Dog Blood

frantically trying to remember the relaxation and stress-control techniques he’d been taught in the “Dealing with Customer Complaints” workshop he’d been sent to last December. Christ, it didn’t matter how many times he did this, he still felt woefully underprepared. No amount of relaxation methods and calming techniques would prepare him for what he was about to face.
    “Couple of miles,” Marshall said, startling Mark. He sat up straight and readied himself, his heart thumping ten times faster in his chest than it should have been. They were well outside the exclusion zone now, and even though there were no signposts, physical boundaries, or other warnings marking the Change, he suddenly felt a hundred times more vulnerable and exposed.
    “Did you say we’re out here for people today?” Mark asked, remembering their brief conversation when he first got into the truck.
    “Yep.”
    “Great.”
    A double pisser. Excursions outside the city were always more risky and unpredictable when civilians were involved. More importantly, if they weren’t out here collecting supplies, there’d be nothing for them to take a cut from when they got back.
    “Look on the bright side,” Marshall said under his breath, sharing Mark’s disappointment and almost managing to smile. “Loads more of those cunts die when the public are involved.”
    He was right. As soon as the first civilians took a step out of their hiding place, hordes of Haters would inevitably descend on them from every direction. Maybe that was the plan? Easy pickings for the helicopter and the forty or so armed soldiers traveling with them in this convoy. He wondered what kind of state the survivors they rescued would be in. Would they even be worth rescuing? He couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to last for so long out here. Christ, it had been hard enough trying to survive back in the city. If these people thought their situation was going to get better after they were rescued, they were very wrong.
    The road they followed used to be a busy commuter route into town, permanently packed with traffic. In today’s baking afternoon heat it was little more than a silent, rubbish-strewn scar that snaked its way between overgrown fields and run-down housing projects. Sandwiched between the first military vehicle and the squat armored troop transport bringing up the rear, the three empty, high-sided wagons clattered along, following the clear path that had been snowplowed through the chaos like the carriages of a train following an engine down the track. Still bearing the bright-colored logos and ads of the businesses that had owned them before the war, they were conspicuously obvious and exposed as they traveled through the dust-covered gray of everything else.
    Mark stared at the back of a row of houses they thundered past, convinced he’d seen the flash of a fast-moving figure. There it was again, visible just for a fraction of a second between two buildings, a sudden blur of color and speed. Then, as he was trying to find the first again, a second appeared. It was a woman of average height and slender build. She athletically scrambled to the top of a pile of rubble, then leaped over onto a parched grass verge, losing her footing momentarily before steadying herself, digging in, and increasing her pace. She sprinted alongside the convoy, wild hair flowing in the breeze behind her like a mane, almost managing to match the speed of the five vehicles. Mark jumped in his seat as a lump of concrete hit the truck door, hurled from the other side of the road and missing the window he was looking through by just a few inches. Startled, he glanced into the side mirror and saw that they were being chased. His view was limited, but he could see at least ten figures in the road behind the convoy, running after them. They were never going to catch up, but maybe they sensed the vehicles would be stopping soon. They kept running with a dogged persistence, the gap between them increasing but their speed and intent undiminished. He looked anxiously from side to side and saw even more of them moving through the shadows toward the road. Their frantic, unpredictable movements made it hard to estimate how many of them there were. It looked like there were hundreds.
    Marshall remembered the place they were heading to from before the war, a modern office building in the middle of an out-of-town business park; as part of his job in his former life he’d made