Page 63 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

All I know is that I watched Bear Shirt walk away for maybe five minutes and only realised I was still pulling the hatch down when I let go once they disappeared. And then I felt even sadder.

You were mourning a possibility, said Cat. A might have been. They might have been a friend. But they might also have been a death, instead.

They were a death, said Freya who’d been listening in the shadows, feeding the babies and looking as exhausted as she was angry. If they were a Russian, or a friend of the Russian bastard, they were death.

So you did the right thing, said Cat.

He shouldn’t have been out there in the first place, said Freya. Mooning around, being soft.

He was keeping lookout, said Storm.

Cat looked at me and started to say something to Freya but I shook my head.

It’s OK, I said. Leave it. I’m going to see the dogs.

I knew they’d be happy to see me.

I’ll come too, said Cat.

Chapter 21

Dog gone

Mouse – Year 201 AG

After Bear Shirt disappeared down the M-way heading south, we waited for two nights before we decided it was safe enough to move around normally and let the dogs out. We’d had whole a day locked up in the Bunker, discussing the who and the what and the why of the visitor, trying to see how dangerous they might have been or still be. The girls never doubted it was another Russian and were happy to stay hidden until the threat was far away. I wasn’t sure, and I found myself feeling more trapped and claustrophobic than I normally did when we cancelled a day and stayed undercover. But having a new person to talk and speculate about was enough to make the time pass quickly, despite the fact that Cat seemed to be less and less keen to join in the conversation. Which was strange. At the time I felt it was almost as if she was envious of my having seen the stranger so closely while she hadn’t. It was just her habit, I thought, Cat liking to know everything so she could keep ahead of stuff that might endanger us. And if she couldn’t know everything, she certainly liked to know more than me or the girls and in this case she only had my words with which to build a picture. She didn’t like that, I think.

Anyway, when we let the dogs out two mornings after I’d been trapped in the tank, it just seemed like a normal day. Freya came out and sat in the sun with Storm and the babies. Cat and I had of course scouted around making sure we still weren’t being crept up on before anyone else came into the open. Freya didn’t say she was happy to be out in the fresh air and sunlight, but from the way she fed the babies and held them without complaining I could see her spirits were as lifted as any of us.

And that was how the aftermath of the near-meeting was. Fine. Uplifting even. At first. Nothing to start with, which should have alerted me to trouble in the offing, because a whole new stranger couldn’t just mean nothing to our world, even if they’d moved on south, never to return. It affected the balance of things. So what actually happened again did so in threes, because of course despite the fact that at first nothing happened, then some things did, and then everything changed.

The first nothing that happened was almost less than nothing, because it was a sort of taking away, a subtraction. And though like everything it put Freya on edge, it was really just a return to the way things had been before it had barrelled into our lives, drawn by Digger’s being in heat.

The dog who might have been called Jip just went.

It hung out with us for a while that first morning, with no urgency in at all its body, lolling happily in the sun beside Digger by the doorway to the Bunker which was, at that time of day, a sort of trap for the sun. And then the wind changed and Digger got up and wandered down the hill a bit and peed by the tank and he followed her, cocking his leg where she had just been in the way dogs seem compelled to do, and pausing to eat some grass as she walked ahead.

And then in an instant his whole body stiffened, and then he bounded forwards, sniffing his way to the front of the tank where Bear Shirt had climbed up. The dog quartered back and forth, nose to the grass, excitedly following an invisible scent-trail with a series of deep and increasingly excited huffs. He bounced up on his back legs and sniffed higher on the tank, where Bear Shirt had hoisted up onto the front plate, and then he dropped down and began to criss-cross his way back along the path they’d had taken from the bench where I’d watched him sit. The dog’s tail was now thrumming with excitement.

Cat came and stood next to me, alerted by the dog’s sudden burst of energy.

That’s where the stranger sat and ate, I said. And drank. On the bench.

She grunted. The dog was looking more and more excited. The huffing inhalations had given way to a high-pitched whining that got the attention of Storm and Freya who came to see what the noise was all about.

That’s where the stranger was, I explained again.

You think he’s excited because there was a stranger there, or because there’s where someone who wasn’t a stranger was? said Storm.

The dog turned and looked at us, cocking its head, and then barking once.

It’s trying to tell us something, I said. Think its—

No, said Cat. No…

The dog turned, looked at Digger, and then just bolted, streaking away through the clumps of scutch grass, heading for the M-way like its tail was on fire.

… he’s saying goodbye, she said.