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 truck.
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.