“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.
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.
Fast enough to get to Beth’s before sundown? Time was ticking away from them. Clare didn’t want to think about spending a night out on the road. They had packed for it—they had blankets, food, water, and even toiletries—but only as a precaution. Clare guessed it had been too much to hope that they could make the trip without any hitches. Even so, the idea of being outside at night, in the world that now belonged to hollows, didn’t sit well with her.
Then a new thought pressed into her mind, and she glanced at the fuel indicator. The little needle hovered over the lowest marker, just above the ominous E.
“We’ll need fuel,” Clare said, hating that her voice cracked.
“Mm. Any thoughts of where we could find some?”
She pictured the service station they had passed in the town and the grey creatures teeming in the streets. The hollows lurked in places where they could hide from the sun: abandoned houses, overturned cars, or the forest. If Clare could find a service station in a field or down a lonely stretch of highway, they might stand a chance. She unfurled the map and stared at it. The only service stations she knew about were part of towns or cities.
Dorran didn’t know the area and was relying on Clare to guide them. He kept his eyes on the road. She had the impression he was trying not to put her under pressure. In a strange way, that only made it worse.
Think! We can’t just keep driving and hope we stumble over a remote station. Where else could we get petrol? If we find an empty car off the side of the road, we might be able to syphon fuel out of its tank… but we’d be gambling on that.
The car would have to be parked somewhere remote enough that there were no hollows around. It would need to run on petrol, not diesel. And they would need some kind of pipe to pull it out of the tank.
Then Clare’s mind lit on the solution, and her stomach turned sour with dread. “Marnie’s. She lives on a farm. Remote. She keeps cartons of fuel in her shed for the equipment.”
On some of Clare’s visits, she’d helped Marnie with her chores. She could picture the shed and its clutter of knickknacks. Bright-red bottles were stacked on a shelf next to gardening supplies. That was the surest bet she could think of.
“It would be convenient…” Dorran spoke carefully. “It’s on our route. But, Clare, you know the risk. That she might still be there.”
That her remains might still be there. Maybe not a body, specifically, but blood. Torn clothes. Bone fragments that the hollows had failed to consume.
“Yes.” The map crumpled under Clare’s tightening fingers. “But we don’t need to go into the house. The fuel is in the shed. We can grab it and be out of there in less than a minute. It’s remote and surrounded by bare farmland, so there probably won’t be any hollows there when the forest offers security and more food.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.” Up ahead, a sign poked out of the side of the road, its arrow pointing towards an offshoot. Dorran slowed as they approached it and turned the car towards their new destination.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clare knew the road well. A big elm tree sat to the left, tilting so badly that it would need cutting down within a few years. That was what Marnie had always said. She’d been saying it for as long as Clare could remember, and each year, the tree grew older and tilted slightly more, yet still remained undisturbed.
Sentimentality. It needed to be killed, but no one wanted to do it. They all grew up driving past that tree. Sitting under it. Talking about how badly it leaned. It was like a friend.
The car bumped over copious potholes. The road saw a moderate amount of traffic from the rural properties flanking it, but never enough for the government to justify resealing it. Every time a pothole grew too bad to ignore, they would fill it, like putting a plaster on a scab that only got worse over time. Some of the potholes had been filled five or six times, their dark asphalt bowed into a bowl shape as they were gradually worn back down. By that point, there were almost more patch jobs than original road left.