Clare kept her speed steady. She wanted to be out of the smothering trees, but she also knew she needed to be careful. Another crash, or even becoming caught in a pothole or snagged on a fallen branch, could be fatal. Especially as the distance between them and Winterbourne, their only safe haven, grew.
As far as Clare could tell, they were the first people to drive along the road since the world had collapsed. The endless storms and melting snows had left debris. Clare drove over the smaller branches carefully. Several larger branches lay to the side of the road, and she coaxed the car around them. Twice, streams of water flowed over their path. Water sprayed in graceful arcs outside their windows, but the car held together.
The headlights picked up a shape in the road, and Clare slowed again. A thick branch blocked their path.
Dorran opened his eyes as the car eased to a halt. “Stay here.”
“No.” She pushed him back into his seat. “You’re hurt. This one is mine.”
“I—”
“No arguments. Sit tight.”
She opened her door, motor still running, and slipped outside. Her boots splashed in the water trickling across the road. Her legs were damp from the saturated car seat, and as a wind nipped around her, gooseflesh rose over her skin. Clare strode through the coiling mist, her ears searching for noise. Faint dripping noises were the only respite from the forest’s eerie silence. She grasped the branch’s ragged end and pulled.
She’d left her door open, and a sickly yellow light flooded through the car. It washed over Dorran, painting shadows across his face and reflecting off his eyes. He sat forward in his seat, alert, his good hand resting on the door handle. Clare shot him a smile that was more confident than she felt.
Behind her, a twig snapped. Dorran’s eyes tightened. Her heart thundered as she dragged the branch to the side, moving it just far enough for the car to slip around, then dashed back to the car. She leapt inside and slammed the door, heart hammering and hands shaking as she released the handbrake and let the car roll forward. “There. No problem.”
Dorran slowly relaxed back. His head turned as they passed the branch, and Clare followed his eyes to see a mangled child creeping out of the forest’s edge. It used its arms to drag itself forward, a multitude of bones springing from its twisted legs like roots on a fallen tree. Its jaw worked furiously, spilling froth, as it crawled through the debris in their wake.
Just how many of them are there?
She kept her focus on the road as they passed through Banksy Forest. She’d driven the path countless times before, but everything looked different that day. She recognised some of the bends, but it felt as though the world had aged a decade in the past few weeks.
Then up ahead, a circle of natural light broke through the gloom. The car coasted out of the forest’s boundary. As the pines receded behind them, the landscape was taken over by gentle, rolling hills and sparse trees.
She drove on until the forest was nothing but a band of darkness in the rearview mirror, then asked, “Do you think it’s safe to stop for a moment?”
“Yes, it should be.” He tilted his head. “Is something—”
She put the car in park then clambered over the divider to reach Dorran. She kissed his lips, his throat, his forehead, every part of him she could reach. He was salty from the drying sweat but she didn’t care. She thought she could hold him and kiss him for the rest of her life and never do anything else.
Dorran began to laugh in between kissing her back. “Oh, Clare.”
“I’m so glad you’re still here.” She ran her hands through his hair, pushing it away from his face. “Back there—the hollows—”
“Shh.” She could feel him smiling against her neck. “You don’t need to worry; I will not be leaving you.”
She kissed him a final time, lingering over his lips, not wanting to pull away. When she did, she opened the first aid kit between them and sifted through the contents. “Let me have a look at your hand.”
“It will be fine. Time is pressing; you should keep driving.”
She frowned as she pulled a bottle out of the kit and tried to read the label. “No, this is important. Are these the painkillers?”
He nodded, and Clare tipped two of the tablets out and balanced them on the dashboard. She then kicked open her door and rounded the car to find water and a cup.
The water cartons, sheltered inside the boot, were still full of ice. Enough had melted that she could pour out a cup for Dorran, which she brought to him. He swallowed the tablets and washed them down. “Thank you. That will be fine for now.”
Clare climbed back into her seat and shuffled around to face him. “Not yet. Let me see it.”
His good hand rested protectively over the swaddled wrist, and Clare had to lift her eyebrows before he removed it. She picked at the edges of the jacket, and Dorran flinched as she peeled the fabric away from his wrist. Moving carefully, she tugged the bloodied sleeve up his arm to get it clear of the wound. The bite seemed to have landed half on skin, half on the glove. She could see punctures from molars, already filling with blood again.
“Is it okay if I take the glove off?”
He did it himself, moving faster than Clare would have, and clenched his jaw as the leather dragged over damaged skin. Clare brushed stray hair out of her face and bent lower to check the damage. Four teeth had punctured the skin, and they had sunk in deeply. Red bruising showed where the rest of the jaw had failed to cut through the glove.
“Okay.” She blinked furiously, trying to keep her emotions in check as she struggled to grasp what needed
