Chapter 17 #3
Beyond them, the new dog and Digger were locked in a strange dance with each other, the unfamiliar dog running round and round her, constantly switching directions, as if trying to wrong-foot her and so get close enough to bite, while Digger growled and snapped at it, spinning about so that however fast the stranger got behind her she was able to turn and present her teeth rather than an unprotected back.
Every now and then the dog stopped, dropped its chest to the ground, and barked at Digger, while she in her turn interspersed her constant warning growl with her strangled barks and a kind of moaning.
What are you doing? I said as I skidded to a stop.
It’s a dog, said Cat.
I know, I panted. What’s it…?
Don’t know, she said, eyes locked on the dogs as they bucked and bounded around each other. But if you’re going to shoot it, do it before it bites Digger. Once they’re fighting for real, you’ll probably hit her instead.
It was only then that I realised that I had my bow raised and aimed. I made myself lower the arrow and joined the other two in watching the dogs.
The new dog had rough, broken fur, not sleek and soft like Digger’s.
His head and legs were a rich rusty colour like the side of the tank, and his neck and back were all black.
His tail split the difference between the two, being black on top and orange as a fox underneath, though it was hard to take all the detail in at once, since it was in motion, wagging excitedly as he skipped and bounded in tight curves around Digger.
I took the wagging tail as a good sign, which was why I kept my arrow down and aimed at the ground.
And despite the wild barking and the back and forth that accompanied the growling like some strange punctuation, the dogs did seem more like they were playing than preparing to fight.
And there was something so engaging in their feinting back and forth with each other that we just stood there and watched the game unfold, somehow drawn in by the heightened energy buzzing off them,
I think they’re OK, I said.
I think we should grab her, said Cat. I mean you grab her. She likes you.
Grab her? I said.
Today’s closed, said Cat, shaking her head at me as if I was being slow on the uptake, or had missed something she’d said earlier. We need to get in the Bunker and stay quiet.
Dogs mean people, said Storm.
And if she stops this and then tries to get in with us, said Cat. Well, she’ll lead them right to us. Go grab her, Mouse.
What about the other one? I said. If there are strangers, he’ll just lead them to our door too. Even if he doesn’t see where she goes, he’ll smell his way there.
So we grab them both, said Cat. Or, you know—
She didn’t finish the sentence. Just signalled with her bow.
I’m not shooting a dog, I said. Not if it’s not attacking anything.
It doesn’t have to attack us to bring us harm, said Storm. Just has to lead them to us.
No, I said, looking at the happy face on the new dog as he pranced from side to side in front of Digger, his chest low to the ground, tail in the air, thrashing from side to side with a velocity that made his whole back-end quiver.
I don’t know why I felt this so strongly.
I’d only met the one dog, but there was something in that meeting, in that bond that made me sure that shooting a dog would be wrong.
It made no logical sense, feeling suddenly squeamish like that – we lived by hunting and trapping.
I’d been the death of so many rabbits and deer, not to mention the birds and the fish. But I felt it in my gut.
Then we each better grab a dog, said Cat, and we better not let either one—
She stopped as abruptly as the new dog’s barking had suddenly done.
Digger had suddenly bolted, running away from us, heading up the slope of the small ridge between two of the further bunkers on the M-way side of the old airstrip.
Even as she ran, she kept throwing a quick look backwards, and I realised that she was seeing if the new dog was behind her.
It wasn’t immediately obvious whether she was hoping for a getaway, or if she wanted him to chase her.
And then she stopped and growled excitedly at him, and only turned and ran once she saw he had begun to follow.
It was like a game of catch-me-if-you-can, what Cat and I used to call Chasey when we were smaller.
And he was fast, the new dog. Within a moment he was right on her heels, bounding along behind her, keeping pace, his tongue still lolling and pink out of the side of a mouth that seemed to me to be curved in a happy smile.
Though I knew even then that dogs are like all animals and don’t have the same expressions we do.
All Cat could do was to say, Shit, as she half-heartedly raised her bow, and then lower it as first Digger and then the new dog ran up and over the lip of the ridge and were gone.
We stood and stared, ears straining for more barking, but we heard no more than we could see: Tanglewood, brambles, weeds and the low humps of the overgrown bunkers in a landscape now as free of dogs as if they had only ever been figments of our imaginations.
So, I said.
No point chasing them, said Cat, who was now looking at Storm who had turned away from where the dogs had gone and was now scanning the track down which the dog had come.
Today’s still closed, said Cat decisively. We’ll lock in and keep our ears open in case Digger comes back and barks at the door so we can get her in quickly, I guess.
You think that’s safe? said Storm, which was exactly what I was now belatedly starting to ask myself.
What I was thinking was this: Closing the day had always worked before because we had trusted our hiding place, not least because locking in and locking down had left nobody outside to betray us. Unlike now.
Maybe Freya was right all along, said Storm. Maybe this is why having a dog is a bad thing. Shit. What if…
If? said Cat. If we need it, we’ve got the gun.
If it works, I said.
We won’t need it, said Cat, and I could hear in the sudden assurance in her voice that she was persuading herself about this as she talked.
I followed her through brambles which seemed to clutch at my clothes in an unusually persistent way, as if trying to warn me that our bunker home was no longer a place of safety, but a dead end that made it a trap we could all too easily be bottled up in.