Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (20 page)

Steve woke from his light doze when Danyl poked his head through the gap in the bathroom floor and said, ‘The sitstatrep is that we're getting out of here.'

Steve was still in the bath. ‘Excellent,' he said. ‘How?'

‘With this.' He held up his hand. A band of steel gleamed in the sunlight.

Steve grasped. ‘Lightbringer! Where was it?'

‘On the floor downstairs, by the main door.'

Steve reached for his crowbar, then caught himself. ‘But no crowbar can cut through a handcuff,' he protested. ‘Not even Lightbringer.'

‘We don't need to cut through the handcuff. The bath you're chained to is fixed to the tiles beneath it. So we'll use this'—he swung Lightbringer like a golf club; it made a whooshing sound as it cut through the air—‘to smash those tiles, then we slide the bath across the floor and drop it through the gap. Once we're downstairs we'll have to carry the bath out the front door, but if we run we might make it to the side of the building without being seen. Once we're there we can dash into the trees and make it to the road, somehow. Once we're away from Threshold we'll find a way to cut you free.'

Steve scratched at the stubble on his head. He contemplated the collapsed bathroom floor. ‘You want to drop the bath through there? Won't that be dangerous?'

‘Not really. Oh, wait. You mean dangerous for you?'

Steve nodded.

‘I guess so, yeah. Very. But we can pad the bath with blankets and lay mattresses on the floor where you'll land. That might reduce the risk of death or serious injury.'

‘What about the bathroom door? Why don't we just force it open with the crowbar?'

‘The bath is too wide. It'll never fit through.'

Steve drummed his fingers on the rim of the bath, trying to think of a way to improve the escape plan by somehow transferring the risk of injury away from himself and onto Danyl. Getting hold of a blowtorch or some bolt-cutters was still the best option. He'd have to manipulate Danyl into going out and searching the rest of Threshold.

But then Steve looked at his poor, unfortunate friend and felt a sense of—not shame, exactly, because Steve didn't believe in the evolutionary utility of shame or guilt; no, what he felt was pity. Danyl had nothing. He'd lost his girlfriend, his book. Even his sanity. All he had left was Steve's friendship—and Steve, who had everything, was plotting to send him into great danger. Gorgon was a monster. She'd deliberately chained Steve to the bathtub and flooded the room, trying to drown him. Danyl was no match for her. What was he thinking?

All of these thoughts flashed through Steve's mind, and he smiled at Danyl and said, ‘It's an excellent plan. Proceed.'

Things went well. At first. Danyl smashed the tiles fixing the bath in place then Steve lay inside it as he slid the tub down the sloping floor. It picked up speed, but midway to the gap Steve lost confidence in the finer details of the plan.

‘This is madness,' he screamed. ‘We have to find another way.' But the tiles were slick and the bath was heavy. It sped onwards while Danyl tried to grab it and Steve tugged at his handcuffed leg, howling. The bath hurtled towards the jagged gap in the floor and came to a shuddering halt when the rim slammed into the base of the wall. Steve fell back and Danyl breathed a sigh of relief just as the buckled and waterlogged floor gave way with a series of sickeningly loud cracks, collapsing under the weight of the bath, which see-sawed for a few seconds then pitched forward and fell.

The impact on the floor below made a sound like a church bell: a deep, pure, solemn note that hung in the air. Danyl peered through the gap, coughing and waving away the clouds of plaster and dust, to see the bath intact and a spiderweb of cracks radiating out from it. Steve lay in the bath, his arms crossed over his chest. When he saw Danyl he smiled and gave a thumbs up.

The best way to carry the bath, Steve explained, once Danyl climbed down and joined him, was to set it on its side. That way Steve's handcuffed leg could reach the ground and he could stand and walk. Then they could just slide the bath along the floor to the front door. ‘Old-school style.'

They chatted as they worked. Steve told Danyl about Gorgon's operation, and he smiled patiently as Danyl recounted his own feeble efforts to understand what was happening in the valley. They slid from the kitchen to the entrance hall, opened the front door a crack and peered through it.

Outside was a muddy slope dotted with weeds. To their left was a brief, slippery dash along the side of the house. Their escape route lay around the corner. Directly ahead of them was the driveway zigzagging back and forth across the incline, and beyond that lay a cluster of townhouses. There were at least thirty Cartographers moving about, some of them singly, most in groups.

But they still had a chance. A group of a dozen people were carrying boxes past their house, heading downhill. They'd have their backs to Danyl and Steve, and they'd block anyone else on the hillside from seeing them. Hopefully. ‘We'll have to lift the bath off the ground,' Danyl said. ‘If we drag it we'll make too much noise, and take too long.'

‘Affirmative,' Steve whispered back. ‘Get ready.'

They squatted down and gripped the bath, waiting for the perfect moment. The Cartographers shuffled down the driveway; when they were in position Steve hissed, ‘Go!'

They hurried through the door, carrying the bath between them, gritting their teeth under its awkward weight. They turned left and slipped their way across the slope. Steve expected to hear a shout ring out at any second. All it would take was one person to glimpse them and get suspicious about a bathtub floating across the hill and they'd be caught.

But the shout never came. They reached the corner and steered the bath around it, then they were out of sight behind the house. They sank to their knees, grinning and gasping for breath.

‘We made it.' Steve gripped Danyl's shoulder. ‘You did well back there buddy. Much better than the shock troops I've been working with. Amateurs. Imbeciles.'

‘Thanks. We're still not free though. We should—'

‘Oh, we're as good as free. We did it. Mostly me, but you helped and I won't forget that. Nothing can stop us. We're a team.' Steve held out his hand and Danyl shook it, and that's when the dog attacked them.

She came at them from downwind, with the afternoon sun behind her. She ran with an easy loping gait. She did not bark.

There were two males. They'd emerged from one of the houses which Dog was Not Allowed Inside. They carried a large bath and one of them was chained to it. They hobbled towards the trees, stopping and resting every few steps. They stank of sweat and weakness and shame.

The male chained to the bath was being punished for something, Dog decided, and the other one must be his master: his pack leader. She would take the master first. She would sink her teeth into the soft, weak flesh of his leg, laming him, and then do the same to his underling, and then she would leap around them, shouting and snarling while they cowered and cried and submitted to her strength, and then Dog's own pack leader would come and see her works and praise her and know that Dog was loyal and brave, and kept the pack leader safe. Dog's heart filled with joy, and she ran faster, head down and ears flat.

Now the males saw her. They picked up the bath and ran, but made it only a few steps before they dropped the bath and fell over. They yelled at each other and the enemy pack leader leaped to his feet and tried to run for the trees, abandoning his inferior, but the other male grabbed his feet and brought his master crashing to the ground. Now they howled at each other and the stink of their terror reached her, carried on the breeze, and intensified Dog's joy. As she sprinted across the last stretch of open ground, she vowed:
I will make you proud of me, pack leader
. She opened her mouth and locked her eyes on the enemy pack leader's thick, flabby calves.

But what were they doing? They'd stopped howling. They were lying down on the ground together. Were they mating? Or prostrating, submitting themselves to Dog? Fools! Did they think she would spare them? She growled with joy; her mouth flooded with drool.

They were doing something with the bath: scratching at it, pushing it. And now it lifted and Dog saw their cowardly plan. She put on an extra burst of speed and barked at them, warning them to stand their ground and fight, but they disobeyed and crawled inside the bath then tipped it down again just as she reached it.

She circled it, snarling and shouting, furious at her enemies' cowardice but also at herself. She pushed at the bath with her snout, but it was solid, impregnable. They were safe inside. She circled it, looking for an opening, listening to the cowardly babble of their voices.

‘Great. We're trapped inside again.'

‘We're outside, Steve. We're just inside the bath.'

‘That's what I said. We're inside.'

‘But the bath is outside.'

‘The house was outside. Does that mean that when we were inside the house we were really outside?'

‘That's stupid.'

‘Stupid? You wouldn't dare talk to me like that if my shock troops were here. Why, they'd—' The underling broke off and screamed. Dog had dug a small hole in the mud beneath the bath and forced her snout through it, and now she growled and snapped at his pink terrified face. Both males recoiled, knocking the bath backwards off the hole.

‘Get off me!'

‘Stop kicking, Steve. Calm down. Listen. We don't have long. That creature will dig its way in, or someone will hear it barking and find us. We need to think our way out of this.'

‘You're right. What should we do?'

‘We should come up with a plan.'

‘Your plan is that we come up with a plan?'

‘Hush, Steve. I'm trying to think.'

‘Hush? Hush? How dare you.'

Dog ignored them. She had problems of her own. Should she go and get help? There were dozens of people on the other side of the house, and they would come running if she barked loud enough. But then they would take these enemies to the pack leader. Dog wanted the joy and ecstasy of delivering these captives herself: laying them before the pack leader in a bloody, defeated pile.

She sat back on her haunches and panted a little. This sometimes helped her think. Should she go and find the pack leader? She would be in her house at the top of the hill. Dog was not allowed inside this house either, but she could run up to it and bark outside. Maybe even rest her forelegs on the floor inside the door if it was open? Then the pack leader would come and follow her down and see that she'd trapped these enemies and vigorously scratch her ears. But what if they returned to find the enemies gone? No, she'd have to deal with these disgusting creatures herself.

And then Dog broke off her thoughts and leapt to her feet. The males were doing something. They'd been whispering to each other; now the bath lifted an inch or two off the ground. Dog trotted towards it. It moved! She leapt back. She growled as it slowly crawled across the muddy ground, back towards the house. It rounded the corner and headed for the front door.

So that was their plan! They knew Dog wasn't allowed inside the House and they thought they'd be safe if they made it back inside. Well, they were wrong about that. Why, she would follow them right in and drag them out again! And they had to reach the House first. She pushed her snout at the gap below the bath and tried to push it up to tip it over. She snarled as the stench of fear and weakness grew stronger, and her enemies howled and babbled and the bath moved even faster. But it was too heavy for her to lift with her snout, and she withdrew and danced away again, snuffling at the trail of scent they left behind. Dog could smell the dye in their clothes, the glue in their shoes, the blood in their veins. She could smell their sour bladders and the yeasty contents of their bowels and, in the sweat that now soaked their backs, the components of their last meal. And she could smell the Old Smell. The complex and frightening smell that she had never smelt before she came to this valley.

Dog had arrived in Te Aro ten winters ago. Her memory of life before that was vague: she remembered vast planes of concrete, loud noises that made her bristle and whimper, terrible loneliness. How much happier she was at her new home! She loved the cool shade beneath the trees, the fields of long grass and hidden rabbits, the screams of occasional trespassers when Dog fell upon them, her teeth flashing in the sun. But she didn't like the Old Smell. How to describe it? Salty and metallic, half-organic, very very old. It came from the old house on top of the hill but it also bubbled up from flooded rabbit warrens when it rained in the spring, and it was strongest outside the culvert at the bottom of the hill, which led into the tunnels beneath the valley.

Dog's job was to protect the pack leader's territory. Dog Was Not Allowed inside the crumbling old buildings staggered up the hillside, or inside the tunnel, or inside the pack leader's house at the top of the slope. She patrolled the territory during the day, and at night she greeted the pack leader when she emerged from the tunnel and escorted her up the hillside to her house.

At first the door to this house was reached by a flight of rotting steps, but shortly after Dog arrived, the pack leader ordered her underlings to tear them down.

The underlings came from the tunnel: a pale, weak-limbed gaggle. They replaced the steps with a scaffolding made of vertical steel poles and horizontal wooden planks. The planks formed a makeshift stairway which the pack leader climbed every evening. Dog would scramble up behind her.

Then the pack leader cooked dinner in the kitchen while Dog waited at the door. Sometimes putting one foot inside the hall, sometimes snuffling. Not trying to be obtrusive, just letting the pack leader know she was still there. Finally the pack leader would finish cooking and would sit on the scaffolding next to Dog, swinging her legs over the side and letting Dog eat bacon or chops or potatoes off her plate.

When the plate was licked clean, Dog rested her muzzle on the pack leader's knee and sniffed her extensively. She smelled of tunnels and darkness, and books, but beyond that she smelled of the old house and the hill where Dog lived.

The pack leader had been a pup here. She'd lived here a long time, far longer than Dog's lifetime. She owned the territory, and every night Dog communicated her fealty with a sequence of snout-pushes and eye-rolls. The pack leader understood and scratched Dog's ears. Then she went inside and slept in her bedroom while Dog slept in the small shelter at the end of the scaffolding, in the snug warmth of her blanket.

For many seasons their days were the same. Then, at the end of last summer, things changed.

It was a baking hot day. Dog spent the morning investigating the mouse and butterfly situation in the lower meadow, then she retreated to the cool shade of a beech tree by the driveway. She dozed—it was hours before the pack leader would return—but woke when she heard voices.

It was a man and a woman. Dog watched as they climbed over the fence. They were wearing backpacks and carrying bags filled with groceries. The wind carried their scents: the usual medley of human smells, but also the Old Smell. Dog was about to charge them, send them running, bite them if they defied her; but then she parsed out the man's scent. He smelled of this place and the house on the hill. He smelled like the pack leader. He was of her litter. Did that mean he was allowed to be here?

The woman shouted. She'd seen Dog. The man knelt and rummaged in his pack. He brought out a package of sausages, tore it open and whistled at Dog, then clicked his fingers and pointed at them.

Dog was noble and proud and fierce. When newcomers invaded her territory she would fight them or die. But this man was of the pack leader's kin; this was his territory. Also: sausages. So she trotted forward and greeted them. The man patted Dog and the woman praised Dog's beauty. Dog accepted these compliments then ate the sausages with quiet dignity. Eventually the woman said to the man, ‘Let's get out of sight.'

They set off up the driveway. Dog trotted after them.

The man carried a box filled with paper, and a briefcase. Inside the case was crushed ice. Beneath that, barely detectable to Dog's nose, were hundreds of glass vials with rubber stoppers. Inside them was a liquid that smelled of the Old Smell.

They picked one of the abandoned houses halfway up the hill. Back then the buildings were all uninhabited, boarded up, but the man and woman circled around and found a loose board hanging from a window. They piled rocks and built a stairway up to it. The man prised the board away, then he and the woman disappeared inside.

They stayed there all day. When the pack leader returned from the tunnels, Dog greeted her and indicated the presence of the newcomers via a sequence of jumps and snorts and tail motions. ‘There are two people living in one of the abandoned buildings,' Dog explained, bounding along beside the pack leader. ‘A male and a female. They gave me a sausage! The man is of your kin. I'm guessing the female is his mate although she did not carry the stink of his seed in her loins. Maybe they're going through a tough patch? I think he can do better than her. Anyway, because the male is your kin, I let them stay. Was that cool? If it wasn't, I can chase them away or take you to them, or we can just sit on the scaffolding outside your house and watch the sunset, and eat bacon. Your call.'

They sat on the scaffolding and ate bacon.

The next day the pack leader went into the tunnel as usual. Dog spent the day waiting below the window of the abandoned townhouse, her tail thumping on the dry grass, wondering if the newcomers had any more sausages. They did! The female emerged in the mid-morning, stinking of the Old Smell. She saw Dog and tossed another sausage at her. She climbed down the pile of bricks and hurried down the driveway, climbed over the gate and disappeared. She returned late in the day with another female, taller than her with ink patterns carved around her ankles, and they went up into the house and spent the night there.

And so Dog's life went on for several months and many sausages. The days grew shorter. The autumn winds blew up and the shadows of clouds raced across the fields of grass. An owl moved into a tree near the pack leader's house and defied Dog's command to move on. But the lives of the pack leader and the male and female went on much the same. Until late one afternoon.

Dog had been sleeping. There was a pile of concrete slabs in the top meadow and they soaked up the heat of the sun. Dog decided to guard these slabs. She lay upon them, her paws outstretched, the rough warmth toasty on her belly, and she dozed. She had a frustrating dream in which she chased large butterflies made of meat across a drowned meadow and her legs got stuck in the mire. She woke snarling, her footpads damp with sweat. The air was contaminated with the scent of an invader.

Dog stood and sniffed deeply. The invader was a human female. She smelled strange: very clean but contaminated in some indefinable way. Dog could tell that she'd entered the development by climbing the gate at the bottom of the hill, then she'd made her way up, searching the derelict townhouses before arriving at the building where the man and the woman slept. That's when her smell became close enough to wake Dog.

Dog sped towards the townhouse, and as she ran her nose detected movement below. The invader was heading back down the hill. She stank of blood.

The information was in the air but Dog was too excited to make sense of it. She charged down pathways, under bushes and over puddles. By the time she reached the townhouse the invader was halfway to the bottom of the hill. She was fast but Dog was faster. She could reach this invader before the invader reached the gate.

But Dog hesitated. The smell of blood flooding out from the townhouse was overpowering. It came in great drifts, mixed with urine, stress hormones, the Old Smell. Someone had been hurt; hurt badly. It was the man. The pack leader's kin. Dog concentrated and the sequence of events written in the air became clear to her. The invader had come into the townhouse and attacked the male while he slept.

Should Dog pursue the invader or go inside and help the wounded man? She could lick his face and nuzzle his fingers until he got better. Or—and now that she thought of this, she realised this was what she must do—she could alert the pack leader. Summon her and tell her everything. The pack leader would know what to do.