Doglands

by Tim Willocks

  “Goats are too scared of the dogs to come this near the compound.”

  “I know goat when I smell it.”

  “Should we make a fuss?”

  “The master hates fuss. Especially after half a bottle.”

  “Plus the bottle he sank last night.”

  “It might be the master we can smell. Give his shoes a sniff.”

  “He hates that too.”

  Dedbone was almost at the gate. He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a key. He was about to slot it in the lock when the Gambler said something.

  “Blah, blah, blah,” droned the Gambler.

  “Spout, spout, spout,” spouted Dedbone.

  After losing all their money and getting beaten up and drinking whiskey all night long, they were both in a foul mood. Furgul just wanted Dedbone to unlock the gate. Tac took a chance and sniffed at Dedbone’s shoes. Dedbone kicked her in the head. It seemed to make him feel better.

  Tac yelped and wandered away—right toward the bathtub.

  She started snuffling around for the invisible goat.

  Skyver’s teeth chattered with terror. The bathtub itself started shaking.

  Dedbone put the key in the lock. He turned it.

  Click.

  Furgul heard a suspicious growl. He glanced through the gap at Tac. Tac was just six feet away from Skyver. Furgul returned his eyes to the key.

  Dedbone pulled the key out. He lifted the latch on the gate—a metal bar in a simple slot with a metal knob to lift it up. In a second the gate would open.

  Skyver exploded from under the tub with a yowl of pure panic.

  Everything seemed to happen all at once.

  Furgul lunged for Dedbone, and Dedbone dropped the latch without opening it. He knew dogs, and he was faster than he looked. As Furgul started to jump, Dedbone raised the key above his head—but a little too soon. Furgul put more power into the last of his thrust and jumped even higher. He saw Dedbone’s fist come toward him, but he didn’t blink. His jaws closed on Dedbone’s hand and crunched the fingers. His teeth bit onto hard, cold metal. The fist hit him. He hit the ground and turned.

  Furgul had the key. He tossed it through the wire mesh into the compound.

  Dedbone could not relock the gate. But the gate was still closed.

  Skyver’s frantic dash took him right toward Tac’s jaws. He braked and spun and ran the other way—right toward the Gambler.

  The Gambler fired his sawed-off shotgun—BOOM!—and fur flew from Skyver’s butt. Skyver kept going, heading right between the Gambler’s legs. The Gambler took aim with the second barrel, trying to keep up with Skyver’s speed. As Skyver slithered between the Gambler’s knees, Furgul jumped and shoved his forepaws hard into the Gambler’s back.

  BOOM!

  Furgul heard a hideous scream and swerved away as the Gambler toppled over.

  The Gambler had shot himself in the ankle.

  From above the squirming body, Furgul saw Brennus charge Tac. His shoulder slammed into her ribs and sent her rolling over. Then Tic came at Brennus from behind. Dervla flew across the bathtub in a blur of fury and sank her teeth into Tic’s neck. But Tic was not Freak. He matched Dervla’s fury and more as he tore himself free and struck back, the shepherd and the mastiff squirming and writhing in a tangle of claws and fangs. Tac came back at Brennus, and she was younger, faster and stronger.

  A savage fight to the death began between the two pairs of dogs.

  Beyond them Furgul saw the baying pack of young Bulls heading for the fray.

  He heard a rousing double bark above the chaos: “FOR THE BACON!!!”

  Cogg and Baz charged through the empty bottles to meet the new assault.

  The junkyard echoed to a frenzy of dogs ripping and snarling, clawing and barking, squirming and biting.

  And though the gate to the compound was unlocked—it wasn’t yet open.

  For a moment Dedbone was transfixed by the sight of the Gambler. The Gambler wailed with horror in a widening pool of blood. Furgul darted round them both to reach the gate. He’d seen how the latch had worked, when Dedbone had almost opened it. He rose on his hind legs, his forepaws resting on the gate, and pushed his nose against the knob on the metal bar. The metal bar began to rise up from its slot. From the corner of his eye he saw Dedbone grab the fallen shotgun from the ground, but he didn’t let the latch drop back. The metal bar clicked up and out of its slot. Furgul shoved on the gate.

  Dedbone swung the empty shotgun like a club to smash Furgul’s head in. But the gate creaked open under Furgul’s weight, and as he dropped to the ground the butt of the shotgun whistled above his ears. Furgul spun around as Dedbone lifted the shotgun to strike again.

  For a moment their gazes met. And locked.

  Dedbone froze, the shotgun poised in the air.

  Furgul saw the change in Dedbone’s face—and he knew that the slaver remembered him. Dedbone recognized the lurcher pup—now grown into a dog—that he’d thrown down the chasm of doom so long ago.

  “You!” said Dedbone. “You! You! You!”

  Savagery flooded through Furgul’s veins, and his lips peeled back in a growl.

  For Eena and Nessa.

  Furgul lunged, and Dedbone swung the shotgun by the barrels. Furgul sidestepped and the shotgun butt caught him in the ribs. Furgul lunged again and sank his fangs up to the gums in Dedbone’s belly. Dedbone bellowed with pain and swung the shotgun down on Furgul’s head. Furgul landed on his side and scrambled to his feet. Dedbone put finger and thumb in his mouth and whistled. Furgul glanced across the junkyard.

  Dervla and Tic were still slashing and wrestling in a whirlwind of blood and fur. Brennus had his back to a rusting trailer and was bleeding from many wounds. Tac hung back with a broken hind leg, but three of the younger bullmastiffs had broken away from Cogg and Baz and were wearing Brennus down bite by bite. At Dedbone’s whistle the three young Bulls whirled away and charged at Furgul.

  Dedbone turned and bent over the Gambler. The Gambler groaned and held out his hand, but Dedbone swatted it aside and rifled the Gambler’s pockets. He pulled out a fistful of shotgun shells and headed for his truck.

  With the three bullmastiffs bearing down on him, Furgul looked through the open gate of the compound. Sixty greyhounds were massed behind Zinni like an army whose time had come. Before Furgul could bark, the three young Bulls surrounded him and attacked.

  Furgul jumped and twisted in midair as they charged. The first two ran into each other, their heads smashing together like two fat rocks. Furgul landed spraddled on the back of the third. He bit him behind the ears but the bullmastiff’s neck was too thick. The mastiff bucked and reared, and Furgul was thrown off. The three young Bulls lined up to attack him again.

  “Zinni!” barked Furgul.

  Zinni charged forward, and the greyhound army followed her. They roared through the gates in a howling mob and rolled toward the three young Bulls in a cataract of rage. The Bulls stopped in their tracks, their eyes bulging. Then the hounds were on them. As the Bulls disappeared beneath the greyhound flood, a separate pack of hounds, driven crazy by the blood, fell upon the Gambler and devoured him alive where he lay.

  Tac hobbled toward the melee to help her youngsters. Brennus rose behind her on his hind legs. While his front paws wrapped about her throat, his great weight smashed down behind her shoulders, and he wrenched her head back. Tac collapsed without a sound. The fight was also over for Tic: Dervla pulled her snout from his lifeless throat. The gang of mastiffs who had policed and terrorized the greyhounds for so long had been wiped out.

  Furgul scanned the throng in search of Keeva. Still he couldn’t see her.

  “Zinni!” he barked above the chaos. “Where’s Keeva?

  “She wasn’t in the compound,” called Zinni. “But when I was up on the tightrope, I saw a cardboard box in Dedbone’s truck.”

  Furgul turned and craned his neck. From here he could see what he hadn’t seen before—a big cardboard box in D
edbone’s pickup. He realized that Dedbone had never put Keeva back in the compound. When he’d brought her back from the track last night, he must have put her straight in the box. She’d been trapped in there all night, waiting to be killed.

  Furgul saw Dedbone wading and kicking his way through the mass of greyhounds. And as he did so, he slotted fresh shells into the barrels of the shotgun.

  Furgul went after him, dodging, twisting, shoving his way through the hounds. He saw Dervla head toward Dedbone too. Beyond her, Cogg and Baz abandoned the corpses of the two young Bulls they’d killed, and stumbled toward the truck to reinforce them. Brennus, though exhausted and bleeding, was running in an arc around the milling hounds. He was closer to Dedbone than anyone else in the Bunch.

  Dedbone half-turned to look at Furgul, the loaded sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Furgul tensed, ready to try to evade the blast. But Dedbone had something more cruel in mind. He grinned. He turned away. Then he aimed the shotgun right at the box on the back of the truck.

  “Keeva!” barked Furgul.

  BOOM!

  Just as Dedbone pulled the trigger, Brennus, with the last of his strength, launched his great battered body through the air. The blast tore into his broad chest and slammed him into the side of the truck.

  Furgul leaped clear of the pack and sprinted for Brennus. Dedbone opened the door of the truck. Then he swiveled, one meaty hand on the bite wound in his belly, as he swung the shotgun with the other.

  He pointed the second barrel at Furgul.

  Furgul tore straight at him.

  As Dedbone locked his aim onto Furgul, a raggedy shape daubed with goat poop and slime shot out from under the truck where he’d been hiding. Skyver threw everything he had into the attack. He crashed his body against the back of Dedbone’s knees. As Dedbone tilted backward, waving his arms for balance, the shotgun boomed. One of the electric cables above was blown in two. A shower of sparks fell on the house, and the house caught on fire.

  Dedbone stomped on Skyver’s neck, just behind the ears. Furgul coiled and sprang up from the ground, his fangs wide, going for Dedbone’s face. But the wily slaver rammed the steel barrels of the shotgun into Furgul’s throat. Furgul was driven head over heels. He landed on his back. Then Dervla rushed Dedbone from the side, but it wasn’t the first time Dedbone had fought a pack of dogs. He swiped her across the skull with the stubby gun barrels and left her stunned and twitching next to Skyver.

  Dedbone threw the gun across the seat and climbed into the truck.

  Furgul rose again and went back in, hoping to savage Dedbone in the cramped interior of the cab. But Dedbone heaved on the door, which slammed into Furgul’s shoulder and bashed him aside.

  As Furgul hit the gravel and rolled and found his feet, pain lanced down his foreleg. The leg almost gave way beneath him, but he ignored the pain. He gritted his teeth. As he raised his head, he saw two bearded fiends hurtle through the air in perfect unison.

  Cogg and Baz crashed into the windshield with their bricklike heads. A web of cracks whitened the glass, but it didn’t shatter. Through the door window Furgul saw Dedbone crack the sawed-off in half. He saw Cogg and Baz, still standing on the hood, butting their heads into the windshield like a pair of hammers, trying to get at Dedbone through the glass.

  “Get down!” barked Furgul. “He’s reloading.”

  Cogg and Baz didn’t listen. Dedbone snapped the sawed-off shut and fired both barrels. The windshield exploded outward. Cogg and Baz arched backward from the hood in a glittering hail of shards.

  Furgul heard the engine of the truck rumble twice and stop. He had to get into the back of the pickup truck. He had to get Keeva out of that box before Dedbone killed her. He swung in a short circle to get the right angle to leap in the back—and glimpsed Brennus still panting beneath the truck.

  Brennus was still alive. If the truck drove forward, the rear wheel would roll over his skull. Furgul abandoned his leap and ducked down to Brennus. From the corner of his eye he saw Dervla stagger to her feet, still dazed.

  “Dervla! Help me with Brennus!”

  Dervla reeled over. There was no time to be gentle. Furgul grabbed a mouthful of skin and fur on Brennus’s flank, and Dervla grabbed the scruff of his neck. They heaved together with all their strength, and Brennus shunted toward them six inches. The engine rumbled again. This time it caught and roared. The rear tires spun in the gravel. Furgul and Dervla bunched their muscles and heaved. The enormous Saint Bernard slid toward them, just as the wheel crunched by and missed him.

  The truck pulled away in a billow of dust with Keeva still trapped in the back.

  Furgul watched it go.

  His heart clenched as Zinni sprinted forward. She stopped to stand directly in Dedbone’s path. Valiant greyhounds sprang from left and right to follow Zinni’s lead. They stood side by side and made a living wall of dogs. It was too late for Furgul to tell them that Dedbone wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

  The engine roared louder and higher. The truck picked up speed as it plowed right into the wall of dogs. Greyhounds flew to either side, and some screamed as they were ground into the gravel beneath the tires. Furgul choked with horror. But as the truck rolled on, Zinni reappeared between the rear wheels. She was so short the truck had passed right over her. Furgul turned back to Dervla and Brennus. From beyond the cloud of dust and smoke came a sinister and familiar sound.

  CLACK-CLACK!

  He saw Dervla’s whole body twitch in a reflex of ingrained fear, just as he’d seen her twitch back at the carnival. A monstrous apparition now materialized through the smoke. His face was deformed by scorpion bites. He still wore only his filthy shorts. In his hand he held the dreaded telescopic steel baton.

  Dervla tensed again and took a step back as Tattoo spewed a stream of foul threats. He was enraged that Dedbone had just abandoned him. He seethed with his hatred of dogs—and of Dervla above all. Furgul knew that Tattoo was the only creature in the world that Dervla feared. He had used that rod to batter that fear into her every nerve and bone. He was the one man that Dervla could not face.

  Skyver tried to stand up off the ground but fell back down.

  Furgul coiled to launch himself at Tattoo.

  “He’s mine,” said Dervla.

  Dervla hurtled forward into the smoke. Tattoo spit obscenities and raised his baton to beat her down. He expected her to cower, as she’d cowered so many times before. But Dervla’s days of cowering were over. As the baton whistled at her head, Dervla sprang and was on him, rearing high, fully as tall as he was. Her eyes drilled holes of fear into whatever it was that passed for Tattoo’s soul. Her breath scorched his face with its fury. Tattoo emitted a high-pitched scream as she toppled him flat on his back and showed him her fangs. Tattoo gibbered with terror and pain as his face disappeared inside her maw. His body thrashed beneath her, his arms trying to fend her off, but without success. Dervla’s fangs burrowed deeper. The muffled screaming stopped. Tattoo no longer moved.

  Dervla stood over his corpse. Her shoulders heaved as she panted for breath. Then she turned to Furgul. He saw her eyes. Dervla would never let a man make her frightened again.

  “Furgul.”

  Brennus’s voice was but a husk of the warm, throaty growl that Furgul had come to love. He stood over the buckshot-ravaged giant and licked his face.

  “Brennus,” said Furgul. “Oh, Brennus.”

  Brennus heaved for breath. Red foam spilled from his lips.

  “Make me an oath,” whispered Brennus.

  “Anything,” said Furgul.

  “Seek the Dog Lore. Show us how to find our way home.”

  “I swear it, Brennus,” said Furgul. “I swear it to you.”

  Brennus smiled, his own blood staining his great, broken fangs.

  “You’ll find me on the winds,” he said.

  Brennus coughed and shuddered. He fought for one last breath.

  “Now go get Keeva.”

  Furgul looked at the dust trail tha
t had whipped up in the wake of Dedbone’s truck. It was far out of range. Not even a cheetah could catch Dedbone now.

  “The Doglines,” whispered Brennus. “Run the Doglines.”

  The mighty heart of Brennus stopped beating.

  “Brennus!” cried Furgul. “Brennus!”

  Furgul felt as if the earth itself would no longer wish to turn. Grief welled up inside him and paralyzed his limbs, blinded his eyes, fogged his mind.

  “Furgul! The Doglines!” barked Dervla. Her voice was harsh. “What did he mean?”

  Furgul looked at her. Dervla’s strength somehow gave Furgul back his own.

  He knew what Brennus meant.

  He turned and started to run.

  But he didn’t try to follow Dedbone’s truck.

  Furgul’s injured shoulder sent knives through his leg with every stride.

  He stumbled across the junkyard through the dazed ranks of greyhounds. He hurdled the ravaged corpses of the Bulls. As he broached the parched grassland, he glanced back at the smoking battlefield.

  Down the main road into Dedbone’s Hole a column of vehicles approached. In the lead he recognized Jodi’s truck. Behind her came a convoy of cars and vans, most of them painted yellow with flashing blue lights. Jodi must have discovered Dedbone’s human name at the track. She was bringing the cruelty-prevention people, just as she had promised. Dervla and the others would be safe. But Furgul didn’t turn back. By the time he persuaded Jodi to pursue Dedbone, Keeva would be dead.

  Furgul was the pale dog running.

  He had to run.

  He had to run like he’d never run before.

  Just as he thought he would falter from the pain, he found the Dogline.

  And along that Dogline Furgul ran to save Keeva.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE CHASM

  As Furgul ran the Dogline across the valley—toward the jagged rock jaws of Argal’s Mountain—he felt the nature of time and space change inside him.

  He didn’t feel that he was running any faster than his best—his pace was no quicker, his stride no longer—yet he was covering more distance, much more quickly, than should have been possible. It was almost as if the ground itself was moving under his paws to increase his speed.