Doglands by Tim Willocks Read Free Book Online

moment sleep was all Furgul wanted.
    The green truck started to rumble and move. Furgul fell into a snooze on the soft leather seat. He had a horrid dream and woke up and it had gone dark. The green truck was speeding along. Patches of artificial light flashed by outside the windows. Furgul wanted to look out the windows and see more, but he was too weak and the blanket was too tight. After a while the truck slowed down and stopped, and the Fisherman switched off the rumbling. He picked Furgul up in his blanket and carried him out.
    They walked across a small black field that had no grass and which smelled of bitter smoke. There were lots of other cars, and Furgul realized that this was a parking lot, like the one Keeva had described at the racetrack. The Fishermancarried him through a door into a room full of harsh bright lights. Furgul had never been inside a room before, and it frightened him. He felt better when he saw that there were other dogs here, of different breeds, each with a master or a mistress. The Fisherman talked to a man in a white coat behind a counter. Furgul couldn’t tell what they were saying, but he could hear the talk of the other dogs.
    “That poor little mutt’s in bad shape,” said one dog.
    “I wonder what happened,” said another.
    “Must have been up to some mischief,” said a third. “He’s been shot.”
    “If you ask me,” growled the second, “it doesn’t look like he’ll make it.”
    The man in the white coat took Furgul from the Fisherman and carried him into a second room where the lights were even brighter. Furgul guessed that this man was the Vet. The Vet unwrapped the blanket and laid him on a shiny metal table. Then he poked and squeezed Furgul all over. It hurt, badly, but Furgul was too exhausted even to yelp.
    “Tut, tut, tut,” said the Vet. “Worry, worry, worry.”
    The Vet went away. Furgul started to shiver again. Then the Vet came back. In his hand he held a little plastic cylinder. In the end of the cylinder was a sharp, thin, gleaming thread of steel. Furgul felt a sharp jab, like the hook that had gone into his neck. He tried to get up from the table, but he couldn’t move. Then his eyes closed, even though he didn’t want them to, and everything went black.
    • • •
    Furgul came around to find himself standing in the first bright room again. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten there. His brain was all fuzzy and foggy and blurred, and so was his eyesight. He could hear the other dogs woofling, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. His legs felt weak. His haunches ached. Yet he could feel that the buckshots had gone. All he really wanted to do was lie down and go back to sleep.
    The Fisherman bent down and smiled at him. He didn’t seem so concerned anymore. He picked Furgul up and carried him back to the green truck. Furgul was happy to curl up on the soft leather seat, where he went to the land in his head where dogs made dreams.
    After that everything seemed like he had made it in a dream. There was more rumbling and more driving through the night. The Fisherman took him inside a house that was full of strange smells, many of them wonderful. There was a woman there. When she saw Furgul, she glared at the Fisherman and started ranting.
    “Rant, rant, rant!” she said.
    The Fisherman waved his hands as he tried to explain himself. Furgul thought he seemed a bit scared of the woman. Eventually the woman patted Furgul on his head. She cooed with pity when she saw his wounds. Then she put something in his mouth. Furgul crunched it upand swallowed. Whatever it was, it was delicious.
    Perhaps it really was all a dream.
    Finally a dog wandered into the room. He was a bulldog, and his belly was so big it almost scraped along the ground. He sniffed around Furgul, and the woman wagged her finger. The bulldog shrugged and lay down next to Furgul. Then he looked at him.
    “Hello, mate,” he said. “My name’s Kinnear.”
    To Furgul that