Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three

by Coates, Darcy

  He was blanched white, his eyebrows pulled so low that he looked terrifying. He didn’t lift his attention from his work. “Look for medicine to aid clotting. It might be an injection or a gel.”

  Clare ran to the drawers at the other side of the room and started opening them. The surgery was well stocked. She riffled through endless gauze and implements then found a row of drawers full of cardboard packets. One in particular caught her eye. It showed a large, illustrated drop of blood with a medical cross where the light would catch. The packet read, Medical Coagulant.

  “This?”

  Dorran was at her side in a second. He took the packet out of her hand then snatched the rest out of the drawers. “Yes. Good. Turn the lights on.”

  At first, she didn’t understand. The room was already lit. Then she looked back towards the surgery table and realised he meant the massive, suspended bulbs. She hurried to them, feeling around them to find the switches. The lights burst on, washing the scene in a blindingly harsh light.

  Dorran opened packets with his teeth. Inside were syringes full of a clear liquid. He bent over Niall’s legs, pushing the needles into the deepest gashes. When he injected the liquid, the ooze of blood stopped.

  Johann stood at Niall’s head. He was shaking as he brushed the other man’s sweat-slicked hair away from his forehead. “Wait… Uh… You’re meant to use gloves…”

  “The thanites will take care of infection.” Dorran didn’t lift his head from his work. “We don’t need to treat him. We just need to keep him alive.”

  Clare forced herself to look at Niall. He’d been so quiet that she’d thought he was unconscious. It was a jolt to see him awake and aware. Blue lips were parted to take weak, gasping breaths. Bruise-like circles underlined his eyes, which were moving, alternately glancing down at his body then looking away again.

  “Hey, hey, focus on me,” Johann said. He kept brushing Niall’s hair back. “You’re going to be fine, buddy. We’ve got you.”

  Dorran moved quickly as he tried to stem the flow of blood. The vivid-red liquid already drenched the surgical bed, dribbling over its edge to drip onto the floor.

  Clare grabbed one of the unopened boxes and ripped the seal to access the needle. “Dorran, do I need to do anything special, or just inject it where there’s blood?”

  His glance was brief and searching. “Are you up for it?”

  “Yes.” She put conviction into her voice.

  “Inject it into the source of the flow. A quarter of a needle in each location, or more if it won’t stop bleeding.”

  Clare snapped the plastic cap off the needle and bent over Niall’s other side. She had to push blood-soaked scraps of clothes aside. Parts of the fabric had become embedded into his wounds. She tried to pull them free then remembered what Dorran had said. Infection and contamination didn’t matter—at least, not yet. All that counted was keeping him alive. She pushed the needle’s tip in and depressed its plunger.

  Dorran discarded another needle, pulled out a strip of gauze, and used it to tie off a large slice. “Does anyone here match Niall’s blood type?”

  Johann blinked sluggishly. “Yeah. Yeah—I do. I’m a global donor. I’ve got plenty more blood. Take it.”

  Dorran remained bent over Niall’s legs. “Can any of you perform a transfusion?”

  Clare clenched her teeth. I’ve spent weeks with him. Why didn’t I ever ask him to show me how?

  “I can,” Unathi said.

  Clare had almost forgotten she was present. She and Becca were near the room’s back. Becca continued to hold on to both the laptop and rebar, eyes round as she stared at Niall. She looked like she wanted to turn away but was physically incapable. Unathi stood tall, chin lifted, her expression firm.

  Dorran gave a short nod. “Start one. Directly into him. Don’t bother drawing into a bag first.”

  Unathi stepped towards the drawers and began hunting through them for needles and a plastic line.

  A sudden noise shook Clare. She looked up. The doors had done an admirable job of blocking out the hollows, something she was only grateful for. But now, a new noise entered the room—fingernails clattering across metal. She scanned the ceiling and saw a half dozen ducts.

  “Becca.” She swung towards the other woman, her pulse jumping. “You said the surgery was airtight.”

  “Ah—right. Hang on.” Becca slid down the wall, legs extended ahead of herself, and unfolded the laptop. She used the trackpad to click several times, then her fingers flew across the keypad. The tapping sounded so much like hollow chatter that uneasy prickles rose across Clare’s skin. She turned back to Niall, doing her best to focus on her work and ignore the growing sounds of danger converging on their location.

  Then a scraping noise rang around them, seemingly coming from all sides. The ducts above them turned as they closed off. A hollow one howled, the sound echoing through the blocked passageways.

  “Focus on me. Focus on me,” Johann whispered. “You’ll be fine, buddy.”

  Niall’s voice croaked. It sounded horribly faint. “I’m really sorry. I couldn’t save West.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Clare stirred. Her neck ached from the angle she’d rested it at. A low headache thrummed, the product of prolonged stress and mild dehydration.

  She sat up, and a surgeon’s gown slid to the tile floor. Someone must have draped it across her after she fell asleep. Dorran, she was pretty sure.

  Clare brushed her hair out of her face. Her fingers caught in flecks of dried blood. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but based on her stiffness and the fogginess around her brain, it had been at least a few hours.

  The surgery was almost perfectly silent. The only sound came from the steady breathing of her companions. Becca sat on the floor in the room’s corner, legs extended, fingers typing on the laptop that Clare had begun to think of as an extension of the woman. She made eye contact with Clare for a second, the glance empty and emotionless, then looked back at her screen. The code was a form of escape for her, a way to take control in a world that had suddenly left her feeling very powerless. Unathi stood in the corner near Becca, staring down at her laced hands.

  She looked in the other direction. Dorran sat with his back against the wall, bloodied hands limp in his lap. He looked wrecked. The efforts to save Niall had gone on for nearly six hours. He’d been active for all of them, constantly moving, barking instructions, even as exhaustion began to paint crevices across his face and slur his words. He’d only stopped twice, while trying to suture wounds closed, when his hands shook too badly to point the needle. He’d put down his equipment, stepped away, and closed his eyes for thirty seconds. That was the only break he’d allowed himself before returning to the table.

  Clare rose and picked up the surgical jacket to hold it around her shoulders like a blanket.

  Johann rested in a chair at the bed’s side. His legs were splayed awkwardly under himself, shoulders hunched, one arm and his forehead resting across the bed’s top, not far from Niall’s head. His skin had taken on an unnatural shade of grey. He’d given what must have been litres of blood and refused to let the pick line be taken out of his arm, even when Dorran began to grow concerned.

  Clare pulled the jacket tighter around herself. Her throat, too dry, ached. Niall lay on the bed, features slack. He looked more like a skeleton than a man, with his hands curled into claws over his chest, the freckles making an odd contrast against his off-colour skin.

  Johann lifted his head. His eyes were bleary, but the ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. His voice had developed a crackling rasp. “He’s asleep. That’s got to be a good thing, right?”

  “Right,” Clare agreed.

  Niall’s chest rose in barely perceptible movements. Clare hated how small and vulnerable he looked. She pulled his blanket slightly higher around his chin then retreated to Dorran.

  Dorran’s eyes followed her, though nothing else about him moved. Clare lowered herself to si
t at his side and leaned her head against his shoulder. She whispered so that she wouldn’t disturb the room’s other occupants. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Mm.” His lids fluttered. “Hope it’s enough.”

  “Come here.” Clare pulled him over so that his head rested in her lap. She ran her hands through his hair. Thick black locks that always looked a little messy were significantly worse after that day. She felt a warm sigh against her leg.

  “That feels nice.”

  “Sleep,” she whispered.

  “Wake me if Niall grows worse. Promise.”

  “Of course.” She kept her hands moving in soft caresses. It didn’t take long for him to go limp. Clare leaned her own head back against the wall. The emotions from the day were just starting to catch up to her, but she wasn’t ready to handle them.

  We saved Niall. But West is gone.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. There had been enough warning signs that the blocked filter was a trap; she should have recognised them sooner. If she had, Johann and West would have never gone outside. They wouldn’t have been cornered. The ventilation system might still be broken, but at least West would be alive.

  Movement disturbed Clare’s thoughts. She cracked her eyes open and saw Unathi had approached. She lowered herself gingerly to kneel in front of Clare. Her composure was back in place; she’d tied her dreadlocks into a bundle and smoothed her clothes. A spot of blood lingered on her shoulder, a memento from the night. She fixed Clare with a searching look over the top of her glasses. “What’s our next step?”

  The implication was clear. Clare had led them into the surgery room, and she was expected to lead them out, somehow. The ship is compromised. There were so many of them… dozens, maybe hundreds. How can we possibly reclaim the rest of the building? Clare shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “I only ask because you’ll know better than any of us. We have been in this room for close to ten hours. We will need water soon and food not long after.”

  The room had a sink in its back wall. Clare nodded to it. “Doesn’t that work?”

  “No.” To her surprise, Becca answered. The older woman remained bent over her laptop in the room’s corner, her voice seeming eerily fragile as she tapped. “The airlock protocol involves shutting off the water as well. The surgery was designed to be completely isolated in case of the emergence of an aggressive disease. Which is lucky for us.”

  “Very lucky.” Clare glanced at the closed air vents. That presented a new risk; with six of them in the room and no fresh air circulating, oxygen levels would begin to run low. She tucked a strand of hair behind Dorran’s ear as she frowned. “We’ll need to leave eventually. But they’ll know we’re here; they’ll be waiting outside the doors.”

  As soon as the words left her, she realised she was wrong. Even though the doors were thick, they couldn’t block out every trace of the hollows’ persistent clawing. Clare remembered the faint noises following her into sleep as she finally lay down, exhausted. Now, the hallway outside the door was silent. Scuttling bodies no longer echoed through the air vents.

  Becca’s shoulders hunched. “Um. Actually, maybe they won’t.”

  “What did you do?” Unathi asked.

  “Johann gave me the idea. In a roundabout way. He was really worried about the garden being killed by the smoke when the ventilation system broke. And I thought… the hollows are strong and good at healing themselves, but ultimately, they’re still human. They need to breathe. So I cut off the oxygen and pumped the ship full of carbon dioxide.”

  Unathi’s lips pursed, opened, then shut again. At last, she said, “You can do that?”

  “Well, yes. It was implemented as a way to put out fires. But by overriding the natural safety locks, I was able to drop our entire carbon dioxide load through the bunker’s ventilation system. That’s a huge security flaw, by the way. What if one of the citizens went rogue and hacked into the system to poison the rest of the ship? We might not even know until it was too late.”

  “Thanks.” Unathi’s tone was dry. “I’ll pass that onto the team in charge of research and development.”

  “Sorry,” Becca mumbled.

  “Why didn’t you raise this with me first? What if the gas got into our room? You could have killed us.”

  “Well, I was pretty sure it would work, and the room really is airtight, and besides, everyone was busy helping Niall… you know I’m not good with blood. So I figured I’d do what I was good at, which includes maintaining the ship’s life support systems. Though I guess I did the opposite of that, didn’t I?” She broke into feeble laughter. When no one else joined in, the sound quickly petered into silence. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be!” Clare had to fight to keep her voice to a whisper. “That’s incredible, Becca. Will the hollows all be dead?”

  “They should be.” She turned her laptop to face them. The screen was open to a security camera looking down a hallway. Crumpled shapes were visible. It took Clare a beat to recognise a three-jointed arm. Becca pressed a button, and the view changed to a different hallway, displaying a similar scene. Everywhere she looked, Clare saw dead hollows.

  “It really worked,” she murmured.

  Becca looked pleased for a second, then her smile faded. “I’ll need to flush clean air through the system before we can leave the surgery.”

  “How long will that take?” Unathi asked.

  “An hour.”

  “Can we begin now?”

  “It should be safe.” Becca clicked through the screens again. “I’ve been watching them. I haven’t seen any movement in a while.”

  “Good,” Dorran mumbled. “Want a shower. Want a proper bed.”

  Clare pressed a hand over his eyes. “Shh, you’re supposed to be asleep.”

  Becca returned to typing. Her shoulders remained hunched, but Clare thought she looked brighter than she had before.

  Unathi folded her arms, her gaze directionless. Clare didn’t like the melancholy in her features and cleared her throat. “We were lucky the surgery was so well stocked.”

  She shrugged. “We never thought we would actually use it. This test run was considered so relatively safe that the surgery and the presence of a doctor was to please the insurance company and legal team more than anything. If it had been left up to me, it would be minimally stocked. But Niall was given his own operating budget and maximised it. Theoretically, any unused purchases could be used as starting stock for the official launch. No one else believed Niall was anything except insurance pacification.” She chuckled. “West and Johann used to joke about visiting him for mosquito bites and splinter removals. Despite that, he always took his responsibility seriously. Thank goodness. It’s probably what saved his life.”

  Clare glanced at the small man on the table. He’d admitted he had never been the best in his class. He’d seemed overwhelmed by the position as the bunker’s doctor. But Unathi was right: despite his inexperience, he’d never shown any sign of shirking his responsibility.

  The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. In the new world, he would be one of the very few doctors left. His knowledge would be invaluable, no matter how untried he was.

  Time passed slowly. Despite his exhaustion, Dorran slept fitfully. Whenever he seemed to be dipping towards deeper sleep, he jolted awake, first glancing up at Clare then towards the surgery table, before finally lowering his head and closing his eyes again.

  Niall didn’t stir. Clare kept watch over him as best she could from her position on the floor. The harsh surgery lights had been turned off, allowing more natural shadows to fall over him. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. It was dust dry.

  “The air out there should be breathable now.” Becca stretched, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. “I can unlock the doors any time. Just say the word.”

  Her companions were all staring warily at the door, and she thought the same question must be running through their minds: Is it really safe
out there?

  She stroked Dorran’s head a final time then gently eased him off her lap. “The rest of you stay here. I’ll have a look around, make sure there are no more living hollows, and bring back some water and food.”

  Dorran pushed himself to sit up, blinking against the light. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Not this time.” She found his hand and squeezed it. “You should stay in case Niall needs you.”

  He frowned through his tiredness. “Don’t want you out there alone.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Johann said. He rolled off his seat and shambled towards where they had dropped their weapons near the door. “I figure I’ve got the measure of this monster bashing business by now.”

  “I can join you as well.” Unathi gave Clare a quick nod. “I was very little use last night. At least I can provide some assistance now.”

  “Very well.” Dorran sighed, though he still looked uneasy. “Don’t stray too far from the surgery. Yell if there are any problems.”

  She kissed his cheek. “We’ll be fine. See you soon.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Oh,” Clare said.

  Becca had retracted the surgery’s doors. As the metal drew back into the walls, a small cascade of corpses tumbled into the room.

  The hollows had spent their last moments clawing at the surgery’s doors. There were at least thirty of them, and they had piled on top of one another as they hunted for an advantage. In death, they created a blockade. Clare scanned the pile, searching for any sign of twitching limbs or swivelling eyes, but they were lifeless.

  “Ugly things,” Johann grunted. He stepped forward and applied his boot to the bodies, shoving them back into the hallway. They fell stiffly, hands held ahead of themselves, necks twisted back, and mouths open in a representation of their final breath. “What’re we going to do with them?”

  “They’ll need to be disposed of,” Unathi said. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s going to be a monumental task to carry them back above ground.”