Doglands

by Tim Willocks

  “AR-GAL! AR-GAL!”

  At the end of the walkway stood a big black door. As Argal approached, the big black door swung open. Some of the dogs started yowling with horror. When Argal reached the threshold of the Death House, he stopped and turned.

  The dogs stopped chanting and yowling.

  Argal looked about the cellblock, at the faces of the dogs who would live and the faces of the dogs who would die. He wagged his tail in salute. Then, down the length of the walkway, he looked at his son, Furgul, for the last time.

  Their eyes met. Furgul felt Argal’s heart reach out across the gray and grimy flagstones. He felt his courage and defiance. He felt his power to understand. He felt the living essence of the wild and rambling road.

  “Farewell to the king,” whispered Furgul.

  Brennus heard him, and took up the cry.

  “FAREWELL TO THE KING!”

  The captive dogs howled in unison.

  “FAREWELL TO THE KING!”

  Then Argal turned away.

  Furgul watched Argal walk into the Death House with his killers.

  The black door clanged shut.

  Furgul couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  And silence fell once again across the Needles.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE REVOLT

  Furgul had no appetite for breakfast. He wasn’t alone. Though dogs would normally keep eating even in an earthquake, many of the prisoners left their bowls of dry biscuits untouched. The two morning shelter workers seemed unsettled too. When they let the dogs out into the exercise yard for their morning hour, they heard a lot more growls than they were used to. Among the dogs who milled about the yard, dashing from one gang to another, all the talk was of Argal.

  Furgul wandered round in a daze. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He saw Tess sobbing and Zinni trying to comfort her. He overheard Skyver telling tall tales to a group of seething pit bulls.

  “So there we were,” said Skyver, “trapped in the headlights with the cops on one side and the Traps on the other. ‘What shall we do, Skyver?’ says Argal. So I say, ‘There’s only eight of ’em, Argal. I’ll take the two on the right, and you take the six on the left.… ’ ”

  Furgul wandered around the perimeter, glancing at the wasted land beyond the wire. The warm sunshine didn’t feel warm. The blue sky didn’t seem blue. There wasn’t a breath of wind. He felt empty. Skyver trotted up and walked along beside him.

  “I’m sorry, Furgul,” he said. “We’re all sorry. A lot of us are angry too.”

  Furgul didn’t answer him.

  “But you and me can get out of here—if we do like Argal told us, when the animal lovers come.” He smiled to cheer Furgul up. “I’ll let you go first, of course. I wouldn’t break a promise to Argal, even though he’s … Well, I won’t break my promise. Mutts like you and me don’t have many friends out there. We should stick together.”

  Furgul didn’t bother to say he was a lurcher. After all, he was a mutt. A mixed breed, a half-caste, a mongrel. That’s why Dedbone had tried to kill him.

  Skyver grinned. “We can both be pets and wear diamond collars like Zinni.”

  Still, Furgul didn’t answer. They stopped near the edge of the main prison building. They watched a truck pull up near the back, and two men in yellow jumpsuits got out. The men went inside the prison.

  “Anyhow,” said Skyver, “who knows what happened to Argal? Maybe the needle couldn’t kill him. Maybe he escaped from behind that big black door.”

  “You think so?”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling the crew. And remember what you said yourself—and you were right—never give up hope.”

  “I suppose it isn’t impossible,” admitted Furgul.

  “Nothing was impossible for Argal. Nothing is.” Skyver pointed through the wire with a paw. “He’s probably out there right now, eating fresh deer meat and drinking cool water from a river.”

  “I guess being a pet again won’t be so bad,” said Furgul. “At least for a while.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Skyver. “The mild and grumbling toad! Funny, when you think about it, that Argal should follow a toad. But who are we to argue with the king?”

  Furgul didn’t bother to correct him about “the wild and rambling road,” but he smiled. The thought of Argal by the river eating meat made him feel a bit better. As he started to walk away from the fence, Skyver’s raggedy ears drooped, and his tail fell between his legs.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Furgul.

  Skyver turned quickly and trotted toward the center of the yard.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. Come on, let’s go make fun of the pit bulls.”

  Skyver was a good liar, but this time Furgul didn’t believe him. He looked back through the fence to see what had bothered Skyver.

  The men in yellow jumpsuits had come back out of the prison. They staggered under the weight of the enormous dog they carried between them. It was Argal. His big red-haired body was all floppy. His head hung down and his jaws sagged wide and flecks of dirty foam dripped from his mouth. His eyes were open, but Furgul knew they couldn’t see. Argal was dead.

  He watched the men heave the body in the back of the truck like a sack of garbage. Then they got into the cab and drove away.

  Furgul felt his heart breaking inside him. He felt even worse than when Eena and Nessa had died. Then he’d only been a puppy. He hadn’t understood the true nature of the world. Now he did. Argal had told him. And Argal was gone.

  Furgul turned away and wandered after Skyver. He didn’t believe his own words anymore. He had given up hope. He didn’t even know if he believed in Argal’s words. He no longer felt the Doglands inside him.

  Then the wind came.

  At first it was just a soft, gentle breeze, and Furgul didn’t pay it much mind.

  Then it grew stronger. And a fiery chill tingled through his blood. His heart had been on the edge of breaking, but now it pounded harder than it had ever pounded before. He raised his snout and took in a deep breath. Furgul howled with joy.

  All the dogs in the yard stopped what they were doing and turned to look.

  Skyver ran over, worried. Then he saw Furgul’s face and stopped.

  “Can you feel it?” asked Furgul.

  “What?” asked Skyver.

  “The wind.”

  The wind was getting stronger and stronger.

  “That’s Argal’s spirit passing by,” said Furgul.

  “Yes,” said Skyver, his ears flapping in the wind. “I feel it. It is him!”

  As Furgul felt Argal’s spirit fill his chest—and his bones and his muscles and his skull—the urge to run flowed through him. He sprang forward into a gallop and took off across the yard.

  “Let’s tell the others!” shouted Skyver.

  But Furgul couldn’t stop and didn’t want to. He ran through the other dogs, who jumped aside and stared at him as if he’d gone mad. Perhaps he had. But he didn’t care. He ran and ran and ran, faster and faster and faster, and as he ran, the wind blew even stronger. He ran in a great circle round the yard, then started round again—as if he’d run for ten thousand years. He heard Skyver yelling to the others. Then Skyver started running too, shambling after Furgul in his shaggy patchwork fur and yowling through his broken yellow teeth. And in ones and twos, then threes and fours, then in one great roaring, panting, galloping pack, the jailhouse dogs followed Furgul around the yard.

  The wind got even stronger still.

  It whirled around and around above their mad and circling charge, and in that circle every jailhouse dog felt free. The wind howled, and they howled back.

  It was Argal’s last shout.

  And Furgul knew that it would blow around the Doglands forever.

  With a final halloo the wind gathered force and roared away across the sky. Somewhere out there, there were other dogs in peril—lost or abandoned, frightened or doomed—who needed to feel that wind roar through their souls.


  Argal’s reign was not finished. It had only just begun.

  As the last breath of wind spiraled off into the wild blue yonder, the pack of running dogs slowed down and finally stopped. All except for Furgul. He ran on and on and on. Until, at last, he heard the whistling.

  Two different shelter workers stood at the entrance to the cellblock. They were both men. One was fat and one was bald and both were red in the face from blowing on their whistles. As Furgul stopped among the pack, the men lowered their whistles and gaped. They’d watched the dogs galloping round and round with Furgul in the lead—and they’d never seen anything like it in their lives.

  Furgul panted hard to cool himself down. In fact, all the dogs were panting. Terriers and spaniels, basset hounds and coonhounds, Dobermans and retrievers, rottweilers and poodles, hunting dogs and toy dogs, tall dogs and small dogs, and mongrels and mutts and crossbreeds of every stripe. Furgul felt good. They all felt good. It was the biggest, happiest crowd of dogs that had ever gathered together inside the wire. They were imprisoned in the Needles. More than half of them would be put to death for the crime of being alive. And this morning they didn’t care.

  The shelter workers waved and whistled for the dogs to come back inside.

  The pack didn’t move.

  Skyver came and stood by Furgul. He looked at him and raised one eyebrow.

  “I feel about a hundred feet tall,” said Skyver. “What about you?”

  Furgul felt even taller. He didn’t speak.

  All the dogs turned to look at him. He was Argal’s son.

  Furgul shouldered his way to the front of the pack. He looked at the bewildered workers. Then he turned to face the horde of dogs.

  “They want us to crawl back to our cages,” said Furgul. “But I don’t feel like answering to a dog whistle today. I think I’m going to stay out here.”

  “Right on, brother!” shouted Skyver. “Follow the grumbling toad!”

  “Argal showed us how to run with the wind—together,” said Furgul. “That’s why he chose to take the long walk. He did it for me. For you. For all of us.”

  A murmur arose among the pack. An angry murmur.

  “You think Argal was beaten?” asked Furgul. “You think the Traps won? You think Argal was scared of their nooses and their needles and their guns?”

  “NO!” roared the pack.

  “They don’t just want us to live with our tails between our legs,” said Furgul, “they want us to die with our tails between our legs too. I say—no more.”

  “NO MORE!” barked the pack.

  “We’re not going to let them muzzle us no more. We’re not going to let them starve us no more. We’re not going to die behind black doors no more.”

  “NO MORE!”

  Skyver shouted, “I’ve heard they sing a song about us! ‘How much is that doggy in the window?’ You know, ‘The one with the waggly tail.’ ” Skyver wagged his own tail and broke wind toward the guards.

  Furgul laughed. The other dogs all laughed too. The two shelter workers whistled again. They were walking nervously toward the pack, rattling metal bowls of cheap dry biscuits.

  Skyver said, “Fatso and Baldy think they can buy us doggies with chicken beaks and butt holes.”

  “Let’s show them how much a dog really costs!” said Furgul.

  The pack howled.

  “Let’s make them pay!” roared Furgul.

  With one deafening snarl the pack rushed at Fatso and Baldy.

  “No blood!” called Furgul.

  The two men dropped their whistles and bowls and sprinted for the prison. They waved their arms and yelled in panic as terriers and pit bulls tore their pants to ribbons. They reached the door and stumbled inside and slammed it shut. A number of dogs cocked their legs and peed on it. The rest yapped and laughed and barked with excitement.

  “That was fun,” said Skyver. “What happens next?”

  “I don’t know,” said Furgul. “The next move’s up to them.”

  An hour later, half a dozen Traps emerged from the prison, brandishing their long poles and nooses. If they thought they could take the dogs back inside one by one, they were wrong. On Furgul’s command, the pack charged again and sent five of the Traps crawling back inside, half-naked, covered in poop and bleeding from the ankles. The sixth Trap scrambled up on top of the roof. A gang of mutts and coonhounds followed him. They surrounded him and barked at him until he was almost crying with terror.

  “Now he knows what it feels like,” said Skyver.

  A fire engine arrived with a siren and flashing blue lights. They raised a ladder to the roof, and the dogs let the sixth Trap escape, but they gave him a good soaking as he climbed down.

  Furgul noticed that the riot had drawn a crowd of curious humans to the fence. To Furgul’s surprise they seemed quite friendly. They waved at the dogs and threw treats over the wire. At first Furgul was suspicious. Perhaps this was a trick and the treats were poisoned. But the dogs who ate them seemed fine, and as time passed the crowd grew even bigger.

  Sometime around noon a flying machine appeared and fluttered in a circle overhead. A man leaned out of it with a strange tube held up against his eye.

  “This is great!” said Skyver.

  “What is it?” asked Furgul.

  “It’s TV!”

  “What’s TV?”

  “You know those flashing screens that humans love to stare at day and night?”

  Furgul nodded.

  “That’s TV,” said Skyver. “When something big happens, they send a helicopter—that’s the flying machine—and when that man points the tube at what’s happening, it all appears on TV.”

  “So we’re on TV?”

  “You can learn a lot about humans from watching TV,” said Skyver. “We’ve hit the big time.”

  “But what’s so great about being on TV?” asked Furgul.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Skyver. “But every human in the world wants to be on TV.”

  As far as Furgul could see, all that being on TV meant was that the crowd of spectators got bigger still. In fact, it became huge. Every inch of the fence was crammed with people. Some of them had the strange tubes like the man in the helicopter, and others had little silver boxes, and they pointed them at the dogs and went “click, click, click.” Most of the dogs were friendly to the crowd—and Skyver showed them he could walk on his hind legs—but some, like Furgul, didn’t go near the fence. The crowd seemed to love them.

  Tess saw her owners and ran over to them. They gave her treats and seemed overjoyed to see her. After a moment she came running over to Furgul.

  “My master and mistress want to take me home,” said Tess.

  “That’s great,” said Furgul. “Next time the Traps open the door, you can go.”

  “I do want to go home,” said Tess, “but not until this is over. I don’t want to let you down. It will be over, won’t it?”

  “It can’t go on forever.”

  “How will it end?”

  “I don’t know, Tess,” said Furgul. He felt a bit guilty. “I don’t really know what we’ve got ourselves into.”

  “You’ll think of something,” said Tess.

  Furgul wasn’t so sure. The fence was too high to climb. The Traps could keep them here until they starved. How could this revolt end? Except in defeat?

  A little later Brennus came padding over to Furgul. Furgul was in awe of the big Saint Bernard, even though he was weak and sick. He bowed to show his respect.

  “This is quite a rumpus you’ve started,” said Brennus.

  Furgul didn’t know if Brennus approved or not. He didn’t reply.

  “Argal would have been impressed,” Brennus said.

  “What should we do next?” asked Furgul.

  “It’s a question of what the Traps will do next,” said Brennus. “This riot of ours has made them look bad. Very bad. Especially since it’s on TV. They’ll want to get us back in our cages as soon as they can. Chance
s are, they’ll hit us in the dark—after midnight. And it won’t be Fatso and Baldy. The Traps’ll hit us hard. More Traps and more guns than we’ve ever seen.”

  “What can we do, Brennus?”

  “Do you see that lady behind the fence—green T-shirt, long hair?”

  Furgul scanned the crowd and saw the lady. She was looking right at him.

  “She told me she wants to talk to you,” said Brennus.

  “She told you?”

  “She’s what we call a Dog Talker,” said Brennus. “It’s only the second time I’ve ever met one. There aren’t many around. She speaks dog tongue—a kind of dog tongue anyway. It’s odd, but it works. You’ll see.”

  “What does she want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to go and find out.”

  “But why me?”

  “You’re our leader,” said Brennus. “You’re Argal’s son.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be the leader.”

  “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Brennus saw that Furgul didn’t understand. “It’s hard to carry all that responsibility,” he explained. “But if you don’t, all this will fall apart. It will all be for nothing. And they’ll make every one of us pay.”

  Brennus’s eyes gave Furgul courage.

  “Stand tall,” said Brennus.

  Furgul trotted over to the lady at the fence, feeling suspicious.

  “Hello, Furgul,” she said. “I’m Jodi. I believe you are the leader of this pack.”

  Furgul was shocked. He could understand her. She wasn’t speaking human words, and neither did she have a dog voice. She just made a kind of murmur. Yet her meaning was clear, as if it were going straight from her brain into his.

  Jodi asked, “Is that true?”

  “Yes.” He remembered Brennus and raised his tail. “I’m their leader.”

  “If you like, I can get you out of here. I can take you to my farm, Appletree Dog Sanctuary. There are no cages, no muzzles, just fields and trees. You can run with the winds.”

  “You know about the winds?”

  “I’ve heard about them, from other free dogs,” said Jodi. “You can live at Appletree for the rest of your life, if you want. Unless you meet a new owner you’d like to live with. But that would be your choice. There are other free dogs to run and play with.”