They had to leap over a cascade of rotting fruit to escape the closed-off market street. On the main road, cars became a hazard. They had to split up to weave between the vehicles. Guttural chattering followed them. Two cars had collided ahead, hedging Clare in, and she leapt onto the bonnets to slide over. Dorran reconverged with her. The hollow thudded into a car behind them, and Clare clenched her teeth as nails scraped over metal.
Up ahead, the blue Helexis sign loomed out of the sky. Two blocks away. A stitch was forming in Clare’s side as she struggled to draw air through the wet mask. She could make it two blocks. They were close.
Close to what?
She tried not to obsess over the thought, but it was the only thing her mind could focus on. Helexis Tower might be their salvation, but it could just as easily be an abandoned building. A locked door. Or worst of all, a tower full of nothing but hundreds of closed doors, all holding a single hollow impatiently scrabbling to be let out.
Stop thinking that. It’s too late to go anywhere else. Just get to the tower. Beth had a purpose in sending you there.
In the desperate part of her mind, she imagined Beth pulling the tower doors open and beckoning her inside. She tried to tell herself it was a fantasy, that she couldn’t believe Beth was still alive, and that she was setting herself up for disappointment, but the idea stuck in her mind like a fiery beacon, bright and tantalising.
They were a block closer, and the sidewalks were clear. To their right, boutique clothing stores sported immense display windows. Clare gasped as something hit the glass. Two hollows pressed against the window. Fractures already ran across the surface from repeated beatings.
Keep running. Don’t look back.
The distinctive slap-scrape-slap noise was now mixed with other pounding feet. She couldn’t see them, but at least half a dozen of the creatures had joined in the pursuit. Some gaits were staggering. Others were long and gaining.
One block. Just one block.
She kept her eyes switching between the road under her feet and the blue letters marking their destination. Breathing was painful. A dry, tacky film was developing in her throat.
They rounded the final corner. Only a four-lane road separated them from Helexis Tower. The blue letters shimmered high above them. Her eyes followed the building’s length. It was dark stone, built within the last ten years and designed to be minimalistic. Hundreds of large, blank windows were the only relief in the smooth walls. Buried in the tangle of stylised architecture and classical buildings, it was plain enough to avoid almost all attention. Clare could have walked past it a hundred times without giving it a second look.
Then her gaze reached the juncture where the building connected with the sidewalk, and Clare choked on her own breath. Before, she’d marvelled at how empty the city was. She’d thought that perhaps the quietness had passed over it while most people were still inside their buildings, or that the hollows had been killing each other.
Now, she saw she’d been wrong. The city wasn’t empty. The hollows weren’t dead. They had just been distracted.
The tower’s base teemed like a beehive. Thousands of bodies pressed together, climbing each other, scrambling to reach the stone walls. The entire lower floor had been engulphed. An eerie noise rose from the swarm. Hands patting stone. Hands patting flesh. Rasping breaths, so many that they merged into an unending whirr.
Clare’s feet faltered. She stared at the tangle, her mind freezing as shock and panic swallowed it. The nearest hollows, the ones on the fringe, turned. Eyes flashed. Jaws widened.
Dorran pulled on her hand, dragging her to the side, towards one of the shops. Clare felt the tug of fingernails snatching at her jacket as the hollow from the telephone box caught up to them. The shock got her moving. She matched Dorran’s pace as they raced towards one of the window displays. It had been a high-end accessories store, full of mannequins brandishing purses that had probably cost more than Clare’s car. Dorran aimed for the window and twisted his body as he neared it. His shoulder hit first. A jangling crack rose from the glass as it shattered. Clare followed in Dorran’s wake, relying on the layers of clothes and the mask to protect her from the razor-sharp edges.
She landed on the platform inside the window and staggered. Dorran, still holding her hand, pulled her close to keep her upright. He reached for the nearest mannequin and wrenched off its arm. Its wig went flying as it tumbled back. Dorran turned and swung the limb like a club. The hollow was already halfway through the hole he’d created. The impact was fierce enough to crack the ceramic arm and force the hollow into the shards of glass still protruding from the window’s frame.
A glut of blood spilt from the hollow’s face. Her business jacket trembled as she tried to squirm free, and fresh blood ran from where a jagged piece of glass cut through her cheek. Dorran lifted the ceramic again, but he didn’t need to use it. As the woman slid free from the glass, she crumbled to the ground, lifeless. Clare could guess what had happened. The cranium bones were growing out of control through the empty eye socket. They had probably already been putting pressure on the brain, and the impact had been enough to sever something important.
Dorran looked down at the mannequin’s limb, crackled and marred with a splatter of red, then dropped it. He
