Darcy Coates
Voices in the Snow
Chapter One
“Everything will be okay.” Clare leaned forwards, hunched against the steering wheel as she fought to see through the snow pelting her windshield. “Don’t worry about me.”
The phone, nestled in the cup holder between the front seats, crackled. Thin scraps of Bethany’s voice made it through the static, not enough for Clare to hear the words, but enough to let her know she wasn’t alone.
“Beth? Can you hear me? It’s all right.”
The windshield wipers made a rhythmic thumping noise as they fought to keep her front window clear. They were on the fastest setting and still weren’t helping much.
Clare had never seen such intense snow. It rushed around her, unrelenting. Wind forced it to a sharp angle. Even with snow tyres and four-wheel drive, the car was struggling to get through the mounting drifts.
The weather forecast hadn’t predicted the storm. Clare had been miles from home by the time the snow began. She couldn’t stop. It was too dangerous to turn back. Her only choice was to press forwards.
“Mar—alr—safe—”
“Beth, I can barely hear you.”
“Marnie—safe—”
Even through the static, Clare could hear the panic in her sister’s voice. She tightened her fingers on the steering wheel and forced a little more speed into the accelerator. “Yes. I’m on my way to get her. I’ll be there soon.”
That had been the plan: collect Marnie then drive to her sister’s house. Beth’s property had a bunker. They would be safe there, even as the world collapsed around them.
Clare had been asleep when the first confused, incoherent stories appeared on social media. She’d been in her kitchen, waiting for the coffeepot to finish brewing when the reports made it to an emergency news broadcast. She kept her TV off on Sundays. If not for Beth, Clare might have remained oblivious, curled up with a good book, and been trying to pretend that Monday would never arrive.
But Beth watched the news. She’d seen the blurry, shaky footage taken just outside of London, and she had started rallying their small family. “We’ll be safer together,” she’d said. “We’ll look after each other.”
That included not just the sisters but their aunt, Marnie. She lived on a farm an hour from Clare’s house. Her only transportation was a tractor. Clare and Beth made time to visit her regularly, checking that she was all right and bringing her extra supplies when she needed them. She was the closest family they had. Now that the world was crumbling, there was no way Clare could leave their aunt alone to fend for herself.
“Op—stop—stop!” The static faded, and Beth’s voice became clear. She sounded like she was crying. “Stop! Please!”
“Beth?” Clare didn’t move her eyes from the road. Soon, she would be at the forest. The trees would block out the worst of the snow and give her some respite. Until then, she just had to focus on moving forwards and staying on the road.
“It’s too danger—s—turn ba—”
“I’m picking up Aunt Marnie.” Clare flicked her eyes away from the road just long enough to check the dashboard clock. “I’ll be there before noon, as long as none of the roads are closed. We’ll phone you and make a new plan then.”
She’d thrown supplies into the back of her car before leaving: tinned food, jugs of water, and spare clothes. Worst-case scenario, she could stay at Marnie’s place for a few days until the snow cleared. Marnie might not have a bunker, but Clare wanted to believe they would be safe—in spite of what the news said.
The storm seemed to be growing worse. She could barely see ten feet ahead of her car. Massive snowdrifts were forming against ditches and hills, but the wind was vicious enough to keep the powder from growing too deep on the road. Even so, her car was struggling. Clare forced it to move a fraction quicker. She couldn’t see the forest but knew it wasn’t far away. Once she was inside, she would be able to speed up.
A massive, dark shape appeared out of the shroud of white. It sat on the left side of the road, long and hulking, and Clare squinted as she tried to make it out. It was only when she was nearly beside it that she realised she was looking at two cars, parked almost end to end, with their doors open.
“Dangerous—” The static was growing worse again. “Don’t—as—safe!”
Clare slowed to a crawl and leaned across the passenger’s seat as she tried to see inside the cars’ open doors. Snow had built up on the seats. The internal lights were on, creating a soft glow over the flecks of white. In the first car, children’s toys were scattered around the rear seat. A cloth caterpillar hung above the window, its dangling feet tipped with snow.
Clare frowned. There was nothing but barren fields and patchy trees to either side of the road. The owners couldn’t have gone far in the snow. She hoped a passing traveller had picked them up.
Or maybe they hadn’t left willingly. A surreal, unpleasant sensation crawled through her stomach. The cars’ doors hung open, and the keys were still in the ignition.
She pressed down on the accelerator to get back up to speed. The steady thd thd thd of the windshield wipers matched her heart rate.
The abandoned cars had absorbed her attention, and she hadn’t realised the static had fallen quiet. She felt for the phone without taking her eyes off the road then held it ahead of herself so that she could watch both at the same time.
The call had dropped off. Clare tried redialling. The phone hung in suspense, refusing to even try to place the call.
“Come on,” Clare whispered. She pushed her car to go a little faster, even though she knew she was testing the limits of safety. Reception was bad in that area, and the storm had to be making it worse, but Beth would panic if she couldn’t reconnect.
Clare tried to place the call again. And again. And again. The phone wouldn’t even ring. She muttered and dropped it back into the cup holder so that she could give the road her full attention. As long as she made it to Marnie’s, everything else would be all right. They would find some way to contact Beth and put her mind at rest. And if it came to it, she and Marnie could hide in her rural farm until some kind of rescue arrived.
Something small and dark darted past her car. Reflexively, she jerked the steering wheel and only just managed to correct it before the car began to spin. Clare pressed one hand to her racing heart and clenched the wheel with the other.
What was that? A fox?
It had looked too large for a fox, closer to a wolf, really, and there were no wolves in the area. It had nearly stranded her, whatever it was. She needed to focus more and not let her mind wander, no matter how much it wanted to. The family had stuck together like glue her whole life. They would find a way to stick together now.
A bank of shadow grew out of the snowstorm ahead, and Clare sucked in a tight breath as she recognised what it meant. The forest. Safety. Shelter. She resisted the urge to go full throttle and instead let her car coast in under the massive pines.
Banksy Forest was a local curiosity. Rumours said the growth had started out as a pine plantation. Even two centuries later, from the right angle, the neat rows were visible. But no one had come to cut the trees down once they reached maturity, so they had been allowed to grow and die as they wished, only to be replaced by more pines and any other plants that managed to have their seeds blown or dropped among them.