David Moody - Dog Blood

I cross the plaza diagonally, feeling increasingly uncomfortable and exposed as I walk around the edge of the lapping lake of dirty rainwater, a Hater deep in Unchanged territory. Are they watching me? Eager to get under cover, I quicken my pace and head out between another two deserted buildings. Then I finally see the place Sahota sent me to find. The Risemore Conservative Members Club is as ugly as everything else around here, a squat, square, redbrick social club that looks like it might actually have benefited from having a bomb dropped on it. I used to do all I could to avoid places like this in the days before the war. When I was little, before he walked out on us, my dad used to drag me out to his drinking club some weekends. I’d sit there with him, bored out of my mind, having to make one can of Coke last for hours while he got drunk, smoked, read the paper, argued with his equally drunk cronies or sat and watched piss-poor comics, singers, and variety acts that, by rights should have been banned from performing in public. As I edge closer to the club I automatically build up a mental image of what it’s going to be like inside: loud, stale, musty, a heavy fug of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, grubby, sticky carpets, uncomfortable plastic-covered seating with the stuffing hanging out…

I can’t get in through the front entrance; an impassable mound of fallen masonry blocks the door. I go around to the back to look for another way in, cursing my naïveté. I was never supposed to get in through the front. You don’t want just anyone to be able to stroll up and knock on your front door if you’re trying to coordinate a terrorist cell, do you? Is that what I am now, a terrorist? A suicide bomber without the bomb? Or am I the bomb?

A narrow, brick-walled passageway runs from the front of the building straight through to the back, opening out into an enclosed but largely empty parking lot. Can’t see anyone around here, or even any evidence that anyone’s been here for a while. There’s a fire exit, a strong, metal-clad doorway. I hammer on it with my fist and wait for an answer, starting to doubt whether I’m at the right place. A mangy tabby cat darts out from under a hedge behind me, racing across the parking lot and scurrying for cover under an overflowing Dumpster. Instinctively I whistle for him. I used to like cats.

The fire door opens, catching me off guard. I spin around and find myself face-to-face with a tall, powerful, nasty-looking bastard covered in tattoos. Thank God we’re on the same side.

“I’m looking for Chapman,” I tell him, remembering the name Sahota told me to ask for.

“Who is?”

“I am,” I answer without thinking.

“And who are you, you fucking idiot?” he sighs, taking a step forward and forcing me away from the building, into the middle of the parking lot. He rests his hand on the hilt of a monstrous knife with a vicious serrated blade.

“My name’s Danny McCoyne,” I answer quickly, trying to sound confident and disguise my nerves. “Sahota sent me here.”

At the mention of Sahota’s name the thug visibly relaxes. He looks me up and down again, then stands to one side and ushers me into the building. I do as he says and wait for him to follow as he pulls the door shut again and secures it with a heavy wooden crossbeam. He leads me through the ground floor of the building. My eyes are slow to adjust to the darkness indoors, and I trip down off a slightly elevated wooden stage area. He looks back at me and shakes his head.

Inside, the club is as dilapidated as everywhere else, nothing like the stupid, outdated image I’d had in my head. The floor is littered with the broken remains of off-white polystyrene ceiling tiles. Makes me wonder-if the ceiling’s this bad, how strong is the rest of the building? Disappointingly (but not unexpectedly), the bar has been completely stripped. There’s a row of spaces on the mirrored wall where the liquor dispensers would have been. Christ, I could do with a drink just to calm my nerves. I feel more anxious in here than I did back in the center of town when I was up to my neck in Unchanged.

My chaperone doesn’t want to talk. He leads me along a wide corridor, through another, much smaller second bar, then up a long staircase. There are four doors leading off a square landing. Three of them are open, and I can see at least one or two people in every room. He opens the remaining door, and I follow him into a large function room, which is almost as big as the main bar area we walked through on the floor below. It’s sparsely furnished but largely undamaged. There are several wooden crates of supplies stacked up against one wall. A guy is sitting by himself at a table in the far corner using a laptop, and there’s another asleep on a mattress under a window. As soon as I enter the room a woman gets up from where she’s been lying on a threadbare sofa. She’s hidden by shadows, but something about her is familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen her before. Is she Chapman?

“Who’s this?” she asks. Her voice has a trace of a gentle Irish accent, which is beaten into submission by the abrasiveness of her tone.

“Says he’s looking for you. Says Sahota sent him.”

My unwilling guide disappears, his job done. The woman walks toward me, stepping into the light. I immediately recognize her, but I can’t remember where from. Was it this life? My old life?

“The slaughterhouse,” she says.

“What?”

“The slaughterhouse, few days back. You’re trying to remember where you saw me before. You were there with the guy with the smashed-up hand and foot, and I-”

“You were the one telling me not to bother with him ’cause he’d be dead soon,” I interrupt, suddenly remembering where we met.

“That’s right. And he was. I’m Julia Chapman.”

“You’re a happy soul, aren’t you?” I say sarcastically as I shake her hand, recalling how blunt and matter-of-fact she was when we spoke before. She nearly crushes me with her viselike grip. She’s just trying to let me know who’s in charge.

“I’m a realist,” she answers, “and I’m focused. And so should you be. I tell you, when this war’s finished, I’ll be the first one up dancing at the fucking party and the last one to sit down. Until then, though, all I’m interested in is fighting.”

“Bit of a coincidence, though, finding you here.”

“You reckon?”

“I thought you were busy recruiting for Ankin’s army.”

“I still am.”

“So why are you here?”

“To make sure Sahota gets the right people, too.”

“What? Are you trying to tell me you followed me into the city?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything, but yep, something like that. There were a few more people involved, and it wasn’t just you we were watching.”

“Don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you like, pal, it really doesn’t bother me. Thing is, we are where we are, and where we are is here. It’s what we do next that matters most.”

“If you say so.”

I wonder if she always talks this much bullshit or if she’s trying to impress me and exert her authority. She looks me straight in the eye, and for a second I think she might be about to throw a punch. She bites her lip and turns away.

“Come here. I want to show you something.”

I follow her out of the room and across the landing. We walk through another part of the building, where two more fighters are resting in the shadows. They glance up at me as I pass them, but they don’t move. We go out onto a narrow veranda, then use an unsteady stepladder to climb up onto a debris-strewn flat rooftop. There are large puddles of water covering much of the ground. A pair of deckchairs have been left under an improvised stretched-out tarpaulin shelter. The views across what remains of the city from one direction and the exclusion zone on the other three are vast and panoramic. Looks like they’ve been using this place as an observation post.