Burning
By Musuko

Sirens. I hate sirens.

The tyres skidded on gravel and the van swung to the left, jolting up the grass embankment before landing back on the road with a crunch. I kept the accelerator pinned to the floor. The engine screamed. Hot sun cooked me through the windscreen. I squinted against the light. The house rose over the curve of the hill.

I must have exhausted the hunting ground without realising. I should not have made such a mistake. The friendly mouse chatting to mothers at the park playground appears innocuous only once, before the first missing child. I had forgotten that child. I had forgotten what I had done at this park some months previously.

I rammed my paw onto the brake and slewed the van in a flailing arc towards the house. The front right wing slammed into the garage door and dented it, breaking it off its mount and sending it crashing into the garage. I kicked the van door open and leapt out. My heart pounded. My lungs burned. My right shoe slapped over the cool concrete. My bare left foot bled. I bounded down the steps, nearly toppling, nearly falling, and hit the light switch.

A couple of mothers across the other end of the park talked in a huddle. Their glances caught my attention. I kept watch, my blank eyes faced their direction whilst my face and my smile stayed with the plump otter telling me all about her sweet eight year old son. I didn’t need to worry, not at that point. But the situation changed when one of the ladies fetched her phone out of her bag. Even at that distance I could see one number pressed thrice. My eyes do not work well, except in bright sunlight, and the sun shone brightly that day, my salvation. She kept her eyes right on me as she talked, and I knew I had to run.

The puppy raised his head as I ran in, greeting me with the awkward grumbling noise that signified his begrudging happiness at my arrival. I barely registered his expression as I fumbled the keys from my pocket. Wrong key. Wrong key. Wrong key. Got it! The padlock clicked open, and the chain separated from the wall.
	“We have to go.”

Uncountable cameras watched my hasty retreat back to my car. They would soon inform of my appearance and route. They would cleanly capture the number plate on my car. I drove out of town, weaving out into country roads. Thoughts racing. Paw kept in check on the pedal. Stay calm. Stay calm. You can’t hear sirens. Not yet.
	A construction site reared on the right. Two house frames stood against the trees. A portacabin. A van. Nobody in sight. Sunday. Nobody working. An assumption, but it would have to do. I coasted to a stop behind the cabin, screened from the road, and jumped out.
	I glanced in through the cabin windows. A desk. Boxes. Papers. Nobody there. I put a brick through the van window.
	“Oi! The fuck you doing?”
I spun around and caught a punch on my jaw. I saw the blurred shape of a very angry bulldog in a high visibility vest as I careened towards the dirt. My sleeve tore at the elbow. My left shoe slipped away and my bare heel sank into the glass shards from the van’s window.
My knife sank into his flabby gut. He swung his fat fists but caught only air this time. I scrambled to my feet as he toppled back, and I dived with my knife and ended him.
Sirens. In the distance. Barely audible in my radar-dish ears. Possibly for me.

I dragged the puppy by his chain. His stumps scrambled for purchase on the stairs, but I gave him no patience. I yanked him ahead of me and kicked his rear.
	“Into the van. Quickly!”
	He struggled to climb up, so I pulled him by the neck and dumped him amongst the bags of cement and jumbled tools. He shrieked as the point of a trowel sank into his thigh. I slammed the door.
	I kept a jerry can of petrol in the garage for this eventuality. I opened the cap and swung it underarm towards the nearest window, sending it sailing through the glass and into the dusty, decrepit interior. I ignited my lighter and tossed it in after. The flames roared up inside the house. By the time we reached the metalled road, the smoke had stained the sky. The fire would do nothing to hide the evidence in the cellar and under the yard, but it would bury it under inconvenient rubble.
	We burned diesel towards the coast, engine grinding, puppy whimpering.

I possessed the keys to an ocean-capable forty-foot yacht worth more than many years of honest work could ever hope to obtain. It waited for us at the marina, clean and white in the sun. I bandaged my paw in dusty rags and discarded my remaining shoe for a pair of work boots. I pulled my jacket closed over my blood-stained shirt and climbed out of the van as nonchalantly as I could. Around the harbour, families holidayed. Boats cruised the water. Fat gulls screeched. I prepared the boat and started the engine, then turned the van around to point the rear towards the water.
	The puppy cringed from the bright light when I opened the door.
	“Out. If you make a fuss, I will kill you in a second.” I lifted my jacket to show the sheathed knife tucked into my belt.
	He fell out of the van amongst a slide of tools and screws, and I rushed him onto the deck of the boat, glancing around for watchers whilst trying to appear not to. I got him into the cabin and locked the door, then hurried back to close up the van’s doors and park it further down the wharf amongst some cars.
	Minutes later I stood in the wheelhouse  as we bounced over the waves at the mouth of the harbour, bound for open sea.

*     *     *

I slept unevenly at the wheel, waking in starts at imagined heat of searchlights, only to find cold, dark night each time. The puppy moved about restless in the cabin below, but I answered each time only with a kick to the deck and a growling request for silence. The night passed. The miles passed. The police would hunt, but every hour took us further away from them. And with luck, their search would not point towards the sea until too late. The compass indicated southwest. The boat’s range allowed us to hit the American coast, north or south. I had no specific aim in mind. Brazil, perhaps. Possibly Cuba. I tried to avoid thinking of glossy sun-kissed bodies and focussed on the black horizon.
The morning broke on empty water from horizon to horizon, with a grey fuzz of cloud to the west, and the cold glow of the sun awakening a dull sky. I lifted my head from the controls and groaned and clutched my head until my headache eased. I checked the clock. The boat had chugged obediently onwards in the two hours I had slept. I locked the wheel and clumped down to the cabin.
The puppy scrambled to his stumps as I clicked the lock open and stepped inside. Scattered around him lay the torn fragments of an MRE pack from the cabinet under the sink. His muzzle fur carried the stains of the meal, and his eyes contained guilt. Surprising to myself, and no doubt to him too, I ignored the transgression and collapsed into the cushioned dining seating and rested my head in my arms.
“Ugh.”
I felt movement and looked up. The puppy had clambered up onto the seat opposite me and quietly watched me. I frowned, and he cringed, giving a puzzled whine.
“Shut up and get back on the floor.”
	He jumped to the floor and looked reproachfully up at me.
	I sat up straighter.
	“My emergency plan only covered me up until this point. From here on out, I don’t have any certainty, except that returning lies outside my range of options. At least not for a while.”
	I drummed my claws on the table. The puppy watched me. I wondered what he thought of it all.
	His mouth twitched into a smile. It lasted only a second, but I saw it. I slammed my fist onto the table and rose to my feet. He cowered away from me.
	“In there,” I shouted, pointing to the bedroom. “Now!”
	He scrambled to a run, and I followed, anger building, red mist descending, and the light dimming from the room as I closed the door behind me. The puppy crouched at the foot of the bed, visibly shaking. The room smelled dusty and unloved. The curtains over the portholes swayed as the boat chugged through the waves. I felt a growl rising in my throat, and my palms itched.
	I reached into the ensuite at my side, my eyes still on the puppy, and closed my fist around the chromed towel rail just inside the door. I braced my heel against the doorway and, with strength that would surprise me later, I wrenched the rail away from the wall. Orphaned screws clattered at my feet, and broken splinters of chipboard and veneer clattered on the tiles.
	“Do you find something funny in my situation, puppy?”
	He shook his head, crawling along the edge of the bed as I approached.
	“No? Sure about that? Not feeling any satisfaction at seeing the ripper brought low?”
	I swished the bent rail in front of me. Two feet of bent pole and the circular mount at the end cut through the air. Another screw fell away. Two more stood stuck as fangs protruding from the chrome.
	The puppy gasped. “No master! I’m not!”
	The rail hit the wall above and  behind me, denting the wood, then carved a graceful curve across the room as I swung down. The puppy ducked, but that didn’t help him. The heavy end mount of the rail crashed against his muzzle and knocked it out of the way to continue its path towards the floor, where it thudded and wrenched clear of my paw. The howl filled the room, and blood gushed from the three inch rip torn across the top of the puppy’s muzzle. He fell onto his side and clutched his face in his stumps.
	I fell into the seat beside the door.
	“We come to an ending, puppy.”
	He moaned, the graveyard sound of abject misery and pain, but I felt the lack of my customary satisfaction.
	“Please no!” he gurgled.
	I sank a little lower into the chair. “Nothing I can do about it, puppy. I won’t have anywhere to keep you on land.”
	“You could let me go. You could...you could...ugh! Please...it h-hurts.” He coughed, spluttering a spray of blood droplets from his drenched lips. The stain on the carpet beneath him grew. The wound had cut deep.
	“You know that I won’t do that.”
	I stood, feeling disgusted, and left the bedroom, shutting the door behind me and latching the door, sealing the whimpering wretch out of my sight for now.
	“Fuck,” I whispered. Do it now, or wait and enjoy my pet for as long as possible? Dare I risk waking to his teeth around my throat if I wait? I should have kept his fate secret.
	I would have to do it now. But how?
	My gaze wandered through the large cabin porthole, to the waves that slid past the hull. I had my answer.

*     *     *

I hauled a gas cylinder up from the storage locker and hooked the hose up to the oven and fired up the hob to heat a tin of disgusting beans, then went up onto the deck to escape the muffled moaning of the puppy that I could still hear through the closed bedroom door. I scanned the horizon as I ate, wondering how far along the trail the police had managed to come. Perhaps they had gone off in entirely the wrong direction. I could only hope.
	I tossed the empty can overboard and brushed myself down. Time to get ready. I tied a rope to the handle of a large bucket and lowered it over the side. The rope became heavy, and I hauled the filled bucket back up onto the deck. I untied the rope, then carried both the bucket and rope inside, setting them down on the floor of the cabin.
	I unlocked the bedroom and slowly eased the door open. The puppy lay on the bed, snivelling with a smeared stain of dried blood under his head. His nose still wept a crimson trickle. I grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him off the bed and dumped him on the floor. He collapsed on his face and moaned.
	“For fuck sake, puppy. Get up.”
	He pushed one leg down against the floor, lifting his chest a few inches, before slumping back.
	“Fine then.” I bent down and gripped his collar again and dragged him bodily out of the bedroom, banging his head and hips against the doorway. The bucket came into his view, and he started to kick his stumps. I smacked my palm across his face, then wiped it clean on the top of his head.
	“Stop making a fuss, puppy. This will not last long.”
	“No...” He coughed, a splatter of congealed blood hitting the floor. “No, please!” His stumps struggled and slipped on the floor as I dragged him closer. I pulled him up onto all fours and held his collar tight while my other paw took hold of a clump of his headfur to brace his head in position over the bucket. The salty water sloshed under his nose as the boat rocked gently in the swells of the Atlantic.
	“Just relax. Breathe out. Don’t fight.”
	“Please! Please don’t kill me!” he cried, his head trying to pull upwards against my grip, his forelegs pressing into the floor, slipping and bumping against the metal of the bucket.
	“Here we go,” I said. I kicked against his foreleg and knocked the support out from underneath him. At the same moment I thrust his head down and plunged it into the cold water, pushing down until the water reached halfway up my forearms, until his head went completely under the surface. His wailing scream cut off with a gurgle, and a flood of bubbles rushed up either side of his head. I gripped him tightly, fighting his struggling, counting the seconds.
	His body wrenched to the side, and I lost my footing. I found myself rolling over his back and impacting against the kitchen cabinets. The bucket upended and gushed its contents across the floor, hitting my body and drenching my clothes. In a wet flurry of fur and blood the puppy launched at me, his broken maw peeled back over fierce teeth, his eyes ablaze with desperate feral violence. I felt unfamiliar fear in the slow-motion seconds of approaching attack, but my body reacted without me, my hand gripping the handle of my knife and sliding the blade clear from its sheath.
	My arm went up and his mouth came down, meeting in a white-hot blaze of pain as his teeth sank into my elbow. I screamed as I felt the crunch of bone and the hot splash of blood against my cheek, and I flailed with the knife with no control, whilst beating my unmolested left arm against his head. I kicked my leg up and caught his crotch with my knee, but still he hung on, teeth pressed hard down into my flesh, an apocalyptic growl rumbling in his throat, inspiring ancient prey terror in my pathetic rodent ancestry. I felt fear. I felt mortal. I gave a scream to the air and snatched the knife from my right paw to my left, swinging it back until it clanged against the gas cylinder and skittered up to bounce off the valve, before slashing it back towards the wolf’s head. The point of the blade impacted with a sickly thunk, embedding an inch deep into his skull. The teeth loosened from my arm, and with a low, fading moan, the wolf rolled off of me.
	I crawled backwards, clutching my elbow, my right arm hanging limp and covered in rivulets of blood. The feral fear pumped through my body, and I scrambled away from his body, gripped with the terror of the realisation that his body moved, still breathing. I pulled against shelves to get to my feet, scattering and smashing carefully-stowed crockery, and staggered up the steps out into the fresh ocean air, slamming the door behind me and fumbling the padlock into place, locking it, then hauling myself up the steps to the wheelhouse, collapsing at the controls, and gasping for breath as I pushed the throttle to its maximum.
	Then, closing my eyes, fading to black.

*     *     *

The sensation of flying woke me, bringing cruel awareness in time for the crashing fall and the impact of the deck against my face. I rolled onto my back, disorientated. The wheelhouse glowed orange and alien, cut with stark black shadows. I felt as if in a dream as I pulled myself to my feet. My ears hurt. I heard a loud ringing tone. I stumbled. The deck slanted beneath me, and tilted further as a mournful groan shuddered the air around me.
	The heat and stink of burning hit me, and all the sensations flooding my senses snapped together into a cohesive reality in an instant, and I rushed outside into the torrent of fire and noise roaring up from the cabin beneath me. The drive for survival took over, and I felt serenely calm and methodical as I shielded my face with one arm whilst I reached into the heat with the other to drag the smouldering lifeboat bag out from its nook and toss it over the side. The rip cord fixed to the deck caught taut and pulled its pin, inflating the covered raft in seconds and holding it moored to the side. The deck tilted further as a rush of hot air burst from a suddenly shattered window. I grabbed what I could around me, unable to see through the thickening smoke, having no clue what I tossed into the raft and into the sea. I knew the raft contained food supplies, but for how long? How far away lay land? It had a radio, but could I dare risk calling for aid?
	Water began to splash over the bow of the yacht. I jumped down into the raft and cut the tether. I splashed with my paws to move the raft away from the burning wreck, before realising the raft contained paddles. I rowed with my left arm until it hurt almost as much as my wounded right, until the yacht became a dim orange glow amongst the black sea and sky. I rolled onto my back and felt the swell of waves under the inflated rubber beneath me. My situation hadn’t sunk in yet. It couldn’t. The adrenaline would wear away and then I could panic, then I could wonder how the explosion and fire had happened, then I could mourn my ruined escape and the improper ending of my pet.
	I struggled to zip up the opening to the raft’s canopy, then lay still in the bobbing darkness. I could afford to sleep for a few minutes. Just a few. Then I would check the GPS and decide what to do. I still had options. I still had hope. I could not, would not, must not hope for rescue, as rescue meant a cell. But I could hope to create an escape yet.
	But for now...sleep.

*     *     *

CKC Special Report 0004102
**SEALED BY ORDER OF MUSUKO MASSIEL**

Re: Recovery of Wolfy Adder.

Routine monitoring of Interpol communication flagged up the recovery of a leisure yacht found 200 miles from the coast of Portugal. The yacht had sustained severe fire damage suspected to have been caused by a gas explosion, and was drifting with a list to the bow. One survivor, named “Wolfy Adder”, was located in the cabin, badly burned and mutilated, but was successfully stabilised into a medically-induced coma. His identity was established via genetic testing.
	This discovery was linked to the “New London Ripper”, known to CKC as Terik. Interception was arranged to obtain custody of Mister Adder and continue his treatment and recovery in secure CKC facilities. Records, witnesses and artifacts were fabricated to classify Mister Adder as being deceased.
	The whereabouts and status of Terik are currently unknown.

Musuko Massiel, personal note: Wolfy is unaware of my involvement in his kidnap and treatment by Terik, but his testimony could lead to Terik’s capture, which would allow Terik to make good on his threat to give evidence to the police and bring me down with him. While it is unfortunate to have to do so, I have no option but to ensure that Wolfy remains in our custody until such time as Terik’s death is confirmed. I intend to do all I can to repair Wolfy’s damaged body and psyche, and to make him as comfortable as possible during his indefinite stay at CKC.