“Yes. I catch them on the radio sometimes, talking to each other. Not the people I would have expected. No government. No military. From what I can figure out, those kinds of people are pretty much gone. Whatever happened started in large cities first. They were overrun before they even realised there was a problem… before they could even start evacuating…” She took a shuddering breath. “Some of the prepper types survived. People who lived out in the wilderness. People who had their own bunkers. But they’re dropping one by one, and I’m hearing fewer broadcasts each day. The preppers take too many risks. They try to push their luck, to venture outside, to fight back.”
“The preppers can’t be the only people out there. Are there any other survivors?”
“Mostly? People who are hiding. Do you understand what I’m saying, sweetheart? The heroes are dying. If you want to survive, don’t take risks. You have a good thing where you are now. Stay there. Weather it out. We might be able to meet up afterwards.”
“Afterwards?”
“It’s got to end at some point, somehow. That’s what people are saying. Either we find a way to kill them effectively, or they starve.”
Or humanity dies out. Clare tried not to follow that third option. “Are they capable of starving?”
“No one knows. They’re hard to kill. You can hurt them—cut them open, bash parts of their heads in, whatever—but they’ll just keep walking for days afterwards. One man talked about a hollow he caught in his barn. He chopped it in half at its waist, he said, and it just kept dragging itself along the ground. After three days, its spine had started to grow… well, he described it as little claws. It was sprouting crab-like legs out of its back and was using those to scuttle around faster. He killed it properly before it grew anything else.”
Clare remembered the hollows she’d seen. They were monstrous, contorted beyond what a person should ever have to endure. Skin grew. Bones grew. They broke out of their confines, and somehow, the creatures neither felt pain nor collapsed from infection.
Beth chuckled. “They make us humans look awfully fragile by comparison.”
“They sure do.”
“Here’s everything I know about them. They’re like animals. They’re hungry, but they still have some kind of survival instinct. They don’t like light or fire, and they’ll hide if they think you’re a threat. So if you ever get trapped, make a lot of noise and use light to chase them away. But they won’t stay away for long, so safety—somewhere they can’t get to—is always your first priority.”
They won’t stay away for long. Clare knew that firsthand from her time in the forest. The hunger was always pushing them. Eventually, it won over caution. They would never give up until they ate.
“They don’t fight each other,” Beth continued. “But they don’t work together, either, thank heaven. They’ll eat another hollow if it’s already dead, but they always prefer warm-blooded things. Humans or animals.”
“They can’t infect you, can they?” Clare tried not to stare at the bandages on her wrist.
“People say they can’t. It’s not like a virus. It’s… I have no idea. Some people say leaking radiation. That hundreds of nuclear bombs went off without anyone realising, and that’s what’s deforming us.”
“But radiation would kill you long before anything like this happened.”
“That’s what I mean about the theories. Most of them are half plausible, but none really make complete sense. Aliens. Government experiments gone wrong. Some people say this is the rapture, except good people seem to be dying alongside the bad. But whatever it is, they agree that you have to be exposed to something to be affected. No one is immune; nobody’s come walking out of a city that was affected. If you come in contact with it, you become a hollow.”
Clare’s heart skipped a beat. “Whatever caused this… is it still out there? Could it change us, as well?”
The radio was silent for a moment. Clare stared at it, fixated, and felt Dorran lean in closer, as well.
“I don’t know.” Beth sounded tired. “I haven’t heard any stories of people surviving the event only to turn monstrous afterwards. But people are disappearing. Their radios just go silent. Are the hollows finally getting them? Infection, dehydration? Or are they changing too? I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know how to keep you safe.”
Clare thought back to the two weeks she’d spent in Winterbourne. As far as she could ascertain, the stillness event had happened shortly before she entered Banksy Forest on her last day of freedom. She’d survived unscathed. But Winterbourne’s owner, Madeline Morthorne, along with her entourage of staff and maids, had all succumbed to the stillness no more than an hour outside the same forest.
The woman had been deranged, but she’d kept at least part of her mind from before the change. When Clare had asked her what the experience had been like, she’d said the air had turned sour. “Oh, it burned when it was swallowed.”
“Keep your air-filtration unit running no matter what. Whatever this is, I think it’s in the air. Your bunker’s filter might be the only reason you’re safe.”
“I’m all right here. I’m more worried about you.”
“We think…” Clare glanced at Dorran. His expression was grim. “Maybe this thing was targeted. You said it started in cities before spreading to rural areas. It’s like it was focussed on where people live. This house is in the middle of the forest, hours from any other kind of habitation. We think that might be why it’s safe here.”
“I hope so.” Beth’s voice sounded ragged. When she paused, Clare could hear the scratching sound again. This time, it was accompanied by a metallic banging. It sounded like some kind of lid being lifted and dropped repeatedly. “I need to go now. I’ll talk to you again soon, okay? Tomorrow, at the same time?”
“Those hollows outside your bunker…”
“They’ll give up after a couple of hours. They always do.”
“They don’t have any way to get in, do they?”
“Not right now. Goodbye, Clare. I love you.”
Clare opened her mouth to say it back, but the radio clicked off before she could. She sat back, blinking at tears, still staring at the little black box clasped between her hands.
Chapter Three
Clare held the radio for several minutes after it went dead. Her emotions rose like a tide, growing overwhelming. There was joy. Beth was alive and, for the moment, safe. There was hope. But dread and fear were growing, too, and they were swallowing the small patches of happiness until all Clare could feel was horror.
Dorran pulled his chair around to sit beside her, but he didn’t try to talk. He seemed to understand that Clare needed time to process what she’d heard. She pictured Beth, sitting in the lightless, lonely room, trying her hardest to stay silent for the hours it would take for the hollows to stop scrabbling at her door. I can’t just leave her there.
But Beth had been vehement. Hollows were everywhere. They were ravenous and hard to kill. Clare and Dorran had been spared the worst of them thanks to their location, but even then, they’d nearly lost their lives just by going to the forest.