Dog Blood (27 page)

Her eyes dart away from my face and toward the windshield. She looks up, scanning the white clouds above us. I follow her gaze, then look down again and steer quickly out of the way as we almost hit the back of a slower dark green vehicle. We rumble over the hard shoulder, the tires brushing the edge of the grass verge and churning up clouds of grit and dust. I yank the Land Rover back on course, the sudden movement making us both slide over to the right. Ellis’s gaze remains fixed, staring into the sky.

“What is it?”

She doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t matter. I can hear it now. Even over the Land Rover’s straining engine and everything else, I hear a high-pitched whine. And then I see it-a single dark speck racing across the sky toward the city at an unimaginable speed. Must be a jet or…

Fuck… It can’t be…

The accelerator pedal’s already flat on the floor, but I try to push it down harder still when I realize what it is I’m looking at. With one hand on the wheel, I reach across and shove Ellis down. She yelps in pain and protest and tries to fight me off, but I ignore her cries and keep pushing. She slides off the seat, and I shove her harder, forcing her down into the foot well.

“Get down!” I scream, my voice hoarse with panic. “Get your goddamn head down now!”

She looks up again, and all I can see is those beautiful brown eyes staring back at me. She tries to move again, but I push her back.

“Don’t look up, Ellis. Whatever you do, don’t look up-”

Then it happens.

There’s a sudden flash of intense white light, so bright that it burns. I screw my eyes shut, but I can still see everything as the incandescent light and sudden, scorching heat wrap all the way around us, filling the Land Rover, burning my skin and snatching the air from my lungs. It fades almost as quickly as it came, but the darkness that takes its place is equally blinding. I’m thrown forward as we smash into another vehicle ahead of us, and in the fraction of a second I’m looking out, I see that the highway has become a single solid mass of smashed cars and trucks.

A howling wind swallows up the Land Rover and hurls us and everything else forward again. I try to reach out for Ellis, but I can’t find her. I lean over, but I can’t feel her. She’s not moving. The Land Rover’s spinning now. Feels like it’s rolling over and over, being hit by debris from all angles. I’m thrown back in my seat again, and the back of my head smashes against the window.

Try to move but I can’t. Try to focus but I can’t. Try to speak but…

HOW LONG? HOURS, MINUTES, or just seconds? Everything is still, much quieter than it should be. I slowly pry my eyes open, not knowing what I’m going to see. The windshield of the Land Rover has shattered, the glass crisscrossed by hundreds of tiny, snaking cracks. We’re straddling another wreck, and the nose of the car has been shunted up into the air. Lying back in my seat, all I can see in front of me is a foul and angry yellow-gray sky. It’s the color of bile.

Ellis moves. I try to lean across and turn toward her, but my neck’s stiff. I reach up to massage it, but I stop. My skin feels moist, raw, and pliable. Must have been burned. Ellis shuffles again, and I try to twist around. Then I freeze. I feel my bladder loosen involuntarily.

The force of what just happened must have spun the Land Rover around through more than a complete half turn, and what I can see now through the passenger window is the single most terrifying thing I have ever seen. Between here and what used to be the city, almost everything’s on fire. There are flickering flames everywhere, and the ground is scorched and black. The city itself-my home, the place where I lived with my family and where I worked and played and struggled and fought-is gone. A thick climbing column of dark gray smoke rises straight up into the sky from its dead heart. At a height I can’t even begin to imagine the smoke balloons out and turns in on itself again and again, forming the unmistakable shape of a mushroom cloud.

Ellis climbs up onto the passenger seat next to me. Thank God I found her. If I’d been any slower or any later or if I’d waited any longer she’d be gone now, vaporized in the blinking of an eye along with so many others. Lizzie, Josh, Edward… all gone. I start sobbing. The apartment, Joseph Mallon, Julia… Don’t know why I’m crying. Is it shock, relief, or sorrow…? Ellis looks at the explosion in the distance, then turns and watches me, her brown eyes locked onto mine. I try to talk to her, but I can’t make the words come out. My throat is burning and dry. My lungs feel like they’re filled with smoke. Is she in shock, too? For the first time since I found her she’s quiet and subdued.

“We’ll wait here till it’s safe,” I tell her in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine. “Then we’ll find somewhere better, okay?”

She looks at me but doesn’t react. Then she looks at the broken windshield.

“Snow,” she says, the first proper word I’ve heard my daughter say in months.

“Not snow,” I tell her, watching a few large gray clumps drift down and settle on the cracked glass. “It’s ash. Dirty. Poison. Make you sick.”

She slumps back in her seat, and beyond her I can see the mushroom cloud again. Even now after all that’s happened, it’s a terrifying and humbling sight. The ultimate symbol of the Hate. Who did this?

“We’re going to find a house,” I tell Ellis, still watching the cloud, not knowing what I’m saying now or why, “and you and me are going to stay there together. I know it’s hard to understand what happened with Mummy and Edward and Josh, but one day we’ll work it out, and when we do you’ll-”

She springs up from her seat and throws herself across the inside of the Land Rover, leaning on my chest, shoving me back into my chair, and pressing her face hard against the glass. I can’t move, pinned down by her weight. She’s following something, watching it circling us. With lightning speed she jumps away again, then scrambles over the seats into the back of the car, trampling over the soldiers’ still-wet corpses. She yanks at one of the door handles, trying to get out.

“Don’t, sweetheart,” I shout, trying to turn my aching body around and pull her back into the front. I manage to catch hold of her, but she wrestles herself free. “You can’t go out there-”

She squeezes through the gap between the seats again, pushing me back and lunging for the door. I lean across and cover the lock. She shakes the handle violently and screams with frustration.

“Ellis, don’t,” I plead. “You have to stay here with me. You can’t-”

A sudden round of gunfire from somewhere close interrupts me. I turn and look out of the window at my side and see that there are people out on the highway now. Hundreds of them. Mostly they look like our people, but there are Unchanged soldiers among them, too. Our fighters outnumber them. They’re hunting them down.

Ellis lunges at me, trying to get past. I wrap my heavy arms around her waist and try to pull her closer, but she kicks herself free. I’m too tired to keep fighting. She shoves me away, and the back of my head cracks against the window. Her constant, violent movements make the precariously balanced Land Rover shake and start to slip and lurch to one side.

“Please…” I say, cautiously trying to reach for her again. She recoils from my touch, scrambling away. She pushes against the windshield in frustration. When the broken glass starts to bulge outward, she does it again. And again. I want to stop her, but I don’t have the energy. There’s blood on her hands now, but she goes on thumping the glass regardless, desperate to get out. Finally, with a grunt of effort and anger, she breaks through the windshield and scrambles out onto the hood of the Land Rover. My door’s blocked by another crashed car, and all I can do is follow her out. I crawl over the front of the vehicle, the metal still hot, most of its paint scorched away, shards of glass grinding into my belly. I drop down onto the ground and lose my footing when it’s farther to fall than I think. I get up quickly, breathing hard. The air out here is bone dry and foul smelling.

Ellis darts away, and I follow her, moving out from the shadow of the crashed Land Rover and into the open. I look along the highway in both directions. It’s a single mass of stationary vehicles now. Many of the Unchanged drivers and their passengers are dead. I can see them wedged behind the wheels of wrecks, others with their bloody faces smashed up against windows. Some have survived. One of them emerges from the back of an overturned truck a short distance away. Before they’ve taken more than a couple of steps away, Ellis has attacked. She jumps onto a car, then leaps at the disoriented Unchanged man, landing on his back and smashing him down to the ground with incredible brutality.

A pack of fighters races past me. They’ve been waiting out here in the wasteland, and now they pick their way through the convoy like vultures, stripping the meat from Unchanged bones, hunting out the survivors and tearing them apart. Up ahead a Brute thunders along the road unchallenged, making kill after kill after kill. Any Unchanged resistance is quickly crushed. Even those who try to run are chased down and killed.

Ellis lunges at another one and disappears from view. I swallow hard and force myself to move. Leg hurts. I look down and see that there’s blood dribbling down from my right knee. My trouser leg and boot are stained wet-red.

“Ellis, wait,” I try to shout, my voice nowhere near loud enough. I find her on the ground beside a jeep, leaning down over another body. She looks up at me, and a chunk of bloody flesh drops from her mouth. Was she chewing it? I reach out and grab her wrist before she’s able to get away. “Too dangerous here. Need to get under cover. Come with me…”

She pries my weak fingers off and crawls away, searching for the next kill. She brings down a dazed, blood-soaked woman who’s already half dead. She pulls her down to her knees, grabs a fistful of hair, and smashes her face again and again into a charred car door, denting the paint-stripped metal more and more with each impact. I haul myself toward her, using other wrecks for support. Up ahead the towering mushroom cloud is beginning to fade and lose focus. That makes me even more afraid. Soon the air will be filled with poison if it’s not already. I throw myself down at Ellis again and wrap my arms tight around her. The pain in my bleeding knee is unbearable, but I have to ignore it. Ellis is all that matters.

“You have to come with me. We’ll both die if we stay out here.”

She puts the soles of her bare feet against the misshapen car door and straightens her legs, pushing me away. Overbalanced, and with one leg already weakened, I fall back. She bites down onto my hand, drawing blood, and I let go. She stands over me, one foot on either side of my body. I look up at her, covering my eyes against the fine dust and ash, which is falling faster now. I reach up and snatch her hand again as she sees another Unchanged and tries to run. I won’t let go. I can’t let go. She screams and pulls and kicks at me, but I won’t let her go.

“Stay with me, please…”

Ellis drops down onto my chest and stares into my face. What’s she thinking? Does she understand any of this? Another Unchanged trying to drag itself to safety distracts her, and she starts to move. I grip her wrist even harder.

“Don’t go.”

She clenches her free hand into a fist and hits me. I try to stop her, but she hits me again, then again and again and again until my face is numb and my eyes are almost swollen shut. Too tired. Can’t fight back.

I feel her get up.

There’s so much I need to say, but I can’t get even the first word out. I’m aware of her looking down at me, breathing hard, my blood on her hands.

“Ellis-” I start to say, but she isn’t listening. She looks up, then sprints away. I turn my head and watch as she disappears into the maze of crashed vehicles, searching for her next kill. All I can do is watch her go.

COLD.

Body shaking.

Breathing in dust.

The fighters are long gone. Ellis is long gone.

Empty.

Everything’s lost.

Still lying in the road, curled up in a ball. Stomach churning, legs and arms aching. Head pounding. Throat dry, lungs scorched. Warm wind gusting. Swirling sky black above me. Light’s fading. Stench of burning meat is everywhere. Been here for hours, facedown on the asphalt.

Heavy footsteps.

Someone standing next to me. A soldier? Stay still. Don’t move.

“Found one,” he shouts, face hidden, voice muffled by a gas mask.

“Worth taking?” someone shouts back.

“Not sure.”

He kicks me in the gut to see if he gets a reaction, forcing air out. I look up but don’t move. I feel the Hate rising.

“Well, has it still got two arms and two legs?”

“Yes.”

“And is it breathing?”

“Think so.”

“Then chuck it on the truck.”

He bends down, grabs hold of my shoulder, and picks me up. He hauls me across the road, feet dragging in the dust.

Have to try to fight. It’s all I’ve got left. Everything else is lost.

With what feels like my last breath, I straighten my legs, stand tall, and wrestle myself free. Unarmed and uncaring, I shove the soldier away with all the force I can manage. Caught off guard, he slams face first into a wreck. I spin him around and rip off his face mask. I need this fucker to know how much I hate him when I kill him.

He throws me back. Much stronger than me. I fall, my injured knee giving way. I wait for him to attack, but he picks me up again.

Is this how it ends? Is he going to kill me now?

Wait. He’s like me. One of us.

“Easy, tiger,” he grunts, pushing me forward again. “Save it for the Unchanged.”

Too tired to protest. Filled with relief, anger, and pain.

He leads me through the highway chaos, then picks me up and puts me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when my legs buckle again. Can’t fight. Can’t react.

I open my eyes and lift my head. Hard to see anything. More soldiers wearing gas masks, all of them dragging or carrying people over this way. We reach a flatbed truck, and he pushes me up. Grabbing hands reach down and help me. I scramble up, then fall back against the side of the truck, struggling to breathe. Dust and dirt grind into my cuts and burns, but I’m too tired to care. Too tired to feel the pain.

Empty.

For half a second I try to look for Ellis, but I know she’s long gone. I look around at the faces of the people crammed into the back of this truck. They’re all like me. They’re all fighters. No longer people, just fighters. All of us conscripted into what remains of Ankin’s army or another force like it.

I was stupid to believe I could sidestep this war, that I could escape from it with Ellis. What’s left of the world is now entirely governed by the Hate, and I have to be ready to fight and to kill until the last trace of the Unchanged is wiped from the face of the planet. Only then will the situation change.

My daughter is gone, lost long before I found her. Now all I have left is the Hate.

Exhausted, I close my eyes and let the darkness swallow me up.

Need to rest and recover and be ready for what’s still to come. No choice. No option. The hardest battles loom large on the horizon.