Dog Blood

here and what used to be the city, almost everything’s on fire. There are flickering flames everywhere, and the ground is scorched and black. The city itself-my home, the place where I lived with my family and where I worked and played and struggled and fought-is gone. A thick climbing column of dark gray smoke rises straight up into the sky from its dead heart. At a height I can’t even begin to imagine the smoke balloons out and turns in on itself again and again, forming the unmistakable shape of a mushroom cloud.
    Ellis climbs up onto the passenger seat next to me. Thank God I found her. If I’d been any slower or any later or if I’d waited any longer she’d be gone now, vaporized in the blinking of an eye along with so many others. Lizzie, Josh, Edward… all gone. I start sobbing. The apartment, Joseph Mallon, Julia… Don’t know why I’m crying. Is it shock, relief, or sorrow…? Ellis looks at the explosion in the distance, then turns and watches me, her brown eyes locked onto mine. I try to talk to her, but I can’t make the words come out. My throat is burning and dry. My lungs feel like they’re filled with smoke. Is she in shock, too? For the first time since I found her she’s quiet and subdued.
    “We’ll wait here till it’s safe,” I tell her in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine. “Then we’ll find somewhere better, okay?”
    She looks at me but doesn’t react. Then she looks at the broken windshield.
    “Snow,” she says, the first proper word I’ve heard my daughter say in months.
    “Not snow,” I tell her, watching a few large gray clumps drift down and settle on the cracked glass. “It’s ash. Dirty. Poison. Make you sick.”
    She slumps back in her seat, and beyond her I can see the mushroom cloud again. Even now after all that’s happened, it’s a terrifying and humbling sight. The ultimate symbol of the Hate. Who did this?
    “We’re going to find a house,” I tell Ellis, still watching the cloud, not knowing what I’m saying now or why, “and you and me are going to stay there together. I know it’s hard to understand what happened with Mummy and Edward and Josh, but one day we’ll work it out, and when we do you’ll-”
    She springs up from her seat and throws herself across the inside of the Land Rover, leaning on my chest, shoving me back into my chair, and pressing her face hard against the glass. I can’t move, pinned down by her weight. She’s following something, watching it circling us. With lightning speed she jumps away again, then scrambles over the seats into the back of the car, trampling over the soldiers’ still-wet corpses. She yanks at one of the door handles, trying to get out.
    “Don’t, sweetheart,” I shout, trying to turn my aching body around and pull her back into the front. I manage to catch hold of her, but she wrestles herself free. “You can’t go out there-”
    She squeezes through the gap between the seats again, pushing me back and lunging for the door. I lean across and cover the lock. She shakes the handle violently and screams with frustration.
    “Ellis, don’t,” I plead. “You have to stay here with me. You can’t-”
    A sudden round of gunfire from somewhere close interrupts me. I turn and look out of the window at my side and see that there are people out on the highway now. Hundreds of them. Mostly they look like our people, but there are Unchanged soldiers among them, too. Our fighters outnumber them. They’re hunting them down.
    Ellis lunges at me, trying to get past. I wrap my heavy arms around her waist and try to pull her closer, but she kicks herself free. I’m too tired to keep fighting. She shoves me away, and the back of my head cracks against the window. Her constant, violent movements make the precariously balanced Land Rover shake and start to slip and lurch to one side.
    “Please…” I say, cautiously trying to reach for her again. She recoils from my touch, scrambling away. She pushes against the windshield in frustration. When the broken glass starts to bulge outward, she does it again. And again. I want to stop her, but I don’t have the energy. There’s blood on her hands now, but she goes on thumping the glass regardless, desperate to get out. Finally, with a grunt of effort and anger, she breaks through the windshield and scrambles out onto the hood of the Land Rover. My door’s blocked by another crashed car, and all I can do is follow her out. I crawl over the front of the