returned their supplies to the car’s back seat. The stop hadn’t been long, but Clare was grateful for it. To be out of the car, to be able to stretch and breathe fresh air, was a luxury she wouldn’t have expected to miss.
The idea of having a caravan like the one they had stayed in at the holiday park was sweetly tempting. A real bed. A kitchen. Room to stand, walk, and stretch without being vulnerable.
And a massive liability. Hitching a caravan behind their car would chew through fuel and make them too slow for any kind of rapid escape. Clare had to grudgingly admit that the luxury wasn’t worth it.
As Dorran drove, the open plains began to return to hills. A road intersected with the path they were on, and Dorran slowed as they neared it. An old, weather-beaten sign told them they were driving along Murray Road. Clare shook the map out with one hand and scanned it.
“Here!” She grinned as an almost-painful relief crashed through her. Not only were they back on the map, but they were closer to Beth’s than she’d dared let herself hope. “If we turn left, we can get onto the freeway. It would only take twenty minutes to reach Beth’s from there.”
“Dangerous,” Dorran murmured.
“You’re right. Let’s go straight, instead. That keeps us on the rural roads.” Clare traced the path, lips twitching as she calculated the time. “It’s not much farther… probably no more than an hour. We should be able to get there before it’s dark, right?”
“I’ll follow your directions.” Dorran smiled, but he didn’t look as happy as Clare had expected.
She frowned at him, trying to understand what was making him tense. Beth’s house is in a suburb. Is he worried about getting past the hollows?
“We’ll have the masks,” Clare said. “If we park right out the front of Beth’s house, we can get to the bunker and back in less than a minute. That should be quick enough to slip past the hollows before they get too pushy.”
He nodded, but his expression didn’t change. The awful guardedness was back in place, a careful construct of serenity.
Clare pursed her lips. That wasn’t the problem. What else, then?
She realised the answer quickly, and with it came a rush of uneasiness. He wasn’t worried about getting to the bunker; he was worried about what was inside. He expected Beth to be dead. And he was probably right.
Clare tried to imagine what they would find. Beth, suffocated, dead, lying on her bunker floor. Maybe nothing at all. Perhaps a splash of blood on the front step. She didn’t know which would be worse, but those were the only possibilities that seemed likely. The idea of knocking on the door and hearing Beth’s answer was more akin to wild fantasy than true hope. And Dorran was afraid of what the loss would do to her. With good reason too. She’d fallen apart at Marnie’s house.
Clare tightened her hands into fists on top of the map. She wouldn’t put him through anything like that again. She knew what the bunker likely held; she’d been preparing herself for it ever since leaving Winterbourne. Then again, she’d expected Marnie to be dead, and it hadn’t made that encounter any easier.
As long as they were still driving towards Beth’s, there was hope. It was small, but it still existed, and it held the grief at bay like a crumbling dam. She could tell herself Beth was gone, but until she saw it with her own eyes, it didn’t feel like reality.
But she’s gone. Almost certainly. Almost guaranteed. Gone like the rest of them.
“Let me drive,” she said.
Dorran shot her a concerned glance. “Your shoulder is hurt.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’ve been driving for longer than you should. And anyway, I know the area around Beth’s house. I’ll be able to navigate it better.”
“Hm. All right. Take some more pain tablets first.”
They exchanged places quickly, out of the car and back in within thirty seconds. Clare reflexively pulled her seat belt into place as she settled in the driver’s seat. It was a habit she would have to forget, she told herself. In this new world, the risk of crashing was outweighed by the possibility of needing to escape the car in a hurry. Still, the strap looped over her shoulder and waist felt comforting.
Dorran was a solid presence at her side. His expression was placid, but the tension around his shoulders and back told her the approaching confrontation was pressing on him as much as it was on her.
The road stretched, straight as a ruler, with very little around it. Clare squinted as she tried to make out distant shapes through the haze. She imagined she could see the freeway to their left, then up ahead, structures that had to be buildings.
I made it, Beth. I came for you.
Chapter Thirty-One
They were approaching the suburb from a different direction to the way Clare used to drive, but as they drew closer, she began to recognise landmarks. A cell tower dominated the skyline even though the lights around its top were blank. In the far distance, she caught a shape through the fog that was too square to be a house. The water silo.
As they neared the suburb’s outskirts, indulgent farmhouses began to crop up. The sprawling, modern structures were a relief after nothing but sparse fields and bare wire fences. Clare thought she recognised some of the cross streets.
“Better to keep the speed up, I think.” Dorran still looked relaxed, but his voice was clipped. “They come out when they hear noise.”
“Right.” She saw a flicker of motion in her rearview mirror. Something with four arms peered through a topiary arrangement.
They left the straight rural road and continued on to a more formal street with gutters and sidewalks. The houses changed noticeably. They were cheaper than the rustic mansions and huddled on compact blocks of land. The last time Clare had seen them, they had appeared uniform but modern and neat.
The suburb occasionally saw snow in winter, and the gardens were designed to cope with it, but Clare guessed the snowstorms must have been as brutal to Beth’s suburb as it had been to Winterbourne. Gutters were littered with fallen branches. In some areas, the roads were still flooded, thanks to debris blocking the drains. Clare saw smashed windows everywhere she looked. They left her uneasy. The holes created access points to the houses, which meant ample nests for the hollows.
She didn’t want to linger, but the roads threw up obstacles that forced her to slow. Evidence of the last day, and the panic it caused, was everywhere. Cars had been driven up onto the sidewalks, hitting garden fences, or crumpled against streetlight posts. Others had been abandoned on the road, doors hanging open. Clare managed to get around one by rising up on the sidewalk herself, but then she had to put the car in reverse because a f
allen oak blocked the road.
“It’s okay.” She spoke half to reassure Dorran and half to reassure herself as she twisted to watch the street behind them. “The streets all connect with one another. We shouldn’t get stuck.”
In the distance, through one of the broken windows, she thought she saw eyes glowing in the red backwash of her car’s lights. The monsters were keeping their distance, at least. Clare wondered if she and Dorran were the first humans they had seen since the stillness. Two spilled luggage cases lay outside an open door. Clothes tumbled over the path, still wet and beginning to rot, a reminder of how quickly the world had ceased.
How long did this area last after my phone disconnected? An hour? Maybe two? Long enough for people to try to escape.
Clare corrected the car’s path to take them down a clear street. Twilight caused the cookie-cutter houses and dying lawns to blend together, forcing her to squint to see. Clare made herself loosen her death grip on the steering wheel. Her palms were wet with sweat. Dorran’s pose was relaxed as he sat back in his seat, but his eyes were constantly moving below heavy eyebrows, and he ran his thumb over his lips.
Beth’s house was near the back of the development, in an area with larger plots of land and less-manicured gardens. When Clare had first seen it, she’d laughed. Beth’s home was surrounded by posh, expensive buildings, but she’d still chosen a house with a half-wild garden and irregular windows. Clare had said, “You can take the girl out of the country, but you—”
“Hush, you,” Beth had said, ushering Clare into the house. “I need my neighbours to think I’m a respectable suburban lady.”
But the non-conformist building helped Clare to see it while she was still two blocks away. A huge pine stood in the backyard, poking above the rooftops like a flag. She fixed on it, eyeing the dark pillar as she struggled through the choked streets to reach it.
