by Darcy Coates
Then Dorran spoke. “I should have known better than to stop. I am sorry for putting you in so much danger.”
She wanted to tell him it was all right, that she’d been lured in just as much as he had, but the words wouldn’t come. She shook her head instead. The air was too hot; it choked in her throat before it could reach her lungs.
Dorran glanced at her, and his expression drew tight. “Clare? Are you hurt?”
“No. Uh—no—I—”
The bus began to slow. Real alarm was growing in Dorran’s eyes. “You’re white. What happened? Did one of those people hurt you?”
“I can’t breathe.” Her stomach was burning. Her lungs ached. She shook her head as a drip of perspiration ran down her cheek. “Pull over… Need air…”
The bus was already coasting to a halt on the road’s shoulder. Dorran put it in park but didn’t turn off the engine as he opened the door for her. Clare rose and tried to climb out. The cold air felt good on her face. She leaned into it and realised a second too late that she was falling.
Dorran barked her name as he caught her before she could hit the ground. His voice sounded as though it had echoed down a long tunnel. He carefully lowered her to sit on the bus’s step, then his hand moved across her forehead and her neck. He took a sharp breath. “The tea. She drugged it—”
Oh, she is such a monster. Clare tilted her head back, begging the swimming nausea to subside. Thank goodness Dorran didn’t drink it. He still had his wits and his reflexes when they attacked us.
“What was it?” Dorran muttered the words, not directed at her, but a question to the universe. “A sedative? Poison?”
“I’m fine,” Clare mumbled, vaguely aware that the words were slurred. “Just got to catch my breath…”
Dorran darted away from her, disappearing into the bus, and returned a second later with the water bottle he kept near the driver’s seat. He unscrewed the lid and held it to her lips. “Drink.”
She shook her head. “Feel sick…”
“Please.” Desperation bled into his voice. “You have to drink.”
Reluctantly, she swallowed the water. It tasted off, and her body wanted to reject the liquid. She managed to swallow three mouthfuls before she keeled over, violently sick.
“Good. Good.” Dorran held her with one arm across her chest, the other rubbing her back. “Get it out.”
Clare hung off him, gasping, sweat sticking her clothes to her skin. She tried to straighten, but her stomach muscles contracted again, forcing her back down. The sickness didn’t stop until bile burned her throat and her body had no more energy to move. Dorran gave her the last few spoonfuls of water from the bottle to help wash her mouth out, then he half guided, half carried her back into the bus.
“Bed or chair?” His voice was beautifully soft compared to the roaring noise in Clare’s ears.
She squinted, trying to think. The back of the bus was dark, almost unpleasantly so. Lights danced across her eyes. To her disoriented mind, they looked like ghosts. “Chair.”
Her throat burned, her stomach muscles ached, and her legs were uncoordinated. Dorran lowered her into the chair and adjusted its back so that Clare was half reclined in it. He buckled her seatbelt, fetched a blanket from the bed, and draped it over her.
Her mouth still tasted foul. But her nausea had finally passed, and a deep thirst had risen. “Water?”
Dorran’s hand ran over her shoulders, a comforting caress. He didn’t move to fetch her a drink, though. He only stood beside her, facing the bus’s insides, a horrible grimness haunting his features.
Clare tilted her head back. Her vision swam, and it took her a moment to see the racks above the seats. The bundles of clothes and blankets were still in their place. But the jugs of water and food were gone, leaving row upon row of empty shelf space.
Oh. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back. That woman. This is why she invites people into her compound. With hollows in the fields, her family can no longer farm… so they lure people to them with the smoke and the sign, drug them until they can’t resist, kill them, and take their stores.
The hand on her shoulder squeezed, then Dorran spoke, his voice hoarse. “I will find you water. Just rest, my darling.”
Chapter Eight
Clare drifted through a surreal series of dreams. She felt cold despite the blanket and the bus’s heater, and a chilled sweat coated her. A thick, pounding headache began in the base of her skull and spread across her head. Every bump in the road or tap of the brakes intensified it, until she couldn’t even escape it in her dreams.
When she woke, she looked to Dorran. His back was straight, and his expression was kept carefully blank, but his knuckles were white as they gripped the wheel. He had the map book open on the dashboard. Clare let her eyes drift closed again. She knew the maps well. There were no rivers in that part of the country. And there wouldn’t be any for a long while.
She was desperately thirsty. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, a sick tacky flavour across it. The sweat had dried, and she could feel the fever continuing to burn at the end of her nerves. She needed something to drink. Even just a teaspoon… an ice cube to suck… anything. The request hung on her tongue, wanting to be asked, but she wouldn’t let it out. Dorran was doing as much as possible, and hounding him wouldn’t change their situation.
The dreams began to encroach on wakefulness. When she looked into the rear-view mirror, she thought she could see Beth walking along the length of the bus, blood dripping over her jaw. Clare blinked, and the aisle was empty again. A knuckle rapped on the window, and Clare turned to see Mother Gum standing at the door, her white wig askew and her smile wide as she knocked to be let in.
“Go away,” Clare mumbled.
Dorran stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Shh.”
She lost track of time. They could have been driving for twenty minutes or for days. The headache was so much worse. Every small jostle and movement sent it beating behind her eyes like a war drum. She thought she might be sick again, except there was nothing left to bring up.
The bus slowed. Clare cracked her eyes open, but her vision was blurred. They were passing something incredibly bright. It made her head worse, and she wished it would go away. After a moment, it did. The bus sped up again. She could sense Dorran fidgeting, fingers picking at the wheel as his anxiety broke through the carefully cultivated poise.
The next time she woke, they had parked. The bus was dark and quiet, the door closed. The engine was off, and Dorran was gone.
Clare tried to sit up. Her arm slipped out from under the blankets, but she had no energy for anything else. The need for water was excruciating. She thought she could still hear Mother Gum tapping on the window, this time a long way away, whispering, “They’re all my children… They’re all my children.”
She tried to speak Dorran’s name, but only a dry rush of air made it past her lips. Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone.
It was night. Through the front window, she saw trees in the distance, cutting across the haze-blurred stars. They didn’t seem to be forested trees, though. They were spaced too far apart. The word landscaping ran through her mind without making much sense.
He didn’t leave me. He wouldn’t.
She was alone, though. And she didn’t know how long she had been lying there, in a dead bus, surrounded by the stillness of night. She was more afraid than she had felt in a very long time. The sensation felt different, though; the hollows inspired a sharp, angry fear that beat at her heart. But this was sluggish and cold, drawing over her like a damp blanket. The fear of being forgotten. The fear of dying alone.
She counted her heartbeats. They were easy to keep track of, each one pounding at her skull, little stabs of pain that ran into her eyes and jaw. She got to fifty before she lost the number and had to begin again.
Then she heard a noise. At first, it might have been the rustle of wind through branches, but as it grew louder, she heard
the steady rhythm, almost matching her pulse. Footsteps, crunching through something that might have been gravel or dead leaves, too regular and steady to be a hollow.
Dorran.
The door’s lock clicked as he unsealed it. Then he stepped into the bus, quietly shutting the door behind himself. It was too dark to make out much of his expression, but the familiar silhouette seemed incredibly tense. He looked towards her, but glanced away quickly. She tried to reach towards him. He didn’t respond or even meet her eyes. Instead, he turned away and paced the bus’s length in eight long, quick steps.
Doesn’t he want to be near me? He had never been short in his affection before. The rejection burned in tandem with the lingering fever.
Dorran stopped at the other end of the bus, where Clare couldn’t see him. She could still hear him, though. His breaths came quickly. They were too rough and uneven to have come from exertion. He was on the edge of hyperventilating.
Dorran took a stuttered inhale and held it. In eight more quick steps, he was back at the bus’s front. He still wouldn’t look at Clare as he took the driver’s seat. This new angle let her see his features better, though. They were tight, his eyebrows heavy, his lips pressed together, a muscle leaping in his jaw. The creases around his eyes were painful to see.
Guilt. He wouldn’t look at her because he was ashamed. Clare tried to lift her hand, but couldn’t move it. She wanted to tell him it was all right, that she didn’t blame him. His eyes were fixed resolutely ahead, though. The key turned in the ignition. The bus’s lights flicked on. He was bathed in the backwash of the headlamps.
Blood ran from his shoulder and arm, saturating the fabric of his shirt. He hadn’t tried to bandage them. Instead, he used the injured arm to put the bus into drive and pulled back onto the road.
“Dorran?” It came out as a rasping breath.
His eyes met hers then were averted again in a flash. “I am sorry, my darling.”
They had to be driving along a well-maintained road; it was too smooth to be anything rural. Through the windshield, Clare saw more of the trees she’d glimpsed before, as well as infrequent peaked rooves.
Houses. He was trying to find bottled water in houses. She ran her eyes across the bloody marks again. He’d tried to go in alone and with no light besides what the moon could provide.
I’m so sorry.
He needed her badly. She was supposed to help him, care for him, and love him. That was what she’d promised. Now, her very presence was crushing him into desperation.
If she’d just been more wary… If she’d just asked to pass by Mother Gum’s Nest… If she’d just tipped the tea out like he had…
His fingers shook, clenched around the wheel. He glanced at the dashboard, towards the fuel gauge. Some awful resolution seemed to form inside of him. His eyebrows flinched down further, then he turned the wheel sharply, the bus’s tyres scraping as he made a U-turn. Then their speed picked up, a racing, rattling pace that couldn’t have been safe. Dorran had a plan, and he didn’t seem to like it.
Breathing hurt. Movement hurt. Clare couldn’t even make it stop. The thumping in her head was worse, breaking her ability to think, consuming her consciousness into its agonising rhythm.
Then lights appeared ahead, with same intense glow they had passed earlier. They were too bright; even with her eyes closed, they hurt.
The bus was slowing, though. They weren’t going to pass it like they had last time. In the harsh white, Clare could see the blood more clearly on Dorran’s skin and shirt. The vivid, angry red was made starker by the lack of colour in his face. He looked towards the lights with the quiet dread of someone on the edge of a cliff.
The bus went over a bump, bouncing Clare. She grit her teeth as the pain flared. Her vision flashed to black and came back slowly, a dizzying, sickening array of blurs and colours. She heard metal scraping. A gate, she thought. Then the bus slowed to a halt.
Dorran stood. He moved towards the bus’s door, grim lines ringing his mouth. Fingers brushed across Clare’s cheek. A caress to comfort or to say goodbye, she wasn’t sure.
Then the door opened, and Dorran stepped out. Through the light and pain, Clare was aware of approaching footsteps. The click of something that sounded like a gun being cocked. Then a man’s voice, thick with a country accent, gruff and cracked from age. “What’s your purpose here?”
“I need water.” Dorran’s voice was steady and moderated, but Clare could still hear how desperately tight it was. “I have clothes and blankets to trade.”
The other man broke into a crackling laugh. “We’re a shopping mall. Clothes are the last thing we need.”
“I… I don’t have anything else. Please. You can take as much of it as you want. I just… I need water. Whatever it takes.”
The man sighed. “Calm down, son. We’re not in the business of sending people away to die, no matter how little they have. Here.”
The bus rocked as weight moved into it. Then cold plastic touched Clare’s lips, and Dorran was whispering, “Drink, Clare.”
She opened her mouth. After craving water so badly, the fulfilment was shockingly unpleasant. The water stung the cracks in her throat and increased the taste of tacky saliva. Swallowing hurt. Water overflowed her lips, dripping down her cheek and into her hair. Dorran murmured apologies and used his sleeve to dab her dry. When he returned the water bottle, he kept the flow slower, so that she could manage it.
Feet crunched outside the bus. Clare forced open sore eyes. She had the impression of grey hair framing a pink face, surrounded by the overwhelming glow of industrial lights. The stranger held a rifle over the crook of his arm.
“She’s in a bad way, eh?” He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “How long have you been driving?”
“A while.” Dorran’s voice was subdued. He stayed focussed on Clare, supplying water in small mouthfuls, as quickly as she could handle. His back was to the strange man, and Clare could feel the uneasiness in his posture.
“Well.” The man took a breath and exhaled it in a gust. “You’d better come in for the night. You’ll probably be needing some food, as well, I’m guessing, since you didn’t offer that to trade.”
Dorran was silent for long enough that the man behind them started shifting his weight. “I would be grateful. But I don’t know what I could give you in return, if you don’t need clothes.”
“We’ll figure that out later. Like I said, we’re not much into the business of turning people away to die. At least this way, you can get some sleep where it’s safe. I find people are better problem solvers when they’re not dead on their feet.”
Chapter Nine
The headache had faded from an all-consuming tsunami to lapping waves at the back of her head. Everything was sore. But her mouth had some moisture in it, and her eyes no longer burned when she opened them.
She was in a small, dark room. An oil lamp sat nearby, turned to its lowest setting to conserve fuel, the glow so soft that Clare could only make out the edges of furniture. Some kind of bookcase. A table. What might have been an empty clothing rack. The floor was concrete, but a plush rug had been laid out in the room’s centre, its fibres ruffled from foot traffic. She was in the room’s corner, propped up on something soft.
Where am I? Where’s Dorran?
Panic pulsed through her veins. She couldn’t see him. Memories from the last time she’d been conscious began to drip back to her in confusing, disconnected scraps. They had arrived somewhere with bright lights. She remembered trying to swallow water and how painful it had been. Dorran had been afraid. He was almost never that frightened. She could remember the conflict in his eyes, the desperation that came from being backed into a corner, the uncertainty. She needed to find him. She needed to make sure he was safe.
Clare tried to sit up and gasped as her muscles burned. Then the shape underneath her—what she had thought was some kind of chair—shifted, and Clare swallowed a yelp.
“Shh, shh, it’s all r
ight, my darling. You’re safe.”
“Dorran?”
She tilted her head back. Dorran sat with his back propped into the room’s corner, a blanket draped around his shoulders. He held her snugly, one arm cradling her head and back, the other around her legs, holding her in his lap. The blanket had been tucked around her, cocooning her until she barely felt the cold.
He looked gaunt, the way he had been when he was sick. But he smiled at her. Clare’s panic began to recede. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. And you will be, too.” He slipped the arm out from under her legs and reached for the bottle of water next to them. They were on a mattress. A set of pillows was stacked beside them, along with a folded set of sheets.
Dorran held the bottle up for her. The thirst was no longer all-consuming, but Clare still drank. This time, her throat handled it better. She took as much as she thought she could without becoming sick. Dorran exhaled as he set aside the half-empty bottle.
“Where are we?” Clare asked.
“At one of the safe havens. We will be all right. For now, just rest.”
She was comfortable in Dorran’s arms. She’d noticed that before; no matter how he arranged her, they always seemed to fit together like two perfectly matched puzzle pieces. She was tempted to close her eyes and fall back to sleep, but instead, she stretched her legs to shake some life into herself. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but Dorran looked exhausted.
“You can put me down, if you’re tired.”
He pretended to consider that for a moment. “I can. But I will not.”
“All right.” She chuckled and rested her hand against a patch of bare skin at his shirt’s collar. The blanket slipped from around his shoulders, and she caught a glimpse of red underneath.
Clare frowned, memories falling back into place. He’d tried to find water in a house, but one of the monsters had been inside. She didn’t know how bad the injuries might be. “You’re hurt.”