Dog Blood

way, shape, or form. He’s a good foot and a half shorter than me, dark-skinned, with close-cropped dark hair, graying at the temples. He has a neatly trimmed mustache and wears a pair of wire-framed glasses. For the first time in months I’m suddenly conscious of my shabby appearance-dead man’s trousers and shirt, no shoes, hair long and shaggy, face covered in stubble and bristle.
    “Come in and sit down,” he says, ushering me farther into the room. It’s a wide, spacious, and relatively clean and uncluttered office-cum-living-area. In one corner is a metal-framed bed, similar to the one in my cell but with clean bedding folded back with military precision. Along one wall are several huge, mostly intact windows (only one pane of glass has been boarded up), and in front of me is a large wooden desk with a single chair on either side. Sahota locks the door, then sits down at the desk with his back to the window. He beckons for me to sit opposite.
    “Where do you want to start?” he asks in a clipped, well-educated accent as he pours me a drink and slides it across the table.
    “Don’t know,” I mumble pathetically between thirsty gulps of water. Truth is, I’ve got so many questions to ask I’m struggling to make sense of any of them.
    “Don’t worry.” He grins. “It’s not unusual. You’ve been through a lot.”
    “I don’t know what I’ve been through.”
    He grins again. “We wouldn’t have done it this way if there’d been any alternative.”
    “So what exactly have you done?”
    “Which one of them looked after you? Selena, Joseph, or Simon?”
    “Looked after me?! That’s not how I’d put it.”
    “Which one?”
    “Joseph.”
    “And what did he tell you?”
    “Lots of bullshit about breaking the cycle, not fighting fire with fire, holding the Hate… He said the more I fought, the harder it would get.”
    “Did you believe any of it?”
    I shrug my shoulders. Truth be told, I’m still not sure what I believe.
    “Bits of it made sense.”
    “Well, some of what he said must have had an effect on you, because you’re here and he’s still alive. You’d have killed him otherwise.”
    “He said I was only locked up here because of the Hate. He said the more we fight, the less we get.”
    “And what do you think about that, Danny?”
    “I’m not sure what I think.”
    “But you must have some kind of opinion. You can’t tell me an intelligent man like you lay there alone in the darkness for hours and didn’t think about what he’d been told.”
    “I think he was right when he said we were stuck in a vicious circle and that things are only going to get worse…”
    “Go on.”
    “But I don’t understand what difference that makes. What else are we supposed to do? We can’t live with the Unchanged, we have to kill them.”
    “You’re absolutely right.”
    “So how do we win a war without fighting?”
    Sahota stands up, picks up his drink, and walks over to the window. He looks out, choosing his next words with care and consideration.
    “There is an alternative.”
    “Is there? I can’t see one.”
    “That’s because you’re looking in the wrong place. You need to change your perspective, Danny, and that’s what this place is all about. That’s why we’re here. Tell me, before we brought you here, did you ever hear anything of Chris Ankin and his plans?”
    “I heard his messages when the war started, and I was with a group for a couple of days. They said they were trying to build an army.”
    He turns back to face me. “And what did you think of that?”
    “Gut reaction?”
    “Yes.”
    “As soon as we start grouping together in large numbers, the enemy will blow the shit out of us.”
    “Exactly right. We’re still outnumbered, and they still have a structured military with a just about operational chain of command. We’d only be able to take the fight to them on limited fronts, and yes, they’d probably blow us out of the water. While we’re concentrating on one of their cities, the others would still be standing strong. They’ve already shown they’re willing to sacrifice thousands of their own to try to wipe us out. You’ve only got to look at how they lost London -”
    “What did happen to London?”
    “You didn’t hear?”
    “Not really, only a few details.”
    “It was early on, before these refugee camps were set up. It wasn’t something we planned; rather it was something they couldn’t prevent. The capital was too big for