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

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.

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.