The creatures wailed. Their heads swivelled, and panic filled their wide eyes as they tried to escape the sound. Then they scuttled back, disappearing into the trees, leaving narrow trails of Clare’s blood in their wake.
She slumped across the steering wheel. Pain blurred her vision. She felt sick and dizzy. She tried to lift her arm, but it wasn’t responding properly.
For a brief second, she imagined the helicopter might be coming for her. Maybe Beth had realised what had happened. Maybe she’d managed to convince someone to look for Clare.
The delusion didn’t last long. The noise passed overhead then receded. Clare closed her eyes. The pain was fading as shock set in properly. She could feel the blood dripping, though. Dripping over her seat, over the floor, and running into her shoe. That upset her more than it really had any right to. The shoes were only a few weeks old. She’d been trying so hard not to let them get muddy, but she’d ruined them with a bit of careless bleeding.
A strangled laugh gurgled out of her. Then she scrunched her face up as she battled tears. I don’t want to die like this. Beth will worry.
Through the fog of pain and fading consciousness, she thought she saw a light in the distance. It bounced as it moved down the road, slowly growing nearer. She vaguely wondered if that was death coming for her. She’d thought it would be more dramatic.
A figure appeared behind the light. A tall man, too far away to make out any features. He slowed down as he saw her car then increased his pace to a jog. His torchlight jostled with each step.
Clare couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Clare rested her forehead against the car’s roof. She was shaking but, in spite of the cold weather, felt far too hot.
The missing hours had come back to her, but that didn’t mean they were easy to accept. She couldn’t visualise the images on the TV or the shapes running through the snow without feeling like she was reliving a feverish dream.
But then she remembered what she’d seen in Winterbourne. The woman with the hole in her side, ribs poking out like feathers, and the figure with the broken spine that jutted through her skin. They looked less human than whatever had attacked her in the snow, but she was certain they were the same breed.
Clare moaned. She had spent the past week afraid that she was delusional. But as her memories resurfaced, she thought she would have preferred insanity. Because being right—seeing what she had seen and piecing it together with what Beth had said and what had been on TV—created a reality that she wasn’t sure she could exist in.
Dorran. Her heart missed a beat. He would have been travelling to Gould in his family’s convoy at the time of the stillness event. His mother refused to let them listen to radios. He’d never heard the news reports.
And he was still in the mansion, trapped with the creatures. They had found a way to hide, and they were clearly reluctant to be seen. But they were there, and it was only a matter of time before they turned on him. She had to go back. Even if she couldn’t convince him of what she’d seen, she needed to find some way to keep him safe.
Clare turned towards the forest separating her from Winterbourne Hall. In the space between the closest trees, two round, bright eyes stared at her.
The world seemed to slow down. A fleck of snow spiralled past, twirling in the gentle wind, taking an eternity to reach the ground.
The man from her memories crouched among the pines. His eyes were huge and staring. He’d lost the remainder of his clothes, but he seemed wholly unaware of his nakedness and the cold that had turned his fingers and toes black.
One hand was spread on the ground, fingers splayed for balance. The other was balled into a clawlike fist. It reminded Clare of a pigeon she’d seen with a broken foot—and a moment later, she realised that was exactly what it was. The fingers were broken from being slammed in the car door. They’d curled into a twisted mess of flesh and shattered bone, but he still walked on the hand.
That wasn’t the only change. The tips of his collarbones had jutted out from his hollow chest wall. His ribs seemed to have sunken in. When he moved, his hip bones strained against the thin layer of skin covering them, seemingly threatening to split it.
There was no way he should have still been alive. But he was. And his lips pulled back from receding gums as he stared at Clare.
No. Please. Not again.
She ran, kicking up a plume of snow as she plunged back onto the road and aimed for the bank of trees opposite him. A horrible clattering noise rose from the forest. Clare looked up. Two shapes moved through the trees, leaping from bough to bough—a large one with long hair and something small. A child still wearing the scraps of a brightly coloured shirt.
Clare twisted away and tried to run along the road. It was bare except for the endless expanse of snow. She was too exposed. She had to get to the forest—either side—and find something to use as a weapon. Something to shield herself with.
A noise came from her side. The man raced parallel to her, moving on all fours like a broken cat. He lunged at Clare, his mouth open, and she gasped as she pulled back, out of his reach. He skidded on the snow, trying to right himself, as the woman leapt out of a tree.
Clare had no choice—she reversed her direction, racing back to the car. She could hear the creatures chattering behind her as they followed. Weariness dragged her down. Her mouth was so dry that every breath felt like swallowing sandpaper. But fear kept her moving. The healing cuts on her stomach and leg ached, a threat of what was to come if she was too slow. She hit the open car door, swung around it, and barrelled inside.
The car jolted as the creatures impacted it. The door was already bent and wouldn’t close. Clare just tried to pull it as near to shut as she could. Then she leapt across the bloodied driver’s seat and fell into the passenger’s side.
Metal cried as the door was wrenched back open. Clare grabbed the passenger’s door handle and shoved. She tumbled through the hole then kicked at the door, smacking it shut in the creatures’ faces.
Both the man and woman had tried to follow her through the car. They pressed against the closed door, fingers and teeth clacking against the glass. Neither tried to use the handle. Like she’d thought, they’d lost their humanity and, with it, their intelligence.
Clare struggled onto shaking feet and clutched at the closest tree. Her heart felt ready to burst, but she couldn’t rest. The car wouldn’t contain the creatures for long. She checked that she still had the radio tucked into her jacket then turned.
Deep snow covered the forest floor in that part of the woods, and Clare struggled over trees and between trunks. She passed a low, dead branch, half detached from its tree, and gave it a wrench to snap it off. It was heavy and unwieldy, but it would work as a weapon. Her main priority had to be getting back to shelter as quickly as she could.
A shriek made her freeze. She looked back to where the car was barely visible through the forest. It no longer rocked as the monsters tried to free themselves. She couldn’t see through the window, but she thought it was empty.
They had gotten out faster than she’d hoped. Clare started running, praying she was moving in the right direction to reach the clearing and Winterbourne. She was struggling, though. And she thought she could hear more noises—more of the creaking, scratching sounds of branches being bowed as a creature clambered through them.