It was a moot question, either way. A pack of hollows were still following them, and shimmering eyes glittered from the shadows around the pumps. There was no room to stop.
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.