Dog Blood

desperate and lost as one of the Unchanged. He has a grenade in his hand.
    “Is this it, McCoyne?”
    “No,” I tell him, “not yet. Julia says we should-”
    “I think it’s time.”
    “Not yet,” I say again, having to shout now to make myself heard. “She’s up there by the statue. Go and speak to her. See what she says before you-”
    “It must be time,” he shouts over the rain. “I can’t stand all this waiting-”
    “Parsons, don’t! It was just a helicopter crash. And the other explosion-”
    He doesn’t say anything else. Instead he just pulls the pin from his grenade. A sudden surge from the crowd shunts him sideways. I try to move back as he manages to get his balance and stand straight again.
    “Throw the fucking thing!”
    Disoriented and racked with nerves, Parsons just looks at me. I shove him hard in the gut, sending him tripping down the slope, colliding with refugees and knocking them over like bowling pins. He topples back and is gone, immediately snatched from view by the hordes. I put my shoulder down and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction, forcing my way through the masses. I trip over a body on the ground and stumble forward, barely managing to stay upright. Instinctively, I reach out and grab hold of another startled refugee, using him to haul myself back up and keep moving forward. He tries to grapple me down, but I just push him out of the way, knowing that in seconds I’ll be the least of his worries. This one has more spirit and fight than most. He manages to cling to the corner of my coat, and I yank it from his grip, then duck to one side when he takes a swing at me. I try to focus on getting away and not panic. I shove him down and glance back over my shoulder, praying that I won’t be able to-
    For a fraction of a second the world is filled with brilliant white light and a noise so loud I think my head’s going to burst. I’m thrown down by the force of the explosion behind me, and for a moment all I can do lie still, sandwiched between fallen Unchanged. I pick myself up, using the bodies around me for support. I look back again, and I can see a space in the crowd and a dark, shallow pit where, just seconds ago, countless people were crammed together. Now there’s nothing, just a layer of bloody, smoldering debris. I turn and run as the shock quickly fades and panic again begins to fill the air.
    People are running in every direction away from the square now, and I allow myself to be carried along with them, using their bulk as camouflage. None of them know who or what I am, and none of them care. Away from Julia and the others I’m suddenly as irrelevant and unimportant as everyone else, and the anonymity is welcome and reassuring. Running shoulder to shoulder with the enemy, I realize the desperate need to kill these people I’ve always felt has all but disappeared. Maybe it’s because these people are all dead anyway? There’s less than an hour to go now until Sahota’s moment of glory, but I don’t think the city will last that long. A phalanx of helicopters thunders overhead. One of them breaks off and begins firing on some unseen target close to the burning high-rise, causing the crowd around me to start moving with even more panic and speed.
    Above the heads of the stampeding masses I see something I think I recognize-the distinctive angular outline of a tall, recently built apartment building. As I run toward it there’s another sudden detonation and the front of the building explodes outward in a swollen bulge of fire and heat. I turn away from the immediate blast and duck down as thousands of tiny shards of glass begin raining down around me. Most of the crowd instinctively tries to turn back and run the other way. Dumb fuckers. I keep moving forward, knowing that the ground around the center of the blast will be relatively clear now with just the dead and dying to get through. I run past the burning stump of the building, zigzagging through the carnage, dodging chunks of concrete and twisted lumps of metal and flesh. I look up and see people trapped on the upper floors. A woman falls from a third-floor window and lands on the pavement just ahead of me, shoved out by the terrified crowds behind her, hitting the ground with a wet thud like rotten fruit. It’s wonderful to see. Part of me wishes I could find somewhere safe around here to sit and watch the whole city burn.
    I’m back to shoving my way through the enemy masses again in