Rat-Catcher

by Chris Ryan

  ‘What happened to them then?’ whispered Amber.

  ‘That is what I want to show you!’ said the general, jumping to his feet with boyish enthusiasm. ‘I have discovered a much more enjoyable way of hunting rats!’

  Paulo came awake in the darkness. His head was swimming with the after-effects of the sleeping drug that had been put in the food. He had no idea where he was or how long he had been asleep. Eliza lay beside him, quiet and still. He reached out and touched her hand. It was icy cold. A thrill of fear ran through him as he felt his way up to her face. What if the drug had been too strong for her? What if she had died in her sleep? He held his hand above her mouth and sagged with relief when he felt the feathery touch of her breath on his palm.

  Paulo lay still for a moment, trying to figure out where they were. The floor beneath them was covered in a thick layer of sawdust. Were they in a stable of some sort? He listened, but there were no swishing tails or friendly whinnies, only a cold, echoing emptiness. Paulo clambered to his feet, groaning at the flaring pains all over his beaten body. He put his arms out in front of him and stumbled forward until he came into contact with a wall. He ran his hands over the wall. It was hard and smooth. It felt like some sort of glass.

  Paulo almost screamed as a set of powerful arc lights suddenly clicked on overhead. He fell backwards, away from the wall, shielding his one good eye against the blinding light with his arm. Eliza moaned beside him, then came awake, whimpering as a muffled banging started on the other side of the glass wall.

  Paulo forced himself to open his good eye. He squinted through his fingers at the glass wall. Then his mouth dropped open with shock as he saw Li on the other side of the glass, shouting soundlessly and kicking the wall with her boots. Alex was there too, and Amber and Hex. Paulo’s face lit up with pleasure for an instant. Then his face fell as he noticed that all four of them were chained together like a bunch of convicts. Behind them stood the general and the thin-faced man who had been such an expert at causing him pain.

  ‘It will not break,’ said the general calmly, as Li continued to kick at the glass wall. ‘It is strengthened glass, built to withstand . . . Well, you will see what it was built to withstand in just a moment.’

  ‘Paulo!’ sobbed Li, watching as he tried to clamber to his feet in the sawdust circle on the other side of the glass. His face was purpled with bruises and one eye was just a swollen, bleeding lump.

  ‘He cannot hear you,’ explained the general. ‘It is soundproofed.’

  ‘What are you going to do to him?’ demanded Hex.

  ‘Watch,’ said the general as a door opened on the other side of the room.

  In the sawdust circle, Paulo and Eliza turned to face the door as it opened. A man walked in. He was a Quechua Indian and, just for an instant, Eliza thought her father had come back to help her. Her face lit up, then she saw that this man was much older than her father. His brown, high-cheekboned face was lined with age and his dark eyes watched her without emotion.

  The man was holding the chains of two of the biggest dogs Paulo had ever seen. They stood as tall as Eliza on their huge, spreading paws. Their shoulders were powerful and muscled and their heads were twice the size of a man’s. They were covered in short, honey-coloured hair, apart from a black muzzle and black, floppy triangular ears. The skin drooped above and beneath their dark eyes, giving them a sad expression, and the folds of their muzzles flapped loosely as they trotted over to investigate Paulo and Eliza.

  Paulo stumbled back against the glass wall as the huge dogs came towards them. He pushed Eliza behind his back, trying to shield her, but the dogs merely shouldered him out of the way. One reared up and planted its front paws on his shoulders. He staggered under the enormous weight of the animal and would have fallen if it had not been for the glass wall at his back. The dog opened its mouth, showing a set of curved white teeth. Then its pink tongue flopped out and licked his face. It felt like being washed with a very large, very soft flannel.

  Eliza was being washed too, but the other dog did not have to rear up to reach her face. She giggled with relief that the huge animal was friendly. The Quechua Indian stood impassively until the general flicked a switch on an intercom on the other side of the glass.

  ‘Proceed,’ he said, his voice ringing out over the loudspeakers. The Quechua nodded, then he pulled the two dogs over to the other side of the room and secured their chains to two of a row of steel rings embedded in the concrete wall.

  ‘These are two of my pets,’ explained the general. ‘I have ten of them in total. They are bull mastiffs the heaviest dog breed on the planet. They weigh more than a fully-grown man, ninety kilos on average. The Romans trained them as warrior dogs and they were used to hunt down bears in the Middle Ages. They can outrun a man and snap a thigh bone in their mouths as easily as we might snap a matchstick. Their jaws can exert a pressure of two hundred kilos per square inch.’

  In the sawdust circle, the Quechua Indian finished securing the dogs and walked over to Paulo as the general was talking. He took a thick, hinged steel bracelet from his pocket and clipped it around Paulo’s wrist. Paulo stared at it, trying to understand what it was. It fitted far too snugly for him to slip it off over his hand, and there seemed to be no catch to release it, only a slot where a key might fit.

  It was heavy and well-made and the hinge was virtually invisible when it was closed. The key slot was set into a thicker section of the bracelet, which also had a dark glass bubble embedded in it.

  Paulo looked over to Eliza. The Quechua was busy testing a bracelet on her skinny wrist, but he soon realized that it would simply slip off over her hand, so he squatted to attach it to her ankle instead.

  ‘What are these for?’ demanded Paulo, turning to face the general.

  ‘You will find out soon,’ said the general, pulling a small metal box from his pocket and extending the aerial. He switched to Spanish for the next part of his speech, so that both Paulo and Eliza could understand what he was saying. Behind the screen, Alex, Li and Hex looked to Amber for a translation, but she shook her head in confusion as she struggled to keep up with what the general was saying.

  ‘You see, mastiffs are not naturally aggressive, as my two pets have just demonstrated. They have to be trained to hunt, to attack. My dog-handler and I have trained these dogs to attack by teaching them to associate a particular noise with a great deal of pain. For months they wore special collars, which gave them strong electric shocks every time they heard this noise and now . . . Now they will hunt down and attack the source of that noise without mercy. When I flick the switch on this box here, your bracelets will make that noise. It is too high for the human ear to register, but you will know when your bracelets are active because a red light will flash inside the glass bubble. And, of course—’ the general laughed - ‘the dogs will attack you without mercy.’

  Inside the circle, the Quechua Indian had just finished attaching the bracelet to Eliza’s ankle, when she reached out and laid a trembling hand on the top of his head. He looked up into her eyes with a startled expression.

  ‘Help me, Grandfather,’ she said in Quechua. The man was not really her grandfather - she was simply using the name all Quechua children used for older men, as a sign of respect.

  A spasm of emotion crossed the Quechua man’s face like a ripple in a pond. He reached up and gave her hand a squeeze, then he stood up. ‘I cannot help you, little one,’ he replied gently. Then he turned and left the training room, closing the door softly behind him. Paulo and Eliza backed up against the glass screen, watching the dogs warily.

  Behind the screen the general reached for the switch on the box, just as Amber worked out what it was he had been saying. Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. ‘Don’t!’ she cried, but she was too late. He had already flicked the switch.

  An instant later, the two dogs in the training circle turned into snarling monsters.

  SEVENTEEN

  The dogs lunged for Paulo and Eliz
a, pushing off with their powerful haunches and rearing into the air. The chains brought them up short when they were centimetres away. Eliza screamed and curled up in a ball in the sawdust. Paulo squashed himself against the glass as one of the dogs snapped at the air in front of his face. The whites of its eyes were red with fury and strings of thick spittle flew from its snarling muzzle. Again and again the maddened dogs lunged to the limit of their chains, until Paulo thought the rings would surely be pulled away from the wall. Then, suddenly, the huge animals stopped and retreated to the far wall, panting and whining and looking around them in bewilderment.

  Paulo looked down at his bracelet and saw that the red light had stopped flashing inside the glass bubble. The Quechua Indian returned, stony-faced, and led the dogs from the room. Paulo sagged against the glass and a silence fell over the training circle.

  ‘Magnificent, weren’t they?’ said the general softly. He straightened and clapped his hands together. ‘And now, it is time for the hunt!’

  The thin-faced man stepped forward and pulled four more steel bracelets from his pockets. Amber, Hex, Alex and Li struggled as hard as they could, but a few minutes later they were each wearing one of the bracelets and their handcuffs had been removed. The thin-faced man opened a door in the glass wall and pushed them through into the training circle. Li ran to Paulo and hugged him hard. He winced at the pain but encircled her in his arms and hugged her back.

  ‘So touching,’ said the general through the intercom. ‘Now, this will be interesting. I have never hunted more than two at once before, and there are six of you. Of course, one of you is small and one is - shall we say? - not in the best of health, so that will slow you down, but even so I think I shall be using all ten dogs today. Will loyalty keep you together? Or will you split up? I wonder. That way some of you might have a chance. Although I must tell you that no-one has managed to escape the dogs so far.’

  The general rubbed his hands, observing them through the glass as though they were a particularly pleasing species of animal. They glowered back at him silently. ‘Nothing to say?’ said the general. ‘No pleading for your lives? Yes, this will be interesting! We are right in the middle of my land here. The grounds stretch for many miles all around. There are no rules. You can choose to go where you like. I should tell you that you will not be able to remove or break the bracelets. They are too strong. You will not be able to muffle the sound, whatever you do. The dogs can pick this sound up even when the bracelet is held underwater. Of course, you are welcome to waste your time trying all these things, but if I were you, I would use your time to get as far away from the dogs as possible. You have a twenty-minute start, then I will activate the bracelets and let the dogs loose. Good luck.’

  The general turned on his heel and left the building, followed by the thin-faced man. A few seconds later a pair of large double doors on the far side of the training circle swung silently open and sunshine flooded into the dark room.

  ‘Quick!’ gasped Amber, heading for the doors. ‘We have to start running!’

  ‘Wait a minute, Amber,’ called Alex, stripping off his fleece jacket. ‘We can’t just dash off without a plan. We’d never make it.’

  Amber turned back, near to panic. ‘What? What do we do?’

  ‘First, we need to strip off some of these clothes. We’ll be far too hot otherwise.’

  Amber, Li and Hex began stripping off their outer layers. Alex threw his waterproof jacket and trousers over to Paulo, followed by his knife. ‘Do you think you can make some sort of a sling out of that, Paulo, so Hex and I can take turns at carrying Eliza on our backs?’

  Paulo nodded and got to work.

  ‘Aren’t we even going to try getting these bracelets off?’ asked Li.

  Hex shook his head as he struggled out of his waterproof trousers. ‘I think the general was telling the truth. They look pretty unbreakable to me.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Paulo.

  ‘Whatever we do,’ said Amber, ‘I think we should stay together. That way we have more of a chance against the dogs when they catch up.’

  Alex nodded absently. He was looking at the compass which was still hanging around Amber’s neck. ‘There is one way we have a chance to get out of this,’ he said slowly.

  ‘How?’ asked Li.

  ‘I saw a road when we came in on the plane. It runs from west to east along the northern boundary of the estate. If we use Amber’s compass to keep us heading north - and if we run as hard as we can through whatever is in our way, we might just make it to the road before the dogs catch up. Then we can stop a car.’

  ‘And what if there isn’t a car?’ asked Li.

  ‘Do you have a better plan, Li?’ retorted Hex.

  ‘Here,’ said Paulo, holding out an improvised, papoose-style carrier. ‘It is done.’

  ‘I’ll take her first,’ said Hex.

  He brought the straps down over his shoulders and tied them to the straps coming around his waist, then Paulo gently lifted Eliza up and slipped her into the papoose.

  ‘Which way, Amber?’ asked Li.

  Amber checked her compass, then pointed out of the doorway. ‘That way, towards the forest,’ she said.

  ‘Will you be OK, Paulo?’ asked Hex.

  Paulo drew himself up and nodded determinedly. ‘They are only bruises,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ said Alex.

  They raced out of the double doors and across the manicured circle of grass that surrounded the converted hut. There was no other building in sight and the area was totally deserted. The general was nowhere to be seen. Strangely, they found that more frightening than if he had been standing there waiting to see which way they went. He must have a lot of faith in the abilities of his dogs to let his intended prey wander off wherever it wanted to go.

  ‘Remember,’ panted Alex, ‘we keep going north as straight as an arrow, through whatever we find in front of us. It’s our only chance.’

  They moved across the open space in a tight bunch, feeling very exposed in the bright sunshine. The grass gave way to a field full of corn and they crashed their way through the tall plants, ignoring the slicing cuts from the sharp-edged leaves.

  ‘Five minutes gone,’ panted Li, checking her watch when they emerged on the other side of the field.

  They pounded on through a sloping meadow until they reached a lake. Alex launched himself from the bank into the murky green water without hesitation and began swimming strongly towards the other side. Amber and Li swam on either side of Paulo, ready to help him if his battered muscles gave out. Hex brought up the rear, swimming more slowly, with Eliza bobbing wide-eyed above his head and clutching at the back of his neck.

  The slope was muddy on the other side, churned up by cattle coming down to drink. They crawled out onto the bank and clambered to their feet, covered in slime and mud and blood. Alex took over the task of carrying Eliza from a badly winded Hex and they struggled on, up the steepening slope.

  ‘Twelve minutes gone,’ gasped Li.

  They had just reached the edge of the forest at the top of the long slope when Hex looked down at his bracelet and saw with a sinking heart that the red light had started to flash. Wordlessly he held his arm out to show the others. A second later they heard a deep, disturbing baying drifting across to them on the still air. They looked back and saw ten pale shapes burst from the training hut, followed by a man on a horse. The ten shapes arrowed straight towards them.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled Alex urgently.

  They crashed into the forest, finding a fresh burst of speed from somewhere. The trees were well spaced, but there were many overhanging branches and tree roots to trip them up. They ran on as fast as they could, with Amber checking her compass and leading the way. Thorns snagged at their clothes and ripped their skin, adding to the cuts they had received in the cornfield. The slope of the ground grew steeper until they were virtually dragging themselves upwards, clinging onto tree roots and branches. And all the while, the maddened bay
ing of the dogs grew louder and louder.

  ‘How much further?’ gasped Paulo, clutching at his side.

  ‘Just keep running!’ shouted Hex.

  Suddenly a crashing sounded in the forest behind them. The dogs had reached the tree line.

  Desperately, they pounded on as the baying behind them grew to an almost deafening level.

  ‘I can see them!’ shrieked Li. ‘They’re nearly on us!’

  ‘It’s lighter up ahead,’ gasped Paulo.

  He was right. The trees were thinning out. They crashed on through the undergrowth and suddenly the road appeared ahead of them through the trees. They tumbled out onto it and looked around them. It was little more than an unmade track, and it was deserted.

  Paulo bent over, trying to catch his breath. Amber and Li clung together, sobbing. Alex untied the straps on the papoose and lowered Eliza to the ground. She jumped up and hurried over to Paulo. Hex found two stout branches and handed one to Alex. Their plan had failed, but they were not going to die without a fight. They could see the dogs now. Huge, pale shapes crashing through the trees with their red eyes glowing.

  Then an open-topped off-roader careered around the corner and screeched to a halt beside them. The Quechua Indian jumped out, leaving the engine running. He grabbed Eliza and threw her up into the back of the vehicle, motioning to the others to climb up after her. As they scrambled in, the man slipped a chain from around his neck and grasped Eliza’s ankle. There was a small key hanging from the chain and he deftly slotted it into the lock on her bracelet. The steel hinge sprang open and he pulled the bracelet from her leg.

  ‘There, little one,’ he said in Quechua.

  ‘They’re here!’ yelled Alex as the huge mastiffs launched themselves from the forest onto the road.

  The Quechua threw the key at Amber, then ran for the driver’s seat, still clutching Eliza’s bracelet. He never made it. Three of the dogs grabbed him by the arms and throat, bringing him crashing to the ground and the others piled in, snarling and tearing at him. The man began to scream, then the screams died into a wet, gurgling noise as his throat was ripped out. Paulo grabbed Eliza and turned her face to his chest so that she would not see what was happening to her friend.