Dog Blood

WITH HIS FACE PRESSED hard against the spyhole in the door, Mark stared in disbelief at the man trying to bludgeon his way into the room directly opposite.

“What is it?” Kate asked, trying to pull him away. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. How could this be? How had he found them? Was it just coincidence or the cruelest stroke of bad luck imaginable? Had he been looking for them? How could he have known they were here? He glanced back over his shoulder at Lizzie standing in the far corner, the stunned expression on his face obviously speaking volumes.

“Mark, what is it? What the hell’s the matter?” Kate demanded again, her voice now frantic. He ignored her and instead continued to stare at Lizzie. She moved closer, her pace quickening as she approached. Sensing that she already knew what was outside, she tried to push Mark out of the way. He stood his ground, turned his back on her, and pressed his eye up against the tiny glass button in the door again.

He hadn’t seen him for almost a year, and he was virtually unrecognizable, but it was definitely him, he was sure of it. Danny McCoyne. His cousin Danny. His mom’s sister Jean’s son. The kid he’d messed around with at countless boring family gatherings and parties when they were growing up. The miserable loser with the dead-end job who’d ended up saddled with too many kids in an apartment that was too small. The notorious slacker who other members of the family had frequently cited as a prime example of how not to do things. Lizzie’s partner. A murderer. A Hater.

Outside on the landing, McCoyne continued to hammer against the door. Mark was overwhelmed by the anger and hatred so visible on his cousin’s twisted face, shocked and appalled by what he had become. He’d always seemed awkward and gangly, uncomfortable in his own body, but that uncertainty had been replaced now with focus, ferocity, and a vicious intent. To Mark, Danny McCoyne now personified the previously faceless Hater menace, and he felt his legs weaken with nerves at the thought he might be forced to confront him.

Lizzie grabbed Mark’s arm and yanked him out of the way. She pressed her eye against the spyhole briefly, then staggered away from the door, recoiling in shock at the sight of the Hater in the hallway. The room around her was filled with noise-Kate’s panicked screaming, Gurmit Singh’s constant unfathomable tirade-but she didn’t hear any of it. How could this be? How the hell could he be here?

“Will someone tell me what’s wrong?” Kate pleaded, desperate for information.

“It’s Danny,” Lizzie mumbled, her voice barely audible.

“What? But how could he-?”

“Keep your voice down, Katie,” Mark warned.

“Let him have the kid,” Kate shouted, moving forward. Mark pushed her back away from the door. “Come on, Mark, let him take her. Give her to him. Get the little bitch out of here. We’ll be safer if-”

He kept pushing her away, the noise from the hallway getting louder and louder. He shoved her back toward her catatonic parents, then ran to the spyhole and peered outside again. He watched as McCoyne finally forced his way into the room opposite. He disappeared inside but was back out again just a few seconds later, and this time there was no question as to where he was heading next.

“Get back!” Mark hissed as he stumbled back toward the others, sweeping them away from the door. He grabbed a baseball bat they’d kept in the room to defend themselves, then herded Kate, Lizzie, and Singh around the foot of the double bed, gesturing for them to get down and stay out of sight.

“Is he-” Lizzie started, the sound of the first flurry of blows from the axe against the door rendering her question obsolete before it had even been fully asked. The door rattled and shook in its frame. Mark glanced back at Kate, who cowered alongside her parents, then turned and faced the door again, desperately trying to give the impression he was ready to fight when all he wanted to do was 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 with me. I want to look after her and take care of her. I don’t want her out there fighting on her own.”

“I don’t want her fighting at all. She’s just a kid…”

“I just want her with me, Lizzie. I want to keep her safe.”

Lizzie slumps back and drops to the floor opposite me, head held in her hands. The Asian guy is still mumbling and cursing at me from the corner of the room. The pregnant woman watches my every move, not daring to look away. Mark tries to appear collected and in control, but I can sense his terror. I feed off their collective fear. It’s empowering. Even together they’re no match for me.

“He’s here to kill us,” Mark says. “Katie’s right, we should have just got rid of him. This was a bad idea.”

I shake my head and spit a lump of bloody phlegm onto the carpet.

“Not interested in any of you. Just Ellis. Let me know what happened to her and I’ll go.”

“Don’t listen to him. Let him go and the fucker will kill us.”

I shake my head again.

“I won’t. I can control it. I’d never have got this deep into the city if I couldn’t. I can hold the Hate. They taught me.”

“Who did?” Lizzie asks.

“People like you.”

“This is bullshit,” the pregnant woman yells. “Why you?”

“Not just me. Others, too…”

“But why…?”

“Haven’t you heard what’s happening outside? It’s a coordinated attack,” I explain, suddenly desperate for Lizzie to understand. “I came here with other fighters, but I broke away to try to find you.”

“I don’t understand…”

“I’m not interested in killing any of you. I just want to know what happened to Ellis. Tell me what happened to her and I’ll go and you’ll never see me again-”

“Let him take her,” the pregnant woman says. “Get the evil little bitch out of here-”

“Shut up, Katie!” Mark yells.

What did she just say? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This must be bullshit. She can’t really be here, can she? How could they have kept her hidden and stopped her from attacking for so long? I look from face to face in search of an explanation.

“Ellis is here?”

“In the bathroom,” she shouts, trying to get up again, pointing at a door in the wall opposite me as Mark pushes her back down and tries to cover her mouth.

“Here? But how…?”

Still slumped on the floor in front of me, just out of reach, Lizzie starts to sob.

“I couldn’t let her go. I knew she was like you, but it didn’t matter. Even when she killed the boys I couldn’t bear to let her go…”

Her words dry up as tears take over. I keep trying to move my wrists and bend and stretch my legs to break my binds. Got to get up and get to Ellis…

“He can take her,” says the pregnant woman. “Let him take her.”

“We can’t trust him,” Mark snaps at her.

“Does it matter? Throw the pair of them out the door and let them take their chances-”

Another thunderous explosion interrupts her. They’re getting closer and more frequent now. At this rate the city will have fallen long before 6:00 a.m.

“She’s right,” I tell Lizzie, begging for her to listen and understand. “I promise I won’t hurt you. I’ll take Ellis and you’ll never see either of us again.”

Mark moves forward and picks up the bloodied baseball bat.

“As soon as we let him go he’ll turn on us,” he says, sneering atme.

“For fuck’s sake,” I scream at him in frustration, “will you just listen to what I’m saying? I don’t want to kill any of you-”

“Come on, Lizzie,” the pregnant woman says, calmer now, lowering herself down and kneeling on the floor next to her. “You said yourself you can’t help her. This is the best option for all of us.”

“She’s right,” I agree, as if they’re going to listen to anything I say. Lizzie glares at me. She’s in an impossible situation-whatever choice she makes, she loses. No matter what she is and how I feel about her now, I’m surprised that it still hurts me so much to see her like this. She’s shaking her head.

“I can’t. I just can’t let her go…”

“You don’t have long,” I tell them. “The city doesn’t have long. I can get her to safety. Get her out of here before it’s too late.”

“You’ve hardly got any medication left for her, Liz. You can’t hold her if she’s not sedated. Have you thought about that?”

“Of course I have,” she sobs, looking back and staring at the pregnant girl. “I just can’t stand the thought of her being out there on her own. She’s only five-”

“But she won’t be on her own,” I interrupt. “She’ll be with me.”

“Come on, Danny,” she sighs, wiping her eyes. “You were hardly the world’s greatest dad at the best of times. What chance has she got with you now?”

“More chance than she’s got without me. Look, you’re not thinking straight. Stay here and you’re all dead. This is the best option for her. The only option…”

The hotel room is momentarily silent, the only noise coming from outside. Vibrations shake the floor and walls. Even the Asian man has finally shut up.

Lizzie holds her head in her hands.

“I just can’t. You don’t understand. She’s not like you, remember,” she says. “She’s-”

Before she’s finished speaking, the pregnant woman moves. She lunges toward me, catching me and everyone else completely off guard. She grabs my head and pulls me forward, then leans down behind me. I try to shake her off, but she’s too heavy and I’m squashed under the bulk of her unborn child. As quickly as she attacked she’s up again. She stands opposite, holding one of my knives in her hand. What has she done? Has she cut me or…?

Wait.

My hands are free.

My legs still tied together, I push myself off the wall and reach out for Lizzie. She manages to scramble back out of the way, but the other woman’s not as quick. I grab her right foot and pull her over. She hits the ground right in front of me. Mark tries to react, but the Unchanged are reassuringly slow, and by the time he’s made a grab for her I’ve already got her held tight. I wrap one arm around her throat and hold the knife to her face. Stupid bitch. At least I’ve temporarily silenced the constant fucking noise coming out of her mouth. I lean forward and cut the ties around my ankles, then slowly stand up. Mark goes to move toward me again, but I prick the woman’s cheek with the tip of the blade, and the sight of her blood and the sound of her half-choked screams is enough to stop him.

I kick the bathroom door open, and it takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Lying bastards, it’s empty. She isn’t here. There’s a thin mattress on the floor, some sheets, empty bottles of water, and the remains of medication, food wrappers… but no Ellis. I can smell her scent, but she’s gone.

“Where is she?” I yell, turning back around and holding the blade up to the woman’s eye.

“Safe,” Lizzie answers. “Let Kate go, Danny.”

In desperation Mark tries to run at me again, but, like all of his kind, he thinks too long instead of acting on instinct. I’m far faster than he is, and I see him coming a mile off. Even with the weight of this bitch in my arms he’s no match for me. I kick him in the balls and send him reeling.

“Where?” I yell again.

“Let her go and I’ll take you,” Lizzie says. I stare straight into her face again and tighten the pressure around the other woman’s neck. Is she telling the truth? Do I have any choice? I could be in touching distance of Ellis, but without Lizzie I might as well be miles away. Mark rolls around at my feet, groaning.

“Please…” he whimpers pathetically.

I could kill her, but I don’t. Suddenly all I can think about is Joseph Mallon. I can see his face and can hear his damn voice echoing around my cell, telling me not to fight fire with fire, to break the cycle. Was he right? As the city crumbles around us, can I risk not following my instinct and letting these fuckers live? Could it really be that the more I fight today, the more I stand to lose?

I let the woman go. She falls to her knees and crawls away on all fours, gasping for air. Lizzie walks over to me, stopping only when we’re almost touching.

“I just need to know that you’ll look after her and get her to safety.”

“Where is she?” I shout, struggling to keep control and not attack. “Just tell me where-”

“I need to hear you say it, Danny.”

“I promise you, Liz. I’ll get her as far away from the city as I can. I’ll look after her. She’s all I’ve got left.”

“Then you’ve got more than I have,” she sobs. She looks into my eyes, and I can’t look away. “We moved her last night,” she finally admits. “We couldn’t risk keeping her here any longer.”

“What have you done with her?”

“She’s safe. Mark and I were going to try to get her out of the city. It was the lesser of two evils…”

Mark gets up. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys, which he throws to Lizzie.

“Take him.”

“I can’t…” she says, beginning to cry again.

“It’s the only option. Listen to what’s happening outside, Liz. It’s all fucked. He’s right, at least she’s got a chance this way.”

“But what if…?”

“I won’t hurt you,” I tell her, meaning every word but still not knowing if she believes me. “All I want is Ellis. Take me to her and you’ll never see me again.”

She nods her head but still doesn’t move.

“Just give him the keys,” the pregnant woman says. “Let him find her for himself. Stay here with us.”

Lizzie shakes her head and wipes her eyes.

“No, I’ll go. I just want to see her again. One last time.”

37

THERE’S A FIRE ESCAPE at the rear of the hotel, a staircase running down the back of the building. Lizzie, watching me like a hawk and carrying a knife I know she won’t dare use, pushes me down the landing and around a corner toward an innocuous-looking gray door. It’s already been forced open. She gestures for me to go through.

“Where is she?” I ask as I step outside, shouting to make myself heard over the sounds of fighting that fill the air. We stand at the top of a zigzagging metal staircase bracketed to the back of the old, run-down building. She points in the general direction of the streets behind the hotel, but I can’t see anything specific. The sun is rising, and below us the city is beginning to burn. A fleet of planes and helicopters is taking off from somewhere far over to our left.

“There’s a garage,” she answers breathlessly. “The front of it has collapsed, so it’s difficult to get in or out. We locked her in the back of a van.”

“If this is a trick, Lizzie-”

“No trick,” she says quickly, and I know she’s telling the truth. We’re wasting precious time. Sensing Ellis is close, I start climbing down.

There’s another parking lot at the back of the hotel, and a small patch of wildly overgrown garden beyond it. Lizzie leads me away from the building down a narrow path that’s barely visible through the long, damp grass. The sky is still filled with heavy gray cloud, but it’s slowly beginning to brighten.

“This way,” she whispers, catching her breath when a series of brilliant white flashes explodes, lighting up the early morning gloom for a fraction of a second at a time. A low-flying helicopter gunship rumbles overhead, heading back toward town.

I follow her to the end of the path, where there’s a tall wrought-iron gate. Lizzie bends down and shifts a broken lump of paving slab that’s keeping it shut, and the gate swings open. She pauses before going through, ducking back into the shadows as a group of people runs past. I watch them as we step out into the open, three figures chasing a fourth down a narrow, cobbled passageway. They corner the lone runner, drag him to the ground, and kick the shit out of him. It’s impossible to tell who’s who-am I watching the Unchanged being hunted down, or is that one of my people cornered? It doesn’t matter anymore.

“Move!” Lizzie hisses, shoving me forward again. There’s another gate in a wooden fence on the other side of this alleyway. We go through, and I can tell immediately from the number of rusting car parts and piles of tires and mufflers that this must be the place. I follow her through a side door into a dusty office. It’s dark. She stops suddenly, and I walk into the back of her, then hold on to her as she grabs my sleeve and leads me farther forward, pausing only to pick up a flashlight she obviously left here previously. We go through another door and down a single steep step into what must be the main workshop. The air’s cold, and the noise we make echoes off the walls. She shines the light farther ahead, and I see that the front of the building has collapsed in on itself, sealing it off from the street.

“Over here.”

We move around the back of a jacked-up car to the farthest corner of the workspace. There’s a white and blue van parked with its back to the wall. Its front fender is a light matte gray color, primed and waiting to be painted by a garage employee who’s never coming back. As we move toward the rear of the van, I see there’s a light on inside it. Lizzie pushes me out of the way and unlocks the door. She opens it as far as she can, then slips through the gap, and I follow her.

Lying flat on her back in the middle of the van, chained to the front seats with her mouth gagged and her wrists, legs, and ankles bound together with plastic-covered clothesline, is Ellis. She’s awake and alert, her beautiful brown eyes darting from Lizzie to me and back again. She looks straight at me, but I’m not sure if she remembers. Dressed only in a dirty gray undershirt and panties, her tiny body is covered in cuts, scratches, and bruises. Lizzie leans over her, and she immediately reacts, arching away from her, then trying to lunge forward and attack. The longer I look at her, the less familiar she becomes. She sobs and whines through the gag like a frightened animal.

Lizzie, Ellis, and me all together again. I never dared dream this would really happen. Suddenly the noise of the battles outside and the helicopters and explosions don’t seem to matter. Everything that I have left is in the back of this van. I swing my backpack off my shoulders and open it up. I pull out Ellis’s doll, and Lizzie takes it from me and holds it close, tears running down her face.

“You went back?” She whispers.

“Looking for you,” I tell her.

Lizzie moves Ellis’s wild, unkempt hair away from her eyes and tries to show her the doll. She recoils from her mother’s touch, desperately trying to pull away. Lizzie seems unfazed. I guess she must be used to this now. Ellis’s eyes show no recognition, no understanding.

“It would have been easier on everyone if she’d just stayed with you,” she admits, “but how was I to know after what you did?”

“I know.”

“I didn’t even realize she was like you until a couple of days after you’d gone. I didn’t expect it, didn’t even think it could happen. One minute she was sitting there with her brothers, the next… I was out of the room for less than five minutes. I came back in and saw her with Edward…”

She starts sobbing, tears dripping down onto Ellis, who wriggles and squirms as if they’re corrosive acid drops.

“Why did this have to happen, Danny?” she asks. She knows I can’t give her the answers she wants.

“It wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do. None of us could control it or predict it…”

She smiles and wipes her eyes. “Remember how hard we used to think we had it? How frustrated we used to get with the kids…?”

“How could I forget?”

“You hated your job, I couldn’t stand being with the children, Dad was sick of bailing us out all the time…”

“I know. I remember.”

“I’d do anything to have it all back how it was.”

She’s right. In spite of everything, sitting here with her and with Ellis lying between us, part of me knows she’s right.

“I wish I could be back there,” she continues, reaching down and resting her hand on Ellis’s shoulder. Ellis flinches and tries to roll away, but Lizzie ignores her violent reaction. “You, me, Ellis, and the boys in the kitchen of our shitty little apartment, fighting over the TV or who’d eaten whose candy or something stupid like that…”

“Me, too,” I say quietly, surprising myself with my admission. Another explosion reverberates around the garage, followed by the sound of dust and debris raining down on the roof of the van. This van is like a cocoon, temporarily isolating us from the chaos of the rest of the world, but I can hear the intensity of the fighting outside continuing to increase.

“We can’t stay here,” I tell her. “It’s not safe.”

“I know.”

“I have to go. I have to take her with me and get her away.”

Lizzie nods and wipes her eyes again. She looks down at Ellis and smiles, then crouches down next to her and picks up the knife she was carrying. Ellis tries to lunge at her, the chains still holding her back. For a split second I think Lizzie’s going to attack her, but I watch her face and I know that she won’t. She can’t. She removes the clothesline that has been wrapped around Ellis’s legs, then slides the long blade between her bare ankles and draws it up, cutting through the plastic ties that hold her tight. Ellis immediately reacts, kicking out at Lizzie with incredible, unrestrained fury and anger.

“What are you doing? Get out of here, Liz. Just go-”

“Hold her, Danny.”

I lift Ellis up, her legs still thrashing, and wrap my arms around her chest as Lizzie removes the padlock and chains that have kept her anchored to the floor of the van. Her ferocity and strength are remarkable, and I struggle to keep hold of her. Lizzie removes Ellis’s gag, and her head immediately lurches forward as she tries to take a bite out of her mother’s face. Lizzie ducks out of the way, then lowers the blade toward the ties binding Ellis’s wrists together.

“You should go,” I tell her. “Get back to Mark and the others. Try to get away from here while you still can.”

She shakes her head and starts to cut.

“Let her go, Danny. I just want to hold her before you take her.”

I relax my grip. The plastic ties pop open, and Ellis immediately lunges forward, her incredible strength taking me by surprise. She flies at Lizzie, landing in her arms and smashing her back against the side of the van with a sickening thump. For the briefest of moments they’re locked in an embrace, Lizzie burying Ellis’s face in her chest, not wanting to let her go. I watch the pair of them in the low light, huddled close together. They could be anywhere-saying good-bye in the school playground, sitting on the end of Ellis’s bed last thing at night, keeping her warm when she’s just come in from outside…

Then the expression on Lizzie’s face changes. Her eyes screw shut with pain, and she opens her mouth to scream but no sound comes out. Ellis pushes her away and glances back at me, blood covering the bottom part of her face. She spits out a chunk of Lizzie’s flesh, then turns back and attacks again.

I shuffle back into the corner and cover my head as she rips her mother’s body apart.

38

BLOOD-SOAKED AND PANTING HARD, Ellis sits in the diagonally opposite corner of the van and watches me. What has she become? Does she even remember who I am? She hasn’t tried to kill me. She’d have attacked if she thought I was a threat.

“We have to go, Ellis. We have to get away from here. It’s not safe. People are going to try to kill everyone here. Do you understand?”

No reaction. No time to wait for an answer. I take her rainbow-colored sweater out of my backpack and edge closer to her.

“Put this on. Keep you warm.”

I reach up to put it over her head. She swipes it out of my hands. I pick it up and try again, but she’s not having any of it, and I drop it. She hisses at me and pushes herself farther into the corner. Poor kid, it’s hard seeing her like this. I’d naively expected her not to have changed much. Maybe I’d just been trying to convince myself she wouldn’t be like the kids we found at her school. She’ll be better now that we’re together.

“Come on, we’re going,” I tell her, forcing myself to move. I grab the knife and flashlight in one hand and Ellis’s wrist with the other and drag her out of the back of the van. We hit the ground, and she immediately tries to pull away from me, but I won’t let go. I drop the flashlight, shove the knife into my belt, and lean back into the van again. With outstretched fingers I reach the long length of cord they’d used to tie her legs together. It’s wet with Lizzie’s blood. Ellis keeps pulling against me, her strength and persistence hard to control, but I manage to keep hold and pull her closer. I tie one end of the cord around my waist and the other around hers like a leash. Christ, there’s hardly any meat on her at all. The chubby puppy fat I remember around her belly has gone. She’s lean and sinewy now-just skin, muscle, and bone.

“In case we get separated, okay?”

Still no reaction.

“Ellis, can you hear me?”

She looks into my face but doesn’t respond. Now that she’s attached to me I let her go, and she immediately darts away, almost dragging me over when the cord pulls tight. I try to haul her back, but she’s fighting against me constantly.

“Stop! Ellis, sweetheart, it’s Daddy…”

I’m struggling to keep my footing. In the brief lightning flash of an explosion outside, I see that she’s trying to undo the cord. I run toward her and scoop her up into my arms again. She kicks and squirms to get free.

“Calm down,” I whisper, my mouth next to her ear. “Please, Ellis, just stop…”

My words have no effect. Got to get out of this garage. Maybe she’ll respond better if she can see me clearly and if she can see what’s happening around us. Disoriented, I head the wrong way and find myself trying to get through the rubble at the collapsed front of the building. I double back on myself, past the open van and Lizzie’s body, trying to retrace my steps back out. Someone shines a light in my face. I can’t cover my eyes, so I instinctively screw them shut. I almost drop Ellis but manage to tighten my grip before she falls.

“Let her go,” an immediately familiar voice orders.

“Julia? How did you…?”

“I followed you. We knew you were looking for your kid, and Craven showed me what you found on the system.”

“But what about the plan? The fighting?”

“What about it? Have you seen what’s happening out there? The chain reaction’s started, McCoyne. They’re turning on each other.”

“So you’ve got what you wanted. The city’s falling apart and-”

“I can’t let you take her. Kids like this are the future. We need them more than you can imagine-”

“She’s staying with me.”

“You don’t understand. Sahota and Preston both-”

“No, you don’t understand. Ellis is my daughter, and I’m responsible for-”

“Your only responsibility is to this war.”

“But I’ll take her back to the others. I promised Preston I’d-”

“Do you think I’m stupid? If I let you go you’d disappear and we’d never see either of you again. I can’t take that risk. She’s coming with me, and you should be proud to let her go. We’ll take her, and she’ll help us hunt more of them down until the last one’s dead. Your kid’s already more of a fighter than you’ll ever be, and you should-”

“She’s my little girl. I don’t want her to fight.”

“You dumb bastard, do you think you have a choice? Just let her go.”

I don’t answer. I run forward, trying to find a way past. Julia comes at me, and I drop Ellis to defend myself. Another flash of the light blinds me for an instant, and the sudden tightening of the cord as Ellis darts away pulls me off balance. Julia swings a punch and catches me on the side of the head. I’m knocked back and sent reeling by the unexpected angle of her attack. I trip over something hard and heavy in the dark behind me and find myself on my knees in some kind of oily inspection pit. I feel the cord tighten again, and I immediately grab it and try to pull Ellis back. It gets even tighter, then goes taut, then drops down loose as Julia cuts through it.

“Ellis!” I shout as I scramble out of the pit. Julia drops her flashlight, and for a split second I catch a fleeting glimpse of her shape as she sprints through the office and back outside, barely managing to drag Ellis behind her. I chase after them, over the land at the back of the garage, through the wooden gate, then out along the cobbled passageway. It’s packed with people, far more than before, all of them running to escape the carnage that is steadily consuming the center of town. Can’t see Julia-she’s just one among hundreds now.

I follow the stumbling crowd until we reach the end of the passageway. I look in all directions and shout for Ellis, but my calls go unanswered, most probably unheard. Too many people. I start to wade through them, unable to see anything through the waves of foul, barely human flesh that constantly crash into me. I grab the knife from my belt and start hacking into those nearest to me, not interested in killing, just wanting them out of the way. The sun’s almost up now, but the light’s still poor. Dirty smoke drifts everywhere like horror film fog.

Someone grabs me from behind. I spin around to defend myself, but they’re not attacking, just trying to get through. I’m on my back in the gutter in a puddle of rancid rainwater before I know what’s happening. My wrist cracks against a curb, and I drop the knife. I reach out for it, but it’s kicked away by one of the stampeding crowd. Before I can get up someone plants a boot right in the center of my chest. Suddenly struggling to breathe, I roll over and manage to crawl away through the forest of legs. Other Unchanged trip and stumble over and around me, but I force myself to keep moving until I reach the side of the street where their numbers are fewer. I’m next to a badly decayed body in a deserted shop doorway when my hand rests on a length of metal tubing about a yard long. It looks like it was a fence post or part of a road sign, but it’ll make a decent weapon. I use it to help me get up, then head back into the crowd again, swinging it around like a samurai sword. On a vicious, upward arc, the jagged end of the tube hits an Unchanged woman on the side of the head, tearing her flesh from below her ear up to the corner of her eye. I swing the tube again and more of them go down like I’m cutting down crops, scything a path through the chaos.

There’s an overturned wreck of a car in the middle of the street. The crowd splits to go around either side of it, but I climb onto it. The burned-out skeleton of the car is precariously balanced on its roof, and it quivers and vibrates with my every move. Another helicopter flies overhead, and I instinctively duck and turn around to watch it disappear, looking back toward town.

Then I see her.

I’m surrounded by a sea of heads, but back in the direction from which I’ve just come, there’s a break in the crowd-a small, unexpected bubble of space. I struggle to see through the smoky haze and constant, uncoordinated activity, but then I glimpse a flash of remarkably fast movement. It’s Ellis. Finally free and unrestricted, she’s killing at an incredible rate. I can see her leaping from victim to victim with ferocious speed and intent, using nothing but her hands and teeth to kill. She wraps herself around each one of them, does enough damage to fatally wound them, then gets up and attacks her next victim before the last one’s dead. Even after everything I’ve seen, my daughter’s ruthless, savage brutality is incredible. Awe-inspiring and terrifying in equal measure.

There’s Julia. I steady myself as the overturned car rocks again, then watch as she chases after Ellis. Holding on to what’s left of the cord with one hand, she chops at the Unchanged around her with what looks like a meat cleaver held in the other. She’s struggling. Ellis is too strong and too fast for her.

I swing the metal pipe out over the side of the car like a golf club, taking out several more refugees and almost decapitating one of them. I jump down into the space where they were standing, then hold the tube out like a lance and run forward, shoulder dropped, toward where Julia and Ellis are fighting. I follow the trail of bodies, tripping over outstretched limbs and slipping in pools of blood and gore that Ellis has left in her wake. An unusually aggressive Unchanged comes at me with a machete. The downward sweep of the blade glances off my shoulder but does little damage, and I’m gone before he can take a second swipe.

Julia’s dead ahead of me now, being virtually dragged along by Ellis as she’s fighting. Yet another helicopter powers overhead, this one releasing a volley of screaming missiles into the crowd nearer to the center of town. I can feel the heat of the missiles as they scorch through the air above me, the shock wave from the explosions in the distance almost knocking me off my feet. Julia lifts her cleaver and chops it down into the pelvis of a slow-moving Unchanged man before the vibrations knock her off balance, too. She steadies herself and pulls back on Ellis’s leash. The momentary delay is enough for me to catch her. I grab hold of her shoulder and spin her around.

“Let her go, Julia.”

Distracted, she almost lets the cord slip through her fingers. She drops her weapon, snatches back the plastic-covered line with both hands, then tries to wrap it around her wrist. Her face is bruised, her right eye swollen purple and almost completely shut. Did Ellis do that to her?

“Help me with her,” she demands.

“Help you?” I yell back, using the metal pole to shove an unsteady Unchanged out of the way. “Are you serious? Let her go-”

“We have to get her out of here. Help me!”

More missiles explode, vast swollen bulges of intense orange flames rising up from the area around the Prince Hotel, far too close for comfort. What choice do I have? I drop the pole and grab the cord, taking the strain from Julia. Together we begin to reel Ellis in. I catch a glimpse of her through the swarming crowds. We’re dragging her back, but she’s still fighting, still grabbing as many Unchanged as she can, sinking her teeth and claws into their skin, slashing and tearing at their flesh. She’s just a yard away now, still pulling against us but unable to overcome our combined strength. Julia runs around from behind me and grabs Ellis by the waist, lifting her clean off the ground. Ellis drops the body of a young Unchanged kid midkill, then manages to squirm around in Julia’s grip. I try to force myself between them and take my daughter from Julia, but Ellis unintentionally elbows me in the face, her bone catching me full force between the eyes. Blood begins pouring from my nose.

Julia staggers away, trying to keep hold of Ellis and at the same time deflect the constant barrage of kicks and punches coming from her. My girl is like a child possessed, fighting with a savage strength and intensity beyond her years. They disappear into the crowd again for a few heart-stopping seconds until, as I spit out blood from my broken nose, I catch sight of the clothesline on the ground. I drop down and grab hold of it, reeling Ellis in again. I find her sitting on top of Julia, her thumbs sunk deep into the woman’s bloody eye sockets, repeatedly lifting her head up and then smashing the back of her skull down onto the asphalt. Julia thrashes her arms wildly, but there’s no strength left in her, only movement. Ellis squeezes again and Julia stops suddenly, limbs falling heavy. Ellis lifts Julia’s head, then slams it back down once more, then looks up and springs away. The cord whips out of my hands, burning my skin.

“Ellis!”

She leaps up at another Unchanged woman who’s running toward her. The woman catches her with surprise and is then slammed back down onto the road, overcome by the unexpected force of the attack. Ellis kills her, then stands up and drags another one down, then another and another, and I’m transfixed until an Unchanged man slams into me from one side. I grab his collar, flip him over, and smash the sole of my boot into his face. The exhilaration is incredible. Suddenly, now that I have Ellis with me, this is all that matters. Another one of them comes at me with a knife. I grab his hand, twist it around with such force that I hear his elbow pop and crack, then plunge the blade into his own chest. I pull the bloody weapon back out and then, without thinking, grab a handful of hair from the head of another, yank it back, and draw the knife quickly across its exposed neck, feeling it slice easily through flesh. Beside me Ellis launches herself at a kid just a little older than she is. The kid fights back, almost getting away, before Ellis forces it over to the side of the road and smashes its head through a low window.

And this, I realize as I kill again and again without resistance, is what I’d always said I’d wanted. I’m fighting freely, without restriction or fear, and Ellis is by my side, doing the same. Except she’s not here. I’ve lost sight of her again. I shout her name, but the chaos around me now is all-consuming. The helicopter circles overhead again, and the panicking crowd pushes me back farther. I try to carve my way through them, but getting through these people is like trying to swim against the strongest current imaginable. Through a momentary gap I see Ellis racing away, moving diagonally across the street, jumping from body to body, from kill to kill, slithering through the crowd. She jumps up onto the back of one unsuspecting man, snaps his neck, then leaps over to her next victim before the first corpse has fallen. Then she’s gone again. Lost in the midst of the madness.

What has she become? She’s a savage, feral monster, a million miles removed from the Ellis I knew and remembered, but she’s still my daughter. Seeing her like this is heartbreakingly sad, but, at the same time, there’s a part of me that’s incredibly proud of what she is now and how bravely and strongly she’s fighting.

Got to get to her.

I’m struggling to keep going. I’m panting with effort, legs heavy and lungs empty, barely able to keep moving, and yet the tide of Unchanged refugees coming toward me is endless. I try to force my way between them, but every time I take a step forward I’m pushed several steps back. Got to keep moving. Can’t stop now…

The roar of another missile fills the air. It hits the side of a building less than a hundred yards ahead, puncturing a hole in the wall, then exploding outward, showering the entire street with debris. When the explosion fades, everything becomes silent and still. I stand motionless as the last few refugees to have escaped the blast continue to push past me. I slowly move closer to the blast zone as the sound gradually begins to return-the screams and moans of the injured and dying, a single car alarm that’s somehow still working, the crackle and pop of flames, the hiss of fractured pipes…

Can’t see Ellis.

I stand alone at the edge of a massive expanse of rubble and fallen bodies. Around me, a few people begin to move again, crawling through the debris, slowly picking themselves up and staggering on. I walk deeper into the madness, slowly at first, then starting to run. I trip and slide over the remains of people under my feet.

Where is she?

I run faster, barely managing to stay upright in the midst of the carnage. The closer I get to the epicenter, the fewer complete bodies there are. I look down and all I can see now is dismembered limbs and other, less recognizable chunks of bloody meat. I can’t move, can’t think straight, the stench of smoke and burning flesh filling my bleeding nostrils. Can’t focus. I can hardly breathe. Have I lost her? Against all the odds, Lizzie kept Ellis safe for weeks on end. Just minutes with me and she’s gone.

Can’t give up.

There are more people moving all around me now, some of them disentangling themselves from the bloody wreckage, others continuing to flood forward from the center of town, picking their way through the gruesome ruins, the explosion just delaying their escape temporarily. I slowly cross what’s left of the street, trying to see through the smoke and haze and line myself up with the buildings close to where I last thought I saw her. As I get nearer I drop to my knees and start to crawl through the bloody mire, pushing away the grabbing hands that reach up at me, desperate for help. My knee sinks down into the open chest cavity of a young Unchanged man, physically forcing his last breath from his lungs. Another one of them catches hold of my coat, and I pry its surprisingly strong fingers away when I see a small, child-sized hand sticking out from under two heavy cadavers. I drag the corpses out of the way, desperate to dig Ellis out from beneath them. She’s facedown on the asphalt, a pool of deep red, almost black blood spilling out around her head. I put my hands under her shoulders, pull her out, and turn her over, but it’s not her. Thank God. I drop the body and keep moving.

There are Unchanged moving all around me again now. Most are injured; all are terrified. I increase my speed, determined to find Ellis, literally throwing wet chunks of human remains over my shoulder as I look for any sign of her. Then I see it-the severed end of the plastic clothesline. As more munitions explode around me, showering me with dust and dirt, I pick up the end of the cord and follow it back, terrified at the thought of what I might find at the other end. I catch sight of a bare ankle that’s smaller and thinner than the rest. I haul another blood-soaked body out of the way and shove it to one side, jumping with surprise when it opens its eyes and screams in pain and grabs hold of me. Underneath another corpse I see Ellis’s shock of untidy brown hair. I push and pull more bodies away until she lies there in front of me, completely uncovered. Her tiny, emaciated body doesn’t move. I shake her shoulder, but there’s still no response. I lean down until my ear’s just a fraction of an inch from her mouth, but it’s impossible to hear or feel anything. I grip her wrist in my hand and check for a pulse, but there’s nothing. I turn her over and pull her up and hold her in my arms. She looks like she’s sleeping, and for the first time since I found her she looks like my Ellis again, like the precious little kid I used to tuck into bed at night and fetch breakfast for in the morning, the noisy little brat who made my life hell but who I loved more than anything else in the world. Bruised, blood-soaked, and beautiful.

I check her neck for a pulse again, not even sure if I’m doing it right. Did I just feel something? I pry her eyelids open. Her pupils are wide, fully dilated, but she doesn’t react to the light. I hold her close, her head next to mine, and for a second I think I hear something. I concentrate on Ellis, shutting out everything else, and then I hear it again. The faintest whisper of a shallow, rasping breath. She’s alive. Got to get her out of here.

39

THE SKIES OVERHEAD ARE filled with movement and noise. Missiles, mortars, and rockets whip across the clouds and detonate around the city center. Helicopters buzz overhead, some observing, most of them attacking, firing into the crowds below.

The bulk of the refugees follow each other like sheep, sticking to the main roads out of town and not even bothering to consider whether those in front know any more or less about the situation than they do. They run blind, finding the illusion of safety in numbers. There are hundreds of them moving down the wide ring road, which, as many of them must know, will eventually swing around and take them straight back into the dying heart of the city.

There’s another way.

Over to my left is an enormous pile of smoldering rubble where there used to be a multiplex cinema. Still carrying Ellis in my arms, I leave the road and run around the edge of the ruins, following the perimeter of a wide, tent- and RV-filled parking lot that has been almost completely abandoned. On the far side of the site is a steep embankment, along which runs one of the train lines out of the city. While thousands of those dumb bastards have stuck to the clogged and overcrowded roads, I can already see that there are just a handful of people up there following the train tracks out of town.

Ellis starts to move. Thank God for that. It was only a small flinch, but it was enough, and I sense she’s going to be okay. I hold her tight as I climb up the embankment, quickly reaching the top and running along the side of the track, still instinctively watching out for trains I know will never come. My feet dig into the gravel as if it’s wet sand, every step taking twice as much effort as it should.

From this relatively high and uninterrupted vantage point, I can see clearly in most directions. I look back over my shoulder at what’s left of the city behind us. Massive sections of it are on fire now. The skyline has changed incredibly in an unbelievably short period of time. Huge, landmark buildings that stood tall and proud when I arrived here just a few hours ago have been destroyed and have disappeared, changing the skyline forever. Even from this distance and over the endless noise of the helicopters, missiles, and muffled explosions, I can still hear the sounds of thousands of people fighting, and the relief at having escaped with my daughter from the heart of the battle is immense.

I keep running, exhausted but forcing myself to keep going. We’re probably safe at this distance, but I want to get even farther away. The train track snakes away toward the suburbs, the desolate ruins of housing projects springing up on either side of us. Even out here there are people in the streets. I see scores of terrified Unchanged refugees who’ve fled the city and are looking for shelter, only to be intercepted and cut off by people like me and Ellis. Where the hell did so many of our fighters come from? Were they already in the center of town with us? The answer becomes clear as I see more and more of them approaching. These people are coming in from outside the city now, crossing the exclusion zone. Word must have reached them that the refugee camp is imploding. Or is this a planned attack? Are these the advance troops from Ankin’s army?

Another helicopter flies overhead, this one so low that I instinctively drop down to my knees and bend forward to protect Ellis. She shuffles in my arms again and groans with pain. I hold her closer to my chest and look up as the helicopter flies past and away. Then another thunders over us, then another… all of them flying away from the city. I stand up as even more gunships follow the first three. I start moving again, and as the combined noise of the aircrafts’ powerful engines begins to fade, I become aware of another sound, this time much closer and on the ground. Beyond the ruined houses to my right there’s a large expanse of parkland. Even from this distance I can see there’s a huge amount of activity there. There are battles raging in the streets around the park, and a massive convoy of vehicles is beginning to leave the grassland and move off along the surrounding roads. Another helicopter takes off from somewhere close. It climbs quickly into the early morning air, then banks hard over to the left and follows the course taken by the others before it.

Ellis starts to wake up and move. She grunts and squirms in my arms, but I just tighten my grip, determined not to let go.

“Stay still,” I tell her, not knowing if she can hear me or if she understands. “Please, sweetheart…”

The train track cuts through the projects, then runs parallel with one edge of the parkland. I’ve never seen it from this angle, but this place used to be Sparrow Hill Park, I’m sure of it. It’s unrecognizable today. The sprawling expanse of well-tended grass I remember is now a vast, cluttered mass of abandoned tents and trailers. Once obviously filled to overcapacity with refugees, much of it now is conspicuously empty. Huge swathes of the camp have been washed away, and now several stagnant lakes where floodwaters have swept relentlessly through the site are all that remain.

There are people fighting on the track up ahead. I run down the embankment and begin to weave through a dense copse of brittle-branched trees to try to get closer to the park. Already I can see movement on the other side of the trees, and I hold Ellis even tighter as she tries to get away again. Her rage seems to increase the closer we get to the Unchanged. She wants to fight, but I won’t let her. It’s too dangerous here.

Through the trees and I hit a wire-mesh fence. Something’s different here. Can’t put my finger on it, but I sense something’s wrong.

As I work my way around the wire-mesh fence looking for a way through, the penny drops. The Unchanged troops are evacuating. It’s their stock response when they realize they’ve lost control of a building, an area, or even a city-withdraw as many of their people as they can to a safe distance, then bomb the hell out of what’s left. I saw it at the hospital, at that office building with Adam, and a hundred times before that. Christ, now I know exactly what happened to London. They lost control, the same way they have here. And their response then? They leveled the fucking place. More than ever, I have to get us away.

Ellis manages to free one of her hands and slashes at my face. Blood dribbles down my cheek, and when I lift up my hand to wipe it away she shoves both her fists up under my chin and pushes my head back, then knees me in the gut and breaks loose. She runs along the edge of the park, and I sprint after her toward where a section of fence has collapsed up ahead. A truck has crashed through and come to a sudden stop wrapped around the base of a tree trunk. It can only just have happened. The half-dead driver is Unchanged. He’s hanging out of the door, and when he sees us he starts groaning and begging for help. Ellis jumps up at him, the force of her sudden attack throwing him back across his cab. By the time I get up to her he’s already dead, but she continues to kick, punch, and slash at his lifeless body, her aggression and instinct taking hold. I grab her hair and pull her back toward me, then manage to get a grip under one of her shoulders and drag her back out into the open.

“Off!” she yells, her voice guttural and hoarse, sounding more like a warning howl than a properly formed word.

“We have to go, Ellis. Can’t stay here. Too dangerous.”

I drag her behind me into the park. She’s still kicking and thrashing furiously, but her short arms can’t reach my hands to break my grip. I run across the boggy grass toward the chaotic activity up ahead. There’s a bottleneck at the single exit, where jeeps, huge trucks, and other armored vehicles are all vying for position to get onto a track that’s barely wide enough for any of them to get through. All around the vehicles, refugees and soldiers on foot try to escape from the park. People fight with each other to get away, but there are no other people like us here. This is Unchanged versus Unchanged.

A khaki-colored Land Rover pulls away and skids through the mud before coming to a sudden halt at the back of the ever-growing line of vehicles. No one pays us any attention as I run toward it. The driver tries to weave through the stationary line and push his way in, his only concern getting away from here before the inevitable carpet bombing begins. But there’s no way through for anyone. A helicopter hovers overhead, broadcasting a pointless announcement that is all but inaudible over the strain of so many impatient, overrevved engines.

The driver of the Land Rover is distracted, arguing with one of the other soldiers in the back. This is our chance. I haul Ellis up close and whisper in her ear.

“Kill them, honey.”

I yank open the back door of the mud-splattered vehicle and literally throw her inside. I slam it shut again and wait for several anxious seconds until the bloody face of one of the soldiers is smashed up against the window, cracking the glass. I pull the front door open, drag the driver out onto the grass, and stamp hard on his face until he stops moving. I jump into his still-warm seat and lock the doors. Behind me Ellis stands on the chest of one of the dead soldiers, ripping out his throat with her bare hands.

“Good girl,” I tell her. “Now sit down and hold on.”

The way ahead is still impassable, and there are more soldiers running toward us now, more interested in the vehicle than in either their fallen comrades or us. As the nearest one reaches for the door I shove the Land Rover into reverse, skidding back across the grass and knocking one of them down, clattering over his broken legs. Into first gear and I accelerate. We struggle to get traction on the wet, greasy ground for a second, but the soldier’s body helps the wheels to finally get a grip, and we career away.

“Hold on,” I tell Ellis again as we slip and slide through the mud. I follow the curve of the boundary fence, looking for the way we used to get in here and hoping I’ll be able to squeeze around the other side of the truck and get out again. There it is. I accelerate up over the collapsed wire-mesh fence, the side of the Land Rover scraping along the side of the beached truck. I steer hard right, then hard the other way, then change direction again as we weave through the trees. Behind me Ellis is thrown from side to side, the soldiers’ bloody corpses providing her with some cushioning.

“Put your belt on.”

She doesn’t react. I wrench the steering wheel hard over again, then grip it tight as we burst out through the trees, crash through a low picket fence, then swerve onto a narrow residential road that’s swarming with people who scatter as we power toward them. Ellis slams herself up against the window, beating her hands against the glass, desperate to get outside and kill.

There’s a traffic island up ahead, and the rest of the traffic that’s managing to escape from the park is driving around it. I accelerate the wrong way around the island, then force my way into the line of fast-moving vehicles. We hurtle along a wide road that’s virtually clear on one side, more refugees diving out of the way as we approach. The road climbs up over a high flyover supported on huge concrete struts, and now I know where we’re heading. This was obviously the Unchanged military’s main route in and out of their refugee camp. In less than a mile we’ll reach the highway. I’m distracted as the truck in front smashes into a person trying to sprint away, sending them spinning over the crash barrier at the side of the flyover and tumbling down a sixty-foot drop. Our speed is such that I dare only look down for a fraction of a second, but I see that the area of town below us now resembles a vast battlefield. Escaping refugees have collided head-on with an army of our fighters marching into the city. They’re no match for our people. I look down over a bloodbath of unprecedented scale and brutality.

The front of the Land Rover clips a lump of concrete, and I almost lose control. I try to focus again as we start to descend toward the highway, Unchanged military vehicles ahead of us and behind. Ellis starts throwing herself at the door, trying to get out, oblivious to the danger.

“Sit down,” I shout at her, reaching into the back and trying to grab her arm. I manage to catch her wrist, but she won’t budge. Christ, she’s strong. She straightens her legs against the back of the front seats. The harder I try to pull her forward, the more she resists.

As this road widens and merges with the highway, two vehicles try to pass me at once, a truck on one side and a jeep on the other. Still struggling with Ellis, I accidentally ram the cumbersome truck. It veers off to the right and hits the metal barrier running along the median and spins. The back of the truck jackknifes and blocks two of the three lanes behind us. I glance up into the rearview mirror and watch as more vehicles smash into the truck, filling almost the entire road with a tangled mass of crashed traffic. Other trucks and vans manage to swerve around the wreck and keep moving.

Ellis lunges at me from the back. I lift my hand to protect myself and manage to get a hold under her armpit. I drag her forward, flipping her over through a full turn, bringing her slamming down hard on her back on the passenger seat.

“Sit down!” I yell at her, the volume of my desperate voice seeming to finally have some effect. She backs away from me and moves toward the door, pulling up her knees and curling herself into as small a shape as possible. “Put your belt on, Ellis,” I tell her. “Do it!”

When she doesn’t react I ignore her, focusing my attention on getting as far away from the city as possible, passing a large armored transporter on the inside. There’s a flash of light and a thunderous noise directly above me, and I brace myself for another missile explosion, but it’s just more helicopters, their pilots and passengers fleeing from the fallen city along with everyone else. I glance at the dashboard for a fraction of a second-as long as I dare-and I see that we’re doing more than ninety miles an hour. More than a mile a minute. We might be six or seven miles away now, maybe more. Is that far enough?

“We’ve got to get away from there, you understand?” I yell over the noise of the engine, looking over at Ellis. She cowers on the seat next to me, half naked and covered in blood and grime. Her huge brown eyes stare back at me unblinking. Poor kid’s in shock, traumatized by everything that she’s seen and done since we were last together. If only Lizzie hadn’t taken her away from me. She’d have been better off with me there to explain everything. “Listen, we’ll find somewhere safe to stop, then we’ll-”

Her eyes dart away from my face and toward the windshield. She looks up, scanning the white clouds above us. I follow her gaze, then look down again and steer quickly out of the way as we almost hit the back of a slower dark green vehicle. We rumble over the hard shoulder, the tires brushing the edge of the grass verge and churning up clouds of grit and dust. I yank the Land Rover back on course, the sudden movement making us both slide over to the right. Ellis’s gaze remains fixed, staring into the sky.

“What is it?”

She doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t matter. I can hear it now. Even over the Land Rover’s straining engine and everything else, I hear a high-pitched whine. And then I see it-a single dark speck racing across the sky toward the city at an unimaginable speed. Must be a jet or…

Fuck… It can’t be…

The accelerator pedal’s already flat on the floor, but I try to push it down harder still when I realize what it is I’m looking at. With one hand on the wheel, I reach across and shove Ellis down. She yelps in pain and protest and tries to fight me off, but I ignore her cries and keep pushing. She slides off the seat, and I shove her harder, forcing her down into the foot well.

“Get down!” I scream, my voice hoarse with panic. “Get your goddamn head down now!”

She looks up again, and all I can see is those beautiful brown eyes staring back at me. She tries to move again, but I push her back.

“Don’t look up, Ellis. Whatever you do, don’t look up-”

Then it happens.

There’s a sudden flash of intense white light, so bright that it burns. I screw my eyes shut, but I can still see everything as the incandescent light and sudden, scorching heat wrap all the way around us, filling the Land Rover, burning my skin and snatching the air from my lungs. It fades almost as quickly as it came, but the darkness that takes its place is equally blinding. I’m thrown forward as we smash into another vehicle ahead of us, and in the fraction of a second I’m looking out, I see that the highway has become a single solid mass of smashed cars and trucks.

A howling wind swallows up the Land Rover and hurls us and everything else forward again. I try to reach out for Ellis, but I can’t find her. I lean over, but I can’t feel her. She’s not moving. The Land Rover’s spinning now. Feels like it’s rolling over and over, being hit by debris from all angles. I’m thrown back in my seat again, and the back of my head smashes against the window.

Try to move but I can’t. Try to focus but I can’t. Try to speak but…

40

HOW LONG? HOURS, MINUTES, or just seconds? Everything is still, much quieter than it should be. I slowly pry my eyes open, not knowing what I’m going to see. The windshield of the Land Rover has shattered, the glass crisscrossed by hundreds of tiny, snaking cracks. We’re straddling another wreck, and the nose of the car has been shunted up into the air. Lying back in my seat, all I can see in front of me is a foul and angry yellow-gray sky. It’s the color of bile.

Ellis moves. I try to lean across and turn toward her, but my neck’s stiff. I reach up to massage it, but I stop. My skin feels moist, raw, and pliable. Must have been burned. Ellis shuffles again, and I try to twist around. Then I freeze. I feel my bladder loosen involuntarily.

The force of what just happened must have spun the Land Rover around through more than a complete half turn, and what I can see now through the passenger window is the single most terrifying thing I have ever seen. Between here and what used to be the city, almost everything’s on fire. There are flickering flames everywhere, and the ground is scorched and black. The city itself-my home, the place where I lived with my family and where I worked and played and struggled and fought-is gone. A thick climbing column of dark gray smoke rises straight up into the sky from its dead heart. At a height I can’t even begin to imagine the smoke balloons out and turns in on itself again and again, forming the unmistakable shape of a mushroom cloud.

Ellis climbs up onto the passenger seat next to me. Thank God I found her. If I’d been any slower or any later or if I’d waited any longer she’d be gone now, vaporized in the blinking of an eye along with so many others. Lizzie, Josh, Edward… all gone. I start sobbing. The apartment, Joseph Mallon, Julia… Don’t know why I’m crying. Is it shock, relief, or sorrow…? Ellis looks at the explosion in the distance, then turns and watches me, her brown eyes locked onto mine. I try to talk to her, but I can’t make the words come out. My throat is burning and dry. My lungs feel like they’re filled with smoke. Is she in shock, too? For the first time since I found her she’s quiet and subdued.

“We’ll wait here till it’s safe,” I tell her in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine. “Then we’ll find somewhere better, okay?”

She looks at me but doesn’t react. Then she looks at the broken windshield.

“Snow,” she says, the first proper word I’ve heard my daughter say in months.

“Not snow,” I tell her, watching a few large gray clumps drift down and settle on the cracked glass. “It’s ash. Dirty. Poison. Make you sick.”

She slumps back in her seat, and beyond her I can see the mushroom cloud again. Even now after all that’s happened, it’s a terrifying and humbling sight. The ultimate symbol of the Hate. Who did this?

“We’re going to find a house,” I tell Ellis, still watching the cloud, not knowing what I’m saying now or why, “and you and me are going to stay there together. I know it’s hard to understand what happened with Mummy and Edward and Josh, but one day we’ll work it out, and when we do you’ll-”

She springs up from her seat and throws herself across the inside of the Land Rover, leaning on my chest, shoving me back into my chair, and pressing her face hard against the glass. I can’t move, pinned down by her weight. She’s following something, watching it circling us. With lightning speed she jumps away again, then scrambles over the seats into the back of the car, trampling over the soldiers’ still-wet corpses. She yanks at one of the door handles, trying to get out.

“Don’t, sweetheart,” I shout, trying to turn my aching body around and pull her back into the front. I manage to catch hold of her, but she wrestles herself free. “You can’t go out there-”

She squeezes through the gap between the seats again, pushing me back and lunging for the door. I lean across and cover the lock. She shakes the handle violently and screams with frustration.

“Ellis, don’t,” I plead. “You have to stay here with me. You can’t-”

A sudden round of gunfire from somewhere close interrupts me. I turn and look out of the window at my side and see that there are people out on the highway now. Hundreds of them. Mostly they look like our people, but there are Unchanged soldiers among them, too. Our fighters outnumber them. They’re hunting them down.

Ellis lunges at me, trying to get past. I wrap my heavy arms around her waist and try to pull her closer, but she kicks herself free. I’m too tired to keep fighting. She shoves me away, and the back of my head cracks against the window. Her constant, violent movements make the precariously balanced Land Rover shake and start to slip and lurch to one side.

“Please…” I say, cautiously trying to reach for her again. She recoils from my touch, scrambling away. She pushes against the windshield in frustration. When the broken glass starts to bulge outward, she does it again. And again. I want to stop her, but I don’t have the energy. There’s blood on her hands now, but she goes on thumping the glass regardless, desperate to get out. Finally, with a grunt of effort and anger, she breaks through the windshield and scrambles out onto the hood of the Land Rover. My door’s blocked by another crashed car, and all I can do is follow her out. I crawl over the front of the vehicle, the metal still hot, most of its paint scorched away, shards of glass grinding into my belly. I drop down onto the ground and lose my footing when it’s farther to fall than I think. I get up quickly, breathing hard. The air out here is bone dry and foul smelling.

Ellis darts away, and I follow her, moving out from the shadow of the crashed Land Rover and into the open. I look along the highway in both directions. It’s a single mass of stationary vehicles now. Many of the Unchanged drivers and their passengers are dead. I can see them wedged behind the wheels of wrecks, others with their bloody faces smashed up against windows. Some have survived. One of them emerges from the back of an overturned truck a short distance away. Before they’ve taken more than a couple of steps away, Ellis has attacked. She jumps onto a car, then leaps at the disoriented Unchanged man, landing on his back and smashing him down to the ground with incredible brutality.

A pack of fighters races past me. They’ve been waiting out here in the wasteland, and now they pick their way through the convoy like vultures, stripping the meat from Unchanged bones, hunting out the survivors and tearing them apart. Up ahead a Brute thunders along the road unchallenged, making kill after kill after kill. Any Unchanged resistance is quickly crushed. Even those who try to run are chased down and killed.

Ellis lunges at another one and disappears from view. I swallow hard and force myself to move. Leg hurts. I look down and see that there’s blood dribbling down from my right knee. My trouser leg and boot are stained wet-red.

“Ellis, wait,” I try to shout, my voice nowhere near loud enough. I find her on the ground beside a jeep, leaning down over another body. She looks up at me, and a chunk of bloody flesh drops from her mouth. Was she chewing it? I reach out and grab her wrist before she’s able to get away. “Too dangerous here. Need to get under cover. Come with me…”

She pries my weak fingers off and crawls away, searching for the next kill. She brings down a dazed, blood-soaked woman who’s already half dead. She pulls her down to her knees, grabs a fistful of hair, and smashes her face again and again into a charred car door, denting the paint-stripped metal more and more with each impact. I haul myself toward her, using other wrecks for support. Up ahead the towering mushroom cloud is beginning to fade and lose focus. That makes me even more afraid. Soon the air will be filled with poison if it’s not already. I throw myself down at Ellis again and wrap my arms tight around her. The pain in my bleeding knee is unbearable, but I have to ignore it. Ellis is all that matters.

“You have to come with me. We’ll both die if we stay out here.”

She puts the soles of her bare feet against the misshapen car door and straightens her legs, pushing me away. Overbalanced, and with one leg already weakened, I fall back. She bites down onto my hand, drawing blood, and I let go. She stands over me, one foot on either side of my body. I look up at her, covering my eyes against the fine dust and ash, which is falling faster now. I reach up and snatch her hand again as she sees another Unchanged and tries to run. I won’t let go. I can’t let go. She screams and pulls and kicks at me, but I won’t let her go.

“Stay with me, please…”

Ellis drops down onto my chest and stares into my face. What’s she thinking? Does she understand any of this? Another Unchanged trying to drag itself to safety distracts her, and she starts to move. I grip her wrist even harder.

“Don’t go.”

She clenches her free hand into a fist and hits me. I try to stop her, but she hits me again, then again and again and again until my face is numb and my eyes are almost swollen shut. Too tired. Can’t fight back.

I feel her get up.

There’s so much I need to say, but I can’t get even the first word out. I’m aware of her looking down at me, breathing hard, my blood on her hands.

“Ellis-” I start to say, but she isn’t listening. She looks up, then sprints away. I turn my head and watch as she disappears into the maze of crashed vehicles, searching for her next kill. All I can do is watch her go.

41

COLD.

Body shaking.

Breathing in dust.

The fighters are long gone. Ellis is long gone.

Empty.

Everything’s lost.

Still lying in the road, curled up in a ball. Stomach churning, legs and arms aching. Head pounding. Throat dry, lungs scorched. Warm wind gusting. Swirling sky black above me. Light’s fading. Stench of burning meat is everywhere. Been here for hours, facedown on the asphalt.

Heavy footsteps.

Someone standing next to me. A soldier? Stay still. Don’t move.

“Found one,” he shouts, face hidden, voice muffled by a gas mask.

“Worth taking?” someone shouts back.

“Not sure.”

He kicks me in the gut to see if he gets a reaction, forcing air out. I look up but don’t move. I feel the Hate rising.

“Well, has it still got two arms and two legs?”

“Yes.”

“And is it breathing?”

“Think so.”

“Then chuck it on the truck.”

He bends down, grabs hold of my shoulder, and picks me up. He hauls me across the road, feet dragging in the dust.

Have to try to fight. It’s all I’ve got left. Everything else is lost.

With what feels like my last breath, I straighten my legs, stand tall, and wrestle myself free. Unarmed and uncaring, I shove the soldier away with all the force I can manage. Caught off guard, he slams face first into a wreck. I spin him around and rip off his face mask. I need this fucker to know how much I hate him when I kill him.

He throws me back. Much stronger than me. I fall, my injured knee giving way. I wait for him to attack, but he picks me up again.

Is this how it ends? Is he going to kill me now?

Wait. He’s like me. One of us.

“Easy, tiger,” he grunts, pushing me forward again. “Save it for the Unchanged.”

Too tired to protest. Filled with relief, anger, and pain.

He leads me through the highway chaos, then picks me up and puts me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when my legs buckle again. Can’t fight. Can’t react.

I open my eyes and lift my head. Hard to see anything. More soldiers wearing gas masks, all of them dragging or carrying people over this way. We reach a flatbed truck, and he pushes me up. Grabbing hands reach down and help me. I scramble up, then fall back against the side of the truck, struggling to breathe. Dust and dirt grind into my cuts and burns, but I’m too tired to care. Too tired to feel the pain.

Empty.

For half a second I try to look for Ellis, but I know she’s long gone. I look around at the faces of the people crammed into the back of this truck. They’re all like me. They’re all fighters. No longer people, just fighters. All of us conscripted into what remains of Ankin’s army or another force like it.

I was stupid to believe I could sidestep this war, that I could escape from it with Ellis. What’s left of the world is now entirely governed by the Hate, and I have to be ready to fight and to kill until the last trace of the Unchanged is wiped from the face of the planet. Only then will the situation change.

My daughter is gone, lost long before I found her. Now all I have left is the Hate.

Exhausted, I close my eyes and let the darkness swallow me up.

Need to rest and recover and be ready for what’s still to come. No choice. No option. The hardest battles loom large on the horizon.