The Dog Who Saved the World

by Ross Welford

  “Sass!”

  Then it comes flooding back. I had completely forgotten she was downstairs. I had forgotten who she was. It’s the brain thing again, although I say nothing.

  “They’re banging on the big door downstairs!” she says, hands flapping in panic. “It’s really loud.”

  “Yeah—that’s the wolf-head knocker,” says Ramzy.

  “Well, I wanna go home now,” she says. “I went out without my phone. Me mam’s gonna go nuts!” And at that moment, all of Sass’s bullying bluster has evaporated. It’s suddenly as though she’s half the size, and her eyes are scared and blinking back tears. “I don’t understand any of this,” she says. “I’m scared and I just wanna go home.”

  Dr. Pretorius doesn’t even look at her when she growls, “Sorry, honeybunch. You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  Think about it: we’re not going to get away with this for long.

  Outside—in what I am now thinking of as the “normal” world—it’s ten o’clock.

  There’s a badly damaged VW campervan smoldering on the seafront.

  Clem has been arrested and probably taken to Whitley Bay police station, where Dad will have been informed and all sorts of trouble will be kicking off.

  Ramzy, for his part, has been missing from home for hours. He has turned off his phone. Heaven only knows what Aunty Nush will be thinking. She’ll have told his dad, and—according to Ramzy—his dad will be back soon.

  “We’re gonna have to do something,” says Ramzy. “I mean, Aunty Nush is a nightmare, but she’ll be worried sick and I feel bad about that.”

  “Will she call the police?” I say. My head is beginning to ache now, and I know it’s going to get worse.

  “Nah. Because, one, she’s terrified of the police. She remembers what they were like back home. Two, she can’t speak English, so what’s she gonna say? And three…” He cocks his head and listens. “I think they already know we’re here.” As he says this, there’s the whoop of a siren from outside.

  I’m already typing a message to Dad.

  Hi. You’re prob worried and I’m sorry. I’m safe and so is Ramzy. Mr. M is with us. I hope that by the morning this will all have been worthwhile. Pls trust me. I love you, Georgie

  I press send and turn off my phone.

  “Dr. Pretorius. How many entrances are there to the dome?”

  Dr. Pretorius swallows hard and takes another sip of water. “There’s the back door to the main bit of the Spanish City: the one we came through before. Did you lock it?”

  “Yes, definitely. But it won’t hold forever, will it?”

  “It won’t hold for five minutes against a half-decent locksmith. The back double doors are much more secure. They’re locked with steel bars across them. Did you do that?” she says to Sass.

  Sass nods. She’s terrified, and I feel a bit sorry for her. “Will anyone get in?” she asks in a small voice.

  Dr. Pretorius coughs and grimaces with the pain. “Sure they will. If they think you’re at risk. If they think I’m harming you, if they think you’re in danger of harming yourself. Sorry to break it to you, but they’ve got every reason to try to force entry. You’re kids, for Pete’s sake.”

  She’s right, of course. Somewhere in the last few hours, I’d kind of forgotten that.

  “Shush!” says Ramzy, holding up his hand.

  There’s a thump, thump, thump coming from downstairs. Someone is trying to get through the back door from the Spanish City.

  Ramzy and I have snuck down the metal steps that link the loading bay to the dome’s control room. The thumping on the door to the Spanish City continues, along with shouts. It’s a Geordie woman’s voice, both stern and friendly at the same time.

  “Ramzy! Georgie! This is the police. Open the door! You’re not in any trouble. We can open this lock without you if we have to, so please open up.”

  I’m absolutely terrified. Ramzy, though, is loving it. With a finger on his lips, he tiptoes over to a pile of old builders’ debris left over from the conversion of the dome and starts looking for something. I don’t know what, but I can’t help thinking back to that time we spoke to the builder as we walked past ages ago.

  And then, without warning, everything is blank like this:

  * * *

  —

  And then it’s not again. I’m blinking hard. During the blank time, everything was white, and I heard nothing, and now it’s OK again. I don’t know how long it lasted. No one has moved, at least not much.

  “Ramzy?” I say. But I don’t know what to ask him. I look over at him, and he still has his finger on his lips to say shhhh.

  “Hey, Georgie,” says the policewoman. “I can hear you. Open the door now, dear.”

  Ramzy’s struggling back with a metal cylinder the size of a fire extinguisher, with a nozzle attached. Liquid Weld. He comes close enough to speak into my ear.

  “You know this stuff? Hardens on contact with air. Should take care of that door.” He looks at me, carefully. “You OK?”

  I’m not, but I nod. The last thing we need to deal with now is my brain melting.

  We stand on the other side of the door from the policewoman, and I hear her say, “It’s no use. Either they can’t hear us, or they’re deliberately ignorin’ us. We could bash it in.”

  Another voice says, “It’s a metal door, Sarge. We’ll have to get the enforcer. Or a locksmith.”

  “The nearest locksmith is in North Shields. Go get the enforcer.”

  I’ve no idea what an enforcer is, but it’s obviously something that can open a door.

  Meanwhile, Ramzy’s reading the instructions on the cylinder, which look to me to be a long list of WARNINGS and HAZARDS and stuff in red letters.

  “Do you have any safety goggles?” he whispers, but doesn’t wait for my answer. “Stand back,” he says, and I don’t need to be asked twice. Seconds later, a whitish stream is pulsing out of the nozzle. Where it hits the floor, it hardens into a gray metallic lump.

  Ramzy aims the stream at the door. Up the line where the door connects with the wall, covering the hinges; across the top and down the side with the locks and handle and into the keyholes.

  “Can you hear that, Sarge? There’s someone…Listen.”

  For good measure, Ramzy finishes off with a thick deposit between the floor and the door, emptying the cylinder; then he steps back to inspect his handiwork. The whole door is sealed to the wall, and the voices on the other side are more muffled.

  “Dunno what that is. But there’s definitely someone there. Ramzy! Georgie! Saskia!”

  We don’t wait. Seconds later, we’re back up the stairs to the control room, slamming the door shut behind us.

  In the few minutes we’ve been away, Sass has helped Dr. Pretorius to get into her large swivel desk chair, and Dr. Pretorius is fiddling with Ramzy’s bicycle helmet. It really seems as though every movement of her fingers is a huge effort.

  “What do we do now?” says Ramzy.

  Dr. Pretorius clears her throat noisily. “You can help me escape all of this when we’re done. Under the tarp in the loading bay. I just hope it still works.”

  “The copter-drone?” breathes Ramzy with awe.

  “I know you’ve been dying to know. Do you reckon you can carry me down?”

  Sass nods.

  “Yeah,” says Ramzy. “But what about before that? Are we…trying again?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I say. “I’m going back in.”

  They all look at me.

  I’m crouched down, stroking Mr. Mash’s ears, which are standing up and alert: Mashie knows something big is going on, but he’s smart enough not to get in the way. I look up and shift myself to a comfortable seated position, ready to tell them what happened when I met myse
lf in the future.

  “You have to listen to me now,” I say, “because I’m not even sure I believe this myself.”

  I start to tell them everything, about the soldiers and the empty parking lot, but I keep forgetting bits. Plus, I’m not going to mention Ramzy being dead in the future, because he’s looking at me with his big eyes, and it’s just too weird. So everything’s a bit garbled.

  Poor Sass is looking at me, then at Dr. Pretorius, and then at Ramzy in turn, with this look of pure bafflement on her face. She doesn’t say a word and appears terrified at what she’s ended up in.

  “Look,” I say in the end, “it’s simple. If I don’t go back, millions of people are going to die.”

  There’s silence. Then suddenly Dr. Pretorius turns. She’s staring at one of the screens broadcasting a television channel. A reporter is standing outside the Spanish City with a microphone.

  “…Thanks, James. We’re coming live from the scene in Whitley Bay where police have surrounded the entertainment complex known as the Spanish City following reports of the kidnapping of three children by an as yet unidentified adult female.

  “The children, who are not being named at this stage, were part of a high-speed chase along the seafront in the burning vehicle you can see behind me.”

  “High-speed chase? It wasn’t that fast,” says Ramzy. He has found some stale bread and cheese and is chewing between glugs of water.

  “Shush!”

  “A few moments ago, police made an unsuccessful attempt to gain access to the part of the complex where the children are being held, and efforts to contact the alleged kidnapper have so far been unsuccessful. I am joined now by the father of one of the children.”

  “Oh my God!” says Ramzy. “Dad!”

  Mr. Rahman is unshaven and exhausted-looking, his bald head beaded with sweat. Beside him, Aunty Nush is twisting the fabric of her headscarf round her fingers.

  The reporter doesn’t even get a chance to ask a question before Ramzy’s dad leans into the microphone and shouts, “Ramzy! We’re comin’ to get you!”

  Ramzy’s on his feet, yelling at the TV. “No, Dad!” Then he says something else in a different language. On the screen, the reporter has pointed the microphone at Aunty Nush, who says pretty much the only thing I have ever heard her say.

  “Ramzy good boy! He good boy,” and then she wipes her eyes.

  Ramzy shouts back at the TV, “I am a good boy, Aunty! I am! You’ll see!” Poor Ramzy: he looks close to tears.

  The reporter turns his attention back to Mr. Rahman. “The police have said you may need to be patient. What do you say to that?”

  He’s not able to reply because Aunty Nush interrupts him with a long stream of words. Mr. Rahman replies just as loudly, and the only thing I can hear him say is “Na-nush, na-nush, na, na.” They’re having an argument on TV.

  “What are they saying?” I ask Ramzy, who looks horrified.

  “Na, Nush. It means, ‘No, Nush.’ She said…she said…” Ramzy’s shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What did she say?” I’m almost shouting with frustration.

  “Well, after she told Dad he was a useless piece of erm…waste, she said she’s going to use his truck to break in, and if he tries to stop her she’ll kill him with her bare hands.” He says it quietly, and he sounds almost admiring as he gazes at the TV. Under his breath he says, “Wow, Aunty Nush!”

  The newsreader on TV is commenting on what he sees: “Extraordinary scenes at Whitley Bay where the father of one of the children allegedly being held in the Spanish City entertainment complex is on the scene…”

  Dr. Pretorius has been hitting keys like crazy during all of this. Her energy has returned along with a sense of purpose that’s infectious.

  “You’re gonna have to go in now, kid. Hawking II has just come into position. I can’t fix the communications channel, and Ramzy’s helmet is completely trashed, so you’re on your own in there.”

  Ramzy looks at me. “Can you do it?” he asks.

  There’s a pause. I can’t even speak I’m so scared.

  “Well,” he says, “if anyone can, it’s you.” He smiles, then gives me an awkward hug, which is a first for me and Ramzy. “It’s been an adventure,” he says.

  I breathe in deeply through my nose and lift my head. It seems to help me to speak again. “How long have we got till your aunty’s back?” I ask Ramzy. He chews his lip in thought.

  “Nine or ten minutes? Dad parks the tractor unit on the street if he’s just done a long run. So she’ll go home, get his keys, and drive back…”

  “Can she drive?”

  Ramzy gives me a withering look. “She drove an armored personnel carrier in the war, so she can drive the front end of a truck.”

  I believe him. Ramzy’s aunty Nush is turning out to be more than just the scary woman I thought.

  “Lock the door, you in the green,” croaks Dr. Pretorius, indicating Sass and then pointing at the door to the control room. “It’ll hold for a few more minutes. Georgie, get that helmet on and go!” She’s not even looking at us as she breathlessly barks commands, but thumping the keyboard and watching figures and lights scroll up and illuminate on the screens.

  “Go, go, go! I’m sending you back exactly where you left off, OK?”

  At that moment, I’m surprised to feel that I don’t really have a choice. This is just something that I have to do, like it or not, and I find myself strapping on the helmet and pushing open the heavy door to the studio. To my horror, Mr. Mash squeezes past me and straight onto the strange ball-bearing floor beneath the dome. He manages a few paces and then stops, baffled at the unusual sensation beneath his paws.

  “No!” I cry. “Come back! Mashie! Come back!” But he won’t move. Instead, he sits down on the floor, lifts his ears, and cocks his head as if to say, I’m coming with you—like it or not.

  “Mashie, Mashie,” I plead as I shuffle through the ball bearings myself. “Come on!”

  The last thing I hear is Dr. Pretorius saying, “Ain’t no time. Leave him alone. You haven’t got long before Ramzy’s old gal makes her breakthrough.”

  The studio door slams behind me with a thunk and it’s pitch-black. I feel the floor begin its quivering motion, which makes Mr. Mash whimper again. I can’t tell where he is. Can he even walk on it now?

  “Mashie?” I call gently.

  Then the band above my eyes glows blue; it gets a bit lighter as the shapes become sharper, and I’m back where I was ninety minutes ago.

  Jessica is still openmouthed in astonishment.

  Other Me looks just like me.

  And I’ve got less than ten minutes left to save the world.

  Standing by the entrance to the Jenner building, Jessica looks first at me, then at Other Me. She blinks hard and then says, “You…you disappeared for a second just then. Are you…are you a ghost or something? I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

  Just for a second.

  This future thing is weird.

  Her gaze flicks between me and Other Me. But for all the urgency that’s crowding in on me, I feel my brain clearing and I’m thinking straight again.

  “No, I’m not a ghost. But…I know it’s weird. It’s weird for us all. Listen, Jessica—this Georgie will explain. Right now, I need to get to your lab and get a sample of the CBE medicine—the cure.”

  Jessica looks at me blankly.

  “The cure,” I repeat. “It does exist, doesn’t it?”

  Please don’t say no.

  “Yes, of course it does,” snaps Jessica. “Only it’s…it’s highly classified. The formula is protected by—”

  “I don’t need the formula,” I say, thinking of when I swallowed the piece of peach. “I just need…a vial or something. Preferably quite small?”

  “Well, we h
ave that, in the lab,” says Jessica, “but I don’t see how—”

  “Let me worry about that,” I say, and it comes out sounding much more confident than I feel inside.

  She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t just walk in and help yourself to the drugs in the lab. It wouldn’t be…”

  Dammit, I should have rehearsed this. Jessica’s whole expression is dumbstruck, and I can’t blame her.

  “The cure! I need the cure. For CBE. Dog Plague!” I’m desperate. No one is moving—they’re both just staring at me. “Now!”

  “Look here, young lady,” says Jessica. “I have no idea at all just what on earth is going on. But if you think for one minute that—”

  “Mum!” says Other Me at last. “Mum! Just this once, you’ve got to believe me. You know all that stuff with Dr. Pretorius, and the dome, and everything? Last year?”

  Jessica narrows her eyes in response. “How could I forget?” she says drily.

  “It was true. You have to believe me. Believe us!”

  At that moment, I feel a cold, wet nose against my hand, and look down to see Mr. Mash. Here. In the future. Goodness knows what he can actually see—nothing, probably, because for him the dome is in total darkness, and everything I can see is generated by my bicycle helmet, and he isn’t wearing one. But he can smell me, and he licks my hand.

  Other Me has sunk to her knees, tears streaming down her face now. “Oh, Mashie!” she wails as he approaches her and lets her scratch his ears. Jessica is just shaking her head in utter disbelief.

  “Th-that’s Mr. Mash?” she croaks. “But he…he’s…”

  “Now do you believe me?” says Other Me through her sobs. “I’ll explain it more later. Right now, we haven’t got long—am I right, er…Georgie?”

  “What? Eh?” Everything’s so strange, and everything is coming at me at once, so that my head feels like it’s buffering the overload of information, including that Other Me and Jessica seem to have a different relationship to the one I have with her. And now Other Me is asking me a question.