Matt had no choice. He had to get away. If the dogs found him, they would tear him apart. No longer caring if he was seen or not, he stumbled to his feet and began to run. His legs were as heavy as lead but desperately he forced them to carry him. The fence was still about ten metres away. Arms outstretched, he raced towards it, not wanting to look behind him. But he couldn’t stop himself. He had to know. Where were the dogs? How near were they? With a grimace, he looked back over his shoulder. And regretted it.
The first of the creatures had already halved the distance between itself and Matt, yet it didn’t seem to be moving fast. It hovered in the air between each bound, barely touching the grass before jumping up again. There was something hideous about the way it ran. A panther or a leopard closing in for the kill has a certain majesty. But the dog was deformed, lopsided, ghastly. The flesh on one of its flanks had rotted and a glistening ribcage jutted out. As if to avoid the stench of the wound, the animal had turned away, its head hanging close to its front paws. Strings of saliva trailed from its mouth. And every time its feet hit the ground, its whole body quivered, threatening to collapse in on itself.
Matt reached the fence and clawed at it with his hands, crashing his fingers against the wire. He thought he had run in a straight line, following the way he had come, but he seemed to have got it wrong. He couldn’t find the gap. He looked behind him. Two more bounds and the dogs would reach him. There was no doubt that they would tear him apart. He could almost feel their teeth tearing into him, ripping the flesh away from his bones. He had never seen anything so ferocious
… not in a zoo, not in a film, not anywhere in the real world.
Where was the gap? In blind panic he threw his whole weight against the fence, almost crying with relief as the edge buckled, revealing the jagged hole. Without hesitating he dived forward. His head and shoulders went through but this time the wire hooked into his trousers. Thrashing out with his arms, expecting to feel the jaws of the dog close on his leg at any moment, he struggled like a fish in a net. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a huge black shape plummeting towards him. He gave a last frantic heave. His jeans ripped and he fell through, rolling into a ball on the other side.
Blood oozed out of a gash in his leg, but he was safe… at least for the moment. He struggled to his feet, then staggered back as one of the dogs lunged at the fence, its mouth foaming, its teeth gnashing at the wire. The two creatures were trapped. The hole had barely been big enough for Matt to pass through and they were bigger and more awkwardly built than him. But then, even as he watched, the dogs began pounding at the earth, raking the soft soil with their claws. They weren’t going to allow the fence to stop them. They were going to burrow their way under it.
Matt fled into the wood. Low-lying branches whipped into his body. Pine needles cascaded on to his hair and into his face. He blinked, trying to keep them out of his eyes. There was nowhere to hide, no way of knowing if he had taken the right path. He was trapped in a vast grid system where every direction looked exactly the same. But the dogs had the advantage. They didn’t need to see him. They would smell him out.
Matt didn’t care where he was going. His only thought was to get away, to put as much space as he could between himself and the two dogs. How long did he have? Thirty seconds? A minute or two at the most. Then they would emerge from the ground on the other side of the fence as if rising out of a grave. They would stalk him through the wood, outrun him and rip him to shreds.
He crashed into the trunk of a tree and reeled away, spinning round. The lights from the power station were already a long way behind him, barely visible through the branches. Matt was exhausted but he couldn’t let himself rest. He needed to find a stretch of water, a river or a stream. Maybe he could throw the dogs off his scent. But there was no such thing in this artificial wood. It stretched on endlessly, with not a glimpse of water in sight.
He paused to catch his breath, his chest and throat rasping, his head pounding. At that moment a terrible baying broke through the air. It was a howl of triumph. The dogs were through the fence. Matt almost gave up. He felt a shiver of despair travel through his body. It was all-consuming. He would just stand here and wait for them to come. All he could do was hope his death would be quick.
No. He forced himself to snap out of it. He wasn’t dead yet. Gathering up his last reserves of strength, he forced himself on, desperately twisting between the trees.
Only the sudden stamping of his feet on hard concrete after the soft silence of the pine needles told him that he was out of the wood. Incredibly, he had broken out on to a road – but it wasn’t the road to Lesser Malling. It was wider and there were white markings down the centre. For a moment Matt felt relief. He was back in the modern world – a car might come. He looked left and right. Nothing. And suddenly he knew that this was the worst place for him to be. He was out in the open, with no cover, nowhere to hide from the dogs.
Where could he go? The strip of concrete divided two worlds. Behind him was the wood. Ahead was some sort of moorland, wild and open. He remembered what he had been thinking. A river or a stream. Matt crossed the road and plunged into the wild grass. He could tell at once that the ground was damp. He could feel it, soft and sticky under his feet. He ran on and as he ran he became aware that the ground was getting wetter. Cold water slid over his trainers and on to his feet.
He was only conscious of the danger when it was too late. He staggered to a halt and at that same moment the ground gave way altogether and he found himself being sucked down, unable to move.
A bog. He had blundered right into it.
Matt screamed. He was being pulled under incredibly fast. He felt mud and slime rising up over his knees and thighs, then his waist. He flailed about but the effort only speeded things up. The bog gripped him around his stomach and he could already imagine what was about to happen next, during the last, horrific moments of his life. The bog would rise over his face and he would give one last scream. But there would be no sound. He would be silenced for ever as stinking mud rushed into his mouth and down his throat.
Matt forced himself to stay calm. He knew that struggling would only make the end come faster. He almost smiled. At least he had cheated the dogs. He had found the one place where they could never reach him. And if he had to die, perhaps it would be better to go this way.
He relaxed and in that instant he thought he could smell something
… very close and yet distant. The smell of burning. The bonfire? No, that was too far away. Could there be someone else out there on the moor? His hopes were raised, only to be dashed again. There was no one there. The smell disappeared. It had been just his imagination.
The bog bubbled around him and rose to his armpits. Its touch was cold, final. A stench of mud and rotting leaves reached his nostrils. Matt closed his eyes and waited for the end. But now the bog was toying with him, creeping upwards centimetre by centimetre, lovingly drawing him into its embrace.
The beam of light hit him before he even heard the noise of the engine. Out of nowhere a car had appeared. It had veered off the road and now it was parked right on the edge of the bog. A man got out, barely visible behind the glare of the headlamps.
“Don’t move!” a voice commanded. “I’ve got a rope.”
But the bog, as if afraid it was going to lose its victim, tightened its hold. Greedily it clung to Matt, its hands spreading over his shoulders, pushing him down.