Dog Blood (22 page)

I’M SCAVENGING DOWNSTAIRS FOR food, hunting through deserted kitchens and bars that have already been ransacked countless times before, hoping to find an overlooked stash of supplies to supplement the crappy rations I’ve had since I got here. At the back of a counter, tucked away behind a lifeless cash register, I find three small packets of peanuts. I swallow the contents of the first in a single mouthful, then do the same with the second. I shove the third into my trouser pocket for later. There’s precious little time to think about food these days, but when I do get to eat I realize just how much I’ve missed it. Maybe one day I’ll get to eat a proper meal again, if I survive the next couple of days, that is.

There’s a half-open door behind the bar I hadn’t noticed before. I lean inside.

“Who the hell’s that?”

I back out of the low-lit storeroom quickly, startled by the voice from the darkness. The door lets some light in, and I can see someone in the corner, sitting wedged between two piles of empty boxes.

“Sorry, I…”

The man looks up and shakes his head. I recognize him from last night. His name’s Parsons.

“Doesn’t matter, my friend.”

I’ve only been awake for a couple of hours, but already the drawn-out tedium of waiting to fight is getting to me. The idea of a conversation-any distraction-is appealing.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Keeping out of the way.”

“Why? You pissed Julia off or something?”

“Show me someone who hasn’t.”

I know what he means. Being around Julia reminds me of working for Tina Murray, my sour old bitch of a supervisor back at the PFP. Wonder what happened to her…?

Parsons gestures for me to come closer. I do as he says, then slide down the wall and sit next to him. It’s stiflingly hot in the social club this morning now that the sun’s up, but the dark storeroom is refreshingly cool.

“So are you ready for this?” I ask. “Ready to go out there and start fighting?”

“’Course I am,” he answers, almost too quickly. “Can’t wait to start killing again. Can’t wait to see them panic when we get given the word.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

The silence continues as he thinks about what I just said.

“I’m not. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know what’s got to be done and I know this is probably the only way to make it happen. It’s just that…”

“You don’t want to die?”

“Exactly.”

“Me neither,” I admit. “Who does?”

“No one in their right mind. They’re all talking about this battle like it’s a holy war or something, and it’s doing my head in. I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of the city when they level the place like they did London.”

“But it’s got to be done. You can’t deny that.”

“I know… I’m just nervous, you know?” he admits, keeping his voice low. “I can’t stand all this hanging around. You know what it’s like when you know you’ve got to fight, you just want to get on and do it.”

He’s right. It’s a relief to find someone else who’s willing to speak candidly about how they’re feeling. Most everyone else is too busy spouting propaganda and bullshit bravado to dare admit that they’re apprehensive about what’s coming. They talk like I imagine Brutes think-focused on the kill at all costs.

“You been here long?” I ask.

“Got here about half a day before you.”

“And were you at that convent place with Sahota?”

He nods his head.

“We’ve all been through that. Quite the eye-opener, eh?”

Parsons stares into space, thinking hard. I sense there’s more he wants to say, but he’s not sure whether he can speak. Perhaps hethinks I’m testing his dedication to the cause? I study his tired face. He looks about ten years older than me, and I wonder what it is we have in common that made us both suitable fodder for Sahota’s organization.

“So did you believe any of it?”

“What?”

“All that stuff the Unchanged were spouting at Sahota’s place? Breaking the cycle and all that crap?”

I don’t answer immediately. Can I trust this man? Now I’m wondering if he’s the one testing my allegiance.

“Some of it,” I answer, being deliberately vague. “What about you?”

“I agree with most of it up to a point. What Sahota said scared me more, though. I get the feeling they’re just using us as-” He stops suddenly.

“Problem?”

“Listen…”

I quickly get up and go back out into the bar. Someone’s banging on the outside of the fire exit I entered through yesterday. Apart from me and Parsons there’s no one else down here, and I realize it’s up to me to confront whoever’s out there. I move quickly across the room, grabbing a broken pool cue to use as a weapon, then stand by the door and wait. The hammering continues. The door’s solid-no way of knowing who it is without opening it up.

“Do it,” Parsons hisses from across the room. Cowardly fucker, why don’t you come over here and open it? Rather than argue, I take a deep breath, tighten my grip on my pool cue bludgeon, then open the door. There’s a teenaged girl standing in front of me, looking as tense and unsure as I did when I first arrived here. She only looks about fifteen. She’s one of us.

“I’m looking for Julia Chapman,” she says, her voice surprisingly confident and strong.

“Who is?” I ask, remembering back to my first encounter here.

“My name’s Sophie Wilson,” she answers, handling the situation far better than I did, “and I’ve got a message for her from Sahota.”

I let her in, quickly glancing around the back of the building to make sure she hasn’t been followed before shutting and barring the fire exit.

I lead her through the eerily quiet building, Parsons following us at a cautious distance. I take her upstairs to where I last left Julia talking to Craven, but she’s not there. He points up at the ceiling. I double back and head up to the roof, covering my eyes at the sudden brightness. The sun is huge in the clear sky high above us. Julia’s sitting on one of the deckchairs under the tarpaulin, looking into the city through a pair of binoculars. She lowers them when she hears us approach.

“This is-” I start to say.

“You Julia?” Sophie asks. Julia nods. “Got a message for you from Sahota. He said to tell you that I’m the last one.”

“What else?”

“He said: Town hall, south side. Six a.m. Five others.”

Julia looks at her for a second, absorbing what she’s been told. Then she nods her head.

“Thanks. Get some rest while you can. There might still be some food left downstairs. Ask one of the others and they’ll show you.”

Sophie heads back down without question, leaving me with Julia. Parsons hovers behind us nervously.

“What did her message mean?” I ask, feeling like I’m the only one who’s not in the know.

“It means there’s as many of us here as there’s ever gonna be. It means it’s time.”

I look straight ahead, determined not to let her see how nervous I’m suddenly feeling.

“South side?”

“South side of the town hall is where he wants us to base ourselves,” she answers, looking through the binoculars again. “It’s where I thought he’d want us to be, close enough to the military to cause them problems, far enough out not to be suspicious.”

“And five others? What was that all about?”

“Five other groups like ours. That’s not so good. We were hoping for double that. Should still be enough, though.”

“And where will they be?”

“Don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know and all you need to know is that we’ll go where we’re told to and cause fucking chaos when the time’s right. Between six groups of us, their military won’t know which way to turn. The panic will spread fast, and before you know it the whole city will be fighting. And if we do it right, before long there won’t be a city left.”

“There won’t be anything left,” Parsons mumbles under his breath.

I sit down on the edge of the roof and stare into the distance. The Unchanged camp looks like a massive, dirty black machine from here. Clouds of gray smoke billow up from between buildings like belching exhaust fumes. Helicopters buzz through the air like flies around a corpse. There’s no point denying it, being this close to the enemy makes me want to march in there and start killing. Or it would if I didn’t feel the odds were stacked against us. It’s probably just me. Perhaps I’m at fault? Maybe I should have more faith? But like I keep telling myself, I don’t want to die.

“Just imagine it,” Julia says wistfully, looking deep into the distance. “Imagine when we start to fight and they start to run, when they panic and try to get away from us, then run straight into the next battle. Christ, it’ll be beautiful. It won’t take much, you know; just the minimum of coordination from us will be enough to start it off, and they’ll do the rest themselves. It’ll be a chain reaction. We’ll be able to sit back and watch them killing each other.”

I know I should keep my mouth shut, but I can’t.

“Except we won’t, will we?”

“Won’t what?”

“Once we’re in there, there’s no way back out.”

“Doesn’t matter. All that’s important is wiping out the enemy.”

“But at what cost?”

“We can’t coexist, end of story. The cost is irrelevant.”

I’m making things worse for myself, but I can’t help it.

“What good is winning if you’re dead? What did they used to call that, a Pyrrhic victory?”

“A what?” Parsons asks.

“A Pyrrhic victory,” Julia sighs. “It’s when you win the battle, but the end result leaves you fucked, too.”

“Great,” he grunts.

“You’re wrong,” she says to me, putting down the binoculars and standing up, “and you need to stop talking like that.”

“How am I wrong? Once we’re in the city, there’s very little chance of any of us getting out alive, is there?”

“It’s a sacrifice we have to make.”

“And where will your pal Sahota be when all of this is going on? Watching from his office? When we’re gone, who’s left? Just kids and Brutes?”

She shakes her head. “You come up with an alternative and I’ll listen. Do you want the Unchanged to survive?”

“Of course not, but-”

“But what?”

“But there’s got to be a better way.”

“If there was, don’t you think someone like Sahota would have come up with it by now? If there was any alternative, don’t you think we’d have tried it? None of us wants to die.”

“My point exactly.”

“But if your death results in the death of hundreds of the enemy, thousands even, then it has to be worth it.”

I don’t bother to respond. She’s bought into this completely, like a brainwashed old-school terrorist about to embark on a jihad. Even if my death were to result in tens of thousands of Unchanged being killed, I still don’t want it to happen. And what about Ellis? I’d rather fight steadily and have this war drag on for years than sacrifice myself today. I can’t stand the thought of not seeing her again.

Julia’s not going to let this go.

“You need to focus on what’s coming,” she says, a sneering, threatening tone in her voice. “Craven said you were looking up information about your family earlier. Forget them, whoever and whatever they were. Your only allegiance now is to us. Nothing else matters apart from what we do when we get back into the city.”

She stares into my face, then walks away, stopping before she disappears down the stepladder.

“If you screw up when we’re in there,” she warns, “then so help me, I’ll kill you myself. This is too important for an idiot like you to fuck up.”

I watch her go, shaking my head in disbelief. Parsons quietly takes her place in the now empty deckchair. I forgot he was here.

“Thanks for the support.”

“I’m with you, pal,” he says, shielding his eyes from the sun, “but I’ve got enough sense to keep my mouth shut.”

HEAVY CLOUD FILLED THE sky during the late afternoon and early evening. As darkness fell we were called into the main upstairs function room and weapons were handed out. I was given a gun, a few rounds of ammo, and several grenades, but I don’t think I’ll use them. More to the point, I don’t know how to use them, even though Julia and one of the others tried to show us. I’ll stick to my blades.

Since this war began I’ve fought alongside hundreds of men and women, maybe even thousands. Who they were and what they were capable of didn’t seem to matter until now. But, standing in the bizarre surroundings of the run-down social club, I looked at the ten other fighters heading into town with me and tried to imagine how each of them would fight and kill. The two women-Julia and Sophie-seemed totally unfazed, ready to face anything. Most of the others were similarly focused. Only Parsons and a guy called Harvey seemed as nervous and agitated as I felt. Harvey is a huge, lumbering bulk of a man. He wears glasses with ridiculously thick lenses, and he suffers from acute asthma. He sounds like Darth Vader, and he has appalling halitosis. You can smell him and hear him long before you see him coming. Poor bastard. He comes across as being a bit backward, and I wonder how much of what’s happening he truly understands. Still, he must have something between his ears if they reckon he’ll be able to keep control of himself in the city surrounded by Unchanged. I’m not convinced.

We left the social club before 3:00 a.m., splitting into four pairs and one group of three, staggering our departures and each of us taking a different, prearranged route to the rendezvous point in town. I’m with Craven, the computer guy, and he reckons we’ve been walking for almost an hour. We follow the towpath alongside a canal that cuts through what used to be a busy residential area. This place used to be a vibrant, noisy suburb of the city. The nearby university caused the local population to swell during the school year, and the narrow streets were full of cheap shops, restaurants, cafés, bars, and pubs. Everywhere is silent now. The only resident I can see is floating facedown in the murky canal.

The towpath has taken us almost all the way into the very center of the city. We reach a steep flight of steps that lead back up to the street. As we climb them, our closeness to the heart of town becomes apparent. We emerge among lifeless crowds of terrified Unchanged who don’t even look at us when we pass them. I expected this to be infinitely harder but I’m somehow able now to swallow down my emotions, hold the Hate and not start killing because I know they’ll be dead before long anyway. Seeing Sahota’s plan realized will result in many more deaths than I could ever cause by myself. If everything happens as predicted, the city will have fallen by this time tomorrow. Maybe I can bear to be with them because, for the first time in as long as I can remember, the Unchanged are not my only focus. I have another agenda. Since we left the social club all I’ve been able to think about is getting deeper into town, giving Craven the slip, and heading for the Prince Hotel. I’ll search for Lizzie, and then, when I’ve made her tell me where she last saw Ellis, I’ll use the chaos as cover and try to get away.

“Down here,” Craven says, changing direction and leading me along a tight passageway filled with people. I look into their vacant faces, and I feel nothing but contempt for them. They remind me of what I used to be before the Hate-beaten, wretched, resigned. They cower in the shadows, waiting for a salvation that is never going to come. The Hate has stripped away their identities and their purpose. They are empty, just waiting for death to come along and end their misery. Standing here, ankle deep in this scum, there’s apart of me that wants to stay and see Sahota’s plan fully realized. I want to watch these people burn.

The road we’re now following runs along the edge of a military enclosure. Everything looks so different tonight, but I’m sure this used to be a council depot. Tall railings surround the place, and there’s a massive concentration of soldiers at the gates. The enclosure is comparatively well lit, thumping gas-driven generators powering floodlights. The number of refugees under our feet here is greater, too, attracted like moths to the light and noise. Craven and I weave through the milling masses with our heads held high, without a fucking care, and no one even gives us a second glance.

“I can see why Sahota picked this spot,” I say quietly as we begin a slow descent down the packed, sloping main street that leads to the town hall. Even now it’s still an impressive focal point of a building, a huge, mock-Grecian hall complete with ornate carvings and rows of massive white stone columns. The civic square around it is seething with people, most of them camped out on the cold, hard ground, wrapped up in coats and blankets, their misery illuminated by more well-spaced lights. There are signs that there used to be something like a soup kitchen operating from here-abandoned tables, empty gas cylinders and tins of food, plastic plates and cutlery blowing in the suddenly vicious wind.

“It’s perfect,” Craven agrees. “There are thousands of them here, and they’re all at breaking point. They probably came here looking for food and shelter and got neither, so they just dropped where they were standing and gave up. They’ll riot in a heartbeat once we start on them.”

I look around as we pick our way through the sprawled masses. He’s right. There’s an unspoken tension in the air here, much more fractious and intense than any I’ve felt before. There’s an uncomfortable standoff between civilians and the military, too. I don’t know which side is more wary of the other. Maybe that’s the real reason why the soldiers are here in such numbers?

We move past a large stone statue, and seeing its distinctive dark outline strikes a sudden chord. For a second I remember this place as it used to be. On the rare occasions I’d get a proper lunch break from work, I’d sometimes walk here to get away from the office and everyone in it. Once or twice I met Lizzie here before the kids were born.

“There’s Sophie,” Craven says, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow and nodding over to where she’s standing on the opposite side of the square. “Go find yourself a spot.”

We separate as planned. Each of us will disappear into the crowd until the time to attack comes. It’ll look less suspicious if we’re all spread out, not that it matters; when the fighting starts no one will care who threw the first punch or fired the first shot. I find a narrow gap midway along a low wall, between two sleeping refugees, where I stop and wait. There’s a still-functioning clock on the side of the town hall, just visible from where I’m standing. It’s approaching four. Just over two hours to go. The Prince Hotel is no farther than a mile from here. I’ll wait for a little while before I make my move. If I go off too fast there’s a chance I’ll be seen and followed.

Trying not to make it too obvious, I look around for the others. Craven and Sophie I’ve already seen. I see Parsons way over to my right and another man whose name I don’t know sitting perched on the plinth of the statue in the center of the square. Harvey is leaning up against the same wall as me, a little farther along. His size makes him easy to pick out in the crowd.

There’s Julia, too, sitting right in front of me, just a handful of people between us. I catch her eye and, stupidly, almost acknowledge her. She has a dirty blanket draped over her head, all but the top half of her face hidden. Bitch is staring straight at me, watching my every move.