Dog Blood

of ice-cold rain. The main street itself, Arley Road, a wide, relatively straight, and gently sloping strip of pavement, looked more like a river. A fast-moving, debris-carrying torrent of rainwater surged down it toward the center of town.
    Back in the hotel room, Mark threw the curtain to Kate, who started mopping up the water that was still cascading down the glass, then spilling down the windowsill and soaking the carpet.
    “Who’s that?!” Kate’s elderly, confused father yelled in panic, lifting his head off the pillow for the first time in hours. “Is it one of them?”
    Next to him, her mother lay on her side, sobbing, the dirty bedclothes pulled up tight under her chin.
    “It’s just Mark, Dad,” Kate shouted.
    “It’s me, Joe,” Mark said, leaning closer to the old man so he could see his face. He’d lost his glasses weeks ago. Mark didn’t know whether he recognized him or not.
    Mark leaned the hatch door against the window over the broken glass and used a phone directory to wedge and hold it in place.
    “Save the water,” he said to Kate.
    “What?”
    “The rainwater… save it!”
    “Where?”
    “In the bathtub.”
    The flow of water into the room temporarily plugged, Kate carried the half-full bucket across the room, her bare feet squelching on the damp carpet. She knocked on the bathroom door.
    “Let me in.”
    There was a brief pause; then the latch clicked and the door opened. Another adult refugee appeared, her face drawn and haggard-looking.
    “Everything okay?” she asked. Kate nodded.
    “Mark said we should try to save the water in the tub.”
    The woman nodded and took the bucket from her. Mark passed her several water-filled cups that he’d collected from by the window.
    “Makes sense to try to hoard as much as we can,” he said, taking back the empty bucket. She nodded but didn’t answer.
    The flood stemmed temporarily, Kate walked away and sat down exhausted on a rain-splashed chair next to her parents. Her mother continued to sob, but Kate couldn’t face trying to comfort her. Instead she closed her eyes and ran her hands over her swollen stomach.
    Mark picked up the last pot of water and carried it to the bathroom. The rain seemed to finally be easing. The woman in the shadows took it from him and emptied it into the tub.
    “Thanks, Lizzie,” he said.

21
    I CAN’T STAND MUCH more of this. It must be hours since Mallon left me. Can’t smell the food anymore, but I know it’s still there, and I want it. My guts feel like they’re somersaulting one minute and being ripped open the next. The pain’s unbearable, almost like my body’s eating itself from the inside out. I try to put the hunger out of my mind, but frustration takes its place. The frustration turns into confusion; then the confusion turns into fear. The fear makes my aching shoulders, arms, and legs feel a thousand times worse. I try to lie still, but even the slightest movement is agony.
    What the hell was that? Something’s moving over me. It feels like there are insects crawling over my itching leg. Maybe there are? I haven’t looked at my legs since I woke up strapped to this bed. Who’s to say that itch isn’t an open, untreated wound? Who’s to say I haven’t got some kind of infection, that there aren’t maggots and worms and Christ knows what else feeding on my flesh? I can feel them wriggling and squirming inside the cut, digging deep into me, boring through my skin.
    Then it stops again.
    Am I just imagining things? Or was it something bigger? A mouse or a rat?
    The dripping is the only distraction. It’s constant now, almost like machine-gun fire, and it never fucking stops.
    I could end this. All I have to do is talk, he said. Just give him that one small victory and I’ll have some light and food and water. Christ, I need to drink something so badly…
    I open my mouth to shout for help, then stop myself. What the hell am I thinking? Have I forgotten what Joseph Mallon is and what his people did (and are still doing) to my kind? They’re the reason all of this happened. If it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have had to kill and my family would still be together. We had to kill them for protection. This whole war has been fought in self-defense… that’s the only reason. They made us do it. And to think, I was about to beg one of them for mercy… Christ, what kind of a person would that make me? I’d be pissing on the memory of all those who’ve already died in the