Sticky noises rose from their shoes as they stepped through the oil. Up ahead, the mannequins blocked their path. Clare hated the way the bald heads were tilted at angles, as though listening to the rain. Hands were raised into inscrutable gestures. Smooth indents marked the places where their eyes belonged. Their poses were elegant, but their clothes weren’t. Bohemian styles and pastel shades were discoloured. They hung off their mannequins awkwardly, wet, sad, and torn. Clare wondered where the rips had come from. Humans grasping and writhing in agony as they tasted the stinging air Madeline Morthorne talked about? Hollows scrambling after their prey? More than half of the statues were overturned, their poses still elegantly classy as they lay facedown in the puddles.
Clare shivered as they passed the figures. They didn’t have faces, but they still looked too human. Then behind them, hinges whined. Clare froze. Their luck had run out. A low, sickeningly familiar chattering noise floated through the air.
She and Dorran turned. The changing booth, a repurposed telephone box with blacked-out windows, had an Occupied sign hanging from the door. The wooden plaque rattled as the door swung outwards.
Chapter Forty-One
The woman inside the booth fixed Clare with her one remaining eye. It was bulging and red, and Clare thought she knew the cause. Sharp bony spikes, like stalactites, filled the empty socket. She’d lost her blouse and pants, but her business jacket still clung to her narrow shoulders. It flapped as she lurched forward. One leg had grown longer than the other, giving her an exaggerated limp. The bloodshot eye moved from Clare to Dorran, and the jaw widened as she chattered.
Dorran tapped Clare’s forearm. It was a small touch to shake her out of her shock and get her to move. She pressed her lips together and gave a tiny nod, and together, they began backing away.
The hollow took another staggering step forward. The jaw worked, and her head tilted curiously. Clare risked a glance down to check that the gloves were still tucked into the jacket sleeves and her socks covered any trace of skin. She was hidden under the layers of clothes. But the hollow was growing excited. Its chattering became louder, and the jaw moved faster, swivelling in loosened sockets, as she stumbled forward recklessly.
Can it tell we’re human? Can it hear our breathing? Smell us? Recognise the way we walk?
Dorran gave another subtle tap. They were backing away, but the hollow’s unsteady gait was closing the gap. They needed to run. She shot Dorran a final look, wishing she could pick out some expression under the mask. He tilted his head in her direction, the only response he could give. Then they turned as one and began running.
Mannequins skittered across the street as they were kicked out of the way. The hollow howled. Through their own pounding footsteps and the steady pattering rain, Clare heard the creature’s feet slapping on the ground as it chased them. Its limp gave it a distinctive, nightmarish gait. One loud smack, then a quick scrape, repeated. Clare focussed on their path, squinting through the fabric, mesh, downpour, and thin fog to see their path ahead. A deep fear of becoming cornered had taken root in her.
They had to leap over a cascade of rotting fruit to escape the closed-off market street. On the main road, cars became a hazard. They had to split up to weave between the vehicles. Guttural chattering followed them. Two cars had collided ahead, hedging Clare in, and she leapt onto the bonnets to slide over. Dorran reconverged with her. The hollow thudded into a car behind them, and Clare clenched her teeth as nails scraped over metal.
Up ahead, the blue Helexis sign loomed out of the sky. Two blocks away. A stitch was forming in Clare’s side as she struggled to draw air through the wet mask. She could make it two blocks. They were close.
Close to what?
She tried not to obsess over the thought, but it was the only thing her mind could focus on. Helexis Tower might be their salvation, but it could just as easily be an abandoned building. A locked door. Or worst of all, a tower full of nothing but hundreds of closed doors, all holding a single hollow impatiently scrabbling to be let out.
Stop thinking that. It’s too late to go anywhere else. Just get to the tower. Beth had a purpose in sending you there.
In the desperate part of her mind, she imagined Beth pulling the tower doors open and beckoning her inside. She tried to tell herself it was a fantasy, that she couldn’t believe Beth was still alive, and that she was setting herself up for disappointment, but the idea stuck in her mind like a fiery beacon, bright and tantalising.
They were a block closer, and the sidewalks were clear. To their right, boutique clothing stores sported immense display windows. Clare gasped as something hit the glass. Two hollows pressed against the window. Fractures already ran across the surface from repeated beatings.
Keep running. Don’t look back.
The distinctive slap-scrape-slap noise was now mixed with other pounding feet. She couldn’t see them, but at least half a dozen of the creatures had joined in the pursuit. Some gaits were staggering. Others were long and gaining.
One block. Just one block.
She kept her eyes switching between the road under her feet and the blue letters marking their destination. Breathing was painful. A dry, tacky film was developing in her throat.
They rounded the final corner. Only a four-lane road separated them from Helexis Tower. The blue letters shimmered high above them. Her eyes followed the building’s length. It was dark stone, built within the last ten years and designed to be minimalistic. Hundreds of large, blank windows were the only relief in the smooth walls. Buried in the tangle of stylised architecture and classical buildings, it was plain enough to avoid almost all attention. Clare could have walked past it a hundred times without giving it a second look.
Then her gaze reached the juncture where the building connected with the sidewalk, and Clare choked on her own breath. Before, she’d marvelled at how empty the city was. She’d thought that perhaps the quietness had passed over it while most people were still inside their buildings, or that the hollows had been killing each other.
Now, she saw she’d been wrong. The city wasn’t empty. The hollows weren’t dead. They had just been distracted.
The tower’s base teemed like a beehive. Thousands of bodies pressed together, climbing each other, scrambling to reach the stone walls. The entire lower floor had been engulphed. An eerie noise rose from the swarm. Hands patting stone. Hands patting flesh. Rasping breaths, so many that they merged into an unending whirr.
Clare’s feet faltered. She stared at the tangle, her mind freezing as shock and panic swallowed it. The nearest hollows, the ones on the fringe, turned. Eyes flashed. Jaws widened.
Dorran pulled on her hand, dragging her to the side, towards one of the shops. Clare felt the tug of fingernails snatching at her jacket as the hollow from the telephone box caught up to them. The shock got her moving. She matched Dorran’s pace as they raced towards one of the window displays. It had been a high-end accessories store, full of mannequins brandishing purses that had probably cost more than Clare’s car. Dorran aimed for the window and twisted his body as he neared it. His shoulder hit first. A jangling crack rose from the glass as it shattered. Clare followed in Dorran’s wake, relying on the layers of clothes and the mask to protect her from the razor-sharp edges.
She landed on the platform inside the window and staggered. Dorran, still holding her hand, pulled her close to keep her upright. He reached for the nearest mannequin and wrenched off its arm. Its wig went flying as it tumbled back. Dorran turned and swung the limb like a club. The hollow was already halfway through the hole he’d created. The impact was fierce enough to crack the ceramic arm and force the hollow into the shards of glass still protruding from the window’s frame.