A guard was upon him, gun raised. ‘Get down!’ he ordered.
Pete looked down at him. ‘No,’ he yelled. ‘No I fucking won’t!’
‘Get down or I’ll …’
I heard Anna moan from way behind. ‘Petey.’
She had seen this before. It was written on her face. He had already passed the point of no return.
Pete launched himself at the guard. The gun went off but fired over his shoulder, and the guard found himself lifted off his feet and slammed to the floor. Pete, now a mess of panic and fury, fled into the horrified crowd and, against my better judgement, I hobbled after him.
There was a whistle, followed by the double chink of two unhooked chains, yelps of freedom and the scrabble of paws in the dirt. The unleashed hounds accelerated past me. The first was a German shepherd, its back pulled straight as an arrow as it darted for its quarry. The second skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, facing me with its fangs bared in the first rush of pursuit.
The crowd parted and I staggered back. Every one of the animal’s muscles was a coiled spring of rage. I covered my head, remembering from some distant childhood book that my jugular was on the left side of my neck.
Seconds passed. The attack never came.
I peered through my arms. The dog’s head was cocked to one side and its fangs were still bared, but only because its lips had caught on them in a dry, clumsy curl. Through the matted fur of its brow I saw two incredulous eyes, and I have never seen a dog perform a double take before but that’s what this one was doing – this mutt, this mongrel, this scabby, patchy, mishmash of breeds …
‘Linn-kaa!’ screamed Aisha from somewhere behind me.
It was him all right: shabbier, dirtier, skinnier and fiercer, but definitely him. Lineker was alive.
Ten years washed over me like a warm tide. For a moment I was no longer lying in the yard, but standing before a cage one spring afternoon, looking down upon a lonely pup. The dog I had pulled from that place, who I had failed to train but succeeded in making happy, who had failed to make a master of me but succeeded in making a friend. The dog I had fed, whose warm shit I had plucked countless times from the dew-drenched grass of The Rye, whose head I had cradled when he caught his first cold, whose neck folds were as familiar to me as the dales and valleys of an old shepherd, and whose paw prints I could pick out from a hundred paces. The dog whose mind I could not hope to fathom but whose heart I knew better than my own, the dog I had rescued and who had in turn rescued me, looked back, asking with the same dumbfounded gawp the very same questions I was asking myself.
How?
What?
And what now?
I went to say his name but before I could speak a guard stormed past me, wielding a stick. Lineker – it was him – looked up and cowered.
‘No!’ I cried out.
The guard dealt two sharp blows to his hide. I felt both, the pain as real and visceral as if they had been aimed at me.
Then came a real blow, this one to my head. Dazed, I saw Aisha reaching for me in a silent scream. Then rough hands hauled me up and dragged me through the dirt. The German shepherd growled and snapped in the distance, and Pete’s strangled cries were silenced by a single shot. Consciousness fell away. The last thing I saw was Anna closing her eyes and bringing her children to her breast.
Choice
REGINALD
The room is roughly 18 feet by …
The room is 18 feet by 27 and …
It’s 18 feet by 27, with three windows, one …
One on …
One on each doorless wall and measuring approximately …
Approximately 4 feet square. The chair is …
The chair is in the centre of the room and …
And I had once read that the average person’s punch …
Registers a PSI of somewhere between …
Between 45 and 50. This …
These are a little higher in my …
In my honest opinion. Probably somewhere over 100. And he’s …
He’s about six foot …
Six foot five is my best guess but …
But it’s hard to tell a man’s height when he’s beating you senseless.
‘Stop.’
The voice was a thousand rooms away. My punisher did as it instructed.
I was befuddled. My hearing was mud. My vision slipped and slid as if the world had been sliced into neat strips.
Through this confusion I saw the plasticine-faced maniac who had inflicted the blows take three steps back with his fists still clenched. Another figure stepped forward. She was smaller, slimmer, neater. Five foot 4 inches, narrow waist, wide hips.
‘That’s enough for now,’ she said. She leaned in and her face gained focus. It was as pale as a china cup.
‘Must stop meeting like this, eh, Little Reggie?’
I coughed, spluttered, retched. Whistles of different pitches grew and receded in my ears like an old radio finding a station.
‘Angela,’ I croaked. ‘What … ?’
‘Captain Hastings, if you don’t mind, Reggie. Speak up, can you?’
‘What …’
‘What am I doing here? Good question. What indeed.’
The room gradually lost its wobble. In one corner I saw a husky licking its paw.
Hastings straightened up.
‘Do you know, Reggie, I was doing my job. Coordinating the dogs. Cleaning the mess from the streets, a task I have been doing quite successfully for the past two years, but, unfortunately, it seems some people aren’t quite as confident in the roles to which they have been assigned.’
She gave a frustrated sigh and paced the floor in front of me.
‘Bloody idiots, can’t even run a simple processing camp.’
‘Wh—?’
‘Hmm? Oh, boring stuff. Too many people, not enough staff, escape attempts, technology problems. Simple to fix, if you have the balls. But I’m afraid the warden here does not.’
She rolled her eyes as if we were executives sharing office gossip by the water cooler.
‘Anyway, I’m here to fix things up, crack a few heads together, know what I mean?’
‘And who should I meet on the first day but my Little Reggie.’
She beamed.
‘What do you want?’ I finally managed to say.
‘What do I want?’ she sighed again. ‘Another good question.’
She paused, and the leather of her boots creaked as she squatted before me.
‘You know, there was a time when I wanted you.’
She pulled an awkward face. ‘I know! It’s true, though, I did. Way back when we were kids, remember? I had a proper soft spot for you, Little Reggie, the real deal.’
‘You …’ I coughed. ‘You used to make fun of me.’
She shrugged. ‘Little girls don’t know what to do with their feelings sometimes. They come out all jumbled up. What starts as love and yearning can end up …’
She made a fist and launched it slowly at my face, making a popping sound with her lips as it reached the point of contact. She held it for a moment, allowing the earthy perfume of her fingertips to creep up my nostrils. Then she let it fall.
‘They never quite leave you, do they, those crushes? It hurt me, proper hurt me when you found a girlfriend.’
She cocked her head and gave me her sweetest smile. ‘That bitch.’
I spluttered and strained.
‘So sorry when I heard.’
‘You said that last time.’
She stood smartly, ignoring me. ‘Still,’ she said, brushing the hem of her jacket, ‘we must move on, mustn’t we, Little Reggie? No use dwelling on the past. Oh, I found your dog.’
She turned to the far corner. There in the shadows sat Lineker with his neck bowed.
‘That is him, isn’t it?’
‘Lineker,’ I breathed. His ears pricked at the sound of my voice.
‘Very good learner,’ she went on, matter-of-factly, ‘easy to
train. I was surprised when his handler told me what happened.’
She turned back to me. ‘He should have followed through, see? With his target, I mean. You. That’s the order he received. But he didn’t. Of course, it makes sense now that I know it’s you.’ She gave a joyless smile. ‘Chances, eh?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you here, now, doing this? You’re hurting people. Killing people. What happened to you?’
She folded her arms. ‘A little late in the day to be talking politics, isn’t it, Reggie?’
‘This is not politics, this is murder.’
Her expression, and the grinding of her jaw, suggested that I had crossed some line or other. She turned and whispered something to my tormentor, who took one last look at me and left. Now we were alone in the room, with Lineker and the husky sitting patiently in opposite corners.
‘You said something to me once that I’ll never forget,’ she said, doing her best to soften her tone. ‘That time when I was handing out leaflets, do you remember? You said that you preferred the company of dogs to people.’ She raised her chin as if the words were poetry. ‘I thought it was just your grief speaking. It hadn’t been long, had it? But when I thought about it I realised: that’s how I felt too.’
She pulled a chair from the corner, placed it squarely in front of me and sat down. ‘You know it was just me and my dad? Well, he always kept dogs, my dad. He’d get drunk and buy them off wankers in pubs or find strays on the way home and take them in. At any one time we had at least one mutt kicking around our house, shitting everywhere or tearing up the carpet. He never looked after them – too pissed – so I would instead. I’d take them for walks, feed them, train them, just simple stuff like come, sit, stay, you know?’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I murmured.
She blinked. ‘People, Reggie. It has to do with people.’ Her face fell and she looked away, remembering. ‘My dad was a racist,’ she said. ‘No two ways about it. Fucking blacks this, fucking Pakis that, fucking ragheads, fucking Muslims. Fucking women, fucking kids, fucking northerners, fucking politicians, fucking Chelsea, fucking Spurs. Fucking anyone but him, when it came down to it, know what I mean?’
She gave a sad smile. ‘“We’re not born to live together,” he’d say. “We’re too different.” And I’d argue back: “We’re no different, Dad. We’re all the same deep down,” and then he’d point at me and laugh with that big red whisky-blossomed face of his. Like I was an idiot.
‘I could only stand being in his company for so long, so I’d take whatever dog we had at the time and find some peace outside. One day I was out a bit later than usual. We had a bull terrier called Winston who was a bit of a handful and I was just crossing The Rye with him, almost home, when I came to a fork in the path. This big bloke in a shell suit came towards me from one direction, riding a bike. From the other I saw a girl on foot. She was wearing a headdress, hijab, I think. I thought nothing of it, but Winston didn’t like it one bit. Her head was covered, you see? Dogs sometimes don’t like that, and it was getting dark so it freaked him out. He started barking at her, right at her, slavering and licking his chops. I tried to calm him down but he was locked on, so all I could do was hold the lead tight as she stood there, screaming.
‘Then the bloke arrived on his bike – angry-looking – and he stopped and stared at me. “What’s going on?” he says. He pointed at me. “What the fuck are you making that thing do?”
‘I said “What? I’m not making him do anything, mate, he’s just scared.” And he laughed and said, “Scared? Fuck off, and I’m not your mate. Call that fucking dog off, you fascist cunt.”
‘“Fascist?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. “I’m not fascist.”
‘“Really?” he said. Then he got off his bike, pointed at the girl – still terrified – and said, “What do you see? Eh? What do you see? Look at her.”
‘“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said. But I did. I knew exactly what he wanted me to say. He wanted me to say I saw a Muslim, and he was implying that I had trained my dog to attack Muslims.’
She shrugged, stood and strolled over to her husky, running her glove through its thick coat.
‘It’s possible, of course; you can train a dog to hate anything. But I hadn’t. It would never have occurred to me. But that didn’t matter, he’d made up his mind: I was a fascist, as he said. So when that girl finally turned and ran, and we stood there alone in the dusk, he walked straight up to me. Winston was oblivious, still barking after the lady, but I backed into a tree and he kept coming at me until his face was right in mine. He didn’t do anything, could have done, I suppose, it was dark enough and there was nobody about, but he didn’t, he just looked at me like I was dirt. Then he pushed me to the ground, kicked Winston in the head, got on his bike and rode off.’
She gave the husky three sharp pats and turned back to me.
‘Funny thing was, it wasn’t being pushed or what he did to Winston but the accusation I couldn’t shake, that I was some kind of monster like my dad. Fascist. I wasn’t like that, was I? I was a nice girl, I believed in togetherness.’ She pulled her lips into a smile that was anything but.
‘Then one day it came to me, clear as a bell. I realised I didn’t like it because it was the truth. Beneath all those half-hearted illusions I had entertained just to argue against my father, deep down I felt the same as him.
‘He may have been a drunk, he may have been violent, and he may have hated the world because he couldn’t find his place in it, but that didn’t mean he was wrong about everything. Maybe, I began to think, maybe people really are too different to ever co-exist.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You had a bad experience. That doesn’t mean you—’
‘It was a good experience, Reggie. It taught me about other people, and about myself. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised the truth.’
‘What truth?’
She placed her hands on the back of my chair and leaned in close. ‘No matter how you sugar-coat reality, no matter how many friendly lies you tell about unity and togetherness, there are lines, deep lines, natural borders – chemical, biological and cultural – that are designed to keep us at a distance.’
Her eyes were closer to my own than anyone’s had been for some time. I fancied I could see glimmers in them; trails of swimming thoughts and secrets, clues to what the years had made of her. But it was just the flickering of the strip light’s ugly glare.
‘There are no lines,’ I said at last. ‘Only the ones inside your head.’
The words barely registered with her, but they hit me like a jolt from a frayed live positive. She stood up, ignoring my drifting gaze of surprise.
‘It was really quite enlightening, Reggie. Good for Winston too, as it happens. He never barked at a headdress again, and I knew exactly what to do if a dog stepped out of line. They’re just wolves, after all; they need to know their place. I got a bit political after that. Started reading books, looked into all kinds of movements and ideas – it always seemed to come down to the same challenges: territories, resources, freedoms, who should go where and what should they be allowed to do. The same question, basically.’
She raised her hands. ‘What do we do with all the people?’
She turned and walked to Lineker, who lifted his head in expectation.
‘You know, it’s a common belief that dogs are not like us, but I disagree. Humans need exactly the same things as dogs: shelter, warmth, food, a set of laws to keep them in check, fences to mark their territory, sex, I suppose.’ She made a lazy, acquiescent grimace. ‘Dogs don’t need freedom, they need a purpose. They don’t need education, they need training. Correcting.’ Her hand travelled to the cane that hung from her belt. Lineker’s ears swivelled, ready to flatten.
‘So really,’ she went on. ‘Dogs are just like people.’ For a moment she delicately fingered the can
e’s handle. Then she released it and turned back to me, hands on hips. Suddenly she seemed bored. ‘Anyway, I met this girl in a pub – pretty thing with a purple beret – who told me about these meetings. The rest, as they say …’
‘Territory?’ I said. ‘Where people belong? How does that translate into rounding people up and killing them?’
‘The maintenance of territories has always involved certain … necessary measures.’
‘Necessary measures? So that’s it? You just … you just get to decide who goes where and who’s allowed to do what based on how they talk or what colour their skin is?’
‘Come on, Reggie,’ she scoffed, ‘you should know it’s not as simple as skin colour any more. The lines between us are just as much social as they are genetic; we all want different things, it’s as simple as that.’
‘But what about the swabbers?’
‘Well, obviously genetics is important; the racial order still needs to be adhered to, but a person’s choices, the ways in which they lean on certain issues, how they feel about the way the world works – these are all just as important gauges in determining their usefulness in the status quo.
‘Usefulness?’
Jag, I thought.
‘Yes, we’re trying to build a new world, Reggie. A better one. So what use are people who don’t agree? In any case, the swabbers were never really anything but a PR exercise. Fear, you understand – a vital tool – but what use is a computer that tells you what you already know? It’s plain to see who sits on what side of the line. You don’t need a glorified breathalyser to tell you that …’ her expression darkened ‘… or a tag around your neck.’
She knelt before me and placed her palms upon my thighs. My nerves tingled nauseously at the touch, but beneath the discomfort was something else: a shrinking inside, a need to protect some raw and hidden part of myself.
‘She’s not your child, Reggie,’ she said.
My gut clenched. She smiled and shook her head.
‘And that is not your wife.’
My vision, still blurred from the beatings, became blurrier still.
The Last Dog on Earth Page 29
