Chapter 9
NINE
My heart beats against my eardrums.
I barrel through the chill that whips my cheeks raw, hearing only my boots smacking down on the road and the hoarseness of my sharp breaths.
My chest is tightening.
Like a fist is clenching around my lungs, each breath is sharper, hollower, than the last.
My lungs are burning for air. But the more I run, the less oxygen reaches them.
The faint stream of white light is weak in the dark, but it’s all I have, and I chase it for a long time, until I’m wheezing and my run is morphing into a sloppy, frantic scramble in the dark.
I’m slowing down.
The vibrations of my heartbeat pulse my brain in my skull, and if I could see a fucking thing beyond the road, it would be warping and spinning.
But I keep running.
I run through the dizziness, through the nausea, the serrated breaths stabbing me—until I run right into something solid.
My legs are lifted off the road.
I smack face-down on the cold bite of metal.
The breath is punched out of me.
Sprawled, a horrible wheeze forces its way through me.
The torch hooked to my wrist clatters over metal. I feel for it, hooking my pinkie finger around the plastic grip, then drag it into my fist.
The breaths running through me are weaker by the second, whimpers now.
I push myself off the cold sheet of metal—and I stagger to my feet.
The light of the torch is slight, but I rinse it over the solid object in front of me.
Tension loosens from my shoulder.
It’s a car.
Just a car.
I went tumbling over the bonnet.
The cold has frosted over the windshield, cracked but not shattered, and the rainfall glistens on the punctured tyres.
I turn the light around, wispy and frail against the strength of the blackout. All I can see is about a metre in front of me.
I stretch out my arm as far as it’ll go. My gloved fingertips press against the quiet, stagnant air.
I take a single, cautious step around the bonnet and turn the light over the darkness.
And I see that I’m at the edge of the road.
I take another step, gliding the soft light over bonnets and tyres and windshields.
Cars are abandoned in a heap between the road and the pavements… like one hell of a crash happened here.
A pile up.
The light only reaches over the bodies of a half-dozen cars. The darkness swallows the rest.
I take another step around the frozen crash, angling the light as I do.
I try to move my way around the tangled mess of metal. But I keep stumbling over bent wheels and broken glass and fallen bags and a stray bumper.
I inch around the corner of the crash, angling the light down the dark road—but a car door blocks my way.
Left open, rusted over in the cold, it’s barely hanging onto its hinges against winds that must have battered through here a hundred times.
But that’s not what slows me.
It’s not what cautions me.
Not the cars, not the pile up, not that I have to try and find my way around the crash.
It’s that buildings border the road on the left side. The light bounces off the windows—and at first, I flinch against the glare, as though it’s a glinting sword aimed at me.
I inch closer, weaving around the cars and the debris of the crash. I step over bags and lunchboxes and keys and a stuffed bear, pink, spattered with blood.
My throat thickens.
I move for the other sidewalk, lined with old brickwork.
I’ve chased the road into the heart of a town.
Or the only part of city that’s still standing, like an outer borough.
Back there in the fight, I saw nothing of our old world, our now dead civilisation. But maybe it used to be there, and units have passed through and burned it all to the ground. Now, it’s just a road through nowhere—and suddenly ending up somewhere.
I’m not thrilled about this.
I shouldn’t be here.
There are places to hide here. I can’t deny that.
But I have no hope springing in my chest. No delusions that, even if I find somewhere to hide, Rust won’t find me.
If he wins that fight, or at least manages to get away and get a headstart, I am absolutely fucked.
No matter where I hide.
But that’s not the only reason tendrils of fear lash in my gut.
Buildings that are still standing…?
I’ve learned in my time with the fae unit what that means.
People.
Survivors.
Almost every single time.
And I could be walking right into their territory, their den, their bullshit sense of safety.
The smart thing to do would be to switch off the light and bunker down in one of these cars. Like, now.
But there’s more to worry about than other people surviving out here.
I don’t fancy facing off with Rust if he catches up to me. And hiding in a car out in the open makes it too easy for him.
I should keep moving.
Find bleach to cover my scent, hide or follow the road, I don’t know. And I don’t know what’s happening back there in the fight.
I ran for so long that it felt like hours. But maybe it was only one hour, or half an hour, or not that long at all.
I can’t hear it.
The fight, metal clashing, shouts—
It’s completely silent. Not even the cars groan in the cold.
But fae are quiet when they want to be.
Rust could sneak up on me now and slice my throat before I even know he’s upon me.
All to spill my blood for something Ramona did.
Fae are a lot of things, but one thing that surprises me about these ancient, fierce creatures is that they are just—
So.
Fucking.
Dramatic.
Like, risking his own life to take out someone who was just there when an entirely different person offended him?
Come on.
My eyes would roll if I had the energy, or even the flicker of humour to break through the dense dread weighing me down.
I need to move.
I need to pick a course and go with it.
I can’t stay out here in the open any longer than I already have.
The faint ribbons of light sputter through the gaps between the cars, all piled and stacked and interconnected across the road.
I creep through the labyrinth.
This was one hell of a crash.
And I learn that not everyone made it out.
I see the evidence of that in the cars that I squeeze by.
Blood on upholstery, mostly decomposed bodies draped over steering wheels and hanging out of windows.
The baby stuff churns my gut. The blankets, the toys, the car seats.
Then the dog harness dangling over a seat—
I throw my gaze away.
Face twisting, I battle against my own intrusive thoughts—of how the fuck this happened. The cars wouldn’t have been working by the time the dark fae marched over the land.
So this crash… it happened before the blackout stole all technology and machinery from us.
This chaos must’ve gone down in the initial panic, when the news of the blackout spread.
That means people did this.
I can almost hear Bee speaking back to me, ‘Fear, Tess. Fear did this. Not people.’
I don’t see the difference.
If Samick was with me now, he would pause and throw a look down at me—he would sense the bitterness eating away at me. He would study me.
But he isn’t here.
I’m on my own again.
For the time in months, it’s only my bootsteps pressing into the loose gravel of the road.
Actually, for the first time since the blackout hit. I haven’t been alone through any of this, not really—not beyond sneaking off to pee or sitting on watch.
I’m feeling the weight of that realisation.
I stop glancing through the car windows. I keep my stare focused on my boots creeping through the faint wisps of light. And I steel myself against the bubbling fear.
I need to get through this pile up, but the longer I walk through the maze of cars, and scoot over the bonnets, the more cars I realise are blocking my path.
It’s like a crash of a hundred cars—but suddenly starting at the edge of the buildings still standing, like back on the road where the fight started, there were once cars locked together and crushed, but the flames of other units burned them all away.
That means this place is on borrowed time.
I shouldn’t hide.
I should pass through the streets and roads until I’m free from it all, and I should walk the lonely road.
Samick told me to run. Not run and hide.
Run.
The problem is, I can’t run anymore.
My breaths are still coming up short. They reach as far as my breastbone—and no deeper.
Samick has my inhaler.
I need it.
My head is too dizzy, my steps too slow, my breaths too loud.
The only other thing I can think of is to find an inhaler.
Scooting over a bonnet, I turn the light over the faces of the buildings on the side of the road.
The windows are full of glares and shadows.
Rows of shops.
Those sorts of shitty shops, like the ones on the outskirts of a city, a lot of phone repair stores that no one ever seems to use, and a rug store directly opposite me with banners clinging to the gutters claiming a closing down sale—but I bet that place has been ‘closing down’ for years.
I always thought those kinds of shops were money laundering fronts.
But usually, there’s a laundromat that comes with them… and a chemist.
I brush the light from broken windows and boarded-up doors to old, faded signs.
I crawl over the cars unevenly, my shoulders hunched with the weight of exhaustion, and I keep my light aimed at the shopfronts that I pass.
A grocer.
A Greek restaurant.
A corner store.
A doctor’s office with caged windows.
And there.
The next store over, across the blood-stained pavement.
The pharmacy.
Bars protect the windows—but not the door.
It’s wide open. Torn off the hinges.
And it’s devastating.
My chances of finding an inhaler were already slim.
Now—as I inch closer, and see the leaves and debris that have blown inside and scatter over the linoleum floor, and the looted shelves—I’d say my chances are just zero.
Doesn’t mean I can turn around and leave, though. I have to check.
I step around the dried leaves, the boxes scattered all over, the smashed glass jars, and the puddles that, as I get closer and the light shines on them, look as dark as blood.
My boots come down on the floor, slow and cautious, as I sweep the light around the shelves.
Ransacked.