Doglands

by Tim Willocks

  “You’re a guard dog?”

  Dervla pointed to the strange machines and giant trucks outside the wire.

  “Every night they leave me out there to frighten off people who might try to steal from them. Thieves are always thinking about thieving, so they’re afraid they’ll get robbed themselves. They also expect me to let them know if the cops show up.”

  “Why don’t you run away?” asked Furgul.

  “You see that?”

  Dervla pointed with her snout. Furgul looked. Just outside the wire mesh lay five coils of steel chain. Each chain was very long.

  Dervla said, “They chain us to the trucks and the machines.”

  Furgul looked at the bodies of the dead dogs. “They were guard dogs too?”

  Dervla nodded. “Tonight we’ll be short of staff. But Spotty and Tattoo will just steal some more. Like they stole me.”

  “How?”

  “My mistress left me outside a supermarket while she went shopping. We dogs aren’t allowed in shops. They’re frightened we might carry germs on our paws.” She scoffed. “There are more germs on a single human shoe than on the footpads of a thousand dogs. But humans are frightened of so many things, I think they must enjoy it.”

  “What happened next?” asked Furgul.

  “Tattoo hit me on the head with his steel baton. Then they threw me in their truck in a sack and drove away.”

  Furgul rubbed the lump on the back of his skull with his hind paw.

  “So they want me to help them rob a house,” he said.

  “You won’t have a choice,” said Dervla. “The really rich houses—the ones they most like to rob—have fences and gates all around them, and huge gardens or lots of land. They’ll throw you over the fence so that the guard dogs will chase after you, not them. Then they’ll sneak into the house and do their thieving. Most guard dogs are pretty stupid. They’d rather chase a dog than a human. That’s why Spotty and Tattoo use greyhounds and lurchers—you can keep the guards running around until they’ve done their thieving.”

  “And then?”

  “Then they drive away with their loot and leave you behind.”

  Furgul brightened up. Once he was off the leash, he could escape.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Dervla. “But if the guards don’t rip you apart, the cops will take you to the pound as a dangerous dog and you’ll get the needle.”

  “I’ll take my chances with the guard dogs,” said Furgul. “And I’m not going back to any dog pound. Never again.”

  “Good luck to you,” said Dervla. “I mean it.”

  “But you don’t believe I’ll get away.”

  Dervla said, “I don’t believe in anything anymore. Except killing.”

  They lay in the sun on their bony beds, and Furgul told Dervla his adventures. He tried to make them sound funny, but he still couldn’t make her laugh. Or even smile. Her ears pricked up the most when he told her the story of Argal and what Argal had said about living and dying and the winds. Her tail even started wagging. But when he told her how Argal had been killed, the hate flared back in her eyes. Furgul realized that the only place where Dervla would heal the wounds to her soul was at Appletree Dog Sanctuary. But Dervla would never get there.

  Loud music started pumping from every direction. Furgul felt his chest vibrate and his ears hurt. The carnival filled up with people. They seemed happy and excited to be there. They crowded round the little stripy shacks, where they threw their money away. They ate hot dogs and sticky red apples on thin wooden sticks. They sat in the little colored buckets on the big wheel, and in the coaches of the giant metal spider, and in the carriages of the up-and-down railway. Then the strange machines began to move. The big wheel turned and the spider wheel whirled and the carriages climbed up the steeply sloped tracks of the railway. Then the people started screaming at the top of their lungs.

  “Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream!!!”

  Furgul was alarmed. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They’re frightened,” said Dervla. “But like I said, they enjoy it.”

  “Is it always this weird?”

  “Every day’s the same until midnight. We’ll stay here for a week, then we’ll move all the machines to a different town. Different town, same music, same screams.”

  Furgul shook his head in amazement. He wanted to understand humans. He really did. But at times like this, he doubted that he ever would.

  “Look out,” said Dervla. “They’ve come to take you early.”

  Furgul was disturbed by the tone of Dervla’s voice. She sounded scared. How could a dog of her ferocity be scared? He turned as Spotty and Tattoo approached the holding pen. Tattoo held a tube of steel in his hand. He flicked it downward.

  CLACK-CLACK!

  Dervla flinched at the sound. The steel tube jumped and became much longer—it was an expandable baton. That must have been what he had used to hit Furgul on the head. He must have used it on Dervla too.

  “Watch out for that steel rod,” said Dervla. “Tattoo knows how to use it.”

  She saw the way that Furgul was looking at her. She hung her head.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “When they muzzle you and tie you up and then beat you with that rod—day after day, night after night—a time comes when you just can’t take it anymore. You’ll do anything not to be beaten again. Anything at all.”

  Tattoo and Spotty reached the pen and stared through the wire in shock at the four dead dogs. Then they looked at Dervla and started shouting and cursing and spitting with rage. Tattoo unlocked the door. Dervla ran to a corner and cringed in fear. Furgul was horrified to see her in such a state. In a way it was even more terrible than watching Argal go to his doom. Anger rose within him. How dare these dirty thieves do this to his friend. He felt his lips peel back from his teeth. His chest shook with a deep, menacing growl.

  He stood in front of Dervla to protect her.

  Tattoo advanced with his steel rod in his hand. Behind him came Spotty, who was armed with the choke-leash made of steel chain. They shouted abuse and threats. But Furgul wasn’t scared of such as these. Not anymore. He snarled.

  Harm one hair on Dervla’s coat and I will kill you where you stand.

  Tattoo and Spotty stopped dead. The curses froze in their mouths. They knew a dangerous dog when they saw one. They murmured to each other as if making a plan. Furgul crouched ready for action. He knew he could take a whipping from the rod until his jaws clamped on Tattoo’s throat. But the real danger was the choke-leash. It acted like a Trap’s noose—once that was round his neck, Furgul was in trouble. He had to take Spotty out first. He could see by the way that Spotty handled the choke-leash that he’d done this before. These men were experts at handling dogs. But Furgul was faster than a skinny guy with scabs on his face. He’d take Spotty’s thumb off. Maybe both his thumbs. Then it would be Tattoo’s turn. He coiled his haunches for the attack.

  “Furgul, don’t!” barked Dervla. “Please. Don’t do this for me.”

  “Stay back,” growled Furgul, “I’m going to do them both.”

  “If you bite Spotty, Tattoo will just run out of the cage and lock us in,” said Dervla. “He doesn’t care about Spotty. He’s a coward and he’s sly. He won’t stay to fight you. He’ll just come back with more men, with clubs and guns.”

  Furgul studied Tattoo and knew she was right.

  “Then I’ll do Tattoo first,” he said.

  “Spotty’s even more of a coward,” said Dervla. “He’ll run too. Please, I’ll be fine. I’m the only guard they’ve got left. They need me. Go with them. Don’t sacrifice your chance to escape because of me.”

  “If we team up now, we can take them both at once.”

  Dervla looked at Tattoo and cowered. “I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t.”

  Furgul had never seen such blind terror as was written across her face.

  “I can live with a few more beatings,” she said. “I couldn�
��t live with knowing that I’d cost you your shot at freedom.”

  Furgul hesitated. Spotty and Tattoo inched forward to surround him.

  What would Argal do?

  Argal had possessed the strength and size to smash both men down at once. Furgul didn’t. It was time to wait—with the patience of a hunter—for a better time to fight. He let his lips cover his teeth again. He shook the killing fury from his muscles. He walked toward Spotty and offered his neck for the leash. Spotty slipped the slipknot of the chain over his head and held it short and pulled the choke-collar tight. When Tattoo was certain that Furgul couldn’t fight back, he thrashed him across the shoulders with the vicious steel rod. Furgul clenched his jaws and refused to whimper. But after five blows he knew why Dervla had broken.

  Spotty dragged Furgul from the pen. Tattoo locked the gate.

  As they dragged him to their truck, Furgul looked back.

  Dervla stood at the wire, sobbing with guilt and shame.

  “I’m sorry, Furgul!” cried Dervla. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “Don’t give up, Dervla!” barked Furgul. “For we shall meet again!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE RACE

  Furgul was chained in the bed of the truck by his leash. If he tried to jump out as they drove along, he’d be strangled. Furgul sat down on a pile of sacks—which he guessed they used for stealing dogs—and watched as they left the big wheel behind in the distance and the carnival noise of music and screams faded away.

  He was hungry, but there was nothing he could do about that. He’d drunk some water in the holding pen earlier on. The ugliness of the town gave way to countryside. In the west the sun painted streaks of vermilion across the blue horizon. They drove past a grove of trees—oak and ash and willow in full leaf—a universe of green shifting this way and that in the breeze. The colors of nature were true. After the fake colors of the carnival, this vision of the wild raised his spirits. Then Furgul saw something so striking that he rose to his feet, his heart thumping.

  As the truck swerved around a bend and cleared the trees, a black silhouette emerged against the skyline. It was tall and rugged, thrusting up into the early evening sky as if it wanted to touch the clouds. Furgul had seen that same silhouette as a pup, and he’d never forgotten it. The spirits of Eena and Nessa dwelled inside that stony tomb, along with those of countless hounds who had never known the Doglands. He wondered how many more had since been added to the hill of dead. Back then the shape of the towering rocks had made him think of a dog’s head and snout. And it still did. But now, from this new angle, it didn’t look like just any dog. With the jaws of its jagged double peak gaping open as if roaring in defiance at the heavens, it looked like Argal.

  From now on, thought Furgul, I’m going to call it Argal’s Mountain.

  And if Argal’s Mountain was just over there, it meant that Dedbone’s Hole could not be too far away. Furgul looked again at the angle of the sun. Brennus had taught him that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. He thought back to that grim day when Dedbone had driven Eena and Nessa to their deaths. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what he’d seen when he stuck his head out of the cardboard box. Yes. That morning the sun had been behind them. That meant Dedbone’s Hole lay somewhere to the east of Argal’s Mountain. Furgul opened his eyes and looked at the silhouette again. The sun was going down behind it in the west.

  That meant the truck—right now—was to the east of the mountain.

  Dedbone’s Hole was even closer than he’d thought.

  He licked his nostrils to make them moist, then raised his nose into the air. He sniffed and sniffed, pointing his snout this way and that. He held his head still as he found it—right there. The scent was faint but unmistakable. The scent of many greyhounds in their crates. One of the earliest scents he’d ever known. The scent of the brutal hellhole into which he’d been born.

  Dedbone’s Hole.

  Furgul looked back at the distant grove of trees. He imagined scraping a line with his paw between the trees and Argal’s Mountain. Although he couldn’t be sure exactly how far the scent had drifted, he reckoned that Dedbone’s Hole lay somewhere near that line. He was that close to Keeva. But he was chained up in a truck.

  Frustration rose inside him. He pulled at the chain and the slip-collar tightened up and choked him. The chain of his leash was knotted through a metal ring welded to the cab of the truck. He tried to bite through the steel. And couldn’t. As he pulled again in anger, he saw Spotty watching him through the rear window of the cab. Spotty was laughing at him. Furgul stopped pulling. He had to be calm. He thought about what Brennus had told him.

  Be patient and wait for your moment.

  For your moment will come.

  But remember that you have to see it, for it’s easily missed.

  Furgul turned away and lay down on the sacks. He had a worrying thought. Dervla had said that the thieves had picked him up early. She must have meant earlier than usual to travel to a burglary. And that might mean that the burglary was very far away. Far from Keeva and Dedbone’s Hole. But he had to be patient. He had to wait for his moment—and he had to see it.

  The truck hadn’t traveled much farther when they reached another town. The light was fading, and the streets were full of cars and suffocating fumes. The truck turned this way and that, then they drove into a parking lot and stopped. Beyond the lot was a high brick wall. Beyond the wall rose tall metal stilts. At the top of the stilts was a huge rectangular array of powerful lights. The lights were pointing down at something behind the wall. He heard a loud, distorted human voice squawking words that he didn’t recognize. He saw people streaming through a wide gate in the wall. It didn’t seem like a very good place for a burglary.

  Tattoo and Spotty untied him and took him through the gate.

  Inside was a huge open space, bigger even than the carnival ground. People stood in long lines at rows of raised windows with holes in them. They shoved wads of money through the holes, and in return they got a little paper ticket. These were the bettors putting bets on at the bookies. Beyond the bookies was a large building made of two giant slopes of seats. There were hundreds of people in the seats, chattering and drinking beer from paper cups. In front of the seats was a sandy road that wound around a grassy field in the shape of an enormous oval.

  The grass oval was flattened on its two longest sides. The grass was surrounded by a white metal rail on the inside edge of the road. At the end of one of the roads was a long, white, rectangular box. In the front of the box was a row of barred gates. Furgul realized where he was.

  This was a racetrack.

  A metal bar, with something white and furry stuck on the end, began to whiz around the rail. To Furgul’s amazement, the gates of the long white box shot up into the air, and six greyhounds erupted onto the track.

  He was watching greyhounds race for the first time in his life. And for the first time he understood why human beings loved to watch them run. It was a sight of wonder and beauty such as Furgul had never seen.

  The hounds hurtled down the track in a blur of pure movement, pure power. Furgul fancied himself a fast runner, but these dogs were something else. He marveled at the length of their stride, the speed of their footwork, the amount of time they spent in the air with each explosive double gallop. Their pads spent so little time on the ground, it seemed as if they were flying. He watched the way they handled the turn, the muscles bulging from their shoulders as they braked for the curve. Then they picked up speed again as they flooded down the back straight.

  Keeva had told him, when he was a pup, that in all the world only one other animal was faster than a greyhound. It was a deadly wildcat that lived in a faraway land and was called a cheetah. Furgul felt a pride in his greyhound blood. He wanted to run with them. Then he became aware of a raucous noise.

  The humans in the rows of seats were up on their feet. And they were screaming. Screaming, shouting, cheering, waving and yelling
at the dogs as they ran. Each dog wore a colored blanket with a number on its back. And Furgul realized that the humans did not come because they loved to watch the beauty of the dogs. They came only to gamble money on which dog would win.

  He imagined what would happen to the dogs who lost. The dogs who weren’t good enough. The dogs who were too injured or old. He remembered, as well, that in order to serve human greed, these beautiful animals spent most of their lives in crates four feet long and three feet wide. Even the hellish holding pen at the carnival allowed its prisoners a bit more freedom than that.

  Furgul turned away from the track. He didn’t want to see who won the race.

  The screaming died down, and the distorted voice started squawking again. Tattoo jerked on the leash, and Furgul followed him and Spotty through the crowd. They went to a gate that led to a restricted area called the paddock. Tattoo slipped some money to the man who guarded it. The guard opened the gate, and they went inside.

  The paddock was busy with greyhounds in their numbered blankets. The dogs were of many different colors: fawn brindles and dark brindles, white and blacks, reds. Some had already raced and some were getting ready to race. Some discussed what had happened, and some discussed what was to come.

  Furgul felt their excitement. They were isolated for twenty-three hours a day in their miserable crates. Who could blame them for being so happy at the track? A race lasted only forty seconds, but those precious seconds were the only real reward they ever got. Furgul felt a stab of sadness. After meeting so many other types of dogs, he realized how gentle greyhounds were. And how easily they were duped and intimidated by humans.

  Trainers were checking the feet and muscles of their dogs and securing their blankets. Tattoo pulled Furgul along as he walked among them. By the way he moved his head Furgul knew Tattoo was looking for someone special. Tattoo stopped and called a name toward two men whose backs were turned toward them. Furgul felt a chill down his spine as one of the men turned. He was as massive and evil and bloated as ever, his eyes just as spiteful, his breath just as foul.