C Fletcher - A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

The Neatfreaks were the Baby Busters who tried to tidy things up and leave the world in an organised fashion. I think it must have been them who had stacked so many old cars on top of each other. I had hit a rusted axle end and used it to crawl further in to safety. I lay across an old drive shaft and got my breath and my senses back. Inside the wall of brambles there was a three-dimensional maze of corroded car bodies. There were some creepers and briars twining around within the structure, but most of the growth was on the outside where the sun was. It was a strange space, broken up by the ribs and spines of the long dead cars, and the covering of vegetation gave it an underwater feeling. It would have been peaceful if there hadn’t been an angry wounded boar snuffling around just beyond the wall of thorns.

When I moved, the car skeleton shifted slightly. Something broke away from something else and fell noisily through the remains of the five or six cars below, hitting a bit of each one on the way down. The car pile was not a wholly safe place to hide. As I clung there and looked around, I was able to see how far gone most of them were. The solid panels had mostly corroded off. Where they survived, they were laced with holes, well on the way to crumbling into nothing. The frames of the cars were thicker metal and they and the wheels and axles were what was keeping the pile intact. The floors of almost every one I could see were either gone or clearly not suitable for treading on. The seats had long rotted away, right down to the springs, which were themselves rusted. There was nowhere you could trust yourself inside the whole pile. I had the strong sense, as I shifted again and heard the grinding noise that accompanied the movement, that the whole structure was just waiting for an excuse to fall in on itself. And even if that didn’t happen, there was an equally uncomfortable possibility that I might fall through the tangle of sharp rusty metal and impale myself on something, or that an axle or an engine block might drop out of a hulk above me and finish me like that.

I clung on and tried to figure out what to do, other than stay still. I had seen what the boar’s snout was capable of, pushing at the thin tree trunk. If it started jostling away at the foot of the car pile, I definitely thought it could destroy the balance and bring it all painfully and fatally down. I peered down at it and decided that it was mean enough to do that out of sheer spite and anger. I could see my bow and an arrow lying in the undergrowth beyond it, but there was no way I could get down and past it to get to them, and I was pretty sure it was too tough to kill with a single arrow unless I was unbelievably lucky.

It seemed like my only option was to stay very still, lying on top of the axle until the boar got tired and went away. The boar didn’t seem to have any plans to do anything else, however, and stayed where it was, huffing and snuffling with what I first thought was anger but that—the longer I listened to it—I realised was pain. I tried to think of good things, like the miracle of the tiny book of trees that had saved my life. I told myself it could be worse.

And then it started raining, and it was. The metal got slippery and, badder than that, the car above was one of the few that still had some bits of bodywork intact, a roof that was angled just right to catch the rain and then funnel it in a small waterfall, right on top of me. It was miserable, cold and dangerous. And the more I tried to stay still, the stiffer I got, and the longer I waited, the more I started to notice the stings and aches of all the scratches criss-crossing me, the ones I’d got from throwing myself to this precarious almost-safety inside the cliff of briars. Once again, I thought what a fool I had been to rush off alone after Brand. And that thought led to the worst thing which of course was not dying alone, because I supposed when that happened I wouldn’t know much about it, but the losing of Jip. That was my responsibility. If I hadn’t come inland, away from the sea that I knew into this country I was so ignorant about, Jip would still be alive and by my side.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else, something that would stop me feeling like I was going to slide off this axle and cut myself to shreds on every exposed bit of corroded metal below me. But I couldn’t. Jip wouldn’t get out of my mind. It was like a haunting. Every time I tried to distract myself, he was there, like a ghost. Happy memories of simpler times? Jip was there. Setting off on this foolish journey in the Sweethope ? Jip was there. Sitting by a warm fire in the safety of an island winter? Jip was there. He was so there that I imagined I could hear him barking.

The boar stopped snuffling and went very still.

The only sound was the rain. And Jip’s barking.

I opened my eyes. I wasn’t imagining it. Jip was barking and he was getting closer. It was unbelievable and it was unmistakable. Jip was alive, he was coming and the excitement in his bark told me he had scented me. My heart leapt. Then the boar huffed and turned and trotted towards the noise and my heart plummeted. Jip had the heart of a lion, and didn’t know to back off a fight, but he had the body of a terrier and the boar that was trotting towards him was much bigger and heavier and was equipped with tusks that would rip his belly open in a single twitch.

No! I shouted. Jip, no! Run! No, Jip! Go away!

His barking raised in excitement at the sound of my voice.

My guts turned to water.

No, Jip! I yelled. Bad dog! Bad dog! Get away with you! Bad dog!

I heard a squeal of anger and swear I felt a tremor in the earth below as the boar must have seen him and kicked into a charge

I heard Jip’s answering snarl.

NO, JIP! I shouted, launching myself off my axle perch, half scrabbling, half tumbling down through the car carcasses to the ground, some forlorn hope moving my body before I knew what I was doing.

NO, JIP!

There was a thunderclap.

And the world bucked.

And the boar’s squealing stopped dead.

I froze. No sound but the rain and the car chassis rocking against each other overhead, disturbed by my sudden descent. I stared at the wall of brambles between me and the fate of my dog.

And then there he was, barking happily at me on the other side.

Once more I forgot about the thorns and burst through and then he and I were together and he was jumping up and curving round me, barking and licking excitedly, tail thrashing and I was trying to hug and stroke and scratch him all at the same time and we were such a tangled mess of happiness I forgot about the boar and then my hand got snagged in the rope round his neck and before I could quite realise what it was and wonder at its strange out-of-placeness I heard a twig crack and looked over his head and my eye followed the long loop of rope and at the end of it I saw her.

I saw the hooded figure and I saw the pale horse she sat on, and I saw the long double-barrelled gun she was holding, pointed up at the sky like a knight’s lance.

She saw me, nodded and then her eyes kept moving, scanning the undergrowth around me, carefully, inquiringly. Finally her eyes came back to me and she spoke.

Eskeelya doe-travek voo? she said.

I could tell it was a question.

Eskeelya doe-travek voo? she repeated, eyes again looking behind me.

I had no idea what it meant.

I don’t understand what you’re saying, I said.

I did understand what the gun meant when it lowered and pointed at me, and then beckoned me out of the trees as she backed the horse away back into the open. She pulled the rope for Jip to come. He resisted. I stroked him.

I wondered if she could hear my heart thumping over the noise of the rain.