Now, it is my fucking duty to bark at that kind of threat, and like I say, once I get started on something …
What’s more, there was a nuance to this threat that made ignoring it even less possible; a familiar smell that – I realised with a curious mixture of shame and delight – I liked. I couldn’t place it at the time, but I would soon enough.
Then there were the other two alarms. The first was the whistling in my ear. That first explosion back at the place of meat and people had planted it there and now it was growing. I couldn’t shake it; it was like a parasite, feeding on my torment.
And the final one, as if the other three weren’t enough – as if this was at all fucking necessary given the state of play – was that I had just realised the entire park was riddled with squirrels.
Reg, threat, pain, squirrels. What chance did I have against all that? What hope did I have to do the right thing? (The right thing which, as I am only too aware now, was to shut the fuck up and go and find Reg. Duh.)
Answer: none. Zip, zero, nada.
So I stood there in that misty wet courtyard doing the only thing I could: bark.
And then, breaking apart all of this chaos, came an olfactory piledriver; a primary scent, strong and indivisible, that felt as if it was written in my very bones. Her. She was near.
I knew She meant danger – even then, I did – but something stronger than fear was drawing me to Her. I had never felt it before and could not fathom it. I felt myself losing control again. I felt myself losing … myself.
But all of a sudden the alarm bells shuffled about. I was back. Priorities were rearranged. Whistle pain? Yes, still there. Squirrels? Yes, very much so. Her? Yes. But threat? Not threat any more. Now it was peril, which meant fear, which meant tail down, ears back and – whoopsie! – a quick widdle on the cobbles before scarpering back into the observatory. And as I darted up the stairs, I just had time to ponder the silence left by that first alarm bell.
Where the fuck was Reg?
I found my way into that room full of clocks, jumped behind a curtain and made myself small. Outside I heard engines and voices, one of which gave me that same quiver of interest I’d had before. I pushed myself further down as the sound of boots filled the corridor downstairs.
Hardly breathing, listening to doors opening, chairs scraping, and words murmured, I spotted something move through the window. Outside was a branch and on that branch? A squirrel. And he was looking right back at me.
My hackles shot up like porcupine quills.
Calm yourself, I thought as I swallowed a growl. Just ignore him.
Then he gave his bum a little shake. The twat.
But before I could react, something drew my attention away. Footsteps were approaching the room, sharp and measured, followed by soft, quick pads, a jingle and a pant. They stopped at the door. I squeezed my eyes shut and hunkered down.
I knew it was Her now; I could smell Her calm power drifting over to me in a hypnotic cloud. I could smell Her husky bitch too, hot like steaming straw and apricots swollen in the sun. They made a slow sweep of the room, stopping between the clocks, and I heard that bitch’s snout sniffing me out along the floorboards. As they reached the window I saw black boots and white paws stop through the gap beneath the curtain.
Done for, I thought.
And then, through the window – I kid you not – that squirrel began to dance.
Oh, you bastard. You vindictive little bastard.
Up and down that branch he ran, back and forth before them, virtually pointing me out with one cretinous right claw as the other gripped his precious cunting nut.
The husky bitch growled. She’d found me. Run for it, I thought. Perhaps I could dart between them and lose myself in the mist outside before I was caught. I sensed Her moving but, as I prepared my muscles and readied myself to spring, She did nothing more than reach forward and knock on the window. Rap-a-tap-tap, She went, and the squirrel jumped away in fright. With a satisfied little huff She turned to leave, but that husky was having none of it. She was locked on to me.
‘Veronica, come. It’s just a squirrel.’
She tugged the leash and the Husky whined, paws scrabbling as she was led from the room. When they had gone, I stared out at the squirrel quivering on the end of his branch, nursing his terrified heart. A cunt, yes. But this one might just have saved my life.
Once they had all cleared off and I was sure I was alone, I crept back outside and through the gate. The mist on the common had thickened into fog and I could barely see two feet in front of me through the swirling grey. I sat down on the cold grass to think. The last few minutes soon caught up with me.
He had left me. I was alone. I began to whimper.
Solitude – it’s just not for me. I need other life around me: humans, dogs, anything to bounce around with. Otherwise, what am I? Nothing but a bundle of thoughts with nowhere to go. We’re nothing on our own.
I had a hard time as a pup when Reg started leaving me in the flat. Hours and hours stretched by with me scratching and whining, trying to find anything of his – socks, pillows, toenails – to cuddle up next to and feel that otherness he gave me. But whatever I found was never enough to calm me because it was never what I needed, which was him, and I’d end up making a mess on the floor and shivering in the corner until he came home.
The relief! Oh, fuck me, that flood of warmth when he stepped in and I flopped at his mercy. Oh please, oh please, oh please don’t be angry, I’m not a bad dog, I just miss you, I miss you I do, so much, so much it hurts me, please don’t leave me again.
But he would leave. Every single time.
Eventually I toughened up. I remember the day it happened. I was crawling about the flat in my usual woeful agony, yowling and gnashing my chops and thinking, Why does this happen? Why does he leave me? Every day it’s the same, he goes and then he comes back and then he goes and comes back, again, and again, and … hold up. There’s a pattern here.
I realised – yes, a little slow, I know – I was never really alone. There was always a time when I would see him again, so all I had to do was fill that time with useful activity. And that, my friend, was when I discovered the delights of the eternal nap time, and the watching of distant birds. A sea change, you might call it.
No matter how much I napped, or how many different flocks I clocked, he would always, always come back to me.
But this time, would he come back? This wasn’t normal life and it wasn’t our flat. All my lines were chopped and knotted, and maybe the normal rules no longer applied. Maybe, I thought, with growing dread, there are no more rules at all. My blood ran cold as I stared into the mist, trying to imagine how my life would be now. Could I survive on my own? Would I even want to? What kind of existence would this be without Reg? And the girl! Oh, how I missed the girl, my little hero, my lifesaver.
Woe was me. All of the woe, every kind of it, even kinds of woe you had never imagined rained down upon my poor, wet, lonesome hide, and – oh, now it’s started to rain too, how appropriate, how fitting that it should precipitate now.
I lifted my snout and howled.
Oh me, oh my, let this miserable tide of rain wash me away with it. Let this pitiful, loveless hound drown in oblivion. Goodbye to the sky, and goodbye to The Rye, and farewell to all my dead friends and plundered maidens. May you all find something other than this gloom, this anguish, this sorrow, this odious, heart-flattening—
Whoosh.
What was that?
Ears pricked, neck stiffened, air crackling in my ears and snout.
See what I mean? A few moments on your own and your brain turns to horse shit.
WHOOSH.
Once again …
What.
Was.
That?
I raised myself off the ground, keeping my head low. Mist whipped around my right flank – fuck. I spun around, sniffing the air. That smell. Strange. Nothing I’d smelled before, and yet familiar … so familiar I could
n’t even match it to a mixture of other smells. It was base, primary, raw.
Whish.
Another swirl of mist. I turned, heart racing, and attempted a growl.
Then there was silence. An unnatural stillness gripped the air as if space and time themselves were being throttled by this new presence. I peered into the gloom. A shape appeared, seeping like black ink on a tide.
‘ZOUNDS’ said the wolf. ‘WHAT HAVE YOU BECOME?’
The Dome
REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL
11TH DECEMBER 2021
The Audi bumped down a wide slope, hit the road and sped north. Travis was still struggling with his seatbelt.
‘Buckle up!’ he yelled as Trudi weaved the car from curb to curb. Fantastic handling, given the circumstances.
I felt wayward, on a brink, ready to slide away. In some dim reality I could hear Aisha’s fractured cries over the growls of the V8.
So, The Duchess. These jewels of hers, they’re special. For starters they’re incredibly valuable, made from the rarest metals and all the shiniest stones of the kingdom cut by the finest—
‘Linn-kaaa! Linn-kaaa!’
She was kneeling up, screaming through the back window. I pushed myself into the corner to avoid her flailing arms. Trudi’s eyes were ablaze in the rear-view.
‘Can you see them yet? Get her head down!’
But they’re magical too, these jewels. When the true Duchess of the kingdom is near them they glow and make music so beautiful that everybody around falls into an ecstatic trance.
Trudi swung right and the car bumped over a curb. We rattled down another steep verge hitting dirt crests and sunken potholes until we landed on a boulevard.
‘Christ!’ Travis squealed. ‘Will you take it easy!’
But above all that, they’re precious to her – sentimental – so she has to find them. That’s her quest. The problem is that nobody believes who she is and the only way she can prove her identity is by getting her hands on them and making the magical music. So, you know, it’s one of those Catch-22 situations.
‘Just keep your eyes on them! And get the girl’s fucking head down!’
I read Catch-22 once. It was rather good.
‘Fuck me, will you get her down!’
‘Linn-kaaa! Linn-kaaa!’
Aisha reached for the rear window but I looked straight ahead. Was he running after us, scampering with good intentions, trying to keep up? Or was he sitting with his head cocked on a hill, watching us leave him there alone. I didn’t want to look in case I saw him.
‘Linn-kaaa!’
‘Get her down!’
So, anyway, she befriends a beggar in a flea market who sells her a map for a strip of fine silk from her dress. Then she wanders through an enchanted valley and comes across a forest filled with light and creatures who whisper truths about the world. After almost starving to death, The Duchess encounters five great battles, and a siege … I don’t know. The words are all there but somehow I can’t find where they’re taking me … Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my dog.
My mouth was bone dry when I opened it. ‘We … we have to go back.’
My mumbles were lost in Aisha’s screaming.
‘Brace yourselves!’ yelled Travis.
The Audi hit a small bridge and, for a few seconds, we were airborne. I felt myself departing from the seat, with just enough time to share a brief look with Aisha, floating too – eyes and mouth seeming to drift apart in the momentary loss of gravity.
‘My dog. My dog. Please …’
Screams – screams from all around me. I wished they would stop.
‘Hold on … Chriiiiiist, Trudi!’
The Audi landed with an axle-bending crunch and Trudi threw the car into a hard left, skidding across a wide paved area and coming to a halt beside a series of tall columns.
The engine cut out but the screaming continued, piercing, shrill … no, lower now, a kind of drone, familiar …
My scream. Just me screaming. I opened my eyes and stopped. The rest stared at me in silence.
‘Get out,’ said Trudi.
‘Where are we?’ I said.
‘Shut up and get out,’ she repeated, already through the driver’s door and slamming it behind her.
‘HQ,’ said Travis, gathering his papers and laptop.
I unbuckled and got out, and Aisha jumped after me.
‘Linnka, Linnka,’ she breathed, tugging urgently at my coat.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘It’s all right.’
We were in a gigantic empty pedestrian square surrounded by buildings – chain restaurants and bars with dead neon signs smashed in, covered with dirt and crawling with plant life. In the middle of them all was a tall spire wrapped in thick tendrils. Tree-like limbs sprouted from the broken concrete and clawed for the sharp point. At the far end was a huge circular building topped with a canvas roof, cut in half and studded with what appeared to be the broken masts of a gigantic ship.
‘Is this the Millennium Dome?’ I asked, following them across the windswept concourse.
Trudi ignored me, striding for the entrance.
‘O2 Arena, to be precise,’ Travis shouted back.
Aisha gave my coat a final yank and let out an exasperated grunt. I stopped and looked down. Her face was streaked with tears.
‘Lin-e-ker,’ she said, screwing up her mouth with effort.
‘I know,’ I replied, with a biting at my chest. ‘I know.’
We followed them inside and walked beneath two gigantic banners hanging from the ceiling – black with a silver and red stamp of palm and star. Birds flew between them and their roosts in the roof’s metal girders.
‘This way,’ said Travis, leading us through some doors. Trudi was way ahead, ranting to some bullish-looking man about codes and incompetence. It was then that I felt an energy looming, a dreadful density ahead that quickened my heart with every step. Aisha hurried behind.
‘Linn-kaaa,’ she whispered.
‘I know. I know, I know, I …’
But as we reached the auditorium, I froze.
Inside was a cacophonous bedlam. The roof was torn in two, so that half was ragged sky spilling with mist and water. The floor beneath was flooded and the seats were crawling with weeds. They ran up from the ground in shallow flights circling the stage – a narrow, raised platform in the centre, illuminated by dazzling floodlights that made eery shadows in the mist.
The great hall swarmed with countless troops in black fatigues running training drills, yomping the stairs, unloading pallets, and eating in long tents filled with smoke and steam. In one corner a squadron stood at ease watching a stocky woman shout at them through a megaphone and tap a pointer around an enormous map of London. Upon the stage two blood-streaked men stood boxing. A crowd jeered as they circled one another with murderous eyes and swung fierce blows.
A thunderous crack echoed from one corner, where someone had rigged up a clay pigeon catapult for target practice. Aisha cowered, hands leaping to her ears as a second disc shot up into the mist. A tall gunner followed its arc, and with another sharp crack the disc exploded into dust.
I gaped at the cave-like arena and the havoc within. My pulse thumped. Sick gulps of blood. I felt myself drifting away.
Travis glanced back. ‘Keep up,’ he said.
‘No.’
He stopped and turned. ‘It’s this way.’
I shook my head. After a pause, he returned to where we lingered on the threshold of the arena.
‘You need to follow me, mate,’ he said, in that kind tone reserved for children and invalids in shock (which, I suppose, was what we were). ‘We can help you, get you fixed up, maybe …’
‘I cannot,’ I said, still transfixed by the mayhem within the dome. ‘We cannot. Not here.’
Travis followed my gaze. ‘Oh,’ he said. Seeming to understand, he tried a nervous smile. ‘I know it looks a wee bit chaotic, but it’s really not so bad. You’re safe here. We can take ca
re of you. We can take care of her.’
I looked down at Aisha. She mouthed that word; the only word she had.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We are not staying here. It is not safe. What about those Purples back there? They could be here any moment.’
‘The BU? Aye,’ replied Travis, raising his arms. ‘And look around. This is a Rising Star military compound, so if those bastards do turn up they’ll have a fight on their hands.’
‘Well, I don’t want to hang around here for a war to break out. Besides …’ A vision floated before me: Lineker alone on a hill with his head cocked, waiting. ‘Besides, I happen to have lost my dog.’
‘Linn-kaaa.’
I straightened up and cleared my throat. ‘Thank you for your help, but we must be on our way.’
The young man looked between us. ‘Where exactly are you going?’
‘North. Across the river.’
‘North? Nobody’s going north, it’s way too dangerous. The BU will be flanking east, and the M25 corridor is impassable, which means you’d need to cross the river somehow. It’s an impenetrable swamp. And even if you can make it across … Look, you just have to believe me; right now this is the safest place for you to be.’
‘It is not safe,’ I said, trembling, ‘and I need to find my dog.’
He gave me a smile of pity. ‘Listen, mate …’
He reached for my shoulder but I stepped back sharply. He frowned. ‘I’m only trying to help you.’
‘Travis!’ bawled Trudi from inside the arena. ‘Get in here, you stupid fucker!’
The young man’s face gave a twitch of annoyance. He shuffled uncomfortably.
‘Young man,’ I said. ‘If you want to help me then tell me the safest way to the South Bank.’
His jaw dropped. ‘South Bank?’ he said. ‘Mate, if you think this is bad …’
‘Please.’
He stared at me, dumbstruck. ‘You’re insane,’ he said.
I hesitated. ‘Do not believe that I have not considered that possibility on a number of occasions.’
He gave a puff and shook his head. Finally, he rolled his eyes and leaned in. ‘Fine. You can leave through the back. Take the corridor right and you’ll come out at the loading bays. Head north and follow the river west. Listen, mate, this is no guarantee, you understand? But some people were still operating ferries the last time I was at the South Bank. Some might even offer safe passage through London. Ask for Charlie Jenkins.’
The Last Dog on Earth Page 18
