David Moody - Dog Blood

“What’re you thinking?” Paul asks after a couple of minutes have passed. “Not still thinking about my dick, I hope!”

“Just how massive the world feels tonight,” I answer honestly as I watch a lone helicopter leading a distant convoy of Unchanged vehicles across their so-called exclusion zone. “First time I’ve been back here in months. From up here I can see where I lived and where I worked and everything in between. Can’t believe I used to spend virtually all my time in the same few square miles of space. Kind of makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it?”

“The best thing about this life of ours now,” he tells me, “is how open it’s made everything. All the walls and barriers that used to hold us back have gone.”

“I’ve been thinking about my apartment. It was just barely bigger than this place, and there were five of us living there. Five of us! How the hell did we ever manage to cram that many lives into such a small space?”

“That wasn’t living, that was just existing.”

“I can see it now, but when you’re in the middle of it you just make do, don’t you. You try to make the most of what you’ve got…”

Paul nudges my shoulder, and I look across at him. He gestures out over the city.

“All of this, my friend,” he says, “is ours now.”

IN A SITUATION WHERE everybody was either on one side or the other and there was no in-between, ascertaining who was who was a priority. A DNA-based “test of allegiance” had been developed early on, and from it the Central System had been born. It was little more than an electronic checklist-a massive summary of names cribbed from the electoral roll, voters’ roll, and births, deaths, and marriages records. The details held on each person were sparse: name, sex, date of birth, last known address, whether the person was dead or not, and, most importantly, whether he or she was Hater or Unchanged.

Many records-no one knew exactly how many-were incomplete or inaccurate. Up-to-date information was increasingly hard to find. Data gathering had been carried out at cull sites, evacuation camps, temporary mortuaries, military checkpoints, and anywhere else there was a controlled flow of civilians. Within the first two months of the crisis, however, that flow had been reduced to a trickle, then a drip. The thousands of bodies lying rotting in their homes, in overgrown fields, or on street corners remained unaccounted for, blank records returned should anyone inquire about their names.

The quality of data wasn’t the only problem with the system. Administration, backups, integrity, access rights, security… the speed and chaotic nature of the Change meant that these and so many other aspects of development were truncated, attempted halfheartedly, skimped, skipped over, or simply abandoned altogether. Nevertheless, the ever-decreasing number of people still using the system continued to do what they could, believing that, eventually, what they were doing would prove worthwhile.

Almost thirty-six hours since he’d been back to the hotel room. He’d managed to catch a few hours’ sleep in the back of one of the empty food trucks this afternoon, but Mark was still exhausted. Volunteers were becoming increasingly hard to find, and they weren’t about to let him go until they had to. He continued to do it because of the promises of extra rations (which had, so far, been fulfilled) and because he felt safer being on the side of the people who had the biggest guns. The city streets were increasingly ugly and unsafe places. Better to walk them with the protection of a little body armor and a weapon, he thought, than without.

All that aside, Mark decided, when I get back to the hotel this time, I’m not coming out again.

Over the past few days he’d begun to sense a change in the air-a difficult situation becoming impossible, a slight risk becoming almost a certainty. Things were deteriorating, and the rate of decline was accelerating. He hadn’t completely given up hope of some semblance of normality eventually being restored, but he knew things were going to get a lot worse before they got any better.

Processing. Of all the jobs they had him do, he hated processing the most. Maybe it was because, bizarrely, it reminded him of working in the call center? Perhaps it was just because it was so desperately sad. Those people who today still staggered into the military camp after months of trying to survive alone were little more than shells. Traumatized. Empty. Vegetative.

Heavy rain lashed down onto the roof of the tent, clattering against the taut canvas. A steady drip, drip, drip hit the corner of his unsteady desk, each splash just wide enough to reach the edge of his papers. Hot days and generally clear skies frequently meant cold nights, and even though it was cloudy tonight, it was still damn cold. He warmed his hands around the gas lamp while he waited. Wouldn’t be long. He’d just had word that a food patrol had found another few stragglers hiding in a warehouse storeroom, drowning in their own filth. Kate had worked here when they’d both first arrived in the city. Back then there’d been a steady stream of refugees coming through here 24/7. Now there were just a handful being processed every day.

“Should have seen him, Mark,” Gary Phillips said, sitting on the dry corner of the desk. “He went fucking wild when we found him.”

Phillips had been out in many of the same convoys as Mark over the weeks. This afternoon he’d won the toss and had taken the last available seat, leaving Mark to fill the desk job. Now he was back telling Mark in unnecessary detail how one of the survivors they’d found had gone crazy when they’d arrived at the warehouse. Mark wasn’t sure whether it was Phillips’s way of coping with what he’d experienced or whether he derived some sick pleasure from watching refugees suffer. Whatever the reason, Mark didn’t tell him to shut up or fuck off like he wanted to do. Instead he bit his lip and put up with Phillips’s pointless drivel. Better that than to show any kind of reaction that might be misconstrued.

“It was just unbelievable, I tell you,” Phillips continued, still pumped with adrenaline. “There were six of them shut in this fucking storeroom smaller than this tent. They’d used up just about every scrap of food they had, but on the other side of the door there was a warehouse still half full of stuff. Too fucking scared to put their heads out into the open.”

“Gets to us all in different ways, doesn’t it?” Mark said quietly, drawing lines on a piece of paper with the longest ruler he could find and writing out the questions he needed to ask. All the photocopied forms had been used up weeks ago.

“I know, but this was a bit fucking extreme by anyone’s standards. Anyway, the soldiers force the door open, not knowing what they’re gonna find in there, and this guy comes charging out, convinced they’re Haters. Fair play, they gave him a chance, which is more than I’d have done, but the dumb bastard wasn’t listening. He just kept coming at them.”

“So what happened?”

“What do you think happened? Fucker didn’t stand a chance. They put so many bullets in him I thought he was gonna… What’s the matter?”

Mark nodded toward the entrance to the tent. Phillips stopped talking and looked around. Behind him stood an elderly couple, who, if you looked past the emaciation, and their haunted, vacant stares, could have just stepped out of their house to go out shopping together. Their surprisingly smart clothes, albeit drenched with rain and streaked with dirt, looked several sizes too big for them. Phillips jumped off the desk, feet splashing in a puddle of mud, grabbed a chair, and placed it next to the one that was already opposite Mark.