Chapter 30 #5
And then I remembered the gun. I dropped my bow and pulled it from my pocket.
I remembered what we had thought when we looked at how it worked and made sure the safety catch was down.
It felt warm and not cold in my hand. It felt reassuringly heavy.
And suddenly I understood why people liked them, why there were so many pictures of them in the books I’d found.
It felt like power in my hand. It felt like a quick solution to the problem in front of me.
I thought the wolves saw the gun and took a step back, and for a moment allowed myself to smile, as if the wolves knew what it was that I had in my hand.
And then I heard the growl behind me and realised they weren’t looking at my gun or me at all.
They were looking at Digger. She stepped forward and stood beside me, and I could feel as much as hear the warning growl coming from deep in her chest, and I don’t think any noise has ever sounded so sweet or welcome to me since then.
It was the noise that said I wasn’t alone, that however bad the day was I still had a friend who was on my side and who would protect me as absolutely as I would protect them.
It wasn’t quite as great as having Cat beside me, but it was good.
Red must have felt it too, because she snorted and stamped her hooves, which made the wolves quickly flick their eyes towards her, and in that moment I lifted the gun and pointed it at the closest one and pulled the trigger.
When the Russian fired his gun it had sounded like a thunder-crack had ripped a hole in the world, deafening me and making my ears ring for the next hour.
This wasn’t that. This was just a dry click of the hammer falling on a bullet that wouldn’t fire.
It wasn’t impressive. And the look the wolves gave me confirmed that.
And I don’t know what made me do what I did next, other than the fact that Digger’s growling was getting louder and more comforting as she stood against my leg, but I decided to roar at the wolves.
I don’t think there were any words in the noise I made, which was more like a wild animal than a person shouting but it was loud enough to make my throat sore for the rest of the evening, and it was perhaps unexpected enough to make the wolves run.
I had never seen wolves this close before and maybe they had never seen a two-legged animal point something metal at them and make a click and then shout at them so loudly while a big dog stood beside him and made it very clear that if there was trouble coming she was going to be the one who brought it.
On top of that one of them had been given a crippling kick by the horse who was clearly not an easy meal either.
So maybe they were just confused rather than scared but run they did, disappearing into the undergrowth as if they had never been there.
Digger held her ground and didn’t chase them, but she never took her eyes off the patch of wood they had disappeared into while I went and untied Red from the pylon and led them both up the slope towards the M-way and home.
I don’t think I was the only one who had prickles on the back of their neck as we hurried away from where the wolves had been, thinking that they might start doubling back and having second thoughts about their dinner.
Digger brought up the rear and kept circling round and peering meaningfully into the dreary wood as if her baleful glaring would keep them at bay.
Almost like she was daring them to follow us.
I always liked Digger, but never as much as I did that evening when she saved me and Red, and of course the rest of us.
Cat was still asleep and did not seem much changed except for the fact the crackling in her lungs seemed worse.
The babies were hungry again, and so I fed them.
I must have been halfway through doing that when I had a sudden vision of the goats being attacked by the wolves, and so stopped feeding, and ran out to the goat field to get them.
That night in the Bunker, that first night after Cat’s fall, was the busiest that the space had ever been, because the only way I could think of keeping everything and everyone I needed to keep alive safe was to have them in the same place.
So the babies were there, I was there, sleeping beside Cat on a mattress on the other kitchen table, while Digger slept beside the babies.
The goats seemed quite calm about being penned in the far corner of the Bunker, while Red huffed and whinnied her way through the night, clearly upset at having to be inside maybe for the first time in her life.
It wasn’t a restful night but it was a safe one.
And given what had happened through the long unsafe day that had come before, the day when the sorrows came in battalions, that was as good as I could hope things could be.
One of the reasons that I slept so badly was because all the things I was worried about seemed to have a barb tugging at me, like fish hooks attached to different lines all pulling in a different direction: the babies sleeping, then crying.
Cat, her breathing sounding more and more as if the bundle of thorns in her lungs were dry as tinder as they scratched away with each intake and outflow of air.
The goats making unfamiliar noises in the dark, mostly trying to eat anything they hadn’t previously had access to, and each time one of them knocked their horns against the window it made me think it was the wolves trying to get in.
And then even in the rare moments when there was quiet in the night there was still the one hook with a line out into the unknowable future that was hidden in the darkness.
At those moments I wondered if I was going mad with worry lying there, straining to hear the sound of howling in the surrounding night, trying to see if the wolves had only gone away in order to find their pack and come back with real battalions of sharp toothed fury.
I only know that I slept for a moment, because I jerked awake, aware that Cat had said something.
Look after the babies.
The words came out of the dark, quiet and whisper thin, slight enough to slip into the narrow moment between sleeping and waking, a voice so delicate that I couldn’t be sure whether I’d heard or dreamed it.
I lay there, unmoving, not wanting to break the moment in case it was a dream.
I had fallen asleep with Cat’s hand in mine and I focused on that. Not cold. Still warm.
They’re fine, I whispered. But you must be in bad pain. I felt a twitch in the hand. Almost a squeeze. No, I decided. Definitely a squeeze.
You fell, I said. I thought you were dead.
A squeeze. The tiniest flex of the hand. Then another. And another.
Not dead yet, she breathed.
Three squeezes, three words. Like it was a game. I smiled in the dark.
And then, like a miracle, I stopped trying to untangle the catastrophe from the many ways it could get worse tomorrow, and slept.
Not much.
But just enough not to go mad. Yet.