by Darcy Coates
Hex barely spared him a glance. She moved them on, giving the truck a smaller berth than Clare wanted. Then they were back into a patch of open ground, facing a covered area filled with more containers.
A figure darted out of the shelter and sprinted across the concrete, its teeth overgrown so that its canines pierced through its lips. It was on the group in less than a second. The two closest guards stepped forward, and with a pair of muffled whicks, the hollow fell dead to the ground.
Hex showed no reaction. Her focus was on the covered area. Screams ran from the dock, some close, some distant, bouncing from a dozen directions. Hex motioned, and the three foremost guards turned on their flashlights. Cool yellow beams cut into the mist and highlighted circles across the containers.
They were a mosaic of colours; iron reds, dull greys, faded greens, and every shade of blue. Hex wove them between the stacks, focussed on the dark-blue specimens, until the torches could pick up the logo on the side or the identification number painted on the corner. Two more streaks of motion came from behind them. Clare felt it before she heard it. She turned, hand moving towards the knife in her belt, but the guards reacted first. The closest hollow dropped, its head cleaved in two. The second one shied back, jaws working, a hissing, angry chatter bubbling out of it.
One of the guards switched her pose, moving her weapon-bearing arm behind herself and extending her non-dominant hand. She pulled her sleeve back to expose a strip of skin. The hollow responded to the offer, lunging forward again. The creature made it to within a foot of her before being cleaved down beside its companion.
Clare released a held breath and pulled the scarf a little tighter around her throat. The group resumed moving. Hex held her weapon, a wickedly sharp cleaver, in one hand and a torch in the other. With each step, the light swept across the floor, across the ceiling, and across the shipping containers in a smooth arc. It caught on dozens of round, glinting eyes. The hollows perched all around them, clinging to the walls and the metal bars supporting the roof.
They turned a corner, moving even deeper into the maze. The rows of containers were endless. They found one with the right logo, but the wrong numbers. They moved onwards. A hollow pushed his way out from a crevice, trying to slink towards the group without being seen. It was quickly dispatched. They moved on.
The claustrophobia was grinding on Clare. The damp air made her feel as though she were drowning. The narrow passageways. The muffled chattering that had haunted her nightmares. The grinding tension. She was ready to snap.
Then Hex pulled them to a halt. They had found another shipping container with the same logo. The lights danced over the number sequence. Clare sucked in a sharp breath. It ended in 4148.
Hex waved two of the movers forward. The massive metal doors groaned painfully as they swung open. A gust of cold, stale air washed over them. The three torch beams intersected as they bobbed over the crate’s contents. Bright-red drums with silver lids were stacked inside.
Hex turned back to them. She didn’t speak, but her grin was all Clare needed to see. They had what they’d come for.
Chapter Eighteen
The guards adjusted themselves into a semi-circle, allowing the movers inside the shipping container. Clare stepped forward with the others, hyper aware of Dorran’s eyes on her as she passed inside. The metal drums came up to Clare’s waist and were heavier than she was. She joined another woman in trying to pull one out. The barrel scraped against the metal floor. Clare grimaced at the noise. Some of the other movers were debating in quiet voices, trying to find the best way to shift the barrels.
Hex leapt inside the container, beckoning them together. “There’s no way to do it silently. Just tip them over and roll them out.”
Clare nodded, then she and her companion pulled their barrel onto its side. Even with both of them trying to brace it, the impact upon metal created a horrific ringing noise. More bangs came from around her as more barrels were tipped. The container shuddered with each one, jangling Clare’s teeth and making her palms sweat. She tried to push the barrel on her own. It was too heavy. The woman who had helped her tip it bent at her side, shoving, and between the two of them, they rolled the barrel out of the container.
Hex lit a flare. Bright-red hissing sparks exploded out of its end as she tossed it onto the ground to mark the location. They moved back towards the outdoors area, through the maze of containers. The passageway was so narrow that they had to travel in pairs, each set bearing a barrel and with a guard flanking them. Clare could no longer watch for threats. All of her attention had to be split between the barrel under her hands and the hunched shoulders of the movers ahead of her.
The barrels were hard to get moving, but once they began to roll, the challenge became keeping them under control. If the pair ahead of Clare began to slow down, she had to slap her hands on top of the barrel, simply trying to stop its momentum before it bowled into them. Direction changes were even worse. They had to grind to a halt and painstakingly twist the container to face the direction they wanted before beginning to push again.
Hex seemed to understand the challenges. There was no pressure to move faster. All she cared about was keeping them grouped together, which meant frequent stops to let the teams at the rear catch up.
The guards lashed out on either side with growing frequency. The muffled whick noise of a cleaved head or the thwack of a pierced skull floated through the fog like the beats of a deranged song. The increased noise was calling creatures out of every corner of the shipping yard, but Clare barely saw what they were fighting. All she had the focus for was the barrels and sporadic glances towards Dorran to make sure he was safe. Occasionally, she saw him strike at the creatures, efficient and steady, and pride bloomed through her.
Hex dropped flares at intervals to ward off the shier monsters. When Clare had to slow to a halt to allow teams behind to catch up, she threw a glance over her shoulder. A line of red and green lights marked the way back to the shipping container like a trail of Christmas breadcrumbs.
The effort, not only of keeping the fuel containers rolling, but of slowing and adjusting their direction, left Clare panting. The briny air stuck to her face and painted strands of hair against her forehead. Then, up ahead, a blocky shape appeared through the fog. The truck.
A flash of metal pulled Clare’s eye up. She could just barely make out Charlene, in position on top of her stack of containers, rifle ready. In the mist, she looked more shadow than human.
The truck’s lights turned on as one of guards opened the back shutter. A ramp hit the concrete, wide enough to accommodate the barrels. The first team tried to push theirs up the slope, but even with momentum, they couldn’t get it more than halfway up. The barrel surged back down, and voices muttered warnings as multiple hands came in to grind it back to a halt.
Hex beckoned them in. Her instructions were stage whispers. “Movers, huddle close to the truck. Guards, perimeter. Jake, Dorran, Stephan, get these barrels up.”
She had called on the three largest men. They clustered around the container and together worked it up the ramp in agonizing inches. Hex didn’t seem bothered that it was slow to load. Face paint running off her cheeks, she simply faced the outside world, cleaver swinging in arcs at her side, eyes narrowed as she scanned the mist.
More hollows came for them. The guards moved quickly, cutting them down in one or two sharp blows before stepping back. The grind of barrels climbing the ramp rang on, and by the time the last one was thudded upright inside the truck, a pattern of dead hollows had been left in a semi-circle around them.
The men jumped down from the truck, and Dorran moved to Clare’s side. Perspiration and condensation mingled on his face, dripping off his nose and chin and washing away flecks of dark hollow blood.
“You okay?” Clare kept her voice to a whisper. “How’s your arm?”
“Fine.” He flexed it. “Took some painkillers earlier. They’re helping.”
Hex, still breathing heav
ily, moved through the guards, asking each one individually, “Are you hurt?”
Each answered with “no” or a shaken head. Then she did the same with the movers, asking each of them if they were still fit to go on a second retrieval. They all were. Hex moved back to the front of the group. “All right. Let’s go.”
They formed the same pattern as the first trip. Clare clumped with the other movers, with Alden beside her. Dorran had arranged himself so that he was the nearest guard to her right. Hex led, using hand signals instead of words. They followed the trail of flares.
Clare’s clothes stuck to her back, heavy with sweat and condensation. Every exhale put out a cloud that blended into the mist. The flares highlighted her companions’ faces in cycling colours; a glaze of red would pass across their features, then shadows returned, to be relieved by a wash of sickly green.
The attacks were more frequent than on their first trip. The noise and lights had attracted hollows from throughout the shipping yard. Most chose to bide their time, lurking in narrow crevices and looming over them from perches on the concrete building and container stacks. Their jaws would open as the group passed. Hisses and barely audible chatters rose and dropped in waves. One or two would lunge forward at a time, over-eager, and were quickly knocked down.
Then they were back into the sheltered area, the claustrophobic hallways painted in harsh glowing shades. A hollow howled. Tapping fingers and scabbed feet pounded across the containers and metal walls. The group turned the corner and faced their container. Hex held them back from entering, one hand raised as the flashlights turned to focus inside the container. Two hollows had crept inside while they were gone. The creatures, hairless and their jaws open in silent screams, scuttled out of the light. Four members of the guard team moved in to dispatch them then stepped back out to allow the movers in.
Clare held her breath as she approached one of the fuel drums. The dead hollows had been left where they fell, one with its skull cracked in half like an egg. Its fingers still twitched. She tried not to look at it as she helped a man overturn a barrel and roll it outside.
They made it back to the open concrete area, but this time, Clare had trouble keeping her focus on the barrel. Faces peered out from every shadowed area. Their eyes glittered in the light of the flares, soulless and mindless. There were hundreds, crammed into every area, climbing each other in their eagerness to watch the humans.
The guards were becoming twitchy. They had been in the shipyard for nearly an hour. The constant alertness and energy required had to be wearing on them, like it was with Clare. A sense of nausea grew as she worked with her teammate to manoeuvre their barrel. The chattering swelled, almost chantlike. Coming from every direction, it was practically deafening.
Hex held her fist up. Clare struggled to drag her barrel to a halt, then she lifted her head, breathing heavily. She thought they had to be midway between the shipping container and the truck.
They were encircled. Bony, twisted bodies blocked their path ahead. The nearest one reared its head back, a glob of saliva dripping onto the concrete, its body lit by the flares.
“Defend,” Hex barked.
It was the loudest noise she’d made since arriving at the shipping yard. Clare blinked, her mind still fogged by the exertion and the stress.
Then her companion grabbed her arm and yanked her towards Hex. She reached out for their barrel. It felt wrong to leave it behind, but then she saw that everyone else was abandoning their posts, as well.
Defend. That’s the command. We’re about to be swarmed.
She stumbled forward, tripping over her own feet, but hands were on her back—Dorran’s, she thought—pushing her into the group of movers clustered behind Hex.
The guards turned, backing up, creating a tight circle around them. Body heat radiated over her, and damp breaths filled her ears as the guards stood shoulder to shoulder. Dorran was positioned immediately ahead of her, his back to her, his too-long hair framed by the flare’s light.
They made their formation just in time. Hollows lurched forward. Not just one or two at a time, but in the dozens. Long arms grasped towards them. Clare flinched as a spray of blood speckled her cheek. A limb dropped near her feet, still spasming.
The noise was horrific. Screams and wails. Noises of hunger, anger, and boiling frustration. Wet hacking sounds split through the cries.
Clare felt for the knife at her side and drew it. Most of the other movers had their own weapons at the ready.
She couldn’t see much of the fray, just the backs surrounding her—flexing muscles, arms rising and falling as the hollows bobbed around them. Dorran had to be tired, but he fought with harsh precision. Efficient. Unyielding.
Blood began to run across the ground, seeping towards Clare’s feet. She was too tightly packed to avoid it. Someone behind her seemed to be hyperventilating. The screams and howls grew louder. The claustrophobia was worse. An impulse to run hit Clare hard. She turned her head, looking for a way out, and her stomach lurched as she realised just how surrounded they were.
They were an island in a sea of hollows. Elongated limbs, skeletal heads, flashing eyes. They spread as far as Clare could see. There was nowhere to escape to. No way out.
“Hold your formation!” Hex yelled. Clare could barely hear her above the cacophony.
She swallowed, damp hands clutching the knife. She said it will pass. She said we just have to hold out long enough.
It felt like a lie. There were too many creatures surrounding them. Too many teeth. Not enough guards. Something large moved through the crowd. At least ten feet tall, it loomed above the other hollows. Limbs swivelled in the low light. So many limbs. A human head perched on top of the expanded torso. Every few inches, a new pair of arms sprouted. Like some kind of deformed insect, each limb bearing three or four joints. Snapping forward like a crab’s claws, it drew closer.
One of the guards near Clare fell. The many-armed thing had caught his ankle and dragged him down. He screamed as the hollows descended on him, teeth fastening over him.
“Reform the line!” Hex shouted. She stepped backwards, out of her space among the guards, to join the movers. Clare felt a stab of something between anger and panic. Hex was retreating. She had lied. There was no way out.
But Hex didn’t stay among the movers. She pushed around them, moving along the narrow gap between the movers and the guards to reach the place the man had fallen from. Then she lunged out, back into the fray.
Clare couldn’t see what was happening. She could only hear it: Hex, gasping, the cleaver stabbing out again and again and again. The guards on either side shuffled forward, joining her, and a moment later Hex was retreating back into the protected circle. She bent double, dragging the fallen guard’s body.
Hex dropped him among the movers, where he lay curled on the ground. He held his arms in a cross in front of his face, shaking, blood and fluids dripping over him. The armour on his arms and legs were in tatters.
Alden dragged his scarf off as he knelt at the man’s side, examined him, then pressed the fabric to a wound on his throat.
Clare wanted to help, but there was no room for her to reach him. The guard’s circle had contracted with one of their number missing. She was being jostled in front and from behind.
“Watch out for the big one,” Hex called. “He goes for your ankles.”
The many-armed hollow had retreated a few paces. It moved through the swarm, its swollen jaw working, arms twitching erratically. Two of them had been turned to bleeding stumps. There were many more to replace them. It let its smaller brethren swarm forward while it waited, watching, looking for a weak spot along the line.
They can’t keep this up.
The breathing around her had devolved to ragged gasps. Dorran was starting to lose focus. His movements were still sharp, but his reactions were growing delayed.
“Hold your positions!” Hex yelled.
The many-limbed one moved forward again. Arms shot out, ai
ming for the man to Dorran’s left. He countered, only to have his wrist caught by another hand.
Dorran swiped out to cut his neighbour free. He severed the hollow’s arm, but three more hands had snaked out where he couldn’t see them. They fastened on his scarf, his shoulder, and his head, dragging him forward, pulling him into the horde.
No. Clare moved before her mind could catch up. She darted into the gap Dorran had left, knife held at the ready, hunting for human skin among the thrashing sea of grey.
“Hold!” Hex’s scream contained panic. The many-limbed creature hadn’t stopped with Dorran. It had created a gap in the wall of guards and grabbed at individuals indiscriminately. Men and woman screamed as they were pulled to the ground, the circle picked apart, the movers exposed.
Clare didn’t stop to watch. She was focussed on the man ahead of her. Dorran struggled to right himself, thrashing under the weight of bodies and arms pinning him to the ground. He was exhausted and disoriented.
Clare’s knife sank into clammy flesh. A smaller hollow had been scrabbling to get through Dorran’s leg guard, and it turned to hiss at Clare. She pulled the knife out of its back and sliced through its eye. It twitched then fell, sliding off Clare’s blade as she turned the weapon on the next hollow.
They were at her back, clawing at her. She pressed forward to free Dorran, stabbing and slashing at every angle.
Cracking noises pierced the air. Hollows dropped as the snipers fired on them. Hex was yelling, trying to regain order, but the screams and frantic interjections drowned her out.
Clare cut into a hollow’s head, stabbing through its temple, and struggled to get her knife free. Dorran grabbed her arm, his breath hot on her cheek. “Back. Back to the group.”
She found his hand and pulled, dragging him with her. She couldn’t see through the ocean of limbs. The chattering was at a deafening pitch, pierced by the pop of gunfire and the human screams.