Dog Blood

and update the Central System. When he and Kate had first started volunteering, the system had been updated religiously by a dedicated team tasked with keeping the information as accurate as was humanly possible. Now, whether it was because of a lack of functioning computers, a lack of trained operators, or any one of a hundred possible other reasons, the system seemed to be falling apart as quickly as everything else.
    Mark handed the slip of paper to Graeme. He took it but didn’t look at it.
    “Take that to the next tent,” Mark told him, unsure if there was anyone left working there tonight. “Those are your billet details. The people next door will give you ration papers. When you’re finished there, they’ll send you to the food store. They’ll give you something to eat if there’s anything left-”
    He stopped speaking. Neither of them was listening. Poor bastards were barely even conscious. They didn’t know where they were, who he was, what he was doing, what he was trying to tell them… Graeme and Mary Reynolds didn’t move. He looked long and hard into their empty, vacant faces and wondered, as he now did with increasing and alarming regularity, why he was bothering. What was the point? When the fighting’s over, he thought, will we ever return to any kind of normality? Or have we gone too far for that? Is this as good as it’s ever going to get? All trust, hope, and faith gone forever… nothing left but fear and hate.
    Mark stood up, took Graeme’s arm, waited for his wife, and then led them to the next tent. Without even stopping to see if there was anyone there, he grabbed his coat and the heavy wrench he always carried with him for self-defense and left. He went out into the rain and walked, determined not to stop again until he was back in the hotel room with Kate and the others.

13
    I WAKE UP STRETCHED out on the threadbare living room carpet of the apartment we broke into last night. I ache like hell, but I slept pretty well considering. Our position midway up the high-rise has kept us out of sight, separated by height from the rest of town. The apartment is filled with dark shadows and the dull blue-gray light of early morning. It’s raining outside, and the rain clatters against the glass like someone’s throwing stones.
    Paul’s asleep in an armchair in the corner of the room, looking up at the ceiling with closed eyes, his head lolling back on his shoulders. Carol’s curled up on the floor near his feet. I get up and stretch, looking around the dull room in daylight for the first time. The decor’s badly dated, and the entire apartment’s in a hell of a state as aresult of its owner’s self-imposed incarceration, but it still feels strangely complete and untouched-isolated to a surprising extent from everything that’s happened outside. I glance at my monochrome reflection in a long-silent TV, then pick up a framed photograph that still sits on top of the set. It’s a twenty- or thirty-year-old wedding day memory. The guy’s just about recognizable as the man from last night. His bride is the corpse next door.
    I find Keith in the kitchen with a map spread out on a small Formica-topped table.
    “All right?” he asks as I trudge toward him, eyes still full of sleep.
    “Fine. You?”
    He nods and returns his attention to the map.
    “We’ll get moving in a while,” he announces. “It’s all quiet out there for now.”
    I look down at the map with him and start trying to work out the best route to Lizzie’s sister’s house. The same two circles representing the edge of the enemy encampment and their exclusion zone have been drawn on this map as on the one Preston showed me yesterday. Except the lines are in slightly different positions on this map. According to this, Lizzie’s sister’s house is just inside enemy territory. I point to roughly where the house is and look across at Keith.
    “That’s where we need to go.”
    “That’s where you think you need to go,” he answers quickly. “That’s where we’re going to try to go, but I’m not promising anything. We’re out here to find recruits. If we get your kid it’s a bonus.”
    “I know, but-”
    “But nothing. We’ll head in that direction and see how far we get.”
    “Is he still going on about that damn kid of his?” Carol says as she shuffles into the kitchen, bleary-eyed. She drags her feet across the sticky linoleum and lights up the first cigarette of the day.
    “I’ve already told