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

Hope can keep you afloat in troubled times. It can also drown you if you let it distract you at the wrong moment. I was enjoying thinking about how surprised they’d all be to find me waiting on the beach with both dogs, when the tree in front of me spat bark shards into my face as an arrow thunked into it.

Don’t move, said a muffled voice ahead of me. Or the next arrow is yours.

On the plus side, it wasn’t Brand. On the other hand, I had been wrong about the horses: there were three riders, faces hidden by old gas masks and scarves. One had a gun with a long and curved magazine underneath it; the others had bows aimed right at me.

Okay, I said.

They stared at me. Not being able to see their faces was unnerving, but they somehow seemed just as unsettled as I was. Like they didn’t know what to do either.

I’m Griz, I said, and raised my hand in the beginning of a wave.

Don’t move, said the one with the gun. And don’t talk.

I had the strongest sense he needed quiet to think what to do next.

I nodded.

Are you sick? one of the bowmen said. His voice sounded younger.

Yes, said the gunman. Good. Are you sick?

No, I said. Just tired.

Have you been sick? said the other bowman.

Not especially, I said.

Where are the rest of you? said the first bowman.

There’s just me, I said.

The gunman snorted.

And where have you come from? he said.

North, I said. I come from the north. Who are you?

Shut up, said the gunman as the second bowman began to answer. He turned to me again.

Leave your weapons here, he said.

I hung my bow and the quiver full of arrows on the tree.

All of them, he said.

So I took my knife and then my other knife and left them sticking in the tree too.

No more knives? he said.

I shook my head. My Leatherman wasn’t really a knife. I could pretend I forgot it if they searched me.

But they didn’t search me. They didn’t come any closer than they already were.

Who are you? I said. I don’t mean any harm—

Plenty of time for talking later, said the gunman. He reached into his saddlebags and threw something at me that thumped into the grass at my feet with a clink of metal on metal.

Put one of those on each wrist and close them until I hear them click, he said. Don’t play games.

They were two pairs of handcuffs made to hold your wrists together. One was silvery, the other a dull black.

Why? I said, wondering if they would get me if I turned and ran, or if that moment had passed.

Because I’ll shoot you if you don’t, he said. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to.

He did sound sort of sorry, but he also sounded like he’d shoot me anyway.

I bent and put them on. The hinges were oiled and they clicked into place, and I stood and showed each pair dangling off a different wrist. It wasn’t clear to me why he wanted me to do that.

Now click the cuffs together, he said.

That made sense: I would have found it too awkward to cuff myself with one pair of cuffs, because my wrists wouldn’t have bent that way, but cuffing myself with two pairs was easy.

They’d done this before.

You don’t want to get close to me, do you? I said. That’s why you’re using two of these. Otherwise you could have come over and cuffed me with one pair. What are you scared of?

We’re not scared, said the second bowman as if I’d insulted him.

Don’t waste your breath, said the gunman. Like I said. Plenty of time to talk to him if he survives.

If I survive what? I said.

Quarantine, he said.

Quarantine was a cell, half underground, in a bunker. Or maybe it was the cellar of a building that had fallen down. Maybe a police station. Maybe an old army barracks. It was quite a distance from the mooring with the red sails, although you could see the masthead and the settlement next to it from the windows of the cells on one side of the bunker. There were six cells, three on each side of a hallway, facing each other.

The distance from the settlement was on purpose. It was quarantine. They didn’t want to catch whatever I might be carrying. If I was infectious. Which I wasn’t, of course.

They made me walk ahead of them as they shouted instructions, guiding me through the trees and into the edge of the old overgrown town towards the bunker building. Then they dismounted, and the bowmen made me walk down a flight of steps and then one made me stand as far as possible from himself as he opened a barred gate and stepped away as I was ushered through it by the other. They made me go to the far end of the hall before they approached the gate and re-locked it.

The six cells all had heavy doors with slits in them so jailers in the old days could have looked in on the inmates to see how they were doing.

Don’t you close those doors, said one of the bowmen, his voice indistinct as he backed up the stairs. You close them, you’re stuck for ever because we don’t have the keys. Use the toilet in the end cell on the right. The old drain’s clear but you flush your business away with a bucket

of water.

Wait, I said. What are you scared of?

Not scared, he said. Prudent. Last visitor but one brought a plague killed three people. Fucking Freeman… You’ll stay here a month; we’ll see if you get sick. You’re still alive after that, we’ll be happy to let you join us.

He doesn’t want to join you, said a voice from the deep shadows in one of the cells I had taken to be empty.

The voice sounded tired, disappointed in me, and chillingly familiar.

He just wants his bloody dog, it said.

I turned and peered into the gloom. His beard split in a thin smile, showing me a flash of white teeth.

I told you to go home, Griz. I did warn you.

Brand. I felt winded and couldn’t speak for a moment. I heard the door at the top of the stairs slam shut and then the noises of the horsemen leaving.

Brand didn’t get off the cot in his cell. And he didn’t say anything else.

I went into the cell across the hall from his and sat on the cement ledge staring at him, framed in the two doorways. It felt like a lot of time passed in silence then, and maybe it did. But eventually all that silence seemed to be sucking the air out of the cells, and talking seemed like the only way to keep breathing.

Where’s Jess? I said.

She’s fine, he said.

Where is she? I said.

Took the chart, he said. That’s how you got here, right?

Where’s my dog? I said.

You find another boat? he said. Is that it? But then—how likely is it you found a boat that was ready to sail? You find a boat these days, you got to cannibalise twenty more to get enough lines and sails and tackle that work to make it go. No. You didn’t find another boat. You walked.

He got off the cot and came and stood in the slant of light falling across the doorway and looked at me closer. He shook his head and grinned.

I wanted to kill him. I don’t like violence. I think violence is a kind of stupidity. But right then, for that grin, I think I could have killed him.

You’re a tough kid, he said. Stubborn. I mean, you’re like an irritating little cough I can’t seem to get rid of but I give you that. You have my admiration.

I don’t want it, I said. I just want Jess.

Jess is a commodity, he said. A bitch that can have pups is a rare thing.

Bitches have puppies, I said. It’s what they do.

No, he said. No, that’s not so.

I glared at him some more.

You walked across the mainland? he said.

I didn’t nod.

Never saw a pack of wild dogs, did you? he said. Strange that, no?

I shrugged.

Sure we talked about this back on your island, didn’t we? he said. The Baby Busters put some kind of poison out for the packs of hungry dogs they got scared of once the population got small enough, and that poison messed with the bitches’ ability to have pups. Least that’s what I heard.