Dog Blood

“I don’t know. Stay there. I’ll go and find something.”

“Don’t go outside,” she pleaded, struggling with her heavily pregnant bulk to turn around and stop him. “Please, Mark.”

“Just to the end of the hall, okay?”

He didn’t give her time to answer. He weaved around the bottom of the double bed, where Katie’s traumatized elderly parents lay terrified, cold, and wet, then ran past the permanently locked bathroom door. He unlocked the main door, took off the security chain, and put his head outside. Just a handful of people out on the landing-a rain-soaked woman from the room next door (who obviously had problems similar to his) and the Chinese guy with his three kids who slept in the broken elevator. Mark looked up and down, then spied a wooden hatch on the wall between two of the opposite rooms. The fire hose that used to be hidden behind the small square door was missing. He pulled at the hatch, then pushed down on it from above, feeling the hinges begin to weaken. A few seconds of violent shaking and pulling and he yanked it free with an almighty splintering crack. He ran back to room 33 with it, stopping only to pull the one remaining curtain down from the side of a large gallery window overlooking the street below. Jesus Christ, things looked bad down there. Crowds of people were pressed up against the sides of buildings, desperate for whatever shelter they could find, woken without warning by an early morning deluge of ice-cold rain. The main street itself, Arley Road, a wide, relatively straight, and gently sloping strip of pavement, looked more like a river. A fast-moving, debris-carrying torrent of rainwater surged down it toward the center of town.

Back in the hotel room, Mark threw the curtain to Kate, who started mopping up the water that was still cascading down the glass, then spilling down the windowsill and soaking the carpet.

“Who’s that?!” Kate’s elderly, confused father yelled in panic, lifting his head off the pillow for the first time in hours. “Is it one of them?”

Next to him, her mother lay on her side, sobbing, the dirty bedclothes pulled up tight under her chin.

“It’s just Mark, Dad,” Kate shouted.

“It’s me, Joe,” Mark said, leaning closer to the old man so he could see his face. He’d lost his glasses weeks ago. Mark didn’t know whether he recognized him or not.

Mark leaned the hatch door against the window over the broken glass and used a phone directory to wedge and hold it in place.

“Save the water,” he said to Kate.

“What?”

“The rainwater… save it!”

“Where?”

“In the bathtub.”

The flow of water into the room temporarily plugged, Kate carried the half-full bucket across the room, her bare feet squelching on the damp carpet. She knocked on the bathroom door.

“Let me in.”

There was a brief pause; then the latch clicked and the door opened. Another adult refugee appeared, her face drawn and haggard-looking.

“Everything okay?” she asked. Kate nodded.

“Mark said we should try to save the water in the tub.”

The woman nodded and took the bucket from her. Mark passed her several water-filled cups that he’d collected from by the window.

“Makes sense to try to hoard as much as we can,” he said, taking back the empty bucket. She nodded but didn’t answer.

The flood stemmed temporarily, Kate walked away and sat down exhausted on a rain-splashed chair next to her parents. Her mother continued to sob, but Kate couldn’t face trying to comfort her. Instead she closed her eyes and ran her hands over her swollen stomach.

Mark picked up the last pot of water and carried it to the bathroom. The rain seemed to finally be easing. The woman in the shadows took it from him and emptied it into the tub.

“Thanks, Lizzie,” he said.

21

I CAN’T STAND MUCH more of this. It must be hours since Mallon left me. Can’t smell the food anymore, but I know it’s still there, and I want it. My guts feel like they’re somersaulting one minute and being ripped open the next. The pain’s unbearable, almost like my body’s eating itself from the inside out. I try to put the hunger out of my mind, but frustration takes its place. The frustration turns into confusion; then the confusion turns into fear. The fear makes my aching shoulders, arms, and legs feel a thousand times worse. I try to lie still, but even the slightest movement is agony.

What the hell was that? Something’s moving over me. It feels like there are insects crawling over my itching leg. Maybe there are? I haven’t looked at my legs since I woke up strapped to this bed. Who’s to say that itch isn’t an open, untreated wound? Who’s to say I haven’t got some kind of infection, that there aren’t maggots and worms and Christ knows what else feeding on my flesh? I can feel them wriggling and squirming inside the cut, digging deep into me, boring through my skin.

Then it stops again.

Am I just imagining things? Or was it something bigger? A mouse or a rat?

The dripping is the only distraction. It’s constant now, almost like machine-gun fire, and it never fucking stops.

I could end this. All I have to do is talk, he said. Just give him that one small victory and I’ll have some light and food and water. Christ, I need to drink something so badly…

I open my mouth to shout for help, then stop myself. What the hell am I thinking? Have I forgotten what Joseph Mallon is and what his people did (and are still doing) to my kind? They’re the reason all of this happened. If it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have had to kill and my family would still be together. We had to kill them for protection. This whole war has been fought in self-defense… that’s the only reason. They made us do it. And to think, I was about to beg one of them for mercy… Christ, what kind of a person would that make me? I’d be pissing on the memory of all those who’ve already died in the fighting.

But why not?

Why shouldn’t I talk?

No one’s going to know, and what are my options? Do I lie here and starve to death or swallow my pride and cooperate?

No… no way… they almost had me then. That’s exactly what they want me to think. They’re trying to get me to crack under pressure and submit. Why should I? I’m stronger than all of them. I’ll outsmart them and outlast them. I’ll break them, not the other way around. When all of this is done, they’ll be the ones lying broken on the ground, not me. I’ll be standing over them, their blood on my hands.

Except right now I can’t stand up. Right now I can’t move. Right now I can’t do anything without that fucker Mallon’s say-so. For Christ’s sake, I’m lying in a bed of my own filth, and I can hardly think straight. I don’t know what time of day it is, where I am, who’s holding me here… and none of that’s going to change unless someone gives way. They’ve got nothing to lose. Unless Mallon gets some twisted kick out of doing this, if I die it’s just one less of us for them to worry about. But what really happens if I keep refusing to cooperate and fade away to nothing in the endless darkness here? I’ll never see Ellis again. Chances are I won’t find her anyway, but the fact of the matter is I’ll definitely never see her as long as I’m locked up in here.

And I need to eat and drink. The hunger hurts.

Going to do it.

I clear my throat, then stop myself.

More indecision.

Bottom line-what use am I to Ellis like this?

Someone has to give way.

I try to shout, but my voice is hoarse and hardly any sound comes out, just a pathetic, strangled whine. For a second I’m relieved; then I tell myself I have to do it. But now I can’t even build up enough spit in my mouth to make a decent noise. Frustrated, I try again, this time a little louder. I manage something that’s half a word and half a cough and immediately wish I hadn’t. I feel like a traitor, colluding with the enemy. Maybe that’s it? Could this place be run by Chris Ankin’s people? Are they testing my loyalty?