Home > Whispers in the Mist (Black Winter #3)

Whispers in the Mist (Black Winter #3)
Author: Darcy Coates

Chapter One

 

 

Clare clung to her seat as the minibus rocked through the city. Abandoned cars littered the streets like the fallen on a battlefield. A path had been carved through them using brute force, but it was irregular, weaving in sharp angles and often forcing them to rise onto the curb.

Every time the bus jolted over some obstacle, Dorran’s shoulder bumped hers. Clare felt pure elation rush through her. They had gotten out of Helexis Tower and away from the scientist who had created the thanites that destroyed humanity. Dorran was with her. Dorran was safe.

She looked up at him, grinning. He tried to return the expression. Clare’s heart sank.

They might be free, but Dorran hadn’t escaped the tower unscathed. Even though he matched her smile, the gesture obviously took effort. He braced one hand on the seat ahead to absorb the shocks. The fingers trembled. His skin was ashen, his dark eyes had lost their familiar brightness, and every jostle seemed to drain more of his strength. His black hair, slightly too long, was damp with sweat.

He needs rest. A few days of good food and sleep, and he’ll start to heal. She wanted to believe the idea. She was desperate to. It seemed too cruel to escape the tower—to escape Ezra and his experiment—only to lose Dorran.

She took his free hand and pressed it gently. He threaded his fingers between hers. His thumb grazed over the ring he’d given her.

Hold on a little longer, Dorran. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right.

Two rows ahead of then, Beth sat in the driver’s seat, navigating the congested roads. It felt like a dream. Clare had clung to hope for her sister longer than any rational part of her could justify. She had travelled across the country, only to lose her again. To find Beth by what seemed like pure coincidence was more good luck than Clare dared trust in. But she was there, within touching distance, alive and real.

Clare swallowed, trying to find her voice. “Beth—”

“Not now,” she barked, her eyes fixed on the path ahead as the minibus screeched around a tight bend.

Ten years her senior, Beth had become a surrogate mother to Clare after their father left and their mother passed away. Beth had taken her to school programs, swimming lessons, and camps, and watched her like a hawk the entire time. There had been doctor’s visits over mild coughs. No swimming in pools unless both Beth and a lifeguard were present. No sleepovers unless Beth trusted the families empirically.

The old Beth, naturally cautious, had never sped in her life. She’d once told Clare, “Driving is one of the most dangerous things a person can do, second only to eating undercooked meat.”

But the new world had changed Beth. Even with the road choked, she was over the speed limit. The minibus scraped half the cars it passed. She drove aggressively but efficiently. The chattering screams from the hollow ones pursuing them were already fading.

That wasn’t the only part of Beth that had changed. Her fine, wavy blonde hair had grown out a little since Clare had last seen her, and it grazed over her shoulders. Her face looked harder. Leaner. Fresh scars marked her delicate features.

Clare leaned forward to try to see her sister more clearly. If Beth was aware of the scrutiny, she didn’t acknowledge it. They rose onto another curb and clipped a lightpost, and Clare dropped back into her seat to avoid being rattled any more than she already was.

The scars were fresh. One ran across Beth’s nose, starting near her eye and arcing down onto her cheek. Another mottled patch stood just above her temple. Three small marks showed where something had sliced into her jaw.

They were recent but already sealed over. Clare knew the thanites would be responsible for that. The thanites were airborne nanoparticle-sized machines designed to heal the human body but gone terribly, horrifically wrong. Like Clare, Beth would have been spared a full dose. She’d had her bunker, an airtight fortress that had saved her from being converted into one of the twisted, mindless creatures during the hours the thanites had been active.

The bunker would have limited Beth’s exposure to the thanites but not eliminated them entirely. And now the tiny machines were inhabiting her body, healing her injuries. It was one of the reasons Clare had survived so long. Poison, blood loss, and infection were all being repaired by the same creations that had grown out of control and mutated most of humanity.

Beth wrenched the wheel to navigate a tight angle. Clare hit Dorran’s side, and he hit the window. The bus teetered on the wheels of one side, and for a moment, Clare was afraid they were about to tip. Then the bus lurched back down, sending shockwaves through them as it reconnected with the road.

This reckless, energetic Beth was a sharp contrast to the woman Clare knew. Her wardrobe had changed too. All black swaddled her, from the scarf around her neck to her boots. If she wore a mask, there wouldn’t be a scrap of skin visible. Covering skin was a defence against the hollows, but it still left Clare disconcerted. She’d never seen Beth wear black before. It was as though all of Beth’s soft sides had been sharpened into angles.

Clare supposed it was hard to stay static in the new world. She wondered how much she had changed in the past weeks.

The minibus’s windows had been covered with plyboard. Narrow gaps existed around the boards’ edges. When Clare was close to them, she could see the businesses and vehicles they passed. She caught sight of movement inside many of the cars. Hollows, trapped, pressed their hands against the closed windows and hissed in frustration. Each nightmarish face was only visible for a split second, but the images haunted Clare. Deformed mouths. Missing teeth. Bulging eyes. Sparse hair.

She tried to imagine what their lives would have been like before the stillness. People on their way to their jobs, parents dropping their children off at day care, an elderly couple driving to an early-morning breakfast date. Those were the monsters that now surrounded them.

Stop. Focus on what’s good. Because there’s a lot of good to be found today.

Dorran was safe. Hurt but still alive. Clare tightened her hand around his. Against all odds, they had found Beth. Or, rather, Beth had found them. She’d gotten them out of Helexis Tower. And now they were leaving the city. The high-rise buildings were being replaced by homes and wider roads as they entered the outer suburbs. The country wasn’t far off.

The tyres screeched as Beth pulled off the road. It wasn’t the first time she’d taken a shortcut across a parking lot, but this time, she didn’t floor the accelerator. She let the minibus rock to a halt, pulled the handbrake, and jumped out of her driver’s seat.

“What the hell were you doing in the city?” She stood in the aisle, her face made of sharp angles and her eyes doused with fire. Then the expression softened, her jaw unclenching and her eyebrows rising, and she reached towards Clare. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”

Clare crossed to her in two quick steps. Beth’s hug was fierce as she half cried, half laughed into Clare’s wet hair.

“I didn’t think I’d get to see you again,” Clare managed.

“Neither did I.” Beth leaned back far enough to see Clare’s face and used her fingertips to brush wet hair off her cheek. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“I’m not, but—”

Clare turned to look at Dorran. He stood a few steps behind them, one hand braced on the back of a chair for support, watching cautiously. He was trying not to look intimidating, Clare knew, but that was hard to avoid when his head grazed the ceiling.

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