It had seemed a bit of a cruel joke to meet one of the very few people left in this wide and empty world only to discover we couldn’t talk because we spoke different languages, but we had made the best of it. And the worst of it was that I had liked her. As I have said before, I did not have a lot of other people to compare her with, but she did not seem untrustworthy. She just seemed like herself. She had never tried to make me like or trust her. I had taken her to be what she appeared to be: gruff, tough, definitely rough-edged, but straight. Brand, in retrospect, had been too much of a storyteller for anyone more experienced in the ways of other people than I was to trust. He was putting on a show. I rescued a book once called Modern Coin Magic by J. B. Bobo, and I spent one long winter practising the tricks inside. One of the things that made them work—apart from having nimble fingers—was making the people watching you look at the wrong hand at the right time, and so miss what you were actually doing. That’s what Brand did: his smile and his stories were all showmanship making you look over there while his other hand was picking your pocket over here. John Dark was not like that. And this was the uncomfortable thing that kept whirling around my head. How had I got her so wrong? Had I misunderstood something vital in our halting communications? Why did she seem to suddenly mistrust me as deeply as I mistrusted Brand? The looks she had given me and the way she had spat her words after she had discovered the key round my neck definitely seemed like she felt fooled or betrayed. But by what? What did the key have to do with this Kel Kun Demal? Or had I been wrong from the very beginning, and had she always been dangerous to me? It didn’t feel right, the thought that she’d been baiting a trap for me ever since we met, but maybe she had? Maybe she had just needed a separate pair of hands to sew her up. But that didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. All of it churned round and round in an endless loop in my head, wiping out any chance of sleep or rest.
I’d smelled the rain coming, but I didn’t see it when it finally did arrive because the overhanging cloud had blocked out the stars and the moon. Instead I felt it, full on my upturned face as the first fat drops fell heavily out of the darkness overhead. I blinked and squeezed the unexpected wetness out of my eyes, and then instinctively bowed my head as the rest of the following downpour hammered down after them. In seconds I was half drowned, rain hitting the concrete around me so hard the drops seemed to bounce back up to have a second go at soaking any bits of me they might have missed on the way down.
I heard Jip barking at the downpour, and then I felt hands at my back and heard a lot of what I took to be French curse words as John Dark took pity and freed me enough to drag me up into the dry warmth of her square cave. She refastened my wrists, but in front of me this time which felt a lot better, and then she pushed me down to sit on my own bedroll against the wall on the other side of the fire from her.
Thank you, I said.
She grunted and leaned back, eyes as hard as the concrete she was resting against.
I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, I said.
Door may voo, she said, and mimed closing her eyes and resting her head against her hands. Door may.
Whatever the words meant, it was clear she wanted me to go to sleep. I had no real objection to that plan. I was exhausted by the whole day and the ugly turn that things had taken but—as I said—my brain was whirring too fast to let the rest of me slow down and rest. Her eyes bored into me across the low flames of the fire. That became too uncomfortable to bear, so I slumped down and closed my own eyes so as not to have the added problem of whether to stare back—and so perhaps provoke her further—or to look shifty by avoiding her gaze. Unexpectedly this did help me slow down a little. Unable to see anything, I listened instead, and the regular hiss of the rain slamming the concrete all around was in its own way almost as restful as the sea-noise I was used to falling asleep to, and though my back remained damp, the heat from the fire that I could feel on my front dried me out and made me feel almost comfortably drowsy. Jip came and leant against me, and the warmth of his sleeping body added a bit of comfort and made everything just a little less grim and a lot less lonely. And with all that, pretending to be asleep could so easily have turned into being asleep, if it was not for the one remaining thought that would not stop scratching at the inside of my head every time it went around.
Why did she want me to go to sleep? What was she going to do when I was unconscious? I didn’t think she was going to hurt me. Or kill me. She had had a chance to do both of those things the moment she disabled me with the wire noose around my neck. But then I had not thought Brand would steal from us, and he had not—until he thought we were all asleep. Mistrusting sleep is a horrible thing. Brand had not just stolen from me; he had left his own unpleasant gift in its place, a gift that goes on taking even more from the receiver, because it stops the one thing that you need to rest and re-gather your energy. I read something somewhere about someone “murdering sleep”. That’s what Brand’s deception has done for me. My sleep is not quite murdered. But ever since he stole from us, it has been fitful and getting worse—sometimes too much, never restful enough. I opened my eyes to find she was still looking at me. And now her look seemed to have an air of satisfaction about it, as if she had caught me red-handed in a dirty trick, pretending to sleep.
She pointed a finger at me.
Voo, she said. And then she seemed to speak English. Just two words, but definitely almost English. Freeman voo?
It didn’t quite make sense.
Voo, she said, and this time she held up the key and jabbed it at me. Et voo an Freeman?
This time the two words seemed to slide together into one.
No, I said. I showed her my wrists, wired together. No, I’m not free.
She shook her head as if she didn’t believe me.
Pew-tan, she said. And then she put a couple more bits of wood on the fire and slid a little further down the back wall so that her eyes were hidden by the flames.
The rain didn’t ease up for at least an hour. And when it did, the noise it made receded and let the other sounds it had been masking be heard. The main noise was water rushing down the sloped stairs and walkways of the stadium, and the splattering noise of the run-off dripping all around us. But the best noise was John Dark’s breathing. Although it was more than breathing because breathing alone would not have been loud enough to make itself heard over the wet noise all around us. It was her snoring.
Maybe if it hadn’t started raining so suddenly she would have repacked my bag after she’d searched it. Maybe not. Maybe she would have just swept my things into a big pile against the wall. Out of my reach. But she hadn’t. They were just strewn over the floor. And though the fire had died down to a reddish glow now, there was enough light for me to be able to see the glint of my Leatherman.
Jip woke the moment I moved. I felt his body tense and willed him to keep quiet. I twisted round and put my hands on him, stroking him, letting my touch tell him everything was all right. I didn’t want him making any noise that might stop the regular snoring on the opposite side of the fire. I rolled down onto my side and squirmed round onto my stomach. Then, worming my body along the cold concrete floor, I inched forwards on my elbows and knees, heading for the tool and, I hoped, freedom.
Something brushed past me and I froze, but it was only Jip, walking to the edge of the landing to look out and take a sniff at the night air. The slight clicking of his claws on the hard floor seemed horrifically loud to me, but the snoring didn’t lose a beat, and I relaxed.
If I had not been so focused on reaching the Leatherman, I might have noticed Jip going very still. And I imagine that if there had been more light I would have seen the hackle fur on his back bristle and rise. But although the clouds had moved on and allowed some moonlight back down onto the pitch, I was not looking at him. I was holding my breath and reaching for the multitool. Metal scraped against concrete, again a tiny sound that seemed catastrophically loud, and then I had the familiar heft of the well-used
steel in my hands and found I was able to open it quite easily, despite my wrists being bound, turning the thin rectangle of steel into a pair of pliers.
If I had not been so worried about dropping the pliers as I awkwardly reversed them so that they pointed towards my elbows, I might have heard something moving on the field below us. There must have been some noise, however small.
And if I had not been so elated by the ease with which I was able to slide the open jaws of the pliers down the channel between my wrists, far enough to put the wire binding them together into the sharp indented blade of the wire-cutter waiting at the bottom of those jaws, I might have noticed the snoring had stopped.
If I had not been so focused on freeing myself, I might have noticed what was about to happen. But I was, and I didn’t.
I leant forward on my hands, my chin on the damp concrete, putting the whole weight of my body behind my fingers which were squeezing the handles of the Leatherman.
There was a click like a gunshot as the wire-cutter severed the wire. And then the thing that happened happened and what happened was really three things and they all happened at once.
Jip barked and hurtled into the night.
John Dark said pew-tan very angrily.
And a horse screamed in the darkness below.
Chapter 22
Loo garoo
There was a fourth thing, but it happened a moment later.
It was a wild, high howling, a noise that shivered a deeper crack in the darkness itself. And it seemed to be in answer to Jip’s barking. And it was followed by snarls and growls that made the hairs on my neck stand up just like a dog’s. I’d never heard it before, but my ancestors and yours had, and maybe that left some memory of what it meant deep in the back of my brain, because the sound of it made my gut flip and go watery so that I had to clench so as not to piss myself.
Son day loo! said John Dark and plunged the loo garoo stick into the fire. The pitch-soaked material blazed into light and she literally jumped right over me as she raced down the steps towards the noise, carrying her gun in the other hand.
She either did not notice or she didn’t care that my hands were free.
A boom like a thunderclap split the night as she fired her gun at something that set off a new series of howls and yipping and then I was on my feet, grabbing my bow and arrows. I strung the bow in one fast tug, and quickly looked around for my knife.
Then I heard Jip bark again and then snarl, and followed John Dark hurtling down the steps towards the light of her flaming torch that was now arcing back and forth on the pitch below.
The steps were very wet and slick with rain and moss, but I kept my footing by a miracle until I tried to stop myself at the bottom and slipped and half tripped to a halt on one knee, hitting it so hard that I later found I’d ripped the knee out of my trousers. I snatched an arrow and nocked it and only then—panting and shaking but finally still—was I able to make sense of what was happening.
At first I thought they were dogs. They weren’t. Nor were they anything you would have expected to find roaming free on this island when you were alive. As a kid, I read a whole book about how they returned to the country after centuries of being extinct, but that was a fantasy. They were something much older than the tamed land you knew, older still than the empty one that we have inherited from you. But there’s no question they do fit the wilderness that time is turning it back into.
Wolves.
In the circle of light cast by the flaming torch in her hand, John Dark stood with the horses, one of which had a sheet of blood washed down its flank. A dead wolf lay in front of her. And Jip stood at bay beside her, snarling out at the loose ring of wolves circling them. The wolves moved all the time, never still for long if they did stop, always pacing and watching. I could see the glint of their eyes on the other side of the horses, behind John Dark. The circular movement masked the fact that they were slowly but definitely getting closer. She seemed to realise this, and kept on turning herself, cutting fiery swathes through the night with her torch, trying to force them back. The horses were terrified, eyes rolled wide in their heads, but they stayed close to her. At first, I thought it was because they trusted her to protect them. Then I remembered she had hobbled them so that they wouldn’t stray.
There was one wolf that was bigger than the others, and where they circled left, it circled right, which added to the confusion and the difficulty in keeping track of them. It kept its belly close to the ground as it moved. John Dark was trying to keep her eye on all the wolves at once. Jip just watched the big wolf. The dog was stiff and quivering with bottled-up tension, almost fizzing with the fight building up inside him. It was a look that terrified me almost as much as the wolves themselves. It meant Jip had decided that when the wolves got too close, he would kill the big one first, before going on to the next and the next. That was how his mind worked. He was born without an inch of back-off in him, and I think—being a terrier—he always assumed he’d win and would never stop until he did. Until he didn’t. At which point he’d be too dead to care much.
It was a big wolf. About the size of two, maybe two and a half Jips.
I realised there was a sort of plan to the way the wolf pack moved. It kept John Dark just distracted enough trying to keep track of them all so that they could each move a little bit closer every time her back was momentarily turned. I wanted to shout a warning, but didn’t want to distract her. Now I realise that I too was getting mesmerised and immobilised by the movement of the pack.
I was certainly distracted enough to miss the first lunge the big wolf made at the rear of the already bloodied horse.
Jip was un-distractible. He hit the wolf broadside on, like a small snarling battering ram that bit into the wolf’s neck as the momentum of his attack knocked it over and the two of them somersaulted across the grass. The wolf threw him off and rolled to his feet before Jip did. Now Jip was stuck between the big wolf and the others. The big wolf snarled and stepped towards him as two smaller wolves slunk behind Jip, into his blind spot.
John Dark swung the torch towards the big wolf who turned and looked at her, just in time to see the gun come up and point at his head.
It went click.
Any ammunition that remains from your time is so old and unreliable that it is always less likely to shoot as hang fire, which is why I was raised to the bow. The look the wolf gave her, even as it cringed away from the swinging flames of the torch, was almost human in its contempt.
Then one of the wolves behind Jip darted in to try and bite out the hamstrings in his back leg, and as Jip jumped and turned so fast that I heard the wolf’s teeth clash on the empty space where he had just been, the big wolf twisted away from John Dark as if it had had eyes in the back of its head all the time, and sprang for the back of Jip’s unprotected neck.
The wolf jerked in mid-air and hit Jip solidly in the back, hitting him like a sack of bricks, just as heavy—and just as inanimate. The back of the arrow stuck out of the base of its skull, buried to the fletch. Even if I were to touch a bow again, I’d never make another shot as good as that. And the funny thing is that I don’t remember thinking I should fire, or aiming, or drawing or loosing the string. All I remember is the arrow in flight and the sure knowledge that it was not going to miss, and then the sound of it hitting which was like the noise an axe makes when it bites into the wood. It must have severed the spinal cord at the very top, killing the wolf as it leapt, so that it was dead on landing.
Jip must have known the wolf was dead before the wolf did, because he didn’t even try to fight it as it landed on him. Instead he shrugged the body off and scooted beneath the horses’ bellies to take up his previous position, keeping guard with John Dark, watching the bits of the circling pack she couldn’t keep track of.
She looked across the darkness at me. If she was surprised to see me free and with a new arrow nocked and ready, she didn’t show it.
On core de fur, she shouted, gesturing with
the guttering torch. On core de fur!
It was clear what she meant. It was also clear that her eyes were not the only ones now looking at me. I turned and pounded back up to the campfire as fast as I could. I grabbed the other loo garoo sticks and lit one.
I heard her shout from below.
Veet! she shouted. Veet!
Jip barked to underscore the urgency of whatever she was saying.
I went back down the steps three at a time, and when I got to the bottom I didn’t stop, but hurdled the fence and ran at the wolves with the fire held in front of me, waving it back and forth like a scythe. They parted and then I was inside the ring with Jip and John Dark and the three horses. There was no need for talking. Her stick was dying in her hands, so I handed her the other one and took over keeping the wolves at bay while she lit it. Jip barked at me, exulting in the midst of all this danger. I think he was happy because even though there was a bigger pack out there, now he had his own pack with him.
We were together, but the night was still going to last longer than the remaining two torches. John Dark fumbled with hers, holding it in the same hand as her gun which she broke and tried to reload with two more cartridges. I understood why she was doing it, but took little comfort from it when she snapped it closed again. There was no guarantee either of the things would fire, and the illusion of safety is a danger all of its own. Out of habit I went to retrieve my arrow from the big wolf. I swung my torch to keep the others back and flipped it on its back with my foot. It was solid and much heavier than I expected. It looked doglike enough for me to feel a pang of something close to guilt as I reached down, put my foot on its neck and pulled the flat-headed arrow all the way out. The other wolves seemed to growl a little deeper as I did so. The shaft was red from tip to butt by the time I got it out, and I snapped my wrist to clear the blood off the feathers, sending a spray of red arcing towards them. This seemed to enrage them further, and two began to howl.
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World Page 20
