David Moody - Dog Blood

“I can’t. You know I can’t-”

“Then I will. I mean it, Mark, if you don’t get rid of them, I’ll leave.”

“Katie, there’s nowhere for them to go. Please, sweetheart, just calm down and-”

“Don’t patronize me. Don’t tell me to calm down. How can I calm down when-”

“Shh,” he begged, putting his hand up to her mouth. “Please don’t shout, Katie, they’ll hear us. Don’t do anything that’ll give them any reason to come back in here. You know what’ll happen if they do.”

“Maybe I should,” she said, pushing him away. “Maybe that’s exactly what I should do. Maybe if they knew what was going on here they’d help. They’d come up here and get rid of-”

“Shut up!” he hissed angrily, covering her mouth again.

Gurmit Singh, who had just started to quiet down, suddenly exploded into life again, startled by the appearance of Lizzie, who emerged from the bathroom.

“Who the hell’s this?”

“Mr. Singh,” Mark answered. “He’s just been delivered.”

“But we don’t have any space-”

“We can’t have his kind here,” Kate’s mother yelled, reaching out and grabbing hold of Lizzie’s arm and pulling her closer. Lizzie shrugged her off.

“Too many here,” Singh yelled back, suddenly switching to English. “Back bad. Need bed.”

“Oh, you can do the language when it suits you, then,” Kate sneered at him.

“What’s going on, Mark?” Lizzie asked.

“Nothing we can do about it,” he began. “We don’t have any say-”

“We can’t go on like this,” Kate interrupted, desperate tears welling up in her eyes.

“We have to-” Mark started to say.

“Tell me what I’m supposed to do, then, Kate,” Lizzie snapped angrily. “I heard what you were saying. I know what you want-”

“Then do something about it!”

“Where else am I supposed to go? What do you want me to do?”

Another outburst from Singh interrupted the argument. He got up from his seat and pushed between them, still gesturing toward the bed. Furious, Lizzie shoved him back down again.

“Back off!” she spat before turning to face Kate again. “Put yourself in my shoes, Katie. What would you do?”

“She can’t stay here. It’s not safe. You’re putting all of us at risk.”

“Look around, we’re already at risk. Everyone who’s left alive is at risk, for Christ’s sake.”

“Calm down, both of you,” Mark whispered, trying unsuccessfully to separate the two women, worried that their noise would bring the soldiers back.

“I’m not going to calm down,” Kate yelled, throwing open the bathroom door and pointing inside. “That thing in there is evil.”

“That thing in there is my daughter.”

“She killed your sons!”

“I know, but she’s still my daughter.”

Lizzie knelt down in the doorway. Curled up on the floor in front of her, chained to the sink pedestal, gagged and bound and heavily sedated, lay Ellis. Lizzie stroked her hair and ran her hand gently down the side of her tranquilized face.

“She could kill you, Lizzie. She could kill all of us.”

“I know, but I can’t let her go. Try to understand…”

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“Yes there is. What if your baby turns out to be like this? Will things be different then? Could you imagine giving your baby up?”

“No, I-”

“She’s my daughter, Katie, and no matter what she is, what she’s done or what she might still do, she’s my responsibility. I’ll protect her and fight for her until the bitter end.”

“If we go on like this,” Kate warned, “that will be sooner than you think.”

THE MORNING I THOUGHT would never come is finally here. I lay on the bed for hours, but I couldn’t sleep. It reminded me of being back in the apartment with Ellis, when we shut ourselves off from the others and slept on Edward’s top bunk. I kept thinking about her wide, innocent eyes. Oblivious to all that was happening around her, she curled up alongside me, full of love and complete, unspoken trust.

Barefoot and cold, I’ve spent most of the last few hours looking out of the small window, watching the darkness turn to gray as the sun rose over the roof of this bizarre prison.

I’ve stood here for hours trying to work out who this Sahota might be and what he wants from me. I’ve taken some reassurance from the fact that I’m sure Joseph Mallon’s naive trusting of me is genuine-he put his life on the line several times yesterday, and all that any of the Unchanged have left now is their lives. He’s either supremely confident and brave, stupidly optimistic, or, and this seems most likely, he genuinely believes all the crap he’s been peddling. So will Sahota be the same? I’ve been trying to work out my tactics, deciding how I should play my showdown with Boss Man. But how can I prepare for a meeting in a place I don’t know with a person I’ve never met?

It’s all irrelevant.

The only thing that matters now is getting out and looking for Ellis. The war… us and them… taking sides-all of that has to take second place from now on. I’ll play along with Mallon and his hippie/pacifist/conscientious objector bullshit for as long as it takes until I get out of here. Unless, of course, they don’t intend to let me out. Then I’ll resort to my backup plan-my Plan B, which used to be Plan A: start fighting and don’t stop until every last one of the fuckers is lying dead at my feet.

The door finally opens, and Mallon strides in. About time. There’s no tray of food and no small talk or niceties either this morning. It’s like he’s just got a job to do. Is he abandoning me and moving on to a new pet? Or is he just unable to look me in the eye because he knows what’s coming next? I want to attack him, but I don’t, forcing myself to swallow the Hate back down like poisonous bile.

“What’s going to happen?” I ask, instantly regretting having spoken. Christ, how far I’ve fallen. It’s bad enough that I’m being held captive by the Unchanged; now I’m begging them for information, too. Pathetic.

“I told you last night. You’re going to see Sahota.”

“Yes, but-”

Mallon stands up straight and looks at me, still on guard but allowing himself to relax slightly. He puts a hand on my shoulder, and I resist the temptation to shrug it off.

“Have faith, Danny. Sahota is a good man. The kind of man who could bring an end to this war.”

That doesn’t make me feel any better.

“But who is he? What does he want to see me for?”

My questions obviously sound as desperate as I suddenly feel. Mallon manages half a smile.

“You’ll find out.”

He bends down and takes the shackles off my feet. Now the only chains left are those that bind my hands together. I could kill him now, but that would be a mistake. If I’m going to kill anyone this morning, it should be the main man, not one of his minions.

Mallon leads me out into a wide corridor. There’s no security this time, no bag over my head, and I get my first proper look at the building I’m being held in. It’s an odd-looking place, nothing like the prison I’d imagined. The walls are bare, their light yellow paint faded and peeling, and the air is cold. There are traces of religious paraphernalia lying around like the crucifix in my room-a painting of some serene-looking woman at the top of a staircase, some unfathomable ancient slogan scrawled across another wall, enough crucifixes to ward off a whole army of vampires.

We reach a T-intersection at the end of the long corridor, walking under an unrepaired hole in the roof where rainwater has poured in and soaked the carpet. To my left the corridor continues toward another long staircase. To my right there’s a short, narrow landing, then three steps leading up to an ominous-looking door. Is this my Room 101? Is this the very end of my journey? All the fears and uncertainties I’d managed to dismiss suddenly manifest themselves again. My pulse is racing and my throat’s dry. My body tenses. I stop and turn toward Mallon. The urge to kill him is strong, almost too strong…