Dog Blood

“Shit!” Keith curses, thumping the wheel in frustration.

“Got a spare?” I ask.

“No idea.”

He stops in the biggest patch of dry land we can find, and I get out. Paul follows me out and opens the back. He rummages around and manages to find the jack and other tools. The spare’s underneath. He starts to get it out. While I’m waiting I walk over to the other side of the road to where the contents of someone’s front room have been strewn across the pavement. Their flat-screen TV lies smashed in the gutter, and an expensive-looking rain-soaked sofa hangs precariously out of the broken bay window. Before all this happened we each lived in relative privacy in individual brick-built boxes, what we did and how we did it hidden from view of the rest of the world by our walls, doors, and windows. Strange how the physical worlds of so many people are now as dilapidated and ruined as their emotional state. There’s no privacy anymore, no boundaries. Everything we do is in full view and exposed. There’s no longer any-

“McCoyne!” Carol shouts at me from the van. “Get out of the fucking way!”

I spin around quickly, but it’s too late. Christ knows where he came from, but a powerful-looking man is ru

“Wait,” I try to say to him, “we’re-”

His bulk belies his remarkable speed, and before I can move he’s grabbed hold of my arm. He spins me around, then throws me over and slams me down onto my back. I’m already winded and gasping when he drops down onto my chest, his knees forcing the air from my lungs with a violent cough. I try to shout for help, but there’s no noise coming.

“Get off him, you fucking idiot,” I hear Paul say. I manage to turn my head to the side and watch as he starts hitting the Brute with part of the jack from the van. The Brute doesn’t react, barely even notices that he’s being hit. He bears down on me, a bizarre mix of terror and excitement on his face.

“Like you,” I manage to squeak. “I’m like you.”

Working together, Paul and Carol pull him away. They drag him back, drop him on his backside, then scatter like they’ve just lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite. I try to scramble away, moving back until I hit the wall of the house behind me. The Brute springs up with a low, guttural, warning growl and looks at each of us in turn. Then, painfully slowly, realization seems to dawn. He looks from Paul to Carol to me again. Paul moves toward him with the jack, ready to attack. Carol pulls him back.

“Don’t aggravate him,” she hisses. “Just drop it and walk away. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Paul does as he’s told, dropping the heavy metal tool, which clatters loudly on the ground. Carol stands motionless as the Brute looks her up and down, her back pressed up against the van. Then he slowly turns and slopes away. He’s barely made ten yards when something else catches his eye and he breaks into a slow, loping run.

“What the hell was that all about?” I ask as I pick myself up.

“No fucking idea,” Paul answers as he returns his attention to changing the tire. I watch the Brute until he’s disappeared from view. Did he think I was one of them, or was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did he see me and think I was Unchanged? Are the Brutes really like us, or was he reacting to a difference between us?

14

THE HEAT AND DAMP have combined to make the world stink more than ever this morning-the relentless, choking, suffocating stench of decay combined with overflowing drains and Christ knows what else. Other than the noise of this tired old van, everything is generally quiet, but the fragile silence is frequently interrupted by sudden bursts of noise: the Unchanged military moving and attacking, distant fighting, a scream as someone is hunted down and killed, the smashing of glass and the crumbling of collapsed buildings, the pained howl of a starving animal searching for food… The constant, smothering noise of the engine is unexpectedly welcome. It drowns out everything else.

I’m traveling in the front with Keith now, giving him directions. I’m trying to concentrate, but I’m distracted by the fact that a pub I used to occasionally drink in has disappeared-there’s now just an unexpected gap and a pile of blackened rubble on the street where it used to be-and for a second I don’t realize the significance of where we are. Then it dawns on me.

“Stop!”

“What’s the problem?” he says, slowing down but not stopping.

“No problem. Take a left here.”

He does as I say.

Carol leans forward from the back. “Trouble?”

“The kids’ school,” I explain. “They used to go to the school down here. My missus worked here, too.”

“So?”

“So if I was in Ellis’s shoes and I couldn’t go back home, school might be the next best option.”

“Worth a look since we’re here,” Keith reluctantly agrees, “but if there’s nothing here we move on quick, and so do you.”

The school is tucked away behind a church and a row of stores and offices. In the morning light everything looks a little more familiar than it did yesterday, but a little more mutated and alien, too. Windows are smashed, doors hang open, and there’s evidence of fighting almost everywhere I look. The road ahead is blocked by the rusting wreck of a car that has mounted the pavement and crashed into a bus shelter. Its heavily decayed Unchanged driver has been thrown-or dragged-through the shattered windshield. Looks like he was attacked as he tried to get away. His body is sprawled out over the crumpled hood of the car, his blue-tinged skin slashed and sliced by jagged shards of glass. His right shoulder is a gnarled stump of ripped flesh and protruding bone. The rest of his arm is missing. Keith mounts the curb and gently steers the van through a narrow gap, scraping against a wall with a vile, high-pitched grating noise. I look down as we drive over another, equally mutilated body. Whoever fought here was vicious. Probably more of those Brutes.

“Turn right down here. Down the alleyway next to the church.”

He does as I say, driving the van slowly down the narrow track that leads into the school grounds. I glance over the low stone wall to my left and see that there are several more bodies in the church graveyard, none of them in one piece. Some are badly decayed, others relatively fresh. I hold my favored knife tight in my hand, ready to attack or defend myself if the need arises. Even though I’m certain whoever did this was on our side, the brutality and savagery of these kills is remarkable. Keith drives through the empty teachers’ parking lot and stops outside the main school gate.

“Holy shit,” Paul says from the back. “What happened here?”

He jumps out and walks over to the wire-mesh fence that surrounds the small rectangular playground. I follow him and immediately see that the violence so apparent out on the streets has spread closer to the school, too. The enclosed asphalt play area is completely covered with a virtual patchwork quilt of body parts. I press my face against the tall fence, which bizarrely makes the playground look like some kind of caged gladiatorial arena. I look down at the ground, and in the few clear spaces between the dead I can still see brightly painted markings: hopscotch, snakes and ladders, oversized letters and numbers… I look up again and remember this place as it used to be, filled with a couple of hundred kids in their identical school uniforms, laughing and playing and-

“Brutes?” Keith shouts from the van, derailing my train of thought.

“Doubt it,” Paul answers quickly. “Why would they be here? More to the point, why would anyone still be here?”