by Kevin Brooks
STOP THEM!
NO! HOLD YOUR FIRE!
I CANT SEE ANYTHING!
We were both pure dog now, and in the last few moments, just before we jumped, everything became perfectly clear to me. I could see the night sky through the gaping window – the stars, the moon, the sleeping town stretched out below – and I could see in my mind the 30-foot drop from the window into the backyard beneath it. I could see all the clutter in the yard – the heaps of building materials, the discarded furniture, the ghostly statues, the thornbushes and weeds – and I could see in my memory a pile of timber planks stacked up in an unsteady block almost directly beneath the window.
I sheathed my knife without breaking stride, took hold of Chola Ses outstretched hand, and we launched ourselves into the air and dived headfirst through the open window.
The crack of a gunshot followed us out, and I felt the air scream as the bullet shot past my head, missing my ear by inches, and then we were falling, dropping down through the darkness together, and just for a second the world slept in silence. There was nothing – just a gentle rush of cold black air, the soundless sound of falling, and the quiet flapping of our clothes, as hushed as the wings of settling birds---
Ide never felt so free in my life as I did in those few fleeting moments. It was as if the world had ended and all we had to do for the rest of forever was fall through the silent darkness together. No more fighting, no more killing, no more living or dying – all we had to do was hold hands and fall through the sky, and nothing would ever stop us---
The bonejarring impact as I slammed down into the pile of timber ripped all thoughts from my head, and in an instant the world came alive again. The silence exploded in a crash of collapsing timbers, and for a moment all I was aware of was Chola Ses hand being torn from mine as the falling planks swept us apart like a great wooden wave, and then – for what seemed like an age – I was engulfed in an avalanche of tumbling planks, the heavy wooden boards battering into me as I rolled and twisted among them.
At one point I found myself lying on my back, sliding headfirst towards the ground, and for a fraction of a second I saw 2 familiar faces staring down at me from the window wede just jumped from – Pilgrim and Captain Kite. Pilgrim had his submachine gun in his hands, and as Kite suddenly spotted me and reached out of the window to point me out – There he is! – Pilgrim put the MP40 to his shoulder and calmly began firing. The machine gun spat flame, and just as a rapidfire hail of bullets began ripping into the timbers around my head, peppering my face with needlesharp splinters, I felt my shoulders hit solid ground. I rolled backwards, landing in a crouch, then leaped to one side and threw myself to the ground, taking cover behind the base of a large stone statue. Pilgrim kept shooting, spraying the statue with dozens of rounds, and I could hear the bullets ricocheting off the stone with a highpitched scream, but I knew I was safe for the moment.
I looked around for Chola Se, but couldnt see her anywhere.
Chola Se! I yelled. CHOLA!
Over here, Jeet.
Her voice was closeby, and as I peeked around the righthand edge of the statue I saw her lying flat on the ground beside the collapsed pile of timber, calmly reloading her shotgun. The pile of boards was between her and the house, and as long as she kept low and close to the heap, Pilgrim and Kite couldnt see her.
Are you okay? I called out in a loud whisper.
She gave me the thumbs up. You?
I raised my thumb in return.
The machine-gun fire had stopped now – I guessed Pilgrim was either saving his ammunition or had run out and was reloading – and in the momentary quiet I heard the heavy clomp of running boots coming from inside the house.
We need to get out of here, Chola, I said.
Have you still got Sweets pistol?
Yeh, I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the Beretta.
How many rounds have you got?
I slid out the magazine and saw that it was fully loaded.
15, I called back to Chola Se, snapping the magazine back in.
You take the door, she said, Ile take the window. The moment they take cover, we run. Okay?
I nodded, holding her gaze for a second, then I turned towards the house, racked a round into the chamber of the pistol, and leveled the gun at the door. I could see Sweets lifeless figure slumped on the ground where wede left him, just a few yards from the door---directly in my line of fire. I couldnt tell if he was alive or not, and I didnt have time to dwell on it. The bootsteps had stopped now, and I could sense a presence behind the closed door.
I hadnt seen the 4 figures in the room clearly enough to identify them, but I was fairly sure that Pilgrim hadnt been one of them, so it was possible there were 5 people in the house altogether, maybe even more. And if Pilgrim and Kite were still upstairs, that meant there could be as many as 3 Fighters preparing to burst through the door, if not more.
I waited, keeping perfectly still – arms outstretched, hands gripping the pistol, finger on the trigger – with the V of the gunsight fixed steadily on the door.
Nothing happened for a good 30 seconds, and I began to wonder if the bootsteps had been a diversion, a distraction to keep our attention from the real point of attack, but just as I was about to take a quick look around to make sure we hadnt been fooled, the door crashed open and 3 Fighters came rushing out, all of them firing rifles, and at the same time I heard the deafening clatter of Pilgrims MP40 opening up from the window, raining down fire on the statue, followed almost instantly by the ear-splitting boom of Chola Ses shotgun.
I started firing the instant I saw the Fighters, letting off shots as fast as I could. One of the Fighters went down almost immediately – hit in the chest as he charged down the steps – and the other one didnt get much farther, making 10 yards at most before clutching his shoulder and reeling sideways, then spinning back round again and sinking to his knees as I caught him with a second shot in the leg. As I swung the Beretta back towards the door, I saw the third Fighter running back into the house and slamming the door shut behind him, and at the same moment I heard the thunderous crash of the shotgun again, followed almost instantly by a sharp cry of pain from the window, then a sudden ringing silence as the roar of the machine gun stopped.
The silence was our signal to move, and a split second later we were both up and running – streaking silently through the darkness, swerving around trees and statues, leaping over piles of rubble---we were in our element now, running wild, and we knew that nothing could stop us. Even when the shooting started up again – machine-gun fire and rifleshots coming from the house – and we could feel the bullets slicing through the air all around us, we knew we were safe as long as we kept running. And as we approached the wall at the end of the yard, thats all I had in my mind – dont stop, dont even slow down, just keep on running---
We could see the opening in the wall now, the narrow gap wede made in the loose stonework on the way in, and as we veered towards it, and Chola Se instinctively began slowing down – preparing to squeeze through the gap – I increased my pace, edging ahead of her, and then I just put my head down and ran, racing straight at the wall, and at the very last moment I lowered my shoulder, leaped into the air, and launched myself at the gap. The thick cloth of my coat cushioned most of the impact, and the stonework was already so weakened there was hardly any resistance anyway. The hole in the wall cracked open like an egg, the crumbled stonework breaking away and falling to the ground in heavy chunks, and as I stumbled through to the backstreet on the other side – my momentum almost sending me sprawling – I looked back and saw Chola Se following me through the newly gaping hole.
The smile on her face was something Ile never forget. It made me want to run through the wall again.
Nice work, Jeet, she said. But why didnt you do that on the way in? It would have saved us a lot of hard work, wouldnt it?
I was about to answer when a bullet thwacked into the wall behind her, and as she quickly threw hers
elf to the ground, I saw the third Fighter taking aim at us from halfway down the yard. He must have come back out of the house again while we were running. I raised the Beretta and let off a couple of shots at him, and as he took cover behind a limbless statue, we set off running again.
The third Fighter tried following us – we could hear him clomping along the streets behind us for a short while – but he never got close enough to take another shot, and within a few minutes wede left him way behind and were jogging along the empty backstreets and alleyways on the south side of town. For the moment we were safe, but we knew it was only a brief reprieve. The gunshots had woken the whole town, and as we loped along through the early-morning darkness we could see more and more torchlights flickering all around us. The town was coming to life, getting louder and brighter and busier by the second – voices calling out, dogs barking, bootsteps running – and I knew it wouldnt be long before everyone knew that Deputy Pilgrim had been attacked in his own house, and that the would-be killers – the dogchilds Jeet and Chola Se – were on the run. And once everyone knew that, we wouldnt just be on the run from the Fighters, wede be on the run from the entire town.
Which way, Jeet? I heard Chola Se ask.
Wede reached the end of a highwalled alleyway at the back of some empty buildings near the Beach Road. Another narrow alley led off to the left – towards the road – and there was a patch of scrubland to our right that led across to the top of the beach.
We were both breathing heavily now, and as we stopped and looked around, trying to decide which way to go, we took the opportunity to get our breath back and check our weapons. As Chola Se reloaded her shotgun, and I counted the rounds left in the Beretta – 5 – I found myself wondering if it really made any difference which way we went. Left or right, towards the road or towards the beach---what did it matter? There was no escape. The townspeople were everywhere. Whichever way we went, theyd get us in the end.
OVER THERE!
The sudden shout came from our right, and as we looked across we saw torchlights in the darkness beyond the scrubland. We didnt wait to see who it was or if theyd actually seen us or not, we just turned to our left and took off down the alley.
We were dogs again now.
No worries, no doubts, no need to think.
The future didnt exist.
There was nothing but now. And now was nothing but running.
By the time the sky was beginning to lighten with the pink glow of dawn, wede just about run ourselves to exhaustion. Wede stopped and laid low a couple of times – once in a corn shed on the west side of town, another time in the basement of an abandoned house – but on both occasions wede almost been discovered, and wede had to make our escape before wede had time to rest. The town was out in force now – Fighters, Youngers, Workers---everyone was out and about looking for us – and although wede managed to avoid them all so far, I knew we couldnt keep going forever. We hadnt slept or eaten for a long time. We were thirsty. We were running out of energy. We needed to rest.
We were back on the south side of town now, close to the beach again. For the last few minutes wede been running from 2 Fighters whode spotted us coming out of a house a few streets away – wede broken into it in the hope of finding some water – and wede finally given the Fighters the slip by throwing ourselves into a ditch that runs along a strip of wasteland between the beach and the edge of town. The ditch was no more than 3 feet deep, but as long as we kept our heads down we couldnt be seen, so after the Fighters had passed us by – close enough for us to hear them talking – we just slumped down together and took a few moments to rest our legs.
Do you think theyve gone? Chola Se said.
For now, yeh. But they could be back any minute. And weare not safe from the eels here either.
We cant keep running, Jeet. Its nearly daylight. We need to find a place to hole up for a while, somewhere they wont find us.
I know, I said, glancing up at the sky.
The sun was rising rapidly now, the dark of the night fading by the second.
What about Eastside? Chola Se suggested. The ruins arent far from here, are they? I know theyre going to be looking for us there, but theres lots of places that most people dont know about, especially around Dog Town.
Dog Town is a bombed-out area near the Eastside cliffs where all the houses are totally demolished. Its known as Dog Town because the female towndogs use it as a den site, and the reason they like it there is that beneath all the rubble are dozens of old cellars and vaults which make perfect dens for raising their pups. And Chola Se was right – theyd make perfect sanctuaries for us as well. As long as we could get to them without being seen.
If we can make it across the Beach Road without being spotted, I said to her, we could follow that track that leads through the thornfield to Dog Town.
The track the dogs use?
Yeh.
She thought about it for a moment, picturing the route in her mind, then turned to me and nodded. She looked exhausted – pale, gaunt, drained---her lips cracked, her eyes glazed, her face streaked with dirt and covered in scratches.
Wele be there soon, I told her. And then we can rest properly, okay?
Yeh.
I shuffled round onto my knees then straightened up and cautiously peered out over the top of the ditch. I could see the flamelight of torches moving around all over town, but I couldnt see any nearby. The wasteland directly in front of us was empty and quiet, and in the dim morning haze I could just make out the Beach Road beyond it. I watched the road for a while, looking for any signs of life, but it too was empty and quiet.
Chola Se was sitting up now. I reached down and gave her a hand, and a moment later she was kneeling beside me, gazing across the wasteland at the road. The morning sun was brightening, the haze beginning to lift. If we left it any longer we wouldnt stand a chance.
We have to go, I said to Chola Se. Can you make it?
She just nodded again.
We looked around for a final time, then scrambled out of the ditch and set off across the wasteland.
Wede nearly reached the Beach Road when we heard the gunshots. They came from our right – rifleshots at first, then a ragged volley of pistol fire – and when I looked across I saw a group of Youngers heading towards us from the east. There were about 6 or 7 of them, and as they charged towards us – whooping and shouting and shooting their guns off – I could see the bloodlust in their eyes. They were firing so wildly that most of the shots were sailing harmlessly over our heads, but they were closing fast – less than 40 yards away now – and some of them were beginning to find their range.
Keep going! I yelled to Chola Se. We can still get across the road!
But as we leaped over the stone wall that borders the road we saw 3 Fighters heading towards us from the north, blocking our way to the thornfield. They were running hard, alerted by the gunfire, and the moment they saw us they dropped to their knees, raised their rifles, and opened fire. Unlike the Youngers, they knew what they were doing, and if we hadnt thrown ourselves to the ground and taken cover behind the wall across the road, we would have been cut down where we stood.
The Fighters had us pinned down now – rifleshots cracking into the wall and splitting the air above our heads – and the Youngers were still closing in. As I glanced over to our right, I saw one of them standing in the middle of the road no more than 30 yards away, pointing at us and calling out to the others, and a moment later the rest of them appeared and started clambering over the wall onto the road.
Chola? I said.
Yeh, I see them.
We both ducked down for a moment as a shot from one of the Youngers smacked into the wall just above our heads, and then we just gave each other a quick look – and a brief nod of agreement – and did what we had to do.
We made our moves simultaneously – Chola Se springing up into a sitting position and blasting the shotgun at the Youngers, while I swung my arm over the wall and let off 3 rapid shots at th
e Fighters – and a split second later we were up and running again, keeping low and shooting as we went. One of the Fighters was already down, and I think Chola Se winged another one when she let loose with the second barrel of the shotgun, and when I glanced over my shoulder at the Youngers I saw that one of them was on the ground and another one was bent over double, holding his bloodied head in his hands. The rest of them were still coming on fast though.
The one in front was Raoul – the Younger whode been on duty at the Olders Home when Ide visited – and it was clear from the way he was urging the others on, yelling and waving his gun around, that he was the leader of the group. I let off a quick shot at him and got lucky, hitting him in the arm, and as he screamed in pain and dropped his gun, the others slowed up and began backing off a bit. The 2 Fighters still on their feet were keeping their distance now too, and although they kept firing at us as we raced away up the road, we were moving so fast they were unlikely to hit us.
The problem was, we were heading the wrong way now – towards the center of town where most of the townspeople were – and because of all the gunfire, everyone knew we were coming. And we no longer had the cover of darkness to help us. The sun was up now, burning down with a brilliant white light that left us nowhere to hide.
All we could do was run.
The Beach Road steepens as it approaches the main part of town – where it merges into Main Street – and as we pounded up the hill we couldnt actually see what lay ahead of us on the other side, but when we reached the top and our view became clear, it was obvious we were in serious trouble. A group of about 10 or 12 Fighters were striding along Main Street towards us, and behind them we could see dozens of other townspeople following in their wake. They were all carrying weapons of some kind – firearms, knives, clubs, machetes – and theyd all become crazed by the hunt. Even the ones I knew to be relatively reasonable had madness in their eyes. It was as if the cloud of confusion and fear theyd been living under for the past few days had suddenly burst open and rained down upon them in a poisonous torrent of mindless rage.