Dive for the gun.

Alice dove for the gun a second before the Citizen Care officer reacted. He bent forward to try and stop Alice from reaching his weapon but it was too late. Alice turned beneath him and fired upwards at his body without aiming. The first bullet hit his stomach. The second his chest. The officer teetered for a moment before collapsing down on top of Alice.

As she lay pinned to the ground by the dead man’s weight, Alice’s pulse raced from adrenaline. He was lying across her body but Alice still had her arm with the gun and her Status-Bracelet free. She waited for something to happen and had just begun to think nothing at all would happen. The Status-Bracelet started to pulse red. It beat like a heart against her wrist before it switched to green and became dormant again. Perhaps it took a few moments for the man to expire completely on top of her or for the Status-Bracelet’s to work out who had been responsible for his slaying. Alice didn’t know and she didn’t care right then. She was green again and that was all that mattered. Her tears were tears of happiness this time.

It took Alice some time to be able to regather her strength to push the dead officer off of her. He was big. There was no way she would have been able to fight him without the gun. Alice managed to crawl out from underneath him and stand up. The front of her white blouse was covered almost completely in a red from where he had bled onto her. She could smell the ferrous tang and almost taste it at the back of her throat. Alice bent over and vomited on the ground beside the man head. Bile and sick tasting better than his horrid stink.

Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, Alice hid the gun inside her jacket. The navy-blue blazer didn’t show the blood as well and helped to hide the mess as she pulled it close around her hugging herself. Alice didn’t want to return to the Ration-Mart. She was Green Status again but the thought of eating made her want to throw up again. She couldn’t allow herself to ever get so low on Social Credits again. She’d go immediately to the Blood Pool and donate to boost herself up again.

As she walked slowly down the street, she saw the faces of the other citizens as they looked at her. It was strange, they’d see her covered in blood looking completely bedraggled and startle and go to move away from her. Next, their eyes would flit to her wrist and they’d relax again when they saw she was green. As if that simple indicator of colour was enough to make what should be a horrible sight perfectly fine.

Inside the Blood Pool, there was nearly one hundred pool lining up to give blood. The majority of people there had yellow Status-Bracelet with a handful of greens like Alice. The very small number of reds she saw were quickly ushered into another part of the Blood Pool. Their blood needing to undergo greater scrutiny and safety precautions. Diseases a bigger risk from their immoral lifestyles.

It took half an hour for Alice to make it to the front of her line to be seen. A heavy-set black woman with a green Status-Bracelet waving her over the moment she was finished with her last patient. The donor going from yellow to green as he walked unsteadily out of the Blood Pool.