by Darcy Coates
How many are there?
Clare gasped as her boots scraped on the concrete. The gap widened. Dorran moved to Clare’s side, putting his shoulder against the door to keep it closed. The pressure on the other side was immense. Screams and the ceaseless chattering shook the room. Clare couldn’t think. She put her head down and pushed with all of her strength, trying to drive the door closed against the wall of flesh. Dorran flinched as fingers plucked at his arm. The hollows didn’t care that their limbs were being crushed. Their hunger and rage was mindless.
Mindless…
Clare’s eyes turned to the radio in the room’s corner. The door ground inwards an inch, and she leaned further into it to force it back. “Can you hold it?”
Dorran gave a short nod. Clare closed her eyes and stepped away from the door. She felt a stab of fear as the metal grated inwards, but Dorran dug his feet into the floor and forced it back. She could see muscles straining even under the jacket.
She darted around the abnormally long arms. The fingers caught at her as she ran past, scraping over her arm, and the screaming, chattering throng became louder as the limbs chased her. She dropped to her knees beside the radio and pressed the power button. It stayed dead.
“No, no, no…” She ran her fingers over the cracked plastic. Dorran knew how to repair the machine, but she didn’t. She turned it over and saw a dark hole in its back.
It wasn’t broken. Its batteries were missing. She put her head down close to the ground and searched for them. Two were under the table. A third had rolled near the couch. Clare snatched them up and forced them into the radio with shaking hands.
“Clare…” Dorran strained against the door, but it was bowing inwards an inch at a time. Faces pressed into the gaps between the arms, hissing. Jaws clicked as they rolled in their sockets. Demented eyes glinted in the torch’s light.
“Almost,” Clare called back, but the word became choked in her throat. She could barely see through the mask. There. The final battery was half-hidden under a sheet of paper. Clare could have cried as she grabbed it. The battery slid into its slot, and she scrambled back to Dorran as she turned on the radio.
One of the hollows spilt through the door. Its torso stretched forward, its arms swinging towards Clare. Its hips had become pinned in the gap. Dorran grunted as he forced the door back an inch, and Clare thought she heard the hollow’s bones fracture. She grabbed his axe off the floor. It was heavier than she’d expected. She lifted, staggered, and brought it down over the hollow’s head.
She’d been trying to decapitate it, but her aim was off. The skull split horribly as the axe embedded in it. Clear cranial fluids ran out of the cavity, dripping down the handle. Clare yelped and released her hold on it. The hollow stayed upright for two more seconds, its eyes rocking wildly in its skull, then it slumped forward, limp.
Clare snatched up the radio and put her back against the door next to Dorran. Desperate, she fumbled over the box’s settings. It hadn’t been left on Clare’s frequency. Beth must have been searching for another broadcaster before she opened the door.
To her horror, new noises came from the bodies packed against the other side of the door. Wet noises. Chewing noises. The dead hollow shuddered, then its body began to slide back behind the door.
“Come on. Come on.”
The door shuddered, making it nearly impossible to control the little dials. Clare shoved back, digging her feet into the ground. Dorran gasped with exhaustion. Then Clare finally got the right setting and turned the switch to start the broadcast.
The radio’s pair waited back in her car. And it was turned on. Clare tapped against the microphone, knowing the sounds would be magnified. It wasn’t enough, though. She tapped harder, scratching her gloved finger over the fine mesh. Then she lifted it to her lips and screamed into the microphone, “Go away!”
Clare heard her own voice, ragged and full of fear, projected from the car on the street. The chattering wails abruptly fell silent, and the roving arms fell still, their fingers still hooked around the door, splayed over the metal walls and the floor.
Clare cupped one hand around her mouth to minimise what noise escaped into the room and spoke into the radio, starting at a whisper and gradually increasing the volume. “Get out of here. Get out of my sister’s bunker. Out of my sister’s yard. Leave us alone. Get out!”
The arms withdrew, the thin skin scraping off against the door’s edge. The chattering carried up the stairs as the hollows scuttled over each other to get outside. The bunker door shut, and the latch clicked, sealing it. Dorran took off his mask, and Clare quickly followed.
“Smart girl,” he said.
Clare tried to smile as she stared at the black box cradled in her hands. “It got them away from us. But now they’ll be gathered around the car, instead.”
“Only as long as they can hear you.” He pointed to the radio, and Clare turned it off. There was no sense in drawing hollows from the rest of the suburb, as well.
Her legs had no strength left. She let herself slide down until she sat on the floor. A second later, Dorran followed, and together, they stared across the ruined bunker.
Chapter Thirty-Four
They sat on the cold concrete floor with their backs against the door, both slick with sweat and hollow blood. Dorran took Clare’s hand and held it tightly. Clare rested her head against his shoulder.
Beth had said it took several hours for the hollows to leave once they could no longer hear any noise. Clare hoped that would be true of the car, as well. If they waited long enough, they might be able to get across the yard without being intercepted.
She already knew the wait would be painful, though. The small room smelt foul. With the door closed, there was no way to get fresh air in, and the odours seemed to build on themselves until she was afraid of gagging.
One of the hollows returned. Clare couldn’t see much with their torch facing the opposite wall, but she felt Dorran tighten as the shuffling footsteps climbed the metal stairs. She held the radio in her lap but didn’t try to use it. Every additional noise would only prolong their stay.
The hollow scratched around the door. The sound of fingernails on metal set Clare’s teeth on edge, and closing her eyes, she tried to ignore it. She and Dorran remained completely silent. After what must have been minutes but felt like hours, the scratching ceased, and the hollow climbed back up to the outside world.
Time stretched on. Clare tried to count the seconds in her mind, carrying a running total so she could guess the length of their wait. She lost count somewhere around half an hour.
Then Dorran dipped his head closer to hers and whispered, “When we reach the car, are we returning to Winterbourne?”
It was a loaded question, and Clare wasn’t prepared to answer it. She glanced towards the five words scribbled on the wall. They shimmered in the dull light. “Beth wanted me to find her message. I’m sure of that. The address is important.”
They were quiet for a moment as they made sure their whispers hadn’t attracted any further attention. Then Dorran asked, “How far away is it?”
“I don’t know the building. But the city is about three hours away on the freeway. Double that if we take the backroads.”
Again, they fell into silence. A question hung between them. Are we going?
“Winterbourne’s garden will need us back soon if the plants are going to survive.” Clare adjusted her position against the door and flinched as her shoulder protested. “And getting through the suburb was challenging enough. The city must be absolutely overrun with them. Plus, we don’t actually know what we’ll find there. It’s just an address. Maybe Beth was trying to tell us to stay away from it.”
“Be honest.” His fingers rubbed over Clare’s own. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to go, or are you giving me reasons for why I can refuse to take you?”
“The latter,” she admitted. The torchlight flowed over a stretch of grey skin in the early stages of decomposi
tion. She tried not to stare at it.
Dorran waited. With anyone else, the silence would have been uncomfortable. But Dorran wasn’t using it to apply pressure; he was waiting for her to get all of her thoughts out. He wanted to know how she truly felt.
“It’s just that… we didn’t find her body. And the bunker’s door was closed when we arrived. That is such a Beth thing to do. Shut the door on the way out.” She smiled, but it vanished quickly. “And my mind just keeps swirling around that. What if she’s still out there? And what if she left me directions for how to find her?”
Dorran nodded but still didn’t speak. Clare had the horrible impression that he was staying quiet because his mental train had diverged from hers.
“What are you thinking?” Clare leaned into him, nudging his shoulder with hers. She could barely see his eyes in the dim light, but the emotions in them weren’t happy. She swallowed. “Please. I want you to be honest with me.”
He took a deep breath and held it for a beat. “I don’t believe Beth left that message for you.”
“Okay.” She’d been braced for dissent, but it still felt like a knife in her stomach.
“I understand why—why you want it to be. But…” He glanced at her, and she nodded back, resolute, telling him it was okay to continue. “Beth was adamant that you should stay at Winterbourne. She did not want you to come here.”
“But she knew I would anyway.” Clare’s voice rose louder than she’d meant, and she forced it back to a whisper. “And—and so she left it just in case.”
“The address has no meaning to you.” Dorran looked sad, almost apologetic for having to say it. “If she wanted you to find it, she would have included an explanation. Or even just your name, to make sure you would have no doubt about its purpose.”
Clare shook her head furiously. She hated feeling like she was grasping at something hopeless. “Maybe she didn’t have time. Maybe she fought off one wave of hollows and only had seconds to write down her destination before escaping.”
Dorran glanced at the words. Clare looked, too, and felt her heart sink. The scores were jagged, but not wild. The address had been written with care in neat, straight lines by a steady hand.
“If she had time to write the address, she would have had time to bring her radio,” Dorran said.
“Maybe… maybe…”
“Perhaps she heard someone share the address on the radio and scratched it into the wall to remember it.”
Clare tilted her head back and blinked furiously at the shadowed ceiling. “Yeah… maybe it’s the address of a safe house. She might have been planning to go there.”
“I think that is plausible,” Dorran said.
Hope exploded in Clare’s chest. She gripped Dorran’s hand too hard. “We might find her on the road. That hollow with the knife in its head—it was still alive when we found it. She probably hasn’t been gone more than a couple of hours. She might not have even left the suburb yet!”
Outside, a hollow screamed. Clare realised she’d been too loud and bit her lip. They waited, listening, but nothing came back to the bunker door.
Dorran relaxed again and adjusted his legs to stretch them ahead of himself. Clare tried to read his expression. The hope was a painful wildfire burning through her chest. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, though, and that wasn’t a good sign.
“You don’t think so,” she prompted, trying to fight the disappointment that wanted to leak into her voice.
“I think it is plausible that Beth would have a plan to escape. Possibly the address was a part of it.”
His sentence had an unspoken but. He still hesitated, though. Clare closed her eyes and spoke more calmly. “It’s okay. I won’t get angry. Go ahead.”
He released a held breath. “The hollow was still alive, but the blood was dry. Beth has been gone for at least a day.”
“Okay.” Clare pictured the hollow lying on the bunker floor, twitching, for that long. Beth must have thought she’d killed it when she’d driven the knife through its skull. But the hollows refused to follow human laws of mortality. They didn’t seem to need their blood, all of their brains, their spinal cord, or anything else that should have been necessary for life.
“If the bunker had been empty and orderly, I would hold hope, as well. But this was a fight.” Dorran indicated to the dead monsters. “Fights create noise and draw more hollows. You saw how many were outside the door when we were trying to close it. Beth was remarkable to have killed four of them. Truly remarkable, especially for a sole individual with very little in the way of defence. But I cannot imagine she would have made it as far as a car. Especially not without leaving signs for us to see. The garden was undisturbed—no bodies, no blood, no churned dirt. The fight started, and ended, here.”
She kept her head tilted back so that he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. Both her mind and her heart hurt. She wished he wouldn’t make so much sense.
“I am so sorry.” It was not a platitude; his voice was full of pain. “I wish I could see it any other way. I wish I could justify a journey to the city.”
“But we can’t.” Her mind was clearing, and the address, so full of promise a moment before, felt empty.
“Six hours to the city if the roads are not blocked. Then perhaps a full day of driving to reach home. We would need to stop for food and fuel. We would need to find a way through the city.”
Beth’s voice echoed in Clare’s mind. If you want to survive, don’t take risks.
“And we don’t know what we would find when we arrive there.” Clare’s voice had lost its energy, but she tried to smile. “It might be a safe house. Or it might be nothing.”
Underneath was an unspoken implication: Whatever is there, it won’t be Beth.
It hurt. She shook her head as she tried to focus on something more immediate, something more actionable. “What supplies do we need?”
“Clare…”
“What supplies?”
“We are low on all necessities, including petrol, bandages, antibiotics, and food. We have enough water left for a day if we only drink it and don’t use any for washing.”
“And I would like a bath. I never realised what a luxury running water was until we didn’t have any.” Clare looked down at herself. On top of every other layer of grime, blood, and sweat, Clare now had cranial fluid sticking on her hand. She felt repulsive. The fact that Dorran still sat so close to her reinforced what she already knew: he was halfway to being a saint.
“I would not disagree with a bath, either. I feel as though I am barely a step above the hollows I am fighting.” Dorran chuckled.
Clare joined in, and the tension between them dissipated.
“It is in your hands.” Dorran’s voice was so soft she could barely hear it. “You know how I feel, but this is still your choice. I promised I would follow where you led, and I will. If you wish to travel to the city, if you feel you cannot return to the house without doing so, I will be there with you.”
The city would be dangerous. She knew that without a shadow of a doubt. The streets would be worse than the freeway. The buildings would be many-storied death traps. The cities had been the first places to change, and their high-density populations meant there would be precious few chances to slip past the hollows unobserved.
They had made it through so much already. They were both injured and worn down. Ready to return home. Ready to consolidate and recover.
Dorran was watching her, his dark eyes filled with grief and love. She had lost her sister. She had to protect what she had left. Clare smiled, and this time, it didn’t hurt as much. “Let’s go back to Winterbourne.”
He kissed her forehead, a soft murmur in the back of his throat, and she could feel the relief running through him.
“We don’t have to give up entirely,” he whispered. “We still have our radio. Beth knows your frequency. If she is out there, she will make contact.” It was a promise without hope, but it was all he could give her.
Clare nodded. He pulled her closer and rested his head on top of hers. The bunker was cold, but Dorran was warm and safe. Clare closed her eyes. Her heart hurt, but she knew it wouldn’t last forever. She just had to get them home.
Low on food. Low on water. Low on medicine. She turned the radio over in her hands. At the opposite wall, the fractured supplies shelf covered a plethora of tins and bottled water. Some had become broken during the scuffle, but there was still more than they could carry. “We can take some of Beth’s food with us, at least. And… I think I know how to get more bandages and antibiotics, as well.”
“That would help. The antibiotics, especially, are a priority.” His eyes flicked down to her shoulder, and she knew he feared that they might make it home in one piece only to succumb to infection. Even if the condition inflicting the hollows wasn’t contagious, that didn’t mean their bites were free of bacteria.
Clare nodded. “Beth will have a first aid kit in her home. I don’t know where she keeps it, but it’s probably either in the kitchen or the bathroom. And I think we can use the radio to buy us a few minutes.”
“Good. I’ll collect the food.”
Dorran left Clare beside the door as he stepped around the dead hollows. He found a discarded blanket, shook it out, then moved through the food, picking out tins that weren’t damaged and placing them in the blanket one at a time to avoid noise.
Clare squinted through the low light to see the settings on the radio. During her time at Winterbourne, she had scrolled through some of the frequencies, looking for other survivors. Their numbers had grown fewer with every day, but some broadcast regularly, sharing advice or simply looking to meet up with others to trade supplies. In amongst them, she’d found one channel that was unlike anything she’d heard before. It was a jumble of sound—white noise, interspersed with second-long clips of songs, sound effects, and voices. It felt uniquely like a product of the stillness, something that shouldn’t have existed in the world before. It made her feel cold and unsafe.
