Dog Blood (3 page)

WE KEEP WALKING AS the daylight slowly fades, the darkness finally bringing some respite from the heat.

“What time is it?” Adam asks.

“No idea.”

“What day is it?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“Don’t suppose it matters,” he grumbles as we limp slowly down a long dirt track that curves around the edge of a deserted farm. He’s right-the time, day, date, temperature, position of the moon… none of it really matters anymore. Life is no longer about order and routine, it’s about the hunt and the kill and just getting through each day unscathed. When the war began, killing was all that mattered, but things feel like they’re changing now.

I would never tell him, but I’ve enjoyed traveling with Adam. Having someone like him to talk to has proved unexpectedly beneficial. Maybe that’s why I went back for him earlier, and why I’ve put up with him for the last few days. Without even realizing it, he’s helping me make sense of what’s happened to me since the onset of the Hate. Before I killed them, Adam’s parents had him locked in their garage, chained to the wall like a dog. He’d spent months there in total isolation. I’ve had to explain everything that happened to the rest of the world while he’d been locked away. Going over it all again has helped me to understand.

Adam’s first direct experience of the Hate was similar to mine, but in some ways the poor bastard had it even tougher than me. He was caught off guard when he realized what he was and what he had to do. He tried to kill his family, but, filled with the same fear and disorientation that I remembered feeling after I’d killed my father-in-law, his father managed to fight back and smashed his right hand and left ankle with a small sledge hammer. Rather than finish him off or turn him over to the authorities, though, Adam’s parents locked him up and locked themselves down. They didn’t have the strength to kill him, even though they knew he’d kill both of them in a heartbeat. I understand why they did it. It’s like the tied-up kid I found earlier today. The Unchanged just can’t let go. They hold on to the people that used to matter to them in the vain and pointless hope they’ll somehow be cured or change again. But how can we be cured? We’re not the ones who are sick. Adam’s parents had the whole thing planned out. They starved the poor fucker for days, then fed him drugged food to keep him subdued and under control. Finding him was like something out of a fucked-up Stephen King book. Wonder if Stephen King’s like us or like them…?

“Can we stop soon?”

“Suppose.”

“You got any idea where we are?” Adam asks. His voice is weak. I glance across at him. His face is white and his skin clammy.

“Roughly,” I answer. Truth is I’m not exactly sure, but for the first time in ages I actually do have a fair idea of where I am. For weeks I’ve traveled everywhere on foot. Like most people I’ve shunned cars and other similar means of transport-they make me feel conspicuous when all I want to do is disappear, and anyway, most roads are blocked and impassable now. I knew we were getting close, but it was yesterday afternoon, after we’d spent almost an hour waiting on the outskirts of a vicious battle for a kill that never came, when I caught sight of the Beeches on the horizon-a distinctively shaped clump of ancient trees perched on top of an otherwise barren and exposed hill. The trees are a natural landmark I used to pass on the highway traveling back home from rare day trips out with Lizzie and the kids. My best guess was that we were three or four miles short of them, and from memory they were another five miles or so from the edge of town.

“So where are we?”

“Close to where I used to live.”

“So why do you want to go back there?”

“What?” I mumble, distracted.

“Back home? Why do you want to go home?”

“I lost my daughter, and I want to find her again,” I tell him. “She’s like us.”

He nods his head thoughtfully. Then, from out of nowhere, a huge grin spreads across his tired, sweat-streaked face.

“So how many did you kill today, Dan?”

“Two, I think. You?”

“Beat you! I got three. You should have seen the last one. Speared the fucker on my stick. Took more effort to pull it out again than it did to skewer him!”

“Nice.”

“I tell you, man,” he continues, the tiredness gone and his voice suddenly full of energy and enthusiasm, “it’s the best feeling. When I first see them they scare the hell out of me, but as soon as I’m ready and I’ve got my head together, all I want to do is kill. Does that feeling ever go? Tell me it doesn’t…”

Adam’s still living off the buzz of sudden power and freedom that comes with understanding the Change and experiencing your first few kills. I felt the same when it happened to me. It’ll be a while before he comes down again. It’s like a drug, and we’re like junkies. I don’t get the same highs I used to anymore, just the cravings. The euphoria has faded, and life’s more of a struggle now. It’s getting harder to find food, and I’m tired. The gap between kills is increasing, and all that’s left to do in those gaps is think.

“The feeling doesn’t go,” I answer. “It just changes.”

“Wish I’d been there at the start…”

For a few seconds he’s quiet again, daydreaming about all the opportunities he’s convinced he’s missed. The silence is only temporary while he thinks of the next question to ask.

“So what are we?”

“What do you mean?”

“All I want to do is kill, man. I’m addicted. Am I some kind of vampire?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not, think about it…”

“Believe me, I have thought about it. We’re not vampires. We don’t drink blood, we just spill it. I like garlic in my food, I’m okay with sunlight, and I can see my reflection in mirrors.”

“You sure? You seen the state of yourself recently?”

I ignore his cheap jibe. He’s right, but he looks no better. It’s months since I cut my hair and weeks since I last shaved. I did manage to wash in a stream yesterday-or was it the day before…?

“What are we, then? Werewolves?”

I shake my head in disbelief. This guy’s relentless. What’s even more disturbing is the fact I’ve already had this conversation with myself and I’ve got my answers prepared. Truth is, at the beginning, there were times I felt more like an animal than a man. In some ways I still do, but now I scavenge more than hunt. Less like a wolf, more like a rat.

“We’re not werewolves. We don’t change when the moon comes out.”

“I know that, you prick,” he says, catching his breath as the toes on his broken foot drag on the ground. I stay quiet for a moment, wondering if I should tell him what I really think or whether it’s just going to pointlessly prolong this stupid conversation.

“Here’s what I reckon,” I say, deciding just to go for it. “You want to compare us to a type of monster? Look at the evidence-”

“What evidence?”

“Look at how we live and what we do.”

“I don’t get you…”

“We drag ourselves around constantly, looking for Unchanged to kill. It’s almost like we’re feeding off them. When you’re killing you feel alive, like you can do anything, but the rest of the time it’s like you’re in limbo. Just existing. Not really living, but not dead either…”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying we’re like zombies,” I finally admit. “Being out here is like being one of the undead.”

He doesn’t react. For a minute everything is quiet and deceptively peaceful, the only sound our slow, uneven footsteps on the dirt track.

“Do you know what I always used to wonder?” he eventually asks.

Do I really want to know?

“What?”

“I used to wonder what happened to the zombies after the end of the film. You know what I’m saying? When all the living have been infected and there’s no one left to kill, what happens next? Does the hunger ever go away, or is rotting all that’s left for them?”

ADAM IS STRUGGLING, HIS battered body a wreck, but he keeps moving. The light’s almost completely gone, and we need to stop. Apart from a single helicopter in the distance and a fast-moving truck a few miles back, we haven’t seen or heard anyone for hours. Things have changed-when the fighting first started there were people everywhere. Maybe it’s because I’m moving at a fraction of my normal pace that the world seems empty? Part of me still thinks I should just dump Adam and go on alone. We’ll find somewhere to stop and rest for the night. When I’m ready to get moving again I’ll decide whether I’m going to take him with me.

“Over there.”

“What?”

“There,” he says, pointing across the road with his badly broken hand. His fingers jut out at unnatural angles, and I can’t see what he’s gesturing at. “Look… through the trees…”

On the opposite side of the road we’re following is a dense forest. I squint into the semidarkness to try to see whatever it is he thinks he’s spotted. He shuffles around and hops away from me, moving toward a gap in the trees that stretches farther into the gloom. I look down and see that there are muddy tire tracks curving onto the road from the mouth of a barely visible track.

“What do you reckon?” he asks.

“Got to be worth a look. There wouldn’t be a track if it didn’t lead somewhere.”

“Might be more of them down there…”

He tries to speed up again, eager to kill, but I pull him back. I’m not sure. This doesn’t feel right. I can see the outline of a large building up ahead on the edge of a clearing, and I cautiously edge closer. The building is huge and box-shaped, like a warehouse-but why here out in the middle of nowhere? I take another few steps forward, and realization slowly begins to dawn. Shit, I know what this place is.

“What’s the matter, Dan?”

I don’t answer. Can’t answer. My mouth’s suddenly dry, and my legs feel like lead. I should turn around and walk away, but I don’t, and I keep moving forward on autopilot, my mind racing. We enter a dusty, gravel-covered yard, lines of mazelike wooden barriers making it look like a deserted, out-of-season tourist attraction. Up ahead the building’s doors hang open like a gaping mouth.

“What is this?”

“You don’t know?”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Should I?”

“Slaughterhouse.”

Adam leans against the nearest barrier and works his way along it toward the open door.

“You told me about these places, but I…”

“What? You didn’t believe me?”

“It’s not that…”

He stops talking and I stop listening. Like a character in a bad horror movie, I walk into the building. It’s almost pitch black inside, but I can see enough to know that we’re in a narrow corridor with a set of heavy double doors directly ahead. It’s musty and damp in here, the faint scents of the forest and wood smoke mixing with the heavy, acrid stench of chemicals and decay. I wish I had a flashlight. The gloom makes it too easy to remember the night I almost died in a place like this. Standing here in the dark I can still see the helpless, terrified faces of the people crammed around me as we were herded like cattle toward the killing chamber. I remember their lost and desperate expressions, the confusion, frustration, and pain so evident. I remember my own terror, convinced I was about to die…

“You okay?” Adam asks, finally catching up and nudging into me from behind. I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped walking. I feel like I’ve stepped out of my body and now I’m watching from a distance. It’s a nauseous, unsettling feeling, like the nervous relief you feel when you walk away without a scratch from a crash that’s just written off your car. You’re thinking, How did I get away with it? How close was I to biting the bullet? and then your mind starts with the “what ifs” and “if onlys”… I know that if I’d have been another hundred or so people farther along the line that night, I’d be a dead man now.

I lean up against one of the doors in front of me. It moves freely, and I shove it open and walk into what must have been the gas chamber. The dark hides the details of what I know is all around me. There are bodies here. I have no idea how many, but I can see their shapes stacked up in featureless piles. The cavernous room is filled with the buzzing of thousands of flies gorging on dead flesh, and I keep looking up to avoid looking down. There’s a hole in the roof three-quarters of the way down the length of the room, and I can just about make out metal gantries and walkways high up on either side. Wide-gauge pipework weaves in and out of the walls of the building, and an enormous exhaust fan has been mounted at the far end of the room, its blades still turning slowly in the gentle evening breeze.

“Let’s get out,” Adam whispers from somewhere close behind me. “Fucking stinks in here.”

I move forward again, dragging my feet along the ground so I don’t trip over anything I can’t see, convinced that the entire floor is covered with gore and bits of bodies. I kick bits of wood and twisted chunks of metal out of the way-remnants of the fallen section of roof-and finally reach the far wall, my pace almost as slow as Adam’s. I work my way along, trying to find a way out. In the farthest corner, hidden from view by another unidentifiable pile of rubbish, is a wide door that’s hanging off its hinges, half open. I duck underneath it, then turn back and prop it open fully so Adam can get through. His uneven footsteps and grunts and moans of effort make him sound like a monster in the shadows.

“We can’t stay here,” he says.

“Might be some other buildings around.”

As soon as he’s completely outside, I put my arm around him and support his weight. We’ve only taken a few steps when he stops.

“Fuck me,” he mumbles. “Would you look at that…”

At the side of the long, narrow building is another clearing, out of sight until now, and the ground is almost completely covered with bodies for as far as I can see. There are hundreds of them, thousands probably, stacked up in massive piles. I leave Adam again and move toward the nearest one. From a distance the gloom makes it look like a single, unidentifiable mass, only distinguishable as human remains because of the countless hands, arms, and legs that stick out from it at awkward angles. As I get closer, however, a level of sickening detail is revealed. These bodies have been dumped-not even laid out-and those at the bottom have been crushed by the weight of the rest, leaving them unnaturally thin, almost like they’ve been vacuum-packed. Higher up, countless squashed, frozen, waxy faces stare back at me unblinking. Their discolored flesh, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes give each of them grotesque, nightmarish, masklike expressions. Seeing them makes me think about my own mortality. I don’t feel anything for any of the people here-they’re just empty shells now, each of them a spent force-but I swear I won’t end up like this.

“Look on the bright side,” Adam shouts across the clearing.

“There’s a bright side?”

“’Course there is. You got away. That could have been you, that could. Could have been me…”

I ignore him and keep walking farther into the clearing, following a narrow pathway between another two fifty-yard-or-so-long piles of death. Distracted, I lose my footing when I reach the end of the rows, and the ground suddenly starts to crumble beneath my boots. I fall back and find myself sitting on my backside on the edge of a vast hole, at least twenty yards square and deep enough for me not to be able to see the bottom in some parts. I know immediately what it is-a mass grave filled with an incalculable number of people like Adam and me. I get up and carefully walk around the edge. There’s a bulldozer up ahead with a massive metal scoop. At first I think they must have used it to dig the pit, but then I see there’s a scrap of clothing caught on the teeth of the scoop and I realize they were using it to fill it. Directly below me there are corpses reaching almost all the way up to the surface, piled up where they were tipped out. They look like they’re climbing over each other to get out.

I jog back over to Adam, forcing myself to look away from the dead. How many sites like this were there, and are any still in operation? Even now as I’m wasting time here, are more of our people being killed elsewhere? Then another thought crosses my mind that makes me go cold: my daughter, Ellis. Did she end up in a place like this? Is she there now, waiting to die? Is she here? For a few desperate seconds I turn back toward the corpses and start looking through them, terrified the next face I see will be my little girl’s. Then, as quickly as sudden panic just took hold, common sense takes over again. If she’s here there’s nothing I can do. I have to believe she’s still alive. She’s all I’ve got left.

“So where are they all?” Adam asks.

“Who?”

“The fuckers who did this. Where’d they go?”

“I don’t know,” I answer as I lead him out behind the main building toward a group of three square-shaped, light-colored, prefabricated huts that look new in comparison to everything else. “Just abandoned the place, I guess. Maybe they were attacked?”

“Hope the bastards got what they deserved.”

Two of the almost identical shedlike buildings are locked. The corrugated metal roller door on the front of the third, however, is not. I open it fully and go inside. It’s small, cramped, and half full of bags of chemicals. Doesn’t matter. It’ll do for tonight. No one with any sense will come here, and even if they do, we’ll just play dead. I’d have fought side by side with any of the thousands of people who died here, but they’re just rotting meat now, and we’ll use them as cover.

Adam sits down on a pile of sacks, struggling to get comfortable and still talking nonstop about nothing of any importance. I close the door, then find myself a scrap of space in the far corner of the hard concrete floor and try to sleep, resting my head on another plastic sack full of Christ-knows-what. It could be poisonous or corrosive, but it doesn’t matter. I cover it with my coat and close my eyes, too tired to care.