by Megan Rix
MEGAN RIX
PUFFIN
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PUFFIN BOOKS
Megan Rix lives with her husband by a river in England. When she’s not writing she can be found walking her two golden retrievers, Traffy and Bella, who are often in the river.
Books by Megan Rix
THE BOMBER DOG
THE GREAT ESCAPE
THE VICTORY DOGS
‘For Gallantry, We Also Serve’
Prologue
Occupied France, 1940
Sabine knew what the soldiers had come for as soon as she saw them marching down the muddy lane to their farmhouse. Her hands shook as she grabbed the nearest of the twelve-week-old German Shepherd puppies and ran out of the wooden back door with it.
Her younger brother, Claude, was outside feeding the chickens.
‘What is it? What’s going on? Where are you taking that puppy?’ he called out.
The German soldiers were almost at the farmhouse. There wasn’t time for Sabine to explain.
‘Tell the soldiers one of the puppies died,’ she said. ‘Do you understand? Tell them he was the smallest and weakest of the litter and he wasn’t strong enough to survive and he died.’
Claude’s blue eyes opened very wide. ‘But that’s not true,’ he said.
‘Just say it!’ Sabine shouted.
The puppy, frightened by the harshness of her voice, wriggled to get away but she clung on to him.
‘You’re not going to kill it, are you?’ Claude said, his eyes filling with tears. ‘You wouldn’t … You couldn’t.’
Those tears would help convince the soldiers that what he said was true.
The Germans were now so close she could hear their voices as they entered the farmhouse. She heard her mother screaming at them not to take the puppies away. Alsatians, or German Shepherd Wolf Dogs, as they were also known, were highly prized by the Nazis. They were famed for their intelligence, strength and bravery, making them ideal dogs to train up for war duty. Herr Hitler owned two of them.
‘No,’ Sabine told her brother. ‘It’s a lie. Just tell them what I told you. At least this one will be safe.’
Claude nodded once, dropped his pot of corn on the ground, and ran back to the farmhouse. The chickens clucked with excitement as they rushed to peck at their unexpected feast.
Sabine looked behind her and then ran the other way. It wasn’t easy to run with a wriggling, heavy, furry bundle in her arms, but if she could save just one of the pups from becoming part of the war, it would be worth it.
The puppy was still very young and not used to being snatched away from his mother or being squeezed so tightly, but there wasn’t time to stop and reassure him.
Sabine ran so hard it felt like her heart was beating almost out of her chest and her breathing came in painful gasps, but she wouldn’t stop. Not even when she got a stitch in her side. She couldn’t stop. She had to save the puppy.
The British undercover soldiers were boarding the rowing boat hidden by the newly formed French Resistance as she ran up to them.
‘Please take this puppy with you. Please save him,’ she begged.
Ever since France had been occupied by Germany, a few brave fighters had formed a group known as the Resistance. It was a secret organization made up of ordinary French people and their aim was to do anything they could to undermine the German occupation of their country. They were being helped by British soldiers from across the English Channel, but their work was incredibly dangerous and secretive. Sabine’s father was part of the French Resistance, just as her brother and mother were.
The Resistance had started with just a few people, but it had gradually grown and grown. Not everyone was a member though, and Sabine and Claude’s mother always warned them that they had to be very careful who they told.
‘Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished,’ General de Gaulle had said in a broadcast on the radio.
But he was now in London and they were on the front line in France.
There were rumours that if the German army found out they were part of the Resistance they would be taken away and put in a prisoner-of-war camp.
Chapter 1
Close to the white cliffs of Dover, a little German Shepherd puppy cowered away from the seagulls that circled menacingly above him. He’d tried to run away from the birds but they were bigger and faster than he was. He’d barked at them but the seagulls’ cries only seemed to mock his high puppy yap.
Molly, a honey-coated spaniel, spotted the puppy and the gulls near the docks. She barked and ran at the large, sharp-beaked birds, scattering them into the drizzly sky of the early February morning. The gulls dodged the silver barrage balloons that floated high in the air, and circled to land on the warships anchored in the harbour, screeching in protest. But they didn’t return.
Once they’d gone, the rain-soaked, floppy-eared, sable-coated puppy came over to his rescuer, whimpering and trembling with fear and cold. Molly licked his blue-eyed face to reassure him and he nuzzled into her. His pitiful cries were gradually calming but his desperate hunger remained.
Molly used her nose to knock over a glass bottle of milk that the milkman had just left at the Dover harbour master’s door. The bottle smashed and the puppy’s little pink tongue lapped thirstily at the milk that flowed on to the ground.
‘Get away from that!’ the milkman yelled angrily, when he saw the puppy drinking. His boot kicked out at him, only narrowly missing the puppy’s little legs. Molly barked at the milkman and she and the pup ran off together with the milkman’s furious shouts still ringing in their ears.
The smell of the sea and the reek of the oil from the ships grew fainter as they ran, but the small dog wasn’t strong enough to run for very long yet, and they slowed to a walk as soon as they left the docks. Molly led the puppy through the outskirts of Dover to her den, a derelict garden shed at the edge of the allotments. There was sacking on the floor, it had a solid waterproof roof, and as an added bonus, every now and again a foolish rat or mouse would enter the shed – only to be pounced on and eagerly gulped down.
The tired puppy sank down on the sacking and immediately fell fast asleep, exhausted from the morning’s excitement. Britain was in the grip of the Second World War, and Dover was a crucially important port, constantly filled with the hustle and bustle of ships and soldiers, but the puppy was blissfully unaware of all that.
Molly lay down too, her head resting on her paws, but she didn’t sleep; she watched over her new companion.
Only a few weeks ago, Molly had been a much-loved pet, until a bomb had hit the house she lived in.
She remembered her owner being put on a stre
tcher and rushed to hospital, but Molly herself hadn’t been found. She’d stayed hidden amid the rubble, shaking uncontrollably, too traumatized to make a sound.
She’d stayed in exactly the same spot for the rest of the night, covered in debris, too scared to sleep. At dawn she’d crawled out of her hiding place and taken her first tentative steps towards the shattered window and the world outside, alone.
The puppy snuffled in his sleep and Molly licked him gently until he settled. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of lost and abandoned dogs in Dover but at least she and this baby Alsatian had found each other.
For the first few weeks, the puppy stayed as close to Molly as he could, never allowing the two of them to get more than a few steps apart. Wherever she went he followed her, not wanting to be left alone again, even for a moment.
Every night they lay close together on the sacking and kept each other warm, listening to the bomber planes as they flew overhead on their way to London and other cities.
As the weeks turned into months, and winter turned into spring and then summer, the bomber planes and the bombs they dropped became so commonplace that they no longer woke Molly or her young friend, curled up together in the shed.
Now one year old, the German Shepherd was no longer the vulnerable puppy he’d once been, but Molly still licked his furry sable head to soothe him when he twitched and cried out in his sleep. He still had the same piercing blue eyes he’d had as a young puppy, but one of his ears now stood straight up, while the other still flopped down. With Molly’s care and love he’d grown fast and he was now much larger and stronger than her, but she was still definitely the leader of their two-dog pack.
Their first priority each day was always to find food – and the most delicious food in the world, just waiting for a dog to help himself, was in the pig bins.
Two or more tin dustbins were set on most street corners for people’s waste food. These dustbins were collected every week and taken out to farms to feed the pigs. Although the bins were emptied regularly, they still attracted flies, especially in the warm summer weather.
Molly and the German Shepherd didn’t mind about the bluebottles that buzzed around the bins. In fact, the young dog sometimes forgot the reason they’d come to the pig bins in his excitement at trying to catch one. He’d jump and snap at the insects as they flew out of the pig bins and buzzed around him, almost taunting him, daring him to try and catch them. He did dare, but however hard he tried, he only occasionally managed to swallow one.
Molly would remind him with a look or a whine, and occasionally even a bark, that they were at the pig bins to eat. Then he would stick his head in the bin and gorge himself until he could eat no more. Sometimes the leftovers had only just been put in the bin and were fresh, but more often, if the bins hadn’t been emptied in the previous few days, they were rancid and mouldy. The dogs ate them anyway, ate and ate and ate.
Today, Molly led her young friend to two bins at the bottom of a dead-end street. He skilfully knocked the lid off the first one and then sneezed with excitement at the tantalizing smell coming from inside it. The next moment all that could be seen of him was a fiercely wagging tail as his sensitive nose investigated the intriguing scent coming from the bottom of the bin. He was so busy trying to reach it that he didn’t even hear the growl.
But Molly did. She turned to find five vicious-looking feral dogs spoiling for a fight. The growl had come from their leader: a large rough-furred, yellow-toothed, muscular dog that towered menacingly over Molly.
Molly gave a low, warning growl in return.
It was at this moment that the German Shepherd emerged, triumphant, to show Molly what he’d found. The ham bone had been right at the bottom of the bin, and old potato peelings and cabbage leaves dropped from him as he rose. He hadn’t expected to find five snarling dogs waiting for him. The brutish-looking leader drooled at the sight of the bone.
The dogs’ faces twisted into snarls as they headed towards him. There was only one way out – he leapt from the pig bin and raced past them and out on to the main street. The feral dogs turned and charged after him, while Molly ran after them, barking loudly.
He raced down one street, and up another, and still they followed him. They were big dogs and looked better fed than him, but he was much quicker.
The large ham bone was heavy in his mouth and slippery in his jaws, but he wouldn’t let it go, not even when one of the pack got so close he could hear it breathing. He doubled back through an alleyway, dodged left then twisted right, racing on through the graveyard, and back through a concealed hole in the fence and into the allotments, where he hid in the blackberry bushes. He panted as he listened intently for the sound of the other dogs, but there was nothing. He’d successfully lost them and he gnawed on his ham bone trophy with relish.
Molly found him a few minutes later and came up to him, out of breath. He dropped the bone and nudged it over to her with his nose. She wagged her tail in thanks and gnawed on it. The bone had been worth it and they took it in turns to chew on it until it was quite gone.
At twilight they made their way back to their den in the old disused shed.
The blackout had been in force since the beginning of the war, so with no street lights on and with clouds hiding the stars, it grew very dark very quickly.
Usually the young dog paid very little attention to the high wailing sound of the air-raid siren. It was such a common noise, one he’d heard since he was born and he, like many other pets, knew instinctively when no bomber planes were headed in their direction and there was nothing to fear.
But tonight was different. Tonight the hackles along his back rose and he sat up and listened to the strange, almost bird-like whistling sound. Tonight he was afraid. He got to his feet but there wasn’t time to run before the bomb fell. A deafening roar filled his ears and for a moment the whole world seemed to collapse around him. The force of the blast threw him across the shed, and he lay still as the dusty air swirled about him.
For a moment he was knocked out, but as soon as he came to, he belly-crawled over to Molly who lay unconscious on the ground.
He whined and nuzzled his head against hers but her eyes didn’t open. He lay down beside her to keep her warm and listened as outside in the street people called to each other, fire-engine bells rang and ambulances screeched to a halt.
Then he smelt a new smell. The smell of smoke. A spark from the burning houses had fallen on the shed and now it began to smoulder.
The dog whined again and then barked at Molly, but still she didn’t stir. He pawed at his friend, instinctively knowing that the smell meant serious danger.
In desperation he barked again and then he took hold of Molly’s collar with his teeth and pulled. Although Molly was much smaller than he was it was still almost impossible for him to drag her leaden body across the uneven ground. He lost his grip, whined, then gripped her collar more firmly in his teeth and crouched low so he could pull her with every ounce of strength he had.
The back wall of the shed had been completely blown away in the blast and he dragged Molly out of it and across the ground away from the flames that had now taken hold. Then he lay down beside her in the smoke and ash-filled air, panting and trembling.
Molly was in a bad way; her fur was coated in blood and her breathing was ragged. The anxious young dog licked his friend’s face and whimpered.
Chapter 2
Nathan Green had seen countless acts of human bravery since the war began, but he’d never seen a dog actually drag another dog to safe
ty before.
The smaller one was lying very still, while the larger one kept licking and pushing at it. It was almost as if the bigger dog was trying to persuade its friend to wake up.
The house that had taken the direct hit had been cleared and the fires it had started in the houses on either side put out, although the soot and ash from the blast still filled the air, so Nathan headed over to the two dogs.
‘Wait!’ the elderly warden called after him. Nathan stopped. ‘Don’t go getting yourself bitten on your last night with us. A frightened animal’s not going to be thinking straight.’
The warden was going to miss Nathan when he left. He was one of the best search-and-rescue volunteers they had ever had. But the boy was almost eighteen, even though with his slight frame he could pass for a much younger lad, and he’d recently received his call-up papers.
‘I’ll be careful, I promise,’ Nathan said. He carried on towards the dogs as the animal rescue ambulance arrived.
Kate pulled on the ambulance’s handbrake and grabbed her first-aid kit. Before the war she’d been a veterinary nurse. Now when the air raid sirens went off she became part of NARPAC, the National Air Raid Precautions Animal Committee.
‘Don’t you have a muzzle?’ the warden called after her, as he pointed to where Nathan and the dogs were.
‘I’ll make do with a bandage if I get worried about being bitten,’ Kate replied. She never liked to use a muzzle unless she absolutely had to, because they could be very distressing for some dogs. The injured animal didn’t look as if it would even be able to sit up, let alone bite her.
She ran to catch up with Nathan.
‘At least the injured dog’s got a NARPAC disc on its collar,’ Kate said with relief as they got closer and she could see the distinctive white disc with a blue cross on it that all registered dogs wore.
