Page 51 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

My next thought was that it was a wolf – then I saw black broken fur and registered the size and thought it was a big badger for a fraction of a second, then I saw the flash of ginger as it blurred past us, jinking again round the bend in the trail we’d been walking on, and decided it was perhaps a fox.

Was that a dog? said Storm, looking at me, then back along the track ahead of us.

I nearly shot it, I said.

Maybe should have, said Storm, still staring at the bush out of which the possible dog had erupted, eye squinted over the feathers of her arrow.

What are you going to shoot? I said.

I don’t know, she said. But if it was a dog…

Oh, I said. Of course…

I felt slow for not having recognised it now she said the word. I’d seen enough dogs in old pictures to know better. Maybe if I’d seen more than one in real life, I’d have been quicker.

And the only other time I’d seen a dog it was with the Russian.

I found I had raised my bow too and was mirroring her aim down the track.

Dogs mean people, she said, as if I hadn’t already got it.

We walked slowly backwards to the kink in the track. It was only about ten steps, but it felt a lot longer, probably because we were now both expecting someone to come running out of the bushes, hot on the dog’s trail. Someone larger, someone dangerous, maybe someone with tattoos and a gun. Maybe more than just one someone. When we got to the bend in the trail, I let Storm move past me and stayed watching the undergrowth, my mouth suddenly dry.

Home, I said, I’ll…

I risked a quick look round to make sure Storm was listening. She wasn’t there. I could hear her feet running back towards the Bunker.

I watched the bushes for another minute and then turned and ran after her, a cold feeling crabbing up between my shoulder blades, a feeling I couldn’t dispel by telling myself there was no one following the dog other than in our imaginations. The closer I got to home, the faster I ran, because as I crested the hill and hit the downslope path I could hear a terrible noise of animals in distress, one of them yelping and making the strangled noise I now know was her kind of barking. A lot of barking, each bark seeming as abrupt and ominous as that gunshot had on the day I killed the Russian, brutal in the way it chopped right into the normal quiet of the afternoon. It was a disturbing wild noise and it spread that coldness down my spine and round my chest until it seemed to curl round my heart, making a hard icy fist for it to knock against, thumping faster and faster as my feet slammed the uneven track ribboning homewards.

I just knew one thing: Something abnormal was happening ahead of me, abnormal meant bad, and I wasn’t there to look after Cat.

I heard myself say a bad word, and then immediately, as if I was being instantly punished for the profanity I stumbled on a root, bounced painfully off a tree trunk, scraping the hand I flung out to protect myself and banging the side of my head on a branch as I did so. I didn’t waste breath swearing again. I just put my head down and ran faster.

I careered out of the edge of the woodland where it gave way to the overgrown airstrip and nearly ran straight into Cat’s back. She and Storm were standing stone-still, staring at the source of the unholy yelping and barking.

Beyond them, the new dog and Digger were locked in a strange dance with each other, the unfamiliar dog running round and round her, constantly switching directions, as if trying to wrong-foot her and so get close enough to bite, while Digger growled and snapped at it, spinning about so that however fast the stranger got behind her she was able to turn and present her teeth rather than an unprotected back. Every now and then the dog stopped, dropped its chest to the ground, and barked at Digger, while she in her turn interspersed her constant warning growl with her strangled barks and a kind of moaning.

What are you doing? I said as I skidded to a stop.

It’s a dog, said Cat.

I know, I panted. What’s it…?

Don’t know, she said, eyes locked on the dogs as they bucked and bounded around each other. But if you’re going to shoot it, do it before it bites Digger. Once they’re fighting for real, you’ll probably hit her instead.

It was only then that I realised that I had my bow raised and aimed. I made myself lower the arrow and joined the other two in watching the dogs.

The new dog had rough, broken fur, not sleek and soft like Digger’s. His head and legs were a rich rusty colour like the side of the tank, and his neck and back were all black. His tail split the difference between the two, being black on top and orange as a fox underneath, though it was hard to take all the detail in at once, since it was in motion, wagging excitedly as he skipped and bounded in tight curves around Digger. I took the wagging tail as a good sign, which was why I kept my arrow down and aimed at the ground. And despite the wild barking and the back and forth that accompanied the growling like some strange punctuation, the dogs did seem more like they were playing than preparing to fight. And there was something so engaging in their feinting back and forth with each other that we just stood there and watched the game unfold, somehow drawn in by the heightened energy buzzing off them,

I think they’re OK, I said.

I think we should grab her, said Cat. I mean you grab her. She likes you.

Grab her? I said.

Today’s closed, said Cat, shaking her head at me as if I was being slow on the uptake, or had missed something she’d said earlier. We need to get in the Bunker and stay quiet.

Dogs mean people, said Storm.