Dog Blood

other side of the door there was a warehouse still half full of stuff. Too fucking scared to put their heads out into the open.”
    “Gets to us all in different ways, doesn’t it?” Mark said quietly, drawing lines on a piece of paper with the longest ruler he could find and writing out the questions he needed to ask. All the photocopied forms had been used up weeks ago.
    “I know, but this was a bit fucking extreme by anyone’s standards. Anyway, the soldiers force the door open, not knowing what they’re gonna find in there, and this guy comes charging out, convinced they’re Haters. Fair play, they gave him a chance, which is more than I’d have done, but the dumb bastard wasn’t listening. He just kept coming at them.”
    “So what happened?”
    “What do you think happened? Fucker didn’t stand a chance. They put so many bullets in him I thought he was gonna… What’s the matter?”
    Mark nodded toward the entrance to the tent. Phillips stopped talking and looked around. Behind him stood an elderly couple, who, if you looked past the emaciation, and their haunted, vacant stares, could have just stepped out of their house to go out shopping together. Their surprisingly smart clothes, albeit drenched with rain and streaked with dirt, looked several sizes too big for them. Phillips jumped off the desk, feet splashing in a puddle of mud, grabbed a chair, and placed it next to the one that was already opposite Mark.
    “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “See you around.”
    With that he was gone. Mark gestured for the new arrivals to sit down. He hated doing this. It was hard. Damned hard. Too hard. He watched as the man sat his wife down, almost slipping in the greasy mud, then sat down next to her. Christ, after all they’d probably been through, he was still managing to be a bloody gentleman. He’d probably been looking after his wife for so long that he was hardwired to do it. She’d no doubt be the same, darning the holes in his clothes and checking he’d had enough to eat when both of them struggled to find any food and the world was falling apart around them. The couple huddled together for warmth, rainwater running off their clothes and dripping from the ends of their noses. The woman sobbed and shook, her shoulders jerking forward again and again. Her husband couldn’t help her or console her. He tried, of course, but she wouldn’t stop. He turned and faced Mark and stared at him, begging for help without saying a word, eyes filled with tears, mouth hanging open.
    “Okay, what are your-?” he began to ask, stopping short when a low-flying jet tore through the air above the park, sounding like it was just yards above the roof of the tent. The gut-wrenching noise and blast of wind made the canvas walls shake and the woman wail and screw her eyes shut. Her husband took her hand in his and gripped it tight. Mark waited a few seconds for the jet to completely disappear before trying again.
    “What are your names?”
    Nothing.
    “Do you have any identification papers with you?”
    Nothing.
    “Do you have any credit cards, letters… anything with your names on it, or an address?”
    Nothing. Mark sighed and held his head in his hands, barely making any attempt to hide his frustration and fatigue. He looked up again, reached across the table, and gently shook the old man’s wet right arm. The man reacted to his touch, shaking his head slightly as if he’d just been woken from a trance.
    “Can you tell me your name?”
    “Graeme Reynolds,” he finally answered, his voice barely audible over the rain.
    “Okay, Graeme,” Mark continued, looking down and scribbling the name at the top of the form he’d drawn up, “is this your wife?”
    He nodded. Mark waited.
    “What’s her name?” Mark asked finally.
    Another pause, almost as if he were having to dredge his memory for the answer.
    “Mary.”
    “Your date of birth?”
    No answer. Graeme seemed to be looking past Mark now, gazing into space. Waste of fucking time, Mark thought to himself. He’s gone again. What’s the point?
    “Wait there,” he told him, although he knew the man wasn’t going anywhere. He got up from his chair and walked across the dark tent to another table, where he added the couple’s names to a register and entered the same names against the next available address in another file. He wrote out the details on a slip of paper and took it back, wondering if anyone was ever going to collect the files