David Moody - Dog Blood

Mark reached for the door and pushed it at the exact same moment Gurmit Singh pulled it open from the other side. In a single movement he raced into the room, dragging Singh back inside and kicking the door shut behind him. He couldn’t risk him getting out and telling anyone what they were keeping in here, not that they’d be able to understand him anyway.

The kid was on the bed, naked but for a dirty gray undershirt, her wrists still bound together with a plastic tie but her legs free. Her tiny hands were wrapped around Kate’s father’s throat, and she was repeatedly yanking his head up, then slamming him back against the wooden headboard. Kate and Lizzie both tried to pull her off the old man, but she refused to let go, her small but strong clawlike fingers digging into his skin and holding on. Mark pushed them both aside and wrapped his arms around the little Hater’s waist. He backed away from the bed, dragging both the girl and the old man with him. Lizzie pried her daughter’s fingers off Kate’s father’s scrawny neck, then shoved him back up onto the mattress. Behind her Kate’s mother screamed, a constant, vile, eardrum-piercing, high-pitched wail of absolute terror and bewilderment.

“What the hell happened?” Mark asked between grunts of effort as he struggled to hold on to Ellis. He wrapped his arms tighter around her chest, restricting her movement. She leaned her head forward and bit down into his forearm; the sleeve of his thick jacket protected his skin. “Where’s her fucking gag gone?”

Before anyone could answer, Ellis jerked her head back again, cracking against Mark’s chin. He bit down hard on his tongue and yelped with pain. Less than half his size, she continued to move relentlessly and with incredible ferocity, refusing to give up despite the fact that, for now, he had her held tight. He knew that if her hands hadn’t been tied, several-if not all-of the people in the hotel room would almost certainly have been killed.

Ellis made another desperate bid for freedom, arching her back, then relaxing, doing it again and then kicking her feet back, catching Mark full in the balls on the rebound. She managed to wedge her foot against the nearest wall and pushed, the sudden movement catching him by surprise and sending him reeling backward. The sickening thud as he slammed against the opposite wall made him lose his grip. Ellis squirmed away from him and raced back into the room toward the old people in the bed, but Kate was waiting for her. She smashed her across the face with a heavy telephone directory. Stunned, Ellis dropped to her knees.

“Don’t!” Lizzie shouted, running toward her daughter as Kate stood over her, ready to strike her again. She shoved the other woman out of the way, then crouched down and thumped a hypodermic needle into Ellis’s bare thigh. Ellis yelped with sudden pain. With the needle still stuck in her skin, she spun around and lashed out at her mother with her bound hands, managing to scratch her nails down her cheek, leaving three parallel bloodred lines.

Then she stopped.

Eyes glazed, she tried to stand up again. She took two steps forward, then fell and hit the grimy carpet, face first. She tried to pick herself up again but was out cold before she’d lifted her head.

The room was instantly silent. Even Kate’s parents became quiet-her mother in shock and her father concussed. Gurmit Singh, who’d been cowering against the door with his hands over his head, stood up and reached for the handle. Mark also stood, the throbbing pain in his balls beginning to subside, and shouted at him.

“You open that door and go out there and you won’t get back in again. Your choice.”

Singh looked at him. Mark didn’t know for sure whether or not he understood, but was relieved when he hesitated with his hand on the latch, then stopped and trudged slowly back to the armchair he’d claimed as his own. He stepped over Ellis’s inert body and pointed down at her.

“Evil,” he hissed. He jabbed his finger at the door. “Nasty bitch! Get gone! Not here!”

With Kate busy dealing with her suddenly catatonic parents, Mark held Ellis still as Lizzie lashed her legs together with a length of nylon clothesline, then gagged her again. She rubbed antiseptic cream from an almost empty tube on the countless sores and abrasions that covered Ellis’s skin, caused by weeks of struggling against her bonds.

“What the hell happened?”

Lizzie shook her head, wiping away tears and trying to stay in control.

“I’m running out of pills. I’ve been giving her half doses. I was just trying to clean her up… I thought she was out cold, but she must have just been asleep or she was trying to trick me or…”

She stopped speaking and began to sob, stroking her daughter’s lank, greasy hair. She shuffled back as Mark dragged Ellis into the bathroom and chained her to the base of the sink pedestal.

“How many of those shots have you got left?”

“That was the last one.”

“And the pills?”

He backed out of the bathroom and shut the door. Lizzie didn’t answer until it was fully closed and her daughter had disappeared from view.

“A week at the most.”

“Jesus…”

“What am I going to do, Mark?”

“That thing has to go,” Kate interrupted, shouting from across the room and pointing accusingly at the bathroom door. “Get it out of here, because if you two don’t, I will.”

He walked over to her and reached out to put his arms around her, but she pulled away. She leaned against the wall and slid down it, cradling her distended belly.

“That thing,” Lizzie sobbed, “is my daughter.”

“She was your daughter,” Kate quickly replied. “Christ knows what she is now. She’s more animal than human.”

“I know that, but what am I supposed to do?” Lizzie asked, sitting on the floor opposite and holding her head in her hands. “You tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Just get rid of her. She’s one of them, Lizzie. She won’t stop fighting until she’s killed us all-”

“I know, but-”

“She killed your boys. How can you ever stand to be anywhere near her when she took your sons from you?”

“I can’t,” she immediately answered, pulling her knees up to her chest and bowing her head, ashamed by her own admission. “I don’t want her here either, but I don’t know what else I can do. I’m her mother and-”

“You could turn her over to the military.”

“You know I can’t. We’ve been through this. As soon as they’ve got her they’ll put a bullet in her head.”

“So?”

“I can’t let that happen,” she snapped with sudden anger evident in her increasingly desperate voice. “You’re right, Katie, I should never have brought her here, but what else could I have done? If I just let her go now, she’ll start killing, and they’ll hunt her down. Even if I could get her out of the city she wouldn’t survive. She won’t be able to find food or keep warm or look after herself or-”

“Tough. We should just do it.”

“How would we get her through the crowds?” Mark asked, trying hard to remain practical and focused and not let fraught emotions cloud the situation.

“Pump her full of drugs, then. Give her everything you’ve got left. Kill her, for Christ’s sake.”

“Katie-” Mark began to protest.

“I can’t hurt her,” Lizzie sobbed. “She’s my daughter, my own flesh and blood. Regardless of what she’s done or what she might do, I still have to protect her.”

ARE YOU MCCOYNE?”

I sit up quick. Eyes blurred. Where am I? No chains. Dull gray light. I look around and try to make sense of my surroundings. It’s one of the upstairs rooms in the social club. I found these cushions on a sofa downstairs and-