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 decomposition. 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.”