The death-haunted eyes of the two dog-foxes were shot through
with pain. They had been running hard,
and would not be able to run much further.
Their pursuers could not be far behind, and would kill them for
sure. Soon. They had run blindly, struggling because of
their bloody wounds, into a part of the city that was unfamiliar and which
looked as though it was rarely visited by either beast or man. A zone of abandoned, desolate buildings and
paving underfoot that was uneven and broken, and strewn with all kinds of
detritus and trash that had somehow washed up there. Where only the lowest scavengers would chance
to come. Where there were few lights to
punctuate the rainy darkness, but still there was seemingly no refuge in which
to hide. Away to the left, and raised on
concrete pillars, was a main road or highway that cut across this whole area,
without notice or regard for its miserable situation. The traffic was infrequent at this time of
night, but every so often could be heard a death-rumble as some huge vehicle
passed along the wet tarmac.
The two creatures slowed their pace to a trot then, turning
by unspoken consent into a black, narrow alley between two decayed structures,
they stopped.
One said something to the other. It was an effort to make the words come
against the pulse of pain from his dry throat, in which there was the taste of
blood – his own, mostly. This was R, a fox in early adulthood. The other fox was the same age (they had
known each other from birth, though were only distantly related). His name was V.
What he had said, or tried to say, was that they could stop
running.
V did not stop panting, but looked up stiffly and
slowly. His breathing was producing a
rattling shake that was horrible to hear, every rattling breath ending in a
small convulsion that shook him down the length of his spine. He was standing awkwardly so as to keep the
weight away from his damaged left rear hip, where his fur, which had been
filthy already with the accumulated grime of many weeks, was clotted with
darker blood. The extent of the damage
could not be fully seen, but he knew it was bad enough to mean death, even if
death was not impatiently closing on them.
R was hardly in better shape. His
right forepaw was badly broken. An ear
had been torn off, and one eye was closed.
They were both at the end of their strength. They had gained some distance on their
pursuers at the muddy drainage sump that bordered this area to the east, but they
were not under any illusion that this advantage would be anything other than a
delay of the inevitable. It was the kind
of thing a story-teller would invent, only to build tension. The difference was the absence of any
possibility of escape.
We can stop running.
Perhaps-
What R said next was easily drowned out even by the roar of
a lorry on the overpass. These vehicles
meant death for countless numbers of their kind, but was not what scared them
now. What scared them was a too-familiar
noise that could be heard again in the wake of the its thunder: the loudening,
frenzied barking of dogs. This was the
form in which death was coming - in the form of the dogs. Dogs with eyes that were wild for blood. Dogs that had seen them arrive in the city,
and which they had seen, but which they had hoped their own small existence
would not interfere with, or if it did that they would be tolerated, so long as
they could avoid directly competition with the dogs’ interests (as the city was
a big place, a vast metropolis, sprawling, a place where people wasted food
with abandon, and it was there literally for the taking, rich pickings able to
sustain a huge population of scavengers).
They had thought they could be
absorbed into the city’s dystopian eco-system, and after a time they would
easily be able to evade attention of the more aggressive animals that lived off
of the waste. They had been wrong to
think this.
Even if they had had the breath, there was no point
discussing the inadequacy of their hiding place. It was a blind alley. Walls that could not be scaled even by a fit
fox. They had left not just a scent but
a trail of blood that any hunting creature could follow with ease. The blood, tasted in nostrils, would increase
the frenzy of the dogs of the dogs as they closed in for the kill – that, and
the vengeance they would require for their fallen comrade – the one that R had
killed.
The baying was raucously louder now. The ugly hate in individual voices could be
discerned. And it was getting louder still. The allotting of death. R had been hunched, he now struggled to his
feet. They stood side by side, looking
at nothing, and neither tried to speak again.
