Dog Blood

astonishing speed as power stations, pumps, and pipelines were abandoned, destroyed, or disabled. With every single person without exception being dragged into the war, those installations and facilities that remained operational longest were frequently those that could function unmanned.
    The evacuation of the Unchanged masses to city center camps simply concentrated and exacerbated the problems faced by the authorities. Extremely limited utility supplies were maintained, with all available water, gas, and power being diverted to the military as priority. Fuck the civilians, there’s a war to be won.
    Without adequate supplies of clean water and basic medical care, the refugee camps quickly became breeding grounds for disease. Previously easily curable ailments rapidly became killers, and small outbreaks and infestations quickly became epidemics. Most bodies were collected and burned, but scores of others inevitably remained undetected. The almost total lack of sanitation compounded the problem dramatically.
    Within the cities, the closely confined masses of refugees continued to produce vast amounts of garbage, none of which was collected or treated. As well as quickly becoming a physical hazard, the huge quantities of waste that quickly gathered also contributed to the acceleration of disease. Rats and other vermin benefited from suddenly plentiful supplies of food, and those drains and sewers that had not been damaged by the fighting instead became blocked with debris.
    From late May onward, an increase in temperature combined with frequent heavy downpours of rain to further accelerate the decline in conditions in the refugee camps.
    Every available scrap of indoor space had been utilized to house the displaced, but inevitably the demand far outweighed what was available. As a result, huge numbers of people were left outside. Some were housed in tents, RVs, and trailers, but most made do with temporary shelters constructed from whatever materials they could find. More than 30 percent of the total population of the refugee camp was forced to live outdoors-hundreds of thousands of exhausted, vulnerable, malnourished people left to the mercy of the elements.
    “Block it up!” Mark yelled as rainwater poured in through the broken top-floor hotel window. The room was dark, almost pitch black despite it normally being bright at this time in the morning. The stormy dawn sky over the city was swollen with rain. It had been falling with the force of bullets for more than fifteen minutes already and showed no signs of abating. The guttering and drainpipes serving the dilapidated old building couldn’t cope with the sheer amount of water flushing through them. A blocked section of gutter had overflowed, and the water had seeped behind a rotting fascia board, then flooded through the window frame. More water seeped through a broken pane of glass.
    “Block it with what?” Kate shouted, using a bucket, a wastebasket, cups, and whatever else she could find to catch the water.
    “I don’t know. Stay there. I’ll go and find something.”
    “Don’t go outside,” she pleaded, struggling with her heavily pregnant bulk to turn around and stop him. “Please, Mark.”
    “Just to the end of the hall, okay?”
    He didn’t give her time to answer. He weaved around the bottom of the double bed, where Katie’s traumatized elderly parents lay terrified, cold, and wet, then ran past the permanently locked bathroom door. He unlocked the main door, took off the security chain, and put his head outside. Just a handful of people out on the landing-a rain-soaked woman from the room next door (who obviously had problems similar to his) and the Chinese guy with his three kids who slept in the broken elevator. Mark looked up and down, then spied a wooden hatch on the wall between two of the opposite rooms. The fire hose that used to be hidden behind the small square door was missing. He pulled at the hatch, then pushed down on it from above, feeling the hinges begin to weaken. A few seconds of violent shaking and pulling and he yanked it free with an almighty splintering crack. He ran back to room 33 with it, stopping only to pull the one remaining curtain down from the side of a large gallery window overlooking the street below. Jesus Christ, things looked bad down there. Crowds of people were pressed up against the sides of buildings, desperate for whatever shelter they could find, woken without warning by an early morning deluge