Dog Blood

polystyrene ceiling tiles. Makes me wonder-if the ceiling’s this bad, how strong is the rest of the building? Disappointingly (but not unexpectedly), the bar has been completely stripped. There’s a row of spaces on the mirrored wall where the liquor dispensers would have been. Christ, I could do with a drink just to calm my nerves. I feel more anxious in here than I did back in the center of town when I was up to my neck in Unchanged.
    My chaperone doesn’t want to talk. He leads me along a wide corridor, through another, much smaller second bar, then up a long staircase. There are four doors leading off a square landing. Three of them are open, and I can see at least one or two people in every room. He opens the remaining door, and I follow him into a large function room, which is almost as big as the main bar area we walked through on the floor below. It’s sparsely furnished but largely undamaged. There are several wooden crates of supplies stacked up against one wall. A guy is sitting by himself at a table in the far corner using a laptop, and there’s another asleep on a mattress under a window. As soon as I enter the room a woman gets up from where she’s been lying on a threadbare sofa. She’s hidden by shadows, but something about her is familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen her before. Is she Chapman?
    “Who’s this?” she asks. Her voice has a trace of a gentle Irish accent, which is beaten into submission by the abrasiveness of her tone.
    “Says he’s looking for you. Says Sahota sent him.”
    My unwilling guide disappears, his job done. The woman walks toward me, stepping into the light. I immediately recognize her, but I can’t remember where from. Was it this life? My old life?
    “The slaughterhouse,” she says.
    “What?”
    “The slaughterhouse, few days back. You’re trying to remember where you saw me before. You were there with the guy with the smashed-up hand and foot, and I-”
    “You were the one telling me not to bother with him ’cause he’d be dead soon,” I interrupt, suddenly remembering where we met.
    “That’s right. And he was. I’m Julia Chapman.”
    “You’re a happy soul, aren’t you?” I say sarcastically as I shake her hand, recalling how blunt and matter-of-fact she was when we spoke before. She nearly crushes me with her viselike grip. She’s just trying to let me know who’s in charge.
    “I’m a realist,” she answers, “and I’m focused. And so should you be. I tell you, when this war’s finished, I’ll be the first one up dancing at the fucking party and the last one to sit down. Until then, though, all I’m interested in is fighting.”
    “Bit of a coincidence, though, finding you here.”
    “You reckon?”
    “I thought you were busy recruiting for Ankin’s army.”
    “I still am.”
    “So why are you here?”
    “To make sure Sahota gets the right people, too.”
    “What? Are you trying to tell me you followed me into the city?”
    “I’m not trying to tell you anything, but yep, something like that. There were a few more people involved, and it wasn’t just you we were watching.”
    “Don’t believe you.”
    “Believe what you like, pal, it really doesn’t bother me. Thing is, we are where we are, and where we are is here. It’s what we do next that matters most.”
    “If you say so.”
    I wonder if she always talks this much bullshit or if she’s trying to impress me and exert her authority. She looks me straight in the eye, and for a second I think she might be about to throw a punch. She bites her lip and turns away.
    “Come here. I want to show you something.”
    I follow her out of the room and across the landing. We walk through another part of the building, where two more fighters are resting in the shadows. They glance up at me as I pass them, but they don’t move. We go out onto a narrow veranda, then use an unsteady stepladder to climb up onto a debris-strewn flat rooftop. There are large puddles of water covering much of the ground. A pair of deckchairs have been left under an improvised stretched-out tarpaulin shelter. The views across what remains of the city from one direction and the exclusion zone on the other three are vast and panoramic. Looks like they’ve been using this place as an observation post.
    Julia leads me to the edge of the roof on the side of the building that looks out over the refugee camp in the center of the city. The view is incredible, not just because of its scope, but also because