Fast enough to get to Beth’s before sundown? Time was ticking away from them. Clare didn’t want to think about spending a night out on the road. They had packed for it—they had blankets, food, water, and even toiletries—but only as a precaution. Clare guessed it had been too much to hope that they could make the trip without any hitches. Even so, the idea of being outside at night, in the world that now belonged to hollows, didn’t sit well with her.
Then a new thought pressed into her mind, and she glanced at the fuel indicator. The little needle hovered over the lowest marker, just above the ominous E.
“We’ll need fuel,” Clare said, hating that her voice cracked.
“Mm. Any thoughts of where we could find some?”
She pictured the service station they had passed in the town and the grey creatures teeming in the streets. The hollows lurked in places where they could hide from the sun: abandoned houses, overturned cars, or the forest. If Clare could find a service station in a field or down a lonely stretch of highway, they might stand a chance. She unfurled the map and stared at it. The only service stations she knew about were part of towns or cities.
Dorran didn’t know the area and was relying on Clare to guide them. He kept his eyes on the road. She had the impression he was trying not to put her under pressure. In a strange way, that only made it worse.
Think! We can’t just keep driving and hope we stumble over a remote station. Where else could we get petrol? If we find an empty car off the side of the road, we might be able to syphon fuel out of its tank… but we’d be gambling on that.
The car would have to be parked somewhere remote enough that there were no hollows around. It would need to run on petrol, not diesel. And they would need some kind of pipe to pull it out of the tank.
Then Clare’s mind lit on the solution, and her stomach turned sour with dread. “Marnie’s. She lives on a farm. Remote. She keeps cartons of fuel in her shed for the equipment.”
On some of Clare’s visits, she’d helped Marnie with her chores. She could picture the shed and its clutter of knickknacks. Bright-red bottles were stacked on a shelf next to gardening supplies. That was the surest bet she could think of.
“It would be convenient…” Dorran spoke carefully. “It’s on our route. But, Clare, you know the risk. That she might still be there.”
That her remains might still be there. Maybe not a body, specifically, but blood. Torn clothes. Bone fragments that the hollows had failed to consume.
“Yes.” The map crumpled under Clare’s tightening fingers. “But we don’t need to go into the house. The fuel is in the shed. We can grab it and be out of there in less than a minute. It’s remote and surrounded by bare farmland, so there probably won’t be any hollows there when the forest offers security and more food.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.” Up ahead, a sign poked out of the side of the road, its arrow pointing towards an offshoot. Dorran slowed as they approached it and turned the car towards their new destination.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clare knew the road well. A big elm tree sat to the left, tilting so badly that it would need cutting down within a few years. That was what Marnie had always said. She’d been saying it for as long as Clare could remember, and each year, the tree grew older and tilted slightly more, yet still remained undisturbed.
Sentimentality. It needed to be killed, but no one wanted to do it. They all grew up driving past that tree. Sitting under it. Talking about how badly it leaned. It was like a friend.
The car bumped over copious potholes. The road saw a moderate amount of traffic from the rural properties flanking it, but never enough for the government to justify resealing it. Every time a pothole grew too bad to ignore, they would fill it, like putting a plaster on a scab that only got worse over time. Some of the potholes had been filled five or six times, their dark asphalt bowed into a bowl shape as they were gradually worn back down. By that point, there were almost more patch jobs than original road left.
The car’s engine rattled with every bounce, but it endured. Clare thought it might actually take them all the way to Beth’s and back as long as they could feed it enough fuel.
A dark shape appeared on the side of the road. Clare craned her neck to see it. Dorran’s expression darkened, and he took some of the power off the accelerator. “Ah. We’re passing it, after all.”
“Passing it?”
“My family’s caravan. This is the road we take to reach the Gould estate.”
“Oh.” Clare had been so wrapped up in her worries about Marnie’s property that she hadn’t even considered the significance it might have for Dorran. She pressed a hand over her mouth.
“I had wondered how far they might have gotten before—well. This is the answer.”
“Did you want to stop?”
“No. There is nothing for me here.”
The car slowed to a crawl as they neared the procession. At the front were six luxury cars. They were older models but maintained well. Even after the snow and rain, their black paint still seemed to glimmer. Behind it were two private busses and horse floats. The staff’s transport. The cars all had open doors. Madeline Morthorne had told Clare about the change. She’d said the air burned. They must have opened the doors to try to escape it. Except, there had been no escape for any of them. A
