Dog Blood

run.
    The Hater in the hallway booted the badly damaged door open, sending it clattering back against the wall, splinters of wood flying in all directions. He charged into room 33, straight into Mark, who ran toward him to try to head him off, baseball bat held high. He clumsily swung the bat at his cousin’s head but missed by a mile, wrong-footed by the sudden speed of events, the close confines of the cluttered room, and the utter terror that he felt in every nerve of his body. McCoyne grabbed the end of the bat on its fast upward arc, yanked it from his grip, and threw it out of reach across the room.
    The Hater stopped.
    He thought he recognized the man in front of him. Mark? Mark Tillotsen? Was it really him?
    The unexpected appearance of a face from his old life caught him completely off guard. For a split second he stood there in numb silence and simply stared at the other man, his head suddenly filled with memories and emotions that had been suppressed and long-forgotten since he’d first tasted the Hate. He rocked back on his feet, hardly even blinking as another explosion outside shook the entire building. Then, as Mark lunged at him again and someone else screamed something unintelligible from the far corner of the room, he snapped himself out of his sudden trance and remembered Ellis and Lizzie and why he was there. He caught Mark as he leaped forward, grabbing his collar, spinning him around, and smashing him up against the wall to his left, then dropping him onto the floor in a crumpled heap. He rolled over onto his back and lay groaning at the Hater’s feet.
    He sensed more movement. Another one of them was attacking.
    McCoyne looked up as Lizzie ran toward him. Her face was tired, old, and drawn, her cheeks and eyes sunken and hollow, but he knew immediately that it was her.
    “Lizzie, I-”
    She swung the baseball bat around and smashed him in the side of the head.

36
    I HEAR THEM TALKING, but I keep my eyes shut. My hands are bound and strapped to radiator pipes behind me, and my ankles are tied together. There’s blood in my mouth, trickling down the inside of my throat. Someone trips over my feet, but I force myself not to react. I half-open one blood-caked eye and see Mark trying to drag a pregnant woman away from me. She sees that I’m awake, then squirms free from him, turns back, and boots me in the gut. Can’t defend myself. I take the full force of her foot right in the middle of my stomach, and I’m suddenly doubled up with pain, gasping for air and choking on the semicoagulated blood in my nose and mouth. Christ, that bitch is wild. It takes two of them to pull her away from me and hold her down. If I didn’t know better she could almost pass for one of us. Maybe she is. Maybe she’s been conditioned to fight like I’ve learned not to.
    Mark and an Asian man keep the pregnant woman away at a distance. Lizzie catches my eye, then strides across the room toward me, grabs my shoulder, and pulls me over until I’m sitting upright opposite her with my back against the radiator. She looks straight into my face, then slaps me so hard I almost fall back down.
    “You killed my dad, you fucker,” she spits. “I loved you and you killed my dad!”
    What am I supposed to say? She’s right, and I don’t regret any of it. I could kill everyone in this room and not give any of them a second thought. Except Lizzie, perhaps. I can’t take my eyes off her. It’s suddenly like we’ve never been apart, and for a single brief and foolish moment the irrevocable difference between us seems trivial and unimportant. She slaps me again. I try to turn away, but she still hits me with full force. The pain’s good. It wakes me up. I start trying to get my hands free of the plastic ties they’re using to hold me.
    “We should kill him,” the pregnant woman snarls, holding her swollen belly.
    “That’d make us as bad as him,” Lizzie answers quickly before turning her attention back to me. She’s nervous. Scared. She forces herself to talk to me. “Why are you here?”
    “Looking for you,” I answer quickly.
    “Haven’t you hurt me enough?”
    “Not about you. Ellis. Need to know what happened to her.”
    “Why?”
    “Why do you think? She’s like me. She should be with me.”
    “What, so you can let her loose outside to kill? So you can let her run wild and…?”
    I shake my head and stare into her face again, still trying to get my hands free behind me.
    “I want to take her