Dog Boy (32 page)

Everyone was now lying in the bower. Black Dog still smelled terrible but they were getting used to it, and they could all smell themselves on him again.

Still, none of them could settle. Something had invaded their lair with Black Dog’s strange smells and nothing felt safe. It was near midnight. Romochka suddenly jumped up. They would go to Laurentia’s and have a big hot feed. He hadn’t been on the streets for ages, and Mamochka was hungry. It would be good to get out. They all followed. Black Dog was too weak to carry him, so Romochka had to cross the allotment on foot.

 

The city seemed as safe as it had been many seasons before. They encountered no troubles, but they ate quickly at the Roma, hurried on by Romochka. He hadn’t settled—if anything he felt worse. This was a bad idea. He hovered near Black Dog, unsure what to do. Everyone was heading home, belly full, but he knew clearly now that above all they couldn’t go back home with Black Dog. He wasn’t completely sure why, but somehow Dmitry had done something to Black Dog. First Puppy, now Black Dog. He reached over and felt the lump again. It was a little swollen from his attentions. Black Dog growled.

The militzia would find them. It was certain that the militzia would find them. He remembered, dizzy with foreboding, that Dmitry had had no doubt. Romochka’s heart was pounding and Mamochka eyed him strangely, jumpy too now, as if she could hear the beat and smell what he was fearing. He would have to be quick. Black Dog would fight and would hurt him. He tried to calm himself and Mamochka and the now uneasy Black Dog but he couldn’t.

He couldn’t wait any longer. They were in a long dark alley. He tried to reach and touch the disc, but Black Dog knew his touch was not loving and snarled at him. He trotted hunting-quiet, stilling his heart for the moment. He pictured the disc and the little wound to the side of it.
Now
.

He leapt with all his strength and speed. He ripped at the thick hair with his hands, raising and parting it, and he sank his teeth deep into the wound, feeling his jaws clamp all the way round the disc. Black Dog spun savagely, raking Romochka’s head with his teeth. Romochka had turned his thick hair that way, hoping to fill those huge jaws, but he still felt his scalp part. He held on with hand and jaws as Black Dog scrabbled and twisted for a better grip. Romochka tucked his elbows in and held on. In a second Black Dog would twist and whip round the other way and bite into his face. His mouth was full of blood. He could feel the disc coming away. He was vaguely aware that the others hadn’t attacked him. Nor had they attacked Black Dog. Black Dog was up and turning hunting-kill quick. Then the disc was his, and he rolled off in a ball, guarding his face and belly with his back and hair.

Black Dog stood over him snarling, bewildered. Romochka could feel Black Sister behind him, tense, growling too. He thought for a moment that he would need Mamochka to help him fight the two of them, but Black Sister did nothing.

Romochka whipped round and stood up over Black Dog. He growled a low, reassuring warning: gentle, warm—speech for a puppy who has not understood. He spat the blood from his mouth and the disc into his hand. He held it out to Black Dog to sniff. The others all came up to sniff the alien thing sliding in Black Dog’s blood. Romochka growled out the danger of it, long and low. Then he threw it far from them and turned to run home. Black Dog fell in behind him.

Romochka was at peace. Mamochka would clean his bleeding scalp. He would lick Black Dog’s wound clean and hold Black Dog tight and all would be well.

 

Mamochka pupped in the pre-dawn. Romochka alone lay with her, stroking her, feeling the mysterious pressures and currents ripple through her body. Not even Black Dog was allowed near. Romochka received with her each slick, squirming sac, helping her part the skein to find the blind mewling baby inside. He helped her clean them in turn. Mamochka’s sage eyes shone in the gloom, and Romochka helped each of the four cleaned newborns to their first milk. He sat on his haunches staring down at his exhausted mother and the new babies. He was filled with a vast calm. The raw flesh smell was sweeter and stranger than food, mingled as it was with Mamochka’s unique scent and the dribbled sticky-sweet first milk. Everything depended on him, and he could be, and do, anything at all that might be needed. He stroked Mamochka’s sunken flank, his cheeks wet with tears as mysterious as the glistening, struggling sacs of life she had pushed from her body.

Before when the clan had small pups, he had always considered Mamochka no fun and had tolerated and despised the little ones themselves for weeks following their birth. This time Mamochka fascinated him, and he noted every small change in the puppies. He felt truly grown up, even feeling, as he once had, that he owned these creatures, the grown and the new, his mother and his brothers and sisters and all her children; but this time it was different, because he also felt that they owned him. All of him, to the very last gristle of his strength and intelligence; and they had a right to demand of him sustenance and safety for every breath they took.

For a week and a half, Romochka stayed close to home and stole food for Mamochka from the army of dumpsters that had now crept into the neighbourhood. He watched her become easy with the pups sleeping alone, and become proud when the others sniffed and licked them. The rituals of greeting began to encompass them too. Romochka was there when the biggest opened his bleary eyes for the first time.

A full moon hangs high over the cold city. Howl of dog, siren, swell and ebb of mingled engines, car horn, squealing tyres, backfire, gunshot. Moonlight washes everything, covering and revealing. The city is dressed with wide swathes of cold light and deep velvet shadows. The air promises frost and numbs fingertips and noses. The gaps between buildings are stark bars of light. The gaps between trees invite. People roam for as long as they can stand the cold, their thoughts open to
what if…
Dogs lope; their eyes glisten. Nothing sleeps. On such a night, for human and animal, anything could happen.

Romochka is dangling his legs over the edge of the cupola above the lair. He has seen few such nights in his four years as a dog. Romochka breathes in the cold air of the magnificent city. He sighs. He misses Laurentia, Pievitza, Natalya. He misses human company. He yips for the dogs, nagging Mamochka to leave the sated, sleeping puppies. They all head for town.

Laurentia looked pale and unhappy. She handed Romochka the bowls in silence. He placed them on the ground in the alley in front of Mamochka and then signed everyone out of the shadows. Laurentia handed him his meatballs and spaghetti, and stood back in the shadowed doorway, face averted. She wasn’t singing. Something was wrong. He started to eat but with a bad feeling in his chest, in his stomach. All over his skin. He glanced up. Tears were rolling down Laurentia’s cheeks. His neck hair stood on end.

‘I am sorry,
bello
. So sorry. The militzia…they give me big trouble.’

He stopped chewing, his mouth half filled and trailing spaghetti, and stared at Laurentia. His pulse picked up. She was sobbing, now, in heaving, messy gusts. He heard a strange, soft thud behind him and turned.

Mamochka had fallen.

His bowl dropped to the ground and smashed.

 

He is at Mamochka’s side, on his knees. Everything is silent, except his pounding heart. Mamochka shaking and crying through clenched teeth, his arms around her neck, his mouth open, but he cannot hear himself. Her faint whimper comes from far away, up in the sky. He holds her chest to his chest and lifts his eyes unwillingly to the others.

The whole world slows—one beat, then the next, then the next, measuring everything. The beats rock him, slow, slower, Golden Bitch staggers, tries to run, falls. Black Dog almost reaches him and Mamochka, tumbles, begging, slow, slower, his bewildered eyes fix on Romochka’s face. White Sister heaves, stumbles…Grey Brother, Little Gold, Little Patch each…crash…slow, slower. Black Sister, eyes intent, staggers forward, falls, against his thigh. The world is filled with whispers. Their voices all leaving him in sighs, silent yelps…Slow… slower. Their coats, black, grey, gold, white, shine in the streetlamps and moonlight. Their beauty is unbearable. Their eyes glitter. They blink at him, asking, asking.

He is losing them all.

Romochka’s heart burns in his chest and throat; he is crying unawares. Slow…slower…Slow…slower…

…Still.

Mamochka is dead in his arms. A frightening smell seeps from her in a last slow rush.

Militzia, like a nightmare, like a dream, are tumbling in from the corners of his mind. He closes his eyes and begins to slow-lick Mamochka’s dead face.

‘Get him off! Get him off! He might get some of it in his mouth!’

He is wrenched off by many hands. He waits, feeling deep for his upwelling rage, feeling for his strength. He hangs limp for seconds, like a meek human child, like Puppy, then he explodes like a cat with all the fighting strength that he has in him.

‘His name is Romochka,’ Dmitry shouted, pushing through the throng of militzia, searching desperately for Major Cherniak. Natalya was just behind him, and he reached for her hand.

Dmitry had their attention and lowered his voice.

‘He can talk; please stop barking at him. The famous dogboy Marko, who was in my care at the Makarenko Children’s Centre, was his brother.’ He no longer had much clout anywhere on the subject of Marko, so this was a gamble. Militzia also were a problem: they despised the centre, he knew, and tended largely to the view that street children were the larval stage of killers and drug lords. But he had to keep Romochka out of the internats somehow. And he had to fulfil his promise to himself and Natalya.

The young officer who had been barking looked sheepish. Dmitry squeezed Natalya’s hand tightly, and pitched his voice to carry over the din Romochka was now making in the back of the van. ‘I am Dr Dmitry Pavlovich Pastushenko. I am to foster him. He knows me.’

The militzia were hovering, looking haggard. Destroying strays was more accepted these days, especially since the Sokolniki rabies case, but many of them were still quite squeamish about killing dogs. Then that Italian cook had shamed them, sobbing like that over the corpses. But you can’t have feral dogs terrorising the district and you can’t have homeless kids becoming canine. And now that they had the dogboy wreaking havoc on the interior of the cage vehicle, they were unsure what to do next.

‘He’s like a wild beast,’ an officer holding a bleeding arm said doubtfully.

‘He knows me,’ Dmitry insisted, although the noise now coming from the van shook his confidence. Finally, he found Major Cherniak, who looked relieved to see him. ‘You can take him to the secure section at the centre to begin with, but I expect to transfer him to my home once he calms down and has had some health checks.’ He leaned in close and murmured. ‘Don’t panic anyone, Major, but everyone who has been bitten must go immediately to Emergency for rabies immunoglobulin and a course of vaccinations, just to be safe.’