Brock Read online

  Eight

  They’d already found two other holes further down the bank, and now they pegged nets over them. Kenny did most of the work while the others yelled at him and told him what to do. Then they got ready to put Tina, the Jack Russell, down the main hole.

  The thing is, I knew they were doing it all wrong. They were acting like they were ferreting for rabbits. You net the holes in a rabbit warren and put a ferret down, the rabbits shit themselves and bolt out, and then you’ve got them in the nets. I didn’t know much about badgers, but I knew they weren’t like rabbits.

  “They’ll kill that dog,” I said.

  I didn’t mean to help them, but I didn’t want to see Tina get killed. She was a little menace, but she wasn’t deep-down bad like the other two dogs.

  “Shut yer trap,” Rob said, “or we’ll stick you down the bloody hole.”

  They all had another good laugh, and then Rich put Tina into the hole. Like I said, she’d been straining at her leash until then. Now she had a quick bark and a sniff and came right back out again.

  So she wasn’t that daft.

  Rob said some bad words to her and grabbed her by the scruff and shoved her in again. She tried to come out, but Rob stuck his arm right into the hole to ram her back. And then Tina was off, her little legs scurrying into the blackness.

  “This is gonna be good,” said Jezbo. He had a big wet grin on his ugly face. “Get ready by them nets.”

  Rich and Rob went and stood by the side holes. They each had a sack. I suppose they planned to put the badgers in the sack when they ran out and got tangled up in the nets. I’d seen a dead badger on the road once, and it was massive. I wouldn’t have fancied trying to wrestle it into a sack, even if it was caught in a net.

  Nine

  They were all laughing and joking to begin with, but then a noise came out of the hole. In fact, it came out of all the holes. It seemed to come out of the ground itself and well up through the soil. First there was a growl, a dog’s growl, then a sort of a hiss, I suppose, but not like a cat. It sounded like the sort of noise that would come out of a dragon or something like that. I mean something from a story, not real life.

  And then came the mixed-up sound of a fight – snarls, growls and yelps of agony.

  “Go on, get stuck in, lass,” Jezbo shouted into the main opening. It was almost sort of funny, I mean talking into a hole like that. But it wasn’t really funny, because you could imagine what was going on under the ground, and that was horrible.

  It was even more horrible when the noise stopped, and then all there was was a giant silence, like in outer space.

  “Shit,” said Jezbo.

  I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything as quiet as that sound after the fighting stopped. It was like the whole world stopped with it. There was no sound of the wind, and not even the annoying squeaking of a sparrow. Even those two mad dogs Satan and Slag stopped barking.

  Then Jezbo came out with a stream of bad words.

  Rich and Rob came back from the side holes.

  “Where’s our Tina?” Rob asked.

  “Shut up,” said Jezbo.

  That would normally be enough to set Rob-the-nutter off, but like everyone else he was afraid of Jezbo – afraid enough to keep his mad side under control. For now.

  “We’ll get a new dog,” said Rich. “A decent dog. Tina was a stupid bitch.”

  That made Jezbo and Rob laugh, but I don’t even know if Rich meant it as a joke.

  Ten

  “Right, let’s dig these buggers out,” said Jezbo. Then he pointed at Kenny. “You, get here.”

  “What for?” said Kenny. He had stopped grinning. Even he knew that something was wrong.

  “Cos I said,” Jezbo said. He thrust a spade into Kenny’s hand. “Now start digging along there.”

  Like I said, the main tunnel went along the side of the bank, so all you had to do to open up the tunnel was to dig into the bank a bit.

  Kenny wasn’t much of a digger. He just sort of poked around, which drove Jezbo mad. He shoved Kenny out of the way and called Rich and Rob over. The three of them got down to it, and we were sent off to mind the nets.

  Jezbo was manic. He hacked away with his spade like crazy, opening up the tunnel with great scraping hacks. Rich and Rob got stuck in too. Rich had the other spade, and Rob used a big stick like a kind of pick. He jabbed at the soil, and his brother scooped it away. Soon they had about three metres of the tunnel dug out.

  I suppose I could have run off with Kenny while they were digging, but I knew Jezbo would come after us and get us in the end.

  Plus there was something else.

  Something in me wanted to see how this would end up.

  I could see that there was a kind of insane energy in Jezbo. It was like he was possessed by a demon. And it was sick and it was wrong. But it was also kind of magnetic. I couldn’t have torn myself away even if I’d wanted to.

  But there was one thing I could do.

  I left Kenny by one of the holes and went to the other. As I pulled the net back with my foot, I glanced over to Jezbo and the others to make sure they weren’t watching.

  Then I stood back and waited.

  Eleven

  Badgers aren’t like rabbits. They won’t just bolt out into a net that’s waiting for them. They’ve got more brains than that.

  Jezbo and the others were working their way along the bank. There weren’t any side tunnels for them to worry about, so they were going quite fast. Soon they’d reach the badgers, and then it’d be a blood bath.

  Then I saw a flash of black and white from the tunnel nearest me.

  I don’t know why badgers have black and white noses. It’s rubbish camouflage – you see it straight away. Or maybe that’s the point – maybe badgers are such tough critters that the black and white is a sort of warning. “Mess with me and I’ll chew your face off” sort of thing.

  Any time you see anything wild like that – I mean something wild that you don’t see very often – it always takes your breath away. For a moment I forgot about Jezbo and his mates. In fact, I forgot about everything in the world except for me and this little black and white face.

  I was as still as death, so as not to scare it back in. The nose came out into the light. Then flickered into the dark again.

  “Any sign of them badgers at them holes?” came Jezbo’s voice.

  I looked up. Jezbo was staring at me. He looked like he suspected I was up to something.

  I shrugged. “Nah. Maybe there’s none down there.”

  “None down there? You stupid poof! What killed Tina, then? Bloody worms?”

  Rich and Rob laughed like jackals. You’d never guess Jezbo was talking about their own dog that they’d been playing with half an hour earlier.

  There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I said nothing. But Jezbo’s joke seemed to have made him forget about me, cos then he asked Kenny if he’d seen anything. Kenny said no, and then Jezbo got back to digging.

  I looked back at my hole. I was really worried that the noise might have scared the badger back down for good, and that would mean death. It would get dug out by Jezbo and then killed by those two big dogs. I didn’t want that.

  But no, the black and white nose was back again. But it was … complicated. There was something different. Then I realised there was something in its mouth. I couldn’t tell what at first, and then I saw that it was another badger – a baby one!

  The badger carrying the baby came running out of the hole at top speed. It was clear it was scared shitless. It – well, I suppose it was a “her” cos it must have been the mum – was only about two metres from me. I could see the silver hair on her back.

  She went off through the bracken and brambles and the crud on the ground. And then it got even more amazing. Another little badger followed her. And another
. Three babies. Well, not tiny babies. They were about the size of a puppy. And then they were gone.

  Safe, I thought.

  There was a smile on my face I couldn’t hide.

  “What you grinning at?” a voice demanded.

  Twelve

  It was Rich this time. He started to walk over to me, with his spade in his hand. He was covered in muck and he looked like he wanted to kill something.

  Or someone.

  I moved next to the hole as fast as I could. As I squatted down, I put the net back over it.

  “Think I saw something,” I said, peering down into the blackness.

  “Has he got one?” Jezbo yelled.

  “Nah,” said Rich. “He’s seeing things.”

  Then Rich gave me the spade.

  “You dig for a bit,” he said in an off-hand way that I found more scary than if he’d been yelling. He shoved the spade in my hand. “I’ll watch the bloody holes.”

  I went and helped the others dig. I didn’t mind now, as I thought all the badgers had escaped. In fact, I was so happy that I dug faster than Jezbo and Rob. There was something quite rewarding about hacking through the soil and opening the tunnel. You didn’t half work up a sweat.

  I didn’t really mind that either. Everyone said I was too scrawny, and I thought the digging might help to build up my muscles so I looked less like a matchstick.

  And then it all changed.

  First we found Tina. I’d forgotten about her. She was jammed in the tunnel and almost bent in half. She was covered in bites and blood, and at first I thought she must be dead. But she wasn’t. She was still breathing. Jezbo reached in and dragged her out by the scruff. He threw her to one side like she was just some rubbish he’d found in there, a Coke can or something.

  I looked at Rich and Rob. Rich’s face was blank, but you could see that there were mixed-up feelings going on inside. But in the end he chose to ignore Tina as well. She was left to shiver and tremble on the wet ground.

  They dug on for a bit longer, and then it all really began to happen.

  Satan and Slag had been lying there licking their arses and doing other bored dog stuff, but then Slag started growling. She leapt forward, with Satan right behind her. They both stuck their heads down into the hole, almost getting them jammed in there.

  “That’s more like it,” said Jezbo. “We’ve got ’em now.”

  I stood back while Jezbo and Rob dug harder. Rich came back and grabbed the spade out of my hands, keen for a bit of the glory.

  A minute later and the dogs went insane.

  “There. I see him,” Rob yelled.

  I looked and saw that the tunnel had opened out. There was dried grass and leaves in there, but that wasn’t all. Most of the space was filled up with a massive badger. I guessed he must be a real old boy – I don’t know, a hundred or something in badger years.

  As I watched, Jezbo hit the badger on the back with the flat of the spade. The badger sort of cowered down a bit when that happened, but then he grunted and spat and bit out at the spade.

  “Hold them dogs back,” Jezbo yelled. Rich and Rob grabbed one dog each by the collar.

  I’ll say this for the twins – they weren’t cowards. The dogs were still going mental, and they tried to bite at them to get loose, but Rich and Rob held them steady.

  I saw Jezbo reach behind the old badger with the spade. Then he sort of shunted him out of the wider space, which I guess was where the old badger slept.

  But then I thought that maybe the big space was the nest – if that’s what you’d call it – where the mother looked after the young ’uns. And so maybe the old badger was guarding her. Or rather, making sure that no one came after her.

  If he’d been left in his den with his back covered, then I reckon that old badger could have taken on anything. A lion or a tiger, even. But now Jezbo had dragged him out on to the scrubby grass, where there was nothing to cover his back.

  “Let ’em go,” he said to Rich and Rob, and they released Satan and Slag.

  Right up until then I think Kenny had thought we were just going to play with the badgers. You know, pet them and stuff. So now, when the attack began, it took him a while to understand what was going on. For a couple of seconds he was grinning.

  “Are the dogs playing with the badger?” he asked. He strained to see past the bodies in his way.

  Then the savage snarls and screams of pain reached a level that even his innocent mind could understand. “Are they fighting?” he asked. “What are they fighting for? What’s going on?”

  And then he ran away into the trees, crying. I should have gone to him, but I couldn’t drag myself away from what was happening on the grass.

  Thirteen

  There was something wrong with the badger’s back legs. Maybe its spine was bust or something. I don’t know if it had happened when Jezbo hit it with the spade, or if it was already crocked. Maybe that’s why it didn’t try to run off.

  It didn’t really matter now anyway. For whatever reason, it couldn’t move too well. And it was under attack, with two massive, evil dogs snapping and chomping at it from every side. The badger would shuffle on its useless back legs to go for Satan, and Slag would dart in for a bite. Then the badger would go for Slag, and Satan would strike.

  It was rotten to see, and I wished I could pull myself away.

  But I was there now, until the end, and it made me feel dirty.

  One thing that helped the badger was that the dogs couldn’t seem to get a grip on its tough old hide. And when at last Slag managed to grasp it, it was a bad move. A bad move for the dog, I mean. The badger’s skin was sort of loose, like a sock that’s too big for your foot. So even with the dog’s big teeth in the back of its neck, the badger could still sort of move inside its own skin and get its head around.

  It seemed to be the moment the badger had been waiting for. He may have been old and slow, but those jaws of his hadn’t lost their power. He opened them wide – much wider than you’d have thought was possible. In that instant I saw his teeth, and they were a mess – all broken and black. But there were a couple of long jagged ones left, and now he fastened them around Slag’s throat.

  I think I knew at that moment that the big dog was as good as dead. There was something about the way the badger looked that made you think, “OK, so you are never letting go, are you?”

  It didn’t matter that Satan was free now – not even this badger could bite two dogs at the same time. Satan sank his teeth into the badger’s back, and at last he cut through the tough pelt and drew blood. He snapped and snarled and bit down and pulled and twisted and tossed, but the badger just ignored him.

  The badger had a job to do.

  A hard job.

  A painful job.

  A job that would kill him.

  But he was going to do it.

  The job was just to hold on.

  Up to this point Jezbo, Rich and Rob had been laughing and yelling and cheering, like it was a football match or something.

  “Kill him, Slag.”

  “Go on, ’ave him, Satan.”

  That sort of thing.

  But now that changed. Jezbo tried to use his spade to free Slag from the jaws of the badger. But it was almost impossible while the three animals rolled and thrashed together. He kept trying to jab down with the sharp edge of the spade, but most of the time he just plain missed. Once he hit Satan a sharp blow on the head.

  That was bad luck on Satan, but it got him out of the way for a second.

  “Hold him!” Jezbo commanded, and Rich and Rob both grabbed the stunned dog.

  The badger still had a death grip on Slag’s throat, and the big dog’s eyes were wide with terror and pain.

  There was something else about them too – you could see the light leaving them. They were growing duller with each
second that passed.

  Now Jezbo could swing his spade. He lifted it up over the two fighting animals and brought it down.

  I couldn’t watch any longer. I turned away and looked for Kenny. He was nowhere to be seen.

  Then I heard a sort of wail from behind me. It was Rich, I think.

  “What have you done?”

  I turned back and saw what had happened. Jezbo had missed the badger with the spade and struck his own dog. If it was in trouble before, it was in dead trouble now.

  Jezbo stood with the bloody spade in his hand and looked at the still body of Slag. His face was as blank and white as a rolled-out pizza base before they put the toppings on it.

  The badger had let go and was lying on its side. It looked half dead itself. Then Jezbo let out a scream and started to hit it with the spade, over and over again.

  That’s when I went home. I ran all the way, half blind from the tears I was crying.

  Fourteen

  When I got home I went up to Kenny’s room. When he was a kid and he got upset he always used to hide under his bed. He was there now.

  “Come out, Kenny,” I said.

  “I don’t want to. I don’t like what they did.”

  “They’re not nice people, them, Kenny,” I told him. “You won’t play with them again, will you?”

  “No.”

  “Come out and you can have a Mars bar.”

  That got him out. It always did.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “I’ll go to the shops and get it later.”

  Kenny looked cheated, as well he might. But then his face changed.

  “Did they kill that badger?” he asked.

  I nodded. And then I told him about how I’d let the mum badger and the babies escape. That made Kenny clap his hands and laugh.

  “I lost my hat,” he said. “My red one that our mum gave me. It must have fell off in the trees.”

  “I’ll get it for you later,” I said, “when I go to buy your Mars bar.”