Dog Blood

for another missile explosion, but it’s just more helicopters, their pilots and passengers fleeing from the fallen city along with everyone else. I glance at the dashboard for a fraction of a second-as long as I dare-and I see that we’re doing more than ninety miles an hour. More than a mile a minute. We might be six or seven miles away now, maybe more. Is that far enough?
    “We’ve got to get away from there, you understand?” I yell over the noise of the engine, looking over at Ellis. She cowers on the seat next to me, half naked and covered in blood and grime. Her huge brown eyes stare back at me unblinking. Poor kid’s in shock, traumatized by everything that she’s seen and done since we were last together. If only Lizzie hadn’t taken her away from me. She’d have been better off with me there to explain everything. “Listen, we’ll find somewhere safe to stop, then we’ll-”
    Her eyes dart away from my face and toward the windshield. She looks up, scanning the white clouds above us. I follow her gaze, then look down again and steer quickly out of the way as we almost hit the back of a slower dark green vehicle. We rumble over the hard shoulder, the tires brushing the edge of the grass verge and churning up clouds of grit and dust. I yank the Land Rover back on course, the sudden movement making us both slide over to the right. Ellis’s gaze remains fixed, staring into the sky.
    “What is it?”
    She doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t matter. I can hear it now. Even over the Land Rover’s straining engine and everything else, I hear a high-pitched whine. And then I see it-a single dark speck racing across the sky toward the city at an unimaginable speed. Must be a jet or…
    Fuck… It can’t be…
    The accelerator pedal’s already flat on the floor, but I try to push it down harder still when I realize what it is I’m looking at. With one hand on the wheel, I reach across and shove Ellis down. She yelps in pain and protest and tries to fight me off, but I ignore her cries and keep pushing. She slides off the seat, and I shove her harder, forcing her down into the foot well.
    “Get down!” I scream, my voice hoarse with panic. “Get your goddamn head down now!”
    She looks up again, and all I can see is those beautiful brown eyes staring back at me. She tries to move again, but I push her back.
    “Don’t look up, Ellis. Whatever you do, don’t look up-”
    Then it happens.
    There’s a sudden flash of intense white light, so bright that it burns. I screw my eyes shut, but I can still see everything as the incandescent light and sudden, scorching heat wrap all the way around us, filling the Land Rover, burning my skin and snatching the air from my lungs. It fades almost as quickly as it came, but the darkness that takes its place is equally blinding. I’m thrown forward as we smash into another vehicle ahead of us, and in the fraction of a second I’m looking out, I see that the highway has become a single solid mass of smashed cars and trucks.
    A howling wind swallows up the Land Rover and hurls us and everything else forward again. I try to reach out for Ellis, but I can’t find her. I lean over, but I can’t feel her. She’s not moving. The Land Rover’s spinning now. Feels like it’s rolling over and over, being hit by debris from all angles. I’m thrown back in my seat again, and the back of my head smashes against the window.
    Try to move but I can’t. Try to focus but I can’t. Try to speak but…

40
    HOW LONG? HOURS, MINUTES, or just seconds? Everything is still, much quieter than it should be. I slowly pry my eyes open, not knowing what I’m going to see. The windshield of the Land Rover has shattered, the glass crisscrossed by hundreds of tiny, snaking cracks. We’re straddling another wreck, and the nose of the car has been shunted up into the air. Lying back in my seat, all I can see in front of me is a foul and angry yellow-gray sky. It’s the color of bile.
    Ellis moves. I try to lean across and turn toward her, but my neck’s stiff. I reach up to massage it, but I stop. My skin feels moist, raw, and pliable. Must have been burned. Ellis shuffles again, and I try to twist around. Then I freeze. I feel my bladder loosen involuntarily.
    The force of what just happened must have spun the Land Rover around through more than a complete half turn, and what I can see now through the passenger window is the single most terrifying thing I have ever seen. Between