A bark, a growl, and a black blur leaps over me. Maroochy! Teeth snap on teeth, and the hand lets go of my leg.
‘Argh!’ he yells, and he sounds young. He’s sliding back through the leaves on the ground, scuffling, and a bike chain clangs as he gets to his bike and pulls it back upright. The front bike-light brightens up the bushes back near the path. Rooch is growling in the gra, gra, gra, sound she makes when she’s playing tug-of-war. She still has him. A hunk of pant leg maybe, a shoe.
Other bikes arrive, lights striping around, glaring, flashing over trees and us, tyres scraping, pedals rattling.
‘What’s happening?’ someone asks. They most probably can’t even see our black Roochy in these puddles of light.
‘Help me!’ the guy says, then grunts and struggles. Then he yells, ‘Let’s get out of here!’ and Roochy barks. She’s let him go.
‘Rooch!’ Emery calls and she’s back, licking my face, letting me wrap my arms around her neck, then Emery’s there, hauling me up, pulling me away. Breathing so fast, as he drags me and Roochy away through the night.
We run, banging into bushes, crashing through branches, sticks tangling in our legs, not caring about noise now ... too scared to care.
Then Emery pulls me behind a tree. He holds his breath, me too, listening for bike tyres, the clang of a bike chain, voices. A night bird squawks nearby and I jump, grab at my thudding heart.
‘You okay?’ Emery says.
‘Yeah,’ I whisper.
‘You always gotta be ready to run, Ella, always,’ he says like I didn’t. Like I wasn’t moving fast as I could, soon as I saw it was bikes.
‘You were pulling me awkward, and I—’
‘You gotta keep up,’ he says.
I shove him. I can’t talk, coz I’m crying, and it’s dark, so he don’t have to know if I don’t say anything in my cracked-up crying voice, but I did my best and I still got grabbed, and now I’m terrified. What if it was more people? What if it was grown-ups, not just teenagers on bikes who are scared of dogs? What if someone had hurt Roochy? I breathe through my mouth so I don’t sniff and let Emery know I’m crying, but I can’t stop my hands from shaking.
‘Let’s keep moving.’ Emery grabs my arm, finds my hand. He must feel the shaking. ‘Baby Bell,’ he says, using Dad’s nickname for me, and squeezes my hand. ‘It’ll be okay.’
‘I’m not a baby,’ I say. I’m angry but not at Emery. I’m angry at me, for falling, for crying, for acting like a baby.
‘Shh,’ Emery says like he understands, he hugs me quick and strong with skinny arms like Dad does and it just makes me miss Dad more.
We pick our way carefully through the trees, looking for that white concrete ribbon, now just a dull path in the dark to lead us out of the city.
One of the solar lights over the bike path hasn’t been stolen from its pole yet, but Emery don’t let us walk through that circle of light, he makes us go way around it. The light is not our friend.
It seems like we walk through the whole night. My feet are heavy and sore and my legs ache, and still we walk on. Then the trees drop away from beside the path and we’re walking on dirt in the open and the only lights and fires are little dots far, far away.
Emery stops. He turns into the darkness, onto rough ground, then tilts up at the stars like he’s looking for something. Maroochy is sucking in air through her nose like she’s searching for something too, then she lets out a long howl and somewhere in the darkness it’s answered.
‘Thanks, Rooch,’ Emery says. She tows us faster then, up over a bare hill and behind some trees to a little shed. She tows us right into two whining, panting, excited faces full of tongues and fur and bouncing like mad. Wolf and Bear! And there’s more whining nearby. White shapes bounce on the ends of leads under a tree.
‘Who’s that?’ I ask.
‘Oyster and Squid,’ Emery says.
‘Tama’s huskies?’ I ask. ‘You traded my bickies for more mouths to feed?’ And I’m getting angry and hot about that, but Emery’s not noticing at all in the dark.
‘Yep. Tama and his brother got a boat and they’re sailing to New Zealand. He says there’s enough rain and good soil there for people to grow lots of veggies and stuff to feed pigs and keep them all fat and happy. He needed your bickies to stock up for the trip, for when they get bored of fish. He said we could go with them.’
‘But you said not without Mum and Dad?’ I ask, still steaming hot at him.
‘Nah,’ Emery says, and there’s a smile in his voice. ‘Tama’s terrible at fishing. I said no in case he was just planning on eating our dogs, or you. A bit of meat on you.’ Emery pokes me.
‘No!’ I say.
Emery laughs. ‘Tama said it himself! He said his brother would most likely eat Oyster and Squid one night in a fit of hunger, so it’s best if we take them up country where there’s roos to eat. And look, look what else.’
Emery grabs my hand and shoves it on something cold and made of metal bars. I run my hands over it, hit webbing and tyres and handlebars.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Is this Tama’s big fancy cart?’ Maybe this is worth my Anzacs.
‘Yep. And I’ve got his tent and sleeping bags, and some pots and camping stuff, and a big old hunting knife, so we’re all self-sufficient.’ Emery sounds so proud to get this all sorted out for us.
‘You and me and five big dogs,’ I say, thinking it over as I go to say hello to Oyster and Squid, let them lick my hands. Maybe we’re gonna be okay.
‘Only problem is,’ Emery says, ‘I can’t put the tent up in the dark, so maybe you can just sleep on the sleeping bag for a few hours? We need to get moving at first light, get away from the city.’
I take off my sneakers, climb into the sleeping bag that Emery gives me, and lie down on the rocky ground next to Bear, who doesn’t mind my head on his back. With the ground so stony under my hip, I think I’ll never sleep. I lie listening to Bear’s heart beating and his breath going in and out, thinking how we’ve got a long way to go tomorrow and I gotta sleep a little bit, but scared to stop listening for footsteps in the dark, in case someone stumbles on us.
Then Bear’s jumping up and the horizon is pink, and Emery is saying, ‘Put your shoes on!’
I groan coz I’m too tired to wake up, and my mouth is too dry and old-fish flavoured to talk back. And Emery is ripping open cans of sardines and sliding out just three little sardines to each dog, licking oil off his fingers between dogs.
‘They got a lot of running ahead of them this morning,’ he’s saying. ‘We can go without food for a while, but they can’t.’
I nod, I don’t want more fish anyway, and pull on my shoes, roll up the sleeping bag, stow it back in the webbing sling of the cart, next to another sleeping bag and a little tent. There’s a couple of two-litre bottles of water sitting there too, and I open one, heft it up, and guzzle a little. Maroochy licks her lips at me. Emery fed her first. She’s the lead dog. She always gets fed first. There’s a little metal pot in the cart so I pour some water into the pot and hold it for her to get a drink then go to Bear and Wolf and Oyster and Squid, making sure they’ve all had a drink.
The sky is getting lighter by the minute. The land shows itself to me, and I just stand and stare. I want to cry. It’s so bare. Trees just growing out of dry dirt with a few scrubby weeds. No grass. I’ve seen all the little dead lawns, I’ve seen the dead parks, I watched the news showing the wheat turn red then black, but I haven’t been out of the city since the grass started dying and this, all this land, all this dead grey and red dirt, stretching on and on over the hills, looking like a desert or the moon, it’s not right.
Emery’s getting the harnesses sorted out in front of the cart.
‘Oyster and Squid know this cart, so I’ll set them up right next to it, and then Rooch will have Bear and Wolf between her and Oyster and Squid,’ he says. ‘Huskies are all about speed, and Bear and Wolf should be closer to the cart to get it rolling, since malamutes are all abo
ut the muscle, but that’s just not going to work yet. We’ll just have to run and push it off like Tama used to.’
Bear and Wolf are always so laid back, letting Roochy be the leader, happy to be like little puppies around her, but Oyster and Squid got their own ideas about who the leader is in their family, and it ain’t none of us. But after the sardines, they look happy to do anything Emery asks.
I turn to scanning the houses up on the hillsides for signs of life. One has dumped cars all around it, like a little fort. I don’t think they can see us down here in the still dark.
I clip the dogs to the gang line one by one after Emery straps them into their harnesses. They’re bouncing and yipping, happy to be getting ready to go for a run, but they know it’s not time yet, and they’re almost busting trying to keep a lid on it.
Emery stands on the back of the cart, yelling for Maroochy to pull the line out, ‘Line, Rooch! Line!’ Then he opens one arm to let me stand up on the step in front of him, while Maroochy prances like a pony, testing the line, lifting it off the dirt, ready to go.
‘Maroochy! Mush! Hike! Hike!’ he yells, letting the brake go and pushing off with one foot. Maroochy leaps forwards, throws herself into the harness, pulling the gang line straight. Bear and Wolf leap after her, and Oyster and Squid, yipping like puppies, follow them and we’re off, along the bike path, wind flying at my eyes, whipping my hair.
‘Emery!’ I yell, coz it’s too fast. The cart is just a giant tricycle really. A big knobby tyre wheel at the front, and two smaller wheels on the back. A set of handlebars that Emery gets to steer and brake with, leaving me just clinging to the frame. Our gear sits just behind the front wheel guard, in that triangle, and it’s bouncing about like mad, with only the netting and some bungee cords stopping it from bouncing out. All I got to stand on is a little platform skinnier than a step, with rubber tread on it.
‘They’ll slow down,’ Emery says. ‘May as well run fast while the path is smooth and straight!’
After a while of hanging onto the metal bar in front of me with both hands, knuckles white as paper, face scrunched up, I figure out we’re not gonna crash or tip, and when we get to a bit of a bend in the path, and Emery shouts, ‘Haw!’ and Maroochy heads left and we make it around nice and smooth, I relax off a bit. Maroochy is paying attention to Emery. She won’t let us crash.
We race for ages before the dogs slow to an easy run. The bike path follows a road for a while and Emery is looking up and down it, like he don’t know what he’ll do if he sees a car, and then there is a car. It sneaks up on us coz it’s electric and just a whir of wheels. Before Emery can do anything, a red car with a big black solar roof is on the road behind us, driving flat out. Fast, like someone stole it. Fast, like someone needs to get a lot of distance from the city before it goes flat. Too fast for anyone driving to be looking at a dog cart on the bike path beside the road. Except there’s a kid in the back with his face pressed to the window, and he looks right in my eyes. Everything so clear in the early morning light, him in his car with his parents driving him out of the city, and me on a dog cart, getting out of the city too, twisting my head, following the car, not wanting our eyes to break their hold, coz we’re the same, him and me, scared to our bones, running to who knows where. But the car is too fast and the boy has to bounce up into the back window to keep staring, and the dogs pull us away from the road, following the railway line instead, on a bike path built for city cyclers to get out of the city for nice daytrips.
The kid’s still staring as our paths separate, as he stays on the road and we head away into the bare countryside. And I wonder, watching that little red car get smaller and smaller, which one of us is on the best path.
The sun heats up and climbs higher and higher, and the dogs slow down, trotting along with mouths open and tongues lolling. The path climbs up and runs on top of where railway tracks used to run back in the old days. The wood and steel’s been torn up now and turned into smooth concrete bike paths for serious bike riders.
‘Thing is,’ Emery says over the whir of our wheels on concrete, ‘all these old lines lead to little country towns like they always did.’
I nod. ‘We wanna stay out of towns,’ I say.
We mostly just wanna stay away from people, I guess. People who might steal our cans of fish, and maybe eat our dogs. People who’ve got guns to shoot them.
The dogs are really panting and Emery slows them down, and we get off and walk beside them for a while. The sun is burning the top of my head now, and my stomach is aching of empty.
‘This concrete’s no good for their paws,’ Emery says. ‘And they can’t run in the heat. But we gotta put some distance between us and the city real quick, so we need to stay on it a bit longer. Gotta get bush so we can find them some roos and stuff to eat.’ He adjusts the knife in its holder on his belt, and this is like a different Emery to the one I know. This is bush-kid Emery.
There’s an old railway bridge ahead, built when people had time to make bridges look nice. The sides are like concrete balustrades and it has big pillars underneath holding it up, built from great rectangles of bluestone stacked up, making arches. There’s shade and cool water down there, so without Emery and me even saying a word to each other, we know we’re gonna rest up there for a while.
Emery leads Maroochy off the track, down to the creek, with the other dogs following and me walking behind, holding the cart brake, so it doesn’t run forwards and bang into the dogs.
Emery unclips Maroochy and sends her down to the creek for a drink first, then lets off Bear and Wolf, who trot after Maroochy.
‘Don’t let those two off,’ Emery warns, coz Squid and Oyster still aren’t part of our pack, and we don’t want them disappearing on us or getting into a fight with Maroochy. ‘I’ll come get them,’ he says.
He clips leads to both their collars and wraps them around his hand, while I shove the cart down towards some bushes so anyone up on the path can’t see it.
Roochy sets up growling real low and staring under the bridge, and Wolf and Bear stop splashing around and look what’s set Rooch off.
There’s some scuffling under the bridge. Emery backpedals towards me, dragging Oyster and Squid with one hand, waving me down with the other.
‘Behind the bushes,’ he whispers, like he’s worried for me. He shoves the leads at me and pushes me off to the bushes. But he’s ducking away and running forwards, clicking his fingers to call Rooch off quietly. She’s not backing down, her hackles are up on her shoulders and her head is real low, fangs showing. Bear and Wolf though, they’re pleased to be told what to do, and they scramble out of the creek to Emery, who’s got his back against the bank beside the path. With them behind him, he creeps closer to the bridge trying to look under it without being seen.
White-sneakered feet are scrambling back behind a pillar, slipping on the rocks. Someone’s sitting in the cool under the bridge, like we want to. They’ll have seen me, even if they can’t see Emery now. I run after Emery, taking the dogs with me. No way I’m letting him face people alone! I’m almost as big as him. Almost.
Squid and Oyster are panting and whining, bouncing, all excited about Maroochy still growling and creeping forwards, like it’s a game. Even though they’re hot and stinky sweaty from all that running.
Emery’s giving me ‘make them shut up’ looks as well as jerking his head to tell me to get away, as well as waving one hand to keep Bear and Wolf behind him, and silent snapping his fingers to get Rooch to come to him. But he needs to be watching out for the people under the bridge, so he gives up telling me what to do and creeps forwards, hand on his knife, still trying to get Rooch’s attention without shouting at her. No way I’m backing off. He’d never leave me to face anything alone.
There’s more scuffling from under the bridge. Rooch lunges forwards, growling and barking like she’s launching a war.
Squid and Oyster leap after her, their leads burning through my hands, my feet sliding on gravel, tryin
g to stop them dragging me towards the bridge. Then I’m just busy hanging onto them without face-planting as I slide past Emery and out into the open.
The person makes a break from under the bridge, and it’s a woman, pushing a three-wheel stroller, bumping over rocks, and a little toddler clinging to the handrail, eyes round and bottom lip trembling at a massive black dog racing at her. The woman leaps in front of the stroller. I run flat out, dogs towing me at Maroochy.
‘Rooch! No!’ I shout.
And Maroochy has the sense to slow, coz there’s nothing scary about the woman except the look on her face as she turns and wraps herself over the toddler.
And then me and Oyster and Squid are on top of Maroochy, me grabbing her collar as she turns her protective growling on poor Squid, who scrambles away. Rooch drags me with her. I can’t let her go, or she’ll bite Squid. Then Emery is in the middle too, and Rooch only gets a mouthful of pale Squid hair before she minds his yelling and backs off. And Oyster’s coming in all growling to protect Squid a bit too late, and Emery turns his attention to sorting her out.
While this is all going on, the woman is halfway up the track on the other side of the bridge bumping the stroller so bad the toddler bangs her head on the side of it and starts wailing. The woman’s looking over her shoulder like we’re wild and dangerous, and I think we kind of are, with these new dogs complicating things.
The Dog Runner Page 3