Doglands

by Tim Willocks

  Furgul sneaked behind a brightly colored machine with stubby little wings. A little boy sat inside the machine and laughed as he bobbed up and down.

  Harriet stared at the first veggie and fired off a rant of disgust.

  “Rant-rant-rant-rant-rant!”

  The veggie pulled his finger from his nostril and sucked it clean. He and Harriet both scanned the mall with their angry eyes. Furgul peeped around the up-and-down machine. The second veggie slithered around on his hands and knees in a greasy sea of beef ribs. He looked even angrier than Harriet.

  Furgul realized his escape through the mall was a disaster.

  The up-and-down machine stopped going up and down. The little boy climbed out. He saw Furgul and smiled with delight. He stroked Furgul on the neck. Furgul liked the little boy and would have been happy to play with him. But Harriet and both of the veggies all spotted him at the same time.

  Three angry fingers pointed at Furgul.

  He was trapped.

  But then, just outside the open archway, Furgul saw the gang of girl dogs with their Dog Walker. The Dog Walker was talking to another—taller—Dog Walker, who had twelve new dogs, of all different shapes and sizes. The two packs of dogs were yapping and chatting away to each other. Furgul gave the little boy a lick on the hand to say goodbye. Then he wagged his tail and barked toward the street.

  “Hey, ladies! Come on down here! Free beefy treats!”

  Mandy, the mini schnauzer, turned and saw Furgul. Her eyes went wide.

  “THERE HE IS!” she yelped. “WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?”

  All at once both gangs of dogs charged through the archway. The two Dog Walkers were so surprised, they were dragged clean off their feet. Their heads crashed together as they fell down on their knees. They lost their grip on the leashes.

  Twenty howling dogs roared into the mall.

  Their invasion caused pandemonium among the shoppers.

  Milly, Molly, Mandy and the five other girl dogs swarmed around Harriet, sniffing and yapping and snapping at her heels in a frenzy. Furgul realized that they could smell his scent on Harriet’s clothes. Harriet hopped from one foot to another, flapping her hands and squawking.

  “Down! Down! Down!” squawked Harriet.

  The first veggie was so shocked, he just put his finger up his nose again.

  The second veggie—still on his hands and knees and covered with rib grease—opened his mouth with horror as the twelve new dogs bounded toward him. Their tongues lolled out of their panting mouths, and their sharp teeth were bared with greed. Furgul closed his eyes as the veggie disappeared beneath a yowling pack of hungry canines.

  “HELP MEEEEE!” cried the veggie.

  The veggie’s voice was drowned out by ferocious barks and the crunching of beefy ribs. Then Furgul heard another voice, close by his ear.

  “I thought I told you not to stop.”

  Furgul opened his eyes. It was Pace. His master was clutching the handle on Pace’s harness. The master seemed bewildered by all the commotion. He still held his jaw.

  “Pace!” said Furgul. “What are you doing here?”

  “I assumed that you lacked the intelligence to do what I told you,” said Pace. “So I thought I’d better come along and help you out.”

  “But how?” said Furgul. “Everybody’s going mad.”

  “It’s just as well that one of us is sane, then, isn’t it?”

  “But how can you run with your master holding on?”

  “We’re not going to run,” replied Pace. “Just walk along right beside me, nice and easy, and no one will take any notice. And even if they do, they’ll think you’re a Seeing Eye dog too.”

  “Pace,” said Furgul, “you’re a genius.”

  There was a high-pitched shriek, and Furgul looked back over his shoulder.

  Harriet was running from the mall with the pack of girl dogs in pursuit.

  Pace started off, and Furgul walked beside him, shoulder to shoulder. They walked past the second veggie, who was curled in a ball with his bald head covered in claw marks. The dogs who surrounded him were snarling with pleasure as they wolfed down the tasty beefy ribs. Furgul and Pace walked past mobs of shoppers, who were shouting into their cell phones and milling around in panic. And Pace was absolutely right. As they calmly strolled toward the far end of the mall, nobody even gave them a second glance.

  “Dentist! Dentist! Dentist!” groaned Pace’s master.

  “Why does he keep saying ‘dentist’?” asked Furgul.

  “Because that’s where he wants me to take him,” answered Pace.

  “What is a dentist?”

  “A dentist is like a vet who takes care of human teeth. Gums too. But not tongues or lips. Never been able to work out the logic of that one. But then that’s humans for you. Nutty as a dachshund in a little red dress.”

  “Why does he want to go to the dentist?” asked Furgul.

  “Because he’s got a toothache, of course,” sighed Pace. “Must be hurting him something cruel by the sound of it. I reckon it’s a major drilling job, myself. Root canal work. That’s as agonizing as it sounds, by the way. And guess who’ll have to stand there by the chair and listen to the screams?”

  “Doesn’t seem fair,” agreed Furgul. “It’s not even your tooth.”

  “Never expect fairness from a human and you won’t go too far wrong.”

  Furgul was still a little confused by who was going where. He said, “So, the dentist is over on this side of the mall—where we’re heading right now.”

  “Actually,” said Pace, “it’s in the opposite direction. But the master here can’t tell the difference. Clueless as a box of corn flakes.” The three of them reached the street on the far side of the mall with no problem.

  Pace pointed down the street. “There’s your furniture van. Good luck.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” said Furgul.

  “Just jump in that van before it leaves,” said Pace. “That’s all the thanks I need. And please don’t get emotional. It’s bad for my diabetes.”

  “DENTIST!!!” Pace’s master now sounded quite desperate.

  “I’d better get Moaning Minnie to his appointment,” said Pace. “Have you noticed that human beings don’t have any patience? It’s always about them.”

  Pace turned around with his groaning master and walked back into the mall.

  Furgul jogged down the road toward the van. It was huge and painted yellow. The two big doors at the back stood wide open. A thin man in blue overalls stood by the driver’s door. The driver leaned out the window while they talked. Just as Furgul reached the van, the thin blue man turned and walked toward him.

  Quick as he could, Furgul dodged out of the thin man’s sight—behind the van—and sprang up into the back. Just as Pace had predicted, it was full of all kinds of furniture. Furgul squeezed his way between some armchairs, then jumped onto a table and scrambled over a tall stack of boxes. Behind the boxes was a long leather couch. Furgul lay down on the couch. His heart was racing.

  Wow! thought Furgul. That was exciting.

  The two big doors clanked shut. Everything went dark. The engine rumbled.

  Then Furgul felt the couch start to shake as the van drove away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE TRAPS

  The leather couch was comfortable, and Furgul stretched out and had a snooze. When he woke up to take a pee, the van was still trundling along toward its unknown destination. He didn’t want to pee near the couch where he was snoozing, so he climbed over the boxes to find the most distant spot.

  A bit of light came in from a crack in the doors, and to his surprise he thought he saw a tree. He went closer. It wasn’t a real tree. It was a painting of a tree in a big gold frame. But it was better than nothing. Furgul cocked his leg. When he’d peed on the tree in the picture to his satisfaction, he went back to his couch for another snooze.

  When he woke up again the van had stopped. He knew that vehicles sometimes sto
pped only for a moment before moving again. But the rumbling engine was silent, which usually meant that the vehicle had gotten to where it was going. He stretched out the sleep from his legs and muscles. He had to be ready to move fast. He climbed over the boxes again and hid underneath the table. He figured that the men would carry something out of the van, starting near the doors. While their hands were busy holding a box or a chair, he’d jump from the back and run away.

  There was a clanking noise and the two big doors swung open. Furgul peeped out and saw the driver and the thin man in the blue overalls. There was a third man with them that Furgul hadn’t seen before. He wore a very clean suit with very thin stripes and a fat gold watch on his wrist. He had eyes like the snake that Furgul had once seen in the grass at Dedbone’s Hole. Although he reeked of almost as many perfumes as Harriet, underneath he smelled as nasty as Dedbone himself. The first thing the thin blue man pulled out of the van was the painting of the tree. The man in the thin-striped suit took one look at it and exploded in a torrent of bad words.

  “XXXX! XXXX! XXXX!” he swore.

  Furgul poked his head around an armchair so he could see the painting. The tree had disappeared. All that was left was a streaky brown stump. The leaves had melted and dribbled all down the picture like green rain. Furgul wondered how that could have happened. The man in the thin-striped suit shook his fist at the two furniture-van men, who shrugged and said something that Furgul had heard Gerry say to Harriet.

  “Wasn’t me! Wasn’t me! Wasn’t me!” said the van men.

  Furgul ducked his head back, but too late. The man in the thin-striped suit saw him. More bad words echoed around the van. Furgul decided to make a run for it. But just as he jumped out from behind the armchair, the van men slammed the two big doors tight shut.

  Furgul waited in the dark near the doors. Next time they opened, he would jump right away. He was faster than the three men, and without a collar he was much more difficult to catch.

  Time passed. It seemed like a long time, even though it wasn’t. Then he heard some mumbling outside. There was a clank, and he knew the doors were about to open. He sat back on his hind legs, ready to leap. Light flooded in. The doors slowly opened six inches. He couldn’t see the men. Just a few more inches. Still no men. It was now or never.

  Furgul jumped out.

  For a second he saw a kind of hoop flash through the air in front of him, but he didn’t take much notice. He hit the ground running. Then Furgul was yanked to a sudden halt. His feet left the ground as something tightened around his throat and strangled him. He twisted and ducked backward, but the strangling got worse. He clawed at his throat with his right hind paw and realized there was a plastic noose around his neck. From the corner of his eye he saw a long steel pole. He lunged forward again. His eyes bulged out as the noose drew even tighter. The noose was attached to the end of the long steel pole.

  Then Furgul heard the man in the thin-striped suit laughing.

  Furgul stopped struggling and got his breath back. There was a man in an orange uniform holding the pole. He was one of the Traps—the dog catchers that Pace had warned him about. The man in the thin-striped suit handed the Trap some folded money. The Trap shook his head, but the man shoved the money into the Trap’s pocket. The Trap pulled on the long pole, and Furgul followed him toward an orange and white truck. The back door of the truck was open.

  Furgul’s heart sank as he saw that the truck was full of cages.

  Furgul was locked in one of the two cages nearest the door. The cage facing him was empty. The Trap gave Furgul a smile as he closed the door of the truck. It was meant to be a comforting smile. The Trap seemed like a nice man. But it was still the smile of someone who had nearly strangled him and locked him up behind bars.

  The Trap truck rumbled off.

  Furgul curled up on the cold, hard floor of the cage and wrapped his tail over his eyes. He could smell other dogs in the truck and didn’t want them to see how dismayed he felt. He’d woken up that morning in his basket next to good old Kinnear, in a warm home with kind masters. Now he was in a strange cage in a strange place miles and miles and miles away. He’d only wanted to hang on to his nuts. He didn’t even know what his nuts were for. He’d wanted to find his mother, Keeva, too, so she wouldn’t have to live in a crate, so she could have a little bit of freedom. Now he was prisoner himself. Perhaps he was a bad dog after all.

  He couldn’t help letting out a sigh of despair.

  “Cheer up,” said a small female voice. “It isn’t over till it’s over.”

  “That’s true,” added a sly male voice. “But it might be over sooner than you think.”

  Furgul stood up and looked around. “I’m Furgul.”

  In one of the cages opposite was a tiny bundle of silky white fur. She was a papillon by breed. “My dog name is Zinni,” she said. She indicated a shy white and tan female beagle in the next cage. “This is Tess.” Then, with some misgivings, Zinni pointed through the bars of the cage next to Furgul’s. “And that’s Skyver.”

  For a moment Furgul wasn’t sure that Skyver was a dog at all. All he could see was a mound of dirty fur. The fur was a mixture of so many lengths and shades—here the hair was long and red, there it was short and black, and there it was white and tufty—that Furgul wondered if there was more than one animal in there. Then the fur jumped up onto four lanky legs, and a head appeared with two bright, crafty eyes—one blue and one brown—and one ear sticking up and the other hanging down. Skyver grinned at him with a set of huge, yellow, broken fangs.

  “That’s my ‘pile of dead cats’ trick,” said Skyver. “Not bad, eh?”

  “Amazing,” said Furgul.

  “I’ve been fooling the Traps with that one for years. Dead cats is garbage, you see—waste disposal, not animal control. Different van, different uniform—different jurisdiction, as they say. Many a time those garbage boys have shoveled me into their truck and driven me right to the dump, where the eating can’t be bettered. You wouldn’t believe the grub that people throw away these days. But tonight the dead-cat scam worked too well—one of the Traps trod right on my—” Skyver glanced at Zinni and Tess. “Well, let’s just say I barked so loud I set off half a dozen car alarms. Anyway, it’s nice to meet a fellow mutt.”

  “I’m a lurcher,” said Furgul.

  “Oh, I see, putting on airs and graces, are we?” said Skyver. “Well, I’ve been told I’m the scruffiest dog in the world, but you don’t hear me bragging about it, do you? Everyone’s equal in the Needles. Five days to live, or five days to die, whether you’re a purebred pedigree, the son of the son of the son of a mongrel’s son—like me—or a lurcher.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Zinni.

  “Once you’re in the Needles, you’ve got only two ways out,” said Skyver. “Either you get lucky and some dog lover rescues you because she thinks you’re cute—which in your case, Furgul, is a long shot because most people think that greyhounds are vicious and insane killing machines that will run down anything that moves.”

  “Or?” asked Furgul.

  “Or what?”

  “What’s the second way out of the Needles?”

  “Oh,” said Skyver. “Or you leave in the back of the truck for the incinerator.”

  “The incinerator?”

  “It’s the machine that they burn dead dogs in.”

  “Why would I be dead?” asked Furgul.

  Skyver gave a sour laugh. “If no one rescues you within five days, they give you the lethal injection. The needle—the Needles—get it?”

  “They’ll just kill us?” asked Furgul.

  “Some animal shelters have a no-kill policy,” Skyver explained. “They feed you and look after you until you get lucky—for as long as it takes. They don’t kill dogs—unless you’ve got rabies or you’re a total psycho. But there aren’t very many no-kill shelters around, and where we’re going isn’t one of them. For every ten dogs they take to the Needles, only four get out alive.�
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  Furgul could hardly believe what he was hearing. It sounded even worse than Dedbone’s Hole. Dedbone wasn’t killing six in ten of his dogs.

  “But why,” said Furgul.

  “Why what?”

  “Why would they kill us?”

  “The pound has got a fixed number of cages, see,” said Skyver. “For every dog that goes in, another dog has to go out—one way or the other. The masters kill millions of us dogs every year. Millions and millions, didn’t you know? Cats too, though, of course, that’s no great loss.”

  “I quite like cats,” said Zinni.

  “I live with one,” said Tess. “They’re not so bad, once you get used to the rituals.”

  Furgul didn’t know what a million was. But it sounded like an awful lot. He asked, “So because I’m going in there, some other dog has to die?”

  “That’s the way it works.” Skyver shrugged. “Five days to get lucky. Then it’s our turn. You and I will take that last long walk to the death house side by side.”

  “There is a third way out,” said Tess. “Your owner can come and claim you. That’s what mine will do. I’ve been in there four times. I’ll be home tomorrow in time for lunch.”

  “You’ve got a name tag and collar, Tess,” said Skyver. “Furgul here hasn’t.”

  “I haven’t got a collar either,” piped Zinni. “Some sneaky guy stole me, then he took my collar and abandoned me in the street.”

  “What kind of weirdo would steal a dog collar?” wondered Skyver aloud.

  “My collar had diamonds on it,” said Zinni.

  “Then don’t worry,” said Tess. “Your owner will call the dog pound and find out if you’re there.”

  “Perhaps your owners will call the dog pound too, Furgul,” said Zinni.

  “Furgul didn’t have any diamonds round his neck,” laughed Skyver.

  “My masters are far away,” said Furgul. “But maybe there’s a fourth way out. Maybe we can escape.”

  “Dream on,” said Skyver. “The Needles is a maximum-security pound. They’re not going to take their eye off a bad boy like you.”