Dog Blood

group of us heading out, and, from what I’ve heard from some of the others, she’s a hard bitch who doesn’t stand for any bullshit. She has a strong Irish lilt to her voice, and I can’t help thinking of the IRA and the Troubles when she speaks. It’s wrong of me, but who cares. Equality, diversity, and political correctness are all things of the past now, condemned to history by the Hate-the great leveler. All the name-calling, insults, and discriminatory language we used to avoid using have lost their impact now.
    “Not yet. He’s still hanging on.”
    She nods, her stern face devoid of any emotion. “There’s more food in the van. Make sure you eat before you leave. Don’t know when you’ll get the chance again.”
    What with the heat, the flies, and the smell, the last thing I want is more food.
    “Poor bastard,” I say quietly. “Just look at the state of him.”
    Now that I’ve taken a step back from Adam I can see just how bad his condition really is. He has open, weeping wounds all over his body, and his shattered bones haven’t been properly looked at since his father first broke them. It makes me feel uneasy; this is a harsh and unforgiving world we’re suddenly all living in. This man is going to die before the day is done, but none of his wounds are truly life-threatening. The medicine, the expertise, and the means to save him exist, but they’re all out of reach. Julia seems to second-guess what I’m thinking with uncomfortable accuracy.
    “Don’t bother beating yourself up about it,” she says. “There’s no point. Face facts, he’s useless to anyone like this.”
    “I know, but-”
    “But nothing. We don’t have time to waste patching up people like this who aren’t going to be able to fight again. It’d take him months to recover, and even then he’ll still be next to no good. And who’s going to look after him? We don’t have the people to spare. Right now there’s no such thing as doctors and nurses and surgeons and the like. At the end of the day we’re all fighters, and that’s all there is to it.”
    I feel like I should protest, that I should try to say something in defense of my fallen friend and fight in his corner, but I know there’s no point. She’s right. Christ, it was only this morning that I was thinking about walking out on him anyway.
    “A fighter who can’t fight,” she continues, preaching at me, “is just a corpse. If you want to do something to help him, then find yourself a gun and put a bullet in his head.”

9
    I’M AWAY FROM THE slaughterhouse and the corpses and the flies and the stench now, and the land stretches out in front of me forever. The sun-bleached, knee-high grass shifts lazily from side to side in the warm wind like waves on a gently rolling sea. The world is suddenly absolutely beautiful, calm and almost completely silent. I feel strong and relaxed, revitalized and ready for the next fight. It’ll be time to leave soon.
    I take a few steps forward, the blazing sun blinding me and burning my skin, my boots trampling down the long grass and leaving a flattened trail behind me. Considering how close to the cull site this place is, it’s remarkably tranquil and clear. Ahead of me there’s nothing, the land from here to the horizon barely even undulating, only a handful of distant, parched trees daring to stretch up from the yellow-green ground into the intense blue sky above.
    Wait. What was that?
    I hear something. The rustle of grass. Footsteps? I’m starting to think it was just the wind when, a few yards ahead of me, a childlike figure appears, emerging from the long grass where it had been hiding. Virtually naked and desperately thin; I can’t even tell from here what sex it is. It slowly stands upright, watching me intently, swaying slowly. I don’t care who or what it is. I know that I have to kill it.
    I start sprinting, totally focused on catching the small figure up ahead and nothing else. He runs (I can tell from the way he moves it’s a male) and makes a sudden, darting turn to the left, moving far faster than me. The gap between us increases, and I follow his trail through the flattened grass, around and around in a lazy arc until I end up back where I started. The child disappears momentarily, and as I scan the horizon I see that up ahead of me now are the ruins of my hometown. It’s been weeks since I’ve been here, but it’s almost exactly as I remember, just a little dirtier than before. The