CHERUB: Man vs Beast (16 page)

Lauren woke with a start from a dream she instantly forgot. The TV was off, Miranda and Adelaide had left the room, but she could hear conversation down the hallway.

She hoped she hadn’t slept through all the excitement as she slipped her trainers on and rushed through to the kitchen. There were six people sat or standing around the dining table, keeping themselves awake with mugs of coffee.

The new arrivals were a middle-aged couple called Phyllis and Ken, a student called Jay who was Adelaide’s boyfriend, and an elderly man whose leather bag made him instantly recognisable as a medic, in this case a vet.

‘Ahh, here she is,’ Miranda said.

‘What did I miss?’ Lauren asked anxiously. ‘You didn’t let me sleep through anything did you?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Miranda smiled. ‘Lou made a call about half an hour ago. Security was featherweight; they managed to get in and out of the kennels without any trouble. They should be here in ten to fifteen minutes. The only thing is, we’ve got seventy-three beagle pups to deal with.’

‘How many were we expecting?’ Lauren asked.

‘Thirty or forty,’ Miranda replied. ‘It’s a good job you came. We’re really going to have our work cut out getting that number of dogs cleaned up and shipped off to the sanctuaries by sun-up.’

‘Lou’s wife and sister are coming over to lend a hand,’ Adelaide added. ‘But they won’t get here for at least another hour.’

All hell broke loose when the two vehicles arrived – Ryan and Anna in a seven-ton truck and Lou in the Vauxhall Astra. It was pitch black, so Lou pointed his car towards the truck and left the headlamps burning so that they had light to work in.

Lauren and the others donned breathing masks and thick rubber gloves, as Anna pushed up the steel shutter at the rear of the truck. The wave of putrid air was beyond anything Lauren imagined possible. She ripped off her mask and staggered forwards to vomit at the edge of the driveway. Phyllis had exactly the same reaction, and several others were gagging.

‘Are you OK?’ Miranda asked gently, as she rubbed Lauren’s back. ‘Do you want me to get you some water?’

‘Help the dogs,’ Lauren gasped as she staggered towards the house. ‘I’ll be OK.’

She ran into the kitchen and quickly swished her mouth out with water. She felt queasy, but was determined to get back out there and show that she could be of some use.

The puppies had been placed on the floor of the truck in cardboard pet carriers. Each was designed for one small dog, but the haul of pups had been beyond expectations and the rescuers had resorted to putting two dogs into some of them.

Braving the appalling smell, Lauren grabbed two boxes that Anna handed down from inside the truck. As she ran around to the stables behind the house, one box was alive with the sound of two frightened pups scratching at their enclosure, while a single pup cowered at the rear of the other.

Each stable had a tap rigged up with its own supply of cold water. The only source of hot ran down a long hose from the kitchen and Adelaide had asked everyone to use it sparingly because the tank wouldn’t last for ever.

Lauren walked into an empty stable. She put the two dog carriers on the stone floor and flipped on the light, revealing a trestle table with three bowls on it. She’d been concerned about the quiet pup and wanted to deal with it first, but as soon as she put the boxes down a riot broke out between the other two and Lauren could see the dogs scrapping through the air holes.

She wasn’t used to dealing with animals, so her heart raced as she popped the cardboard box open and – taking pains not to inhale the smell in case it made her sick again – pulled out a skinny, wriggling object no bigger than a guinea pig. The little dog twisted and yapped as her gloves tightened around its waist.

Lauren wanted to cry when she saw the state of the little thing. Its eyes were bright, but its brown and white coat was stained yellow and its fur was matted with dried out smears of excrement.

‘Poor baby,’ Lauren choked, but then she almost dropped the frightened dog as it blasted a warm jet of pee down her arm. She hurried forwards and plonked it in the first empty bowl, as Phyllis came into the room holding the hot-water hose.

‘Do you need a squirt?’

‘I guess I do,’ Lauren said, smiling uneasily.

Phyllis had vomited at the same time as Lauren, but apparently didn’t possess the same determination to get over it and still looked green. She held her breath as she ran warm water into the second and third bowls.

Meanwhile, Lauren grabbed the cold hose off the floor and turned on the tap. She felt really mean as she began dribbling the cold water into the first bowl and the little dog yipped as it lapped against its paws.

It reared up on the side of the bowl and tried scrambling over the side, forcing Lauren to pin the animal gently in the middle of the bowl before spraying its coat with the cold water. The little dog squealed miserably as Lauren hosed the filth out of its coat.

‘I know it’s not nice,’ she said soothingly. ‘But you’ll feel better when we’ve finished and we’ll find you a nice new home.’

‘Brilliant, you’ve started already,’ Ryan said, pulling on his gloves as he stepped inside behind her. ‘I tell you what, I’ll take over at the dirty end and you can deal with the disinfectant and the final rinse.’

Lauren handed Ryan the hose and watched as he demonstrated a technique based upon years of rescuing laboratory animals.

‘Start at the head and move your hands down the body in smooth strokes,’ he explained. ‘Always move from head to tail; that way you’re less likely to get something unpleasant in its eyes or mouth.’

While Ryan expertly massaged out the filth and snipped out clumps of hopelessly matted fur with a pair of scissors, Lauren poured a mixture of disinfectant and dog shampoo into the second bowl.

‘Little dogs
always
drink the bath-water and go potty when they get the taste on their tongue,’ Ryan said. ‘So prepare to get wet.’

Sure enough, as soon as Lauren plopped the shivering dog into the warm, foamy water it started going berserk. She squirted shampoo directly on to the dog’s coat and worked it into a lather. After a minute or so, the poor thing had yapped itself into a state of complete exhaustion and by the time she lifted it into the third bowl to rinse the shampoo out of its coat, the panting dog had resigned itself to being washed.

After a squirt of deodorant, a blast of flea powder and a quick towelling off, Lauren held the bundle out for Ryan, who was already hosing the next pup in line.

‘It actually looks like a dog now,’ she said, grinning helplessly at the sour-faced lump in her hands.

‘OK,’ Ryan nodded. ‘Well done. Take him through to the vet in stable number two, and then get back here.’

‘Come on doggy,’ Lauren smiled, as she headed out of the stable and past the cleaning operations going on next door. ‘The big man’s probably going to stick a needle in your bum, but after that, we’ve got a stable laid out with water and nice bowls of vegetarian dog food. And you’ll be able to make friends with the other puppies.’

*

Ninety minutes later, Lauren delivered her eleventh damp puppy to the vet. He seemed like a nice old chap, but he had beagle pups coming at him from four different cleaning stations and no time for chit-chat.

As Lauren headed back towards Ryan in the other stable, Miranda stepped in front of her.

‘You look worn out,’ she said. ‘Phyllis is making hot drinks in the kitchen. Why don’t you take a ten-minute break?’

‘What about Ryan?’ Lauren asked.

‘I’ll help him out, then he can go for a break when you come back.’

Lauren became acutely aware of the mess she was in as she stepped into the kitchen. Her jeans and T-shirt were spattered with soap suds, filthy brown water and the residue from several dogs peeing and one throwing up. She’d gradually got used to the foul odours, but guessed that she smelled worse than she’d ever done in her whole life, easily surpassing the five-day wilderness training exercise during CHERUB basic training.

The previously immaculate kitchen floor swam with brown water.

‘Sit yourself down,’ Phyllis said. ‘Don’t worry about the state of the place; I’ll nuke it with bleach once all the dogs are cleaned. What would you like to drink? Tea, coffee, soy-milk cocoa?’

‘Cocoa,’ Lauren smiled, as she sat at the table and got the horrible itchy feeling of wet knickers sticking to her bum.

By the time the microwave heating the cocoa pinged, Lauren had pulled off her breathing mask and gloves, revealing a set of shrivelled fingertips. At the opposite end of the eight-seat dining table, Adelaide worked frantically at a beefy laptop which had two camcorders and a jog-shuttle controller plugged into its rear ports.

‘Want to see yourself at work?’ Adelaide asked.

Lauren carried her steaming mug around the table and looked at the biggest laptop screen she’d ever seen. It was divided into a row of video feeds at the top, with a mass of timelines, sound waves and buttons beneath.

‘What is that?’ Lauren asked.

‘Adobe Premiere, video editing software,’ Adelaide explained. ‘I’m putting together a press pack. We’ve already e-mailed the BBC and all the other big media organisations with a batch of still photographs we took inside the kennels. Now I’m editing together a ten-minute film that we can upload to the Zebra Alliance website.’

While Miranda spoke, she’d flipped the screen to some video footage taken inside the stable. It showed Lauren from the back, frantically scrubbing one of the pups before transferring it from the disinfectant bowl into the final rinse.

‘Cool,’ Lauren said. ‘I didn’t see you filming.’

Miranda smiled. ‘You were so into it that you didn’t hear me coming up to the stable doors and I didn’t want to disturb you because the image of a young girl helping to scrub the dogs is just
perfect
.’

‘Ryan’s on parole you know, if someone recognises him
…
’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Miranda smiled. ‘I take every bit of footage and pixelate the faces. Then I destroy the original tapes and wipe the hard drives of the laptop. Just to be extra safe, the Alliance has a media lawyer who watches every video and photograph. Then he gets one of his assistants to send it to the media from a twenty-four-hour internet café, which makes it impossible to track down our location.’

‘So when will pixelated me be uploaded to the Zebra Alliance website?’

‘Less than three hours, hopefully. We’ve got magnificent footage of the filth inside the kennels. Lou even videoed a couple of puppies that had died from infected wounds in their enclosures.’

‘Poor little things,’ Lauren said sadly.

‘It’s sad that the animals were so badly treated,’ Miranda nodded. ‘But the upside is that we can notify the RSPCA and the local council as soon as their offices open. Those kennels will have their dog-breeding licence removed and be forced to shut down.’

‘Cool,’ Lauren said. ‘And I bet no other kennel will want to supply Malarek with dogs.’

Adelaide nodded. ‘If they do, they’d better keep it secret from us.’

Lauren drained her cocoa and clonked the empty mug on the table. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’d better get back out there so Ryan can take his coffee break. I think there’s less than a dozen dogs left to clean now.’

As she stepped outside, Lauren could see the sun rising behind a line of trees. She glanced back inside at the kitchen clock and was stunned to see that it was quarter to five in the morning.

‘Hey,’ Ryan said, as he gently brushed his fingertips against Lauren’s cheek to wake her up. His hairy chest was bare and he wore a set of Lou’s jeans that were several sizes too big for him.

Lauren opened her eyes and realised that she was on a sofa, squeezed up inside a Bob the Builder sleeping bag. Sunlight blazed through the curtains.

‘Anna’s making you lunch,’ Ryan said.

‘
Lunch
,’ Lauren gasped. ‘What time is it?’

‘Ten past one.’

‘Blimey. Does Zara know where we are?’

‘I’ve spoken to her,’ Ryan nodded. ‘She’s fine about last night and everything. She’s on her way down in the car to pick us up.’

As Lauren unzipped the sleeping bag and sat up, the events of the night before came flooding back. Once the last batch of dogs had been dealt with, everyone had headed into the house to clean themselves, but the hot water had run out. After a freezing cold shower, Lauren had towelled off and changed into an oversized T-shirt and shorts that belonged to Miranda.

As Lauren wandered through to the kitchen, her arms and shoulders ached from the effort of scrubbing the dogs.

‘Hello,’ Anna said brightly, moving across to the dining table and pouring Lauren a glass of orange juice. ‘How does vegan French toast sound?’

‘Sounds great,’ Lauren grinned, hitching up her massive shorts as she sat down. She looked around and noticed that everything was spotless, with no trace of the paraphernalia they’d used the night before. ‘Are all the dogs gone?’

Ryan nodded as he sat next to Lauren. ‘Lou took some, Adelaide and Miranda left with the rest.’

‘Oh,’ Lauren said, feeling sad because she would have liked a chance to see them all cleaned up and happy.

Anna’s French toast came dusted with icing sugar, strawberries and slices of melon on the side. The hot, sweet bread was exactly what Lauren felt like after the exertion of the night before.

‘I’d better be going, Ryan,’ Anna said, once she’d switched off the oven and rinsed the baking tray under the tap. ‘I’ve got to pick Cat and Polly up from school at three. Would you mind washing Lauren’s dishes and locking up? You can hand the keys back to Phyllis; she’s always up at the protest site on the weekend.’

‘No problem at all,’ Ryan nodded. ‘Don’t wait around here on our account. Zara should be here in half an hour or so.’

After eating and waving goodbye to Anna on the doorstep, Lauren found her trainers and wandered outside for some air and a final look at the stables. She felt a lump in her throat as she imagined the excited puppies sitting in the backs of cars and vans, smelling of disinfectant as they headed for sanctuary.