The smell was immediate and repulsive. The stink of urine. The sour scent that she’d come to associate with hollows. And beneath it, the sweetly poisonous tang of rotting flesh.
I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see her dead.
But she had to. They had risked their lives to get to the bunker. Clare took another step down. The metal stairs echoed under her feet. Clare felt for the light switch on the stairwell’s wall then remembered the generator had died. The plastic switch turned uselessly under her fingers. She continued on.
The pit below was perfectly dark. Thin light—tinted red as the failing sun struggled to press through choking clouds—came through the open door and created an insipid rectangle of illumination at the base of the stairs. Inside that were three small drops of something dark. After another step, Clare staggered against the wall as the smell became worse. She was nearly choking on it. The air was stale and seemed to stick to the inside of Clare’s lungs. Another three steps, taken too fast, and she was nearly at the base of the stairs. The drops of blood were clearer. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Slowly, she turned her gaze towards the rest of the room.
Tins and bottles lay on the floor. A small pile of clothes had been discarded in one corner. The couch in the centre of the room was lumpier than Clare remembered it being. Near the stairwell was the TV, an old-fashioned boxy shape with a DVD player. Clare still remembered the films Beth had bought for her bunker. Her “I’ll never get tired of these” collection, all cheery romcoms and slice-of-life series.
Clare stopped at the base of the stairs, straining to see through the gloom. The bunker was cold, and her skin prickled. Dorran had remained at the top of the stairs, standing guard, but now he followed. His footsteps seemed to beat in time with her heart. She turned left. Beth had said she had torches. A cylindrical shape rested on the small table opposite the TV. Clare grasped it with shaking, sweating hands and felt for the button. She found it. Her little circle of light exploded over the opposite wall.
“Oh,” Clare moaned.
Beth’s tiny bunker was in chaos. The metal shelf that held her food and water had been knocked down. Its corner rested against the table, and its contents were spilled across the floor. The couch had appeared lumpy. Clare now saw why. Something had cut into its fabric, and the deep slashes spilled billowing stuffing.
Shiny dents marred the metal walls. The bathroom door lay in splinters on the floor. Scraps of papers were everywhere—on the floor, on the tables, and moving in little eddies when air from the open door disturbed them. The radio Beth had used to communicate with Clare lay on the floor beside the TV, its plastic shell cracked.
And there were dead hollows. Four of them. At least, as far as Clare could see. Two had been mangled so badly, it was hard to tell where one began and another ended. The third one lay face-down on the floor, a kitchen knife embedded through its skull. Its head was tilted to the side, facing the door. Clare turned her torch towards it, and its eyes twitched in the sudden light. Its jaw gaped a fraction of an inch wider.
Clare pulled off her mask, letting it drop to the floor along with the crowbar, then pressed a damp hand to her face. She had been ready to see her sister’s body. But it wasn’t there. Instead, she found only confusion and chaos. And she couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Dorran moved silently as he took the torch from Clare. She lowered her hands and forced herself to look again as Dorran examined the scene.
“What…” He shook his head.
She opened the doors. They came in. She fought.
A swell of pride for her sister was quickly followed by grief. Beth had fought, but she couldn’t have escaped. The suburb was teeming with hollows, and the sounds from the scuffle would have drawn in a wave of them. Her eyes dropped to her feet. The floor was saturated with blood. More blood than she thought the remaining bodies could account for.
They ate her. Clare felt herself choking and grasped at the unravelling threads of her mind as she tried to pull herself back together. Beth hadn’t died cowering. She had taken down four of the monsters before succumbing. That was admirable for anyone.
The nearest creature twitched again, its fingertips curling up a fraction. It wasn’t dead, but it was so close that Clare was amazed it was still moving.
Dorran placed a hand on Clare’s back and whispered, “Turn around.”
“What?”
“I need to take care of this. Turn around.”
She faced the wall above the table. The metal had been damaged there, too, by tiny scratches that had probably come from hollow fingernails.
Two loud whacking noises echoed through the room. Clare flinched. The hollow stopped croaking. Clare took slow breaths.
That’s it. You saw the bunker. You can get out now. Run for the car. Don’t look back.
Her eyes were blurred with unshed tears, distorting the marks on the wall above the desk. Her breath caught. The scratches appeared in little bunches. They were too controlled to be from hollows.
“Dorran. The torch.”
He directed the light towards where she pointed, and Clare squinted against the glare cast off the metal. The lines weren’t scratches from fingernails. They had been cut with the sharp edge of a screw. The implement lay on the ground just below the table, its tip worn down from the usage. Beth had written an address into the wall.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Helexis Tower, Floor 12, Inner City.” Clare ran her fingers over the words as she read them. The lines were all jagged from the force of being cut with a screw, but they were in Beth’s hand—she was certain. Beth had a particular way of forming Es that was unmistakable.
“Is the location significant to you?” Dorran’s voice was a whisper. He kept glancing up the open stairwell beside them. They had already spent longer than they should have.
“I know the city. I’ve been there a few times. But I’ve never heard of the tower. Why would Beth write it, though?”
“And on the wall, not on the paper.” Dorran indicated to the scraps of white littering the ground. Pages torn out of books. Scraps from the notepad that was now flung against the opposite wall. If she’d needed something to write on, there was an abundance of material.
The answer came to her quickly. “Because she wanted me to see it. She knew I would come for her, but that I wouldn’t have enough time to sort through the papers on the ground. So she left it on the wall, where I couldn’t miss it.”
Except you nearly did miss it, the little voice in her head whispered. If Dorran hadn’t made you turn around, you wouldn’t have seen it at all.
But it was the only theory that made sense. A message scrawled on metal. Something that couldn’t be erased, scrunched up, or burnt. Placed beside the exit. It had to be for her.
She pressed her hand to the metal. Her breathing was ragged, and her heartbeat sounded too loud. The fact that she didn’t understand the message didn’t matter. Beth had tried to communicate with her.
“Clare. Mask.” Dorran stayed facing the stairwell. He’d gone very still, and his whisper held a note of warning.
She grabbed the fencing mask from the floor and pulled it over her head, then she stepped up to his side. At the top of the stairs, framed by a square of harsh light, stood a disfigured silhouette. Its elongated head tilted to the side as it stared down at them.