Dog Blood

“Please…” he whimpers pathetically.

I could kill her, but I don’t. Suddenly all I can think about is Joseph Mallon. I can see his face and can hear his damn voice echoing around my cell, telling me not to fight fire with fire, to break the cycle. Was he right? As the city crumbles around us, can I risk not following my instinct and letting these fuckers live? Could it really be that the more I fight today, the more I stand to lose?

I let the woman go. She falls to her knees and crawls away on all fours, gasping for air. Lizzie walks over to me, stopping only when we’re almost touching.

“I just need to know that you’ll look after her and get her to safety.”

“Where is she?” I shout, struggling to keep control and not attack. “Just tell me where-”

“I need to hear you say it, Da

“I promise you, Liz. I’ll get her as far away from the city as I can. I’ll look after her. She’s all I’ve got left.”

“Then you’ve got more than I have,” she sobs. She looks into my eyes, and I can’t look away. “We moved her last night,” she finally admits. “We couldn’t risk keeping her here any longer.”

“What have you done with her?”

“She’s safe. Mark and I were going to try to get her out of the city. It was the lesser of two evils…”

Mark gets up. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys, which he throws to Lizzie.

“Take him.”

“I can’t…” she says, begi

“It’s the only option. Listen to what’s happening outside, Liz. It’s all fucked. He’s right, at least she’s got a chance this way.”

“But what if…?”

“I won’t hurt you,” I tell her, meaning every word but still not knowing if she believes me. “All I want is Ellis. Take me to her and you’ll never see me again.”

She nods her head but still doesn’t move.

“Just give him the keys,” the pregnant woman says. “Let him find her for himself. Stay here with us.”

Lizzie shakes her head and wipes her eyes.

“No, I’ll go. I just want to see her again. One last time.”

37

THERE’S A FIRE ESCAPE at the rear of the hotel, a staircase ru

“Where is she?” I ask as I step outside, shouting to make myself heard over the sounds of fighting that fill the air. We stand at the top of a zigzagging metal staircase bracketed to the back of the old, run-down building. She points in the general direction of the streets behind the hotel, but I can’t see anything specific. The sun is rising, and below us the city is begi

“There’s a garage,” she answers breathlessly. “The front of it has collapsed, so it’s difficult to get in or out. We locked her in the back of a van.”

“If this is a trick, Lizzie-”

“No trick,” she says quickly, and I know she’s telling the truth. We’re wasting precious time. Sensing Ellis is close, I start climbing down.

There’s another parking lot at the back of the hotel, and a small patch of wildly overgrown garden beyond it. Lizzie leads me away from the building down a narrow path that’s barely visible through the long, damp grass. The sky is still filled with heavy gray cloud, but it’s slowly begi

“This way,” she whispers, catching her breath when a series of brilliant white flashes explodes, lighting up the early morning gloom for a fraction of a second at a time. A low-flying helicopter gunship rumbles overhead, heading back toward town.

I follow her to the end of the path, where there’s a tall wrought-iron gate. Lizzie bends down and shifts a broken lump of paving slab that’s keeping it shut, and the gate swings open. She pauses before going through, ducking back into the shadows as a group of people runs past. I watch them as we step out into the open, three figures chasing a fourth down a narrow, cobbled passageway. They corner the lone ru

“Move!” Lizzie hisses, shoving me forward again. There’s another gate in a wooden fence on the other side of this alleyway. We go through, and I can tell immediately from the number of rusting car parts and piles of tires and mufflers that this must be the place. I follow her through a side door into a dusty office. It’s dark. She stops suddenly, and I walk into the back of her, then hold on to her as she grabs my sleeve and leads me farther forward, pausing only to pick up a flashlight she obviously left here previously. We go through another door and down a single steep step into what must be the main workshop. The air’s cold, and the noise we make echoes off the walls. She shines the light farther ahead, and I see that the front of the building has collapsed in on itself, sealing it off from the street.

“Over here.”

We move around the back of a jacked-up car to the farthest corner of the workspace. There’s a white and blue van parked with its back to the wall. Its front fender is a light matte gray color, primed and waiting to be painted by a garage employee who’s never coming back. As we move toward the rear of the van, I see there’s a light on inside it. Lizzie pushes me out of the way and unlocks the door. She opens it as far as she can, then slips through the gap, and I follow her.

Lying flat on her back in the middle of the van, chained to the front seats with her mouth gagged and her wrists, legs, and ankles bound together with plastic-covered clothesline, is Ellis. She’s awake and alert, her beautiful brown eyes darting from Lizzie to me and back again. She looks straight at me, but I’m not sure if she remembers. Dressed only in a dirty gray undershirt and panties, her tiny body is covered in cuts, scratches, and bruises. Lizzie leans over her, and she immediately reacts, arching away from her, then trying to lunge forward and attack. The longer I look at her, the less familiar she becomes. She sobs and whines through the gag like a frightened animal.

Lizzie, Ellis, and me all together again. I never dared dream this would really happen. Suddenly the noise of the battles outside and the helicopters and explosions don’t seem to matter. Everything that I have left is in the back of this van. I swing my backpack off my shoulders and open it up. I pull out Ellis’s doll, and Lizzie takes it from me and holds it close, tears ru

“You went back?” She whispers.

“Looking for you,” I tell her.

Lizzie moves Ellis’s wild, unkempt hair away from her eyes and tries to show her the doll. She recoils from her mother’s touch, desperately trying to pull away. Lizzie seems unfazed. I guess she must be used to this now. Ellis’s eyes show no recognition, no understanding.

“It would have been easier on everyone if she’d just stayed with you,” she admits, “but how was I to know after what you did?”

“I know.”

“I didn’t even realize she was like you until a couple of days after you’d gone. I didn’t expect it, didn’t even think it could happen. One minute she was sitting there with her brothers, the next… I was out of the room for less than five minutes. I came back in and saw her with Edward…”

She starts sobbing, tears dripping down onto Ellis, who wriggles and squirms as if they’re corrosive acid drops.

“Why did this have to happen, Da

“It wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do. None of us could control it or predict it…”