Riddle Gully Runaway Read online

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Will. ‘I forgot about that.’ He wrapped some bread around a piece of cheese and took a bite. ‘I know! We catch the bus back to Maloola and ask Mr Mallard to put us up!’

  ‘You haven’t learned much in the year you’ve been living in the country, have you Will?’ said Pollo. ‘There’s no bus back to Maloola until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What?’ yelped Will. ‘You never said!’

  ‘You never asked,’ said Pollo.

  ‘So we’re stuck here in this dump of a place?’

  ‘If you were being a miserable pessimist, you might say that,’ said Pollo. ‘On the other hand, an optimist might say we’ve enhanced our opportunities of finding Benson. We could do another sweep of Princeville later. We might still find him.’

  Will snorted and shoved the rest of his bread and cheese into his mouth. He pulled his phone from his backpack and began scrolling through phone numbers with his thumb, his cheeks bulging. Shorn Connery, standing at the door, bleated mournfully into the wind.

  ‘Take another example,’ continued Pollo cheerily. ‘If you were a miserable pessimist, you might say there was no point going back to the abattoir tonight to rescue Ear because we’d never pull it off. On the other hand, an optimist might say —’

  Will spun his head to look at Pollo. ‘What? There’s no way, Pollo! You can’t be serious! I’m calling Angela right now!’ With a flourish, he pressed the call button on his phone. He held the phone to his ear, glaring defiantly at Pollo. Outside, beyond the cubby walls, the ocean growled and the empty swing creaked.

  Pollo cut more cheese while Will waited for his mum to pick up. After a minute, he put it down and mumbled, ‘She’s got it switched off.’

  ‘That’s because she thinks you’re safe in Canberra,’ said Pollo. ‘What’s the bet she and HB are planning a lovey-dovey night in your absence? You don’t want to go near that, do you?’

  Will hastily shoved the phone into his backpack like it had suddenly sprouted fangs.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ said Pollo. ‘Sit here all night and freeze to death, or come back with me to the abattoir and spring Ear?’

  ‘There’s other stuff I can do,’ said Will sullenly. He tapped his backpack. ‘I’ve brought my paints, remember. I’ll finish one of my art assignments.’

  ‘In the dark? Okay, then. Good luck with that.’

  Will grunted. He took the packet of Ginger Nuts. It felt lighter than he’d hoped. He held it up to the dim glow of the streetlight filtering into the cubby. Nearly empty. ‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘I guess we can give it a go.’

  Pollo slapped Will on the knee. ‘That’s the spirit! What’s the worst that can happen?’

  Will opened his mouth, but Pollo interrupted. ‘On second thoughts, don’t answer that.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Under the cover of night, Benson shouldered through the door of the shed out back of the Royal Arms pub, his ears stinging with cold. It was too early yet for the drinkers in the front bar to be rowdy, for the jukebox to be cranking up — late enough, though, for the concrete floor to have lost what warmth it had scavenged from the day. He had a few precious hours to himself now at least. He was done with skulking on the edges of town, counting down the daylight.

  He scanned the floor with his torch. Despite what the Duke had said about Tony’s missus knowing about him, everything seemed to be where he’d left it — the hessian sacks he’d laid on the floor, his book, his backpack amongst the old paint cans. He flicked mouse droppings, fresh since leaving for the abattoir that morning, from the sacks, balanced his torch on his backpack and sat down.

  He peeled back the lid of a tin of stew and shook its contents into his mouth, scraping out the last with his finger. Who had those voices in the playground cubbyhouse belonged to, he wondered. Delinquents-in-training sneaking something they’d nicked from a liquor cabinet? Maybe it was a couple of homeless kids. One morning last year, early, he’d gone fishing with his dad and seen two kids sleeping rough, rolled in a blanket on the dirt under a bridge. It hadn’t looked like fun. If whoever was in the cubbyhouse was there again tomorrow night, he’d show them his shed.

  Taking a grubby hoodie from his backpack, he lay down, bunching the hoodie under his head. He reached for his book, Robinson Crusoe. It was old, the story at least, written three centuries ago about a dude shipwrecked alone on an island — a bit like the Cast Away movie. The language was weird but you got used to it. His granddad had given it to him on his twelfth birthday, saying that the main character sure knew how to think for himself. It was lame alongside the Xbox Benson got from his parents, so he hadn’t looked at it twice at the time. But he’d been going through some stuff not long ago and found it. And now he wished the old guy was around to chat about it with.

  His iPod had run out of juice so there was no music to get lost in. It was just him and the book now, and trying to swap the stink of blood and guts that lingered in his nostrils with imaginings of beaches and hilltops; trying to believe in his heart that sometimes, like Crusoe, you had to do hard stuff in order to survive — that the deal he’d struck with the Duke was a necessary evil.

  This time on a Saturday, he was usually in Kal’s garage practising with the guys, Kal’s little sister bopping in the corner and complaining when they repeated a snatch of song till they nailed it. Kal, his penniless mate. At the end of every session, Kal would carefully wipe down the strings of the old guitar he’d borrowed from Bixo and polish the thing till it shone.

  Could what he and Kal had done be called a necessary evil too — if they hadn’t got caught, if they’d gone ahead with it? Kal wanting something so badly, just that once; him trying to help out a mate in need? Whatever, it had all gone south. He’d been given his suspension and straightaway been packed off to Riddle Gully; then that girl had put that stuff in the newspaper, telling the world what a scumbag he was. The whole sloppy business had baked onto him somehow before he’d had a chance to put things right.

  He couldn’t go home, not now, not yet. He had something in common with Mr Crusoe. He was marooned … in Princeville — a thief, a bad person, his very own shipwreck. And he could feel the tide rising, the water beginning to wet his feet. No music, no money, no phone, no bed, hungry, reeking and three days till payday. He flicked a daddy-long-legs off his page and lowered the book to his chest. He lay listening to the scuttling of cockroaches and the base boom-boom from the pub lounge. He cracked his knuckles one by one. He’d go back to the abattoir tonight ’cos he didn’t know what else to do.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Will and Pollo stood beneath the last streetlamp on the road out of town to the abattoir. Pollo held Shorn Connery by the head while Will, the end of a paintbrush to his chin, circled them slowly.

  ‘Nearly done,’ said Will. ‘Just a dab … here … on his ear.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be perfect, Will,’ said Pollo. ‘I’m freezing to death! Just so long as he looks more like a Dalmatian than a sheep! It’s just a precaution.’

  ‘A precaution against everything going wrong and Shorn Connery getting mixed up with his mates on Death Row.’

  ‘The teeny-tiny possibility of things going wrong, Will! Stop being such a pessimist.’

  ‘I still don’t see why we have to bring him,’ muttered Will.

  ‘How else are we going to find Ear among five hundred head of sheep?’

  ‘What if she doesn’t recognise him now he’s covered in spots?’

  ‘We’ve been over this,’ sighed Pollo. ‘She will. Trust me.’

  ‘Trust you?’ Will touched up a blob on Shorn Connery’s back. ‘Look where that’s got me.’

  Pollo huffed and turned to Shorn Connery. ‘Hold still, old buddy. It’s for your own good. If anyone sees us we don’t want you —’

  ‘— to be turned into C-H-O-P-S!’ giggled Will, to a glare from Pollo.

  Baa-aa-aa-aah!

  ‘We’ll need to do something about that bleating of his, to
o,’ said Will, adding a daub of black paint to Shorn Connery’s nose.

  Pollo leaned close to Shorn Connery and looked him in the eye. ‘You’ll have to be quiet as a mouse!’ she whispered. ‘You can do that, can’t you?’

  Baa-aa-aa-aah!

  ‘Hmm,’ said Will. ‘What about this?’ He stood and took a deep breath. Woo-woo-woo-woof!

  Pollo swung around, sprawling onto her backside, her head spinning, searching.

  Will grinned. ‘Barking — it’s my specialty. I used to sneak up and get Angela with it all the time. If Shorn Connery bleats at the wrong moment I can bark in sync with him!’

  ‘It could come in handy!’ said Pollo.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Will. He applied a final spot to Shorn Connery’s tail. ‘All done. We’re good to go.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Pollo helped Will shrug into his backpack, still loaded with Shorn Connery’s fleece. With stippled clouds wisping across the moon, the girl, the boy and the oddly-shaped Dalmatian set off up the road.

  *

  Pollo, Will and Shorn Connery approached the abattoir through the ghostly moon-shadows of the avenue of eucalyptus trees. Pollo and Will tiptoed up a short flight of steps onto the unloading dock platform. From there, at sheep-truck height, a wooden ramp ran steeply down to the dirt of the holding pens next to the slaughterhouse. The closer pen was still empty — just a stretch of trampled sand and animal droppings. In the second pen, grey moonlight bounced off the backs of the huddled sheep. Somewhere unseen, the guard dog barked once, perhaps at an owl or a rat.

  ‘Is it time?’ whispered Pollo.

  Will nodded and shouldered off his backpack. He unzipped it and brought out the tightly packed hessian bag containing Shorn Connery’s fleece, sewn shut by Mr Mallard. Pollo flicked at the string with her pen-knife and the fleece sprang forth, surrounding their feet like overflowing soap suds. They eased it into two halves, its smooth lanolin greasing their fingers, the buttery smell of it filling their nostrils.

  ‘You first,’ said Will.

  Pollo plunged both fists into one of the piles and draped it over her head and shoulders. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Like a sheep that’s had a very bad night’s sleep.’ Will pinched his nose, trying not to laugh.

  ‘Now you,’ said Pollo.

  Will did the same. The fleece bunched over his head and spilled down his back.

  ‘I’d give anything to have my camera with me right now!’ chuckled Pollo. She picked up some scraps of wool from the platform. ‘We should tuck these into our pockets. The more wool we’ve got on us, the more that guard dog will be thrown off our scent.’

  When they finished they looked like a cross between giant chickens and Abominable Snowmen.

  ‘We don’t look much like sheep,’ said Will.

  ‘No, but we sure smell like them!’

  Shorn Connery, resplendent in his spots, stared up at them, looking puzzled. Baa-aa-aah!

  ‘Shsh!’ said Pollo. ‘It’s only a loan, old buddy. As soon as we find Ear and get her out of here we’ll —’

  Meh-eh-eh!

  Shorn Connery stood stiff, his ears pricked forward, sniffing the air. Pollo and Will looked at one another.

  Baa-aa-aah!

  Meh-eh-eh!

  Suddenly Shorn Connery shot away. He clattered down the ramp and pelted across the empty expanse of the first pen, his rope lead bouncing behind him. Charging at full speed, he bounded high over the metal bars separating him from the next pen — and Ear. For a flash, Pollo and Will saw his spotty figure sailing in the moonlight, and then … nothing. The mob of sheep made way for him, then closed together, engulfing him, making Shorn Connery — wherever he was — one of their own.

  ‘He’s meant to bring Ear to us!’ cried Will. ‘Not the other way round! Pollo, you said —’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now!’ squeaked Pollo. ‘Quick, we have to get after him!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Pollo and Will slid and slipped down the stock ramp. Across the dirt of the empty holding pen they ran, their clothes stuffed with fleece, their cloaks flopping, the sheep in the pen ahead bleating and backing off as far as they could. As Pollo and Will climbed the bars of the second pen’s fence, some sheep panicked, clambering over the other animals’ backs with sprawling hooves.

  Sitting atop the fence, shadows shifted as clouds rolled across the moon. Will and Pollo scanned the pen, straining to see Shorn Connery and his spots. But between the shadows and the tight scrum of sheep, they couldn’t make out a single spot of him. From around the corner of the building, the guard dog began to bark. Between barks they heard its throaty growl.

  Suddenly Will tugged on Pollo’s arm. ‘Look!’ In a room inside the building, a beam of torchlight was sweeping from side to side. ‘Somebody’s here! It must be a nightwatchman!’

  ‘A nightwatchman!’ cried Pollo. ‘I don’t want to put Shorn Connery’s disguise to the test, Will! If the nightwatchman twigs to it, tomorrow Shorn Connery could be —’

  This time, Will couldn’t spell it, even to himself. Chops! He would never again be able to eat one, for fear it belonged to Shorn Connery. Meanwhile, Pollo was clambering down the other side of the railings, the fleece cape flowing around her shoulders. Will followed hastily, grabbing hold of the loop of Pollo’s jeans just as the flock engulfed them. They crouched low, holding their fleeces tight around their necks. They shunted forward, searching for Shorn Connery. Sheep bayed and kicked and pressed in on them. Animal fear mingled with the damp stench kicked up by their hooves.

  Inside, the torchlight was moving down a corridor, bouncing off the roof through the high, narrow windows. They heard the skitter of a dog’s claws on concrete and a low growl.

  Just then, Pollo caught a glimpse of what she was desperate to see — a spotted head. And in the flimsy light, another ear — black and twirling — beside it.

  ‘Over there!’ She pointed. ‘In the corner! It’s them! Oh dear …’

  Will peered and saw them too — and his heart sank. Shorn Connery and Ear were pressed into the farthest possible corner of the yard against the high fence arcing inward at the top — the fence that separated the sheep pens from the raised concrete platform next to the slaughterhouse. The two animals huddled together trembling, their ears flattened, as above them, only centimetres away behind the fence, crouched a brute of a dog — its eyes on Pollo and Will — quivering, slavering, its tongue glistening between its curved teeth.

  ‘It can see us!’ said Will.

  ‘But it can’t smell us!’ said Pollo. ‘It doesn’t know what to bark at!’

  They pressed forward into the mob of sheep, clumsy in their fleece-stuffed clothes and capes. Craning their necks to keep Shorn Connery and Ear in sight, they pushed into the swathe of animals till they stood panting in front of the two woolly lovebirds. Pollo flung herself at Shorn Connery and squeezed him with relief. At this, the dog hurled itself at the fence and bared its teeth even more, its purple gums rippling.

  Over an exit door that opened onto the concrete platform, a blue security alarm began to flash. Shorn Connery and Ear snorted and shuffled fearfully, dodging Pollo’s attempts to settle them. The dog gave a low growl, ready to start barking again.

  ‘That dog’s going to put the nightwatchman onto us!’ hissed Will.

  Pollo peered at the high steel fence. It would hold. It was worth a shot. Swallowing hard, she took a fistful of the thick fleece once sported by Shorn Connery and now draped across her shoulders. She faced the dog and slowly began flapping her arms.

  The dog licked its lips and took a step backwards. Will followed Pollo’s lead. The befuddled guard dog stopped snarling and sat back on its haunches, thrusting its nose in the air in short, puzzled jabs.

  Pollo and Will stared at one another in disbelief. It had worked! An owl tooted softly in the distance; wind shuffled the leaves of the trees. They flapped their fleece-capes again. The dog stabbed its nose from side to side, flummoxed by the queer sheepy-human w
hiffs.

  Inside the building, the torch beam was heading steadily for the nearby exit door. Whoever came through that exit would be almost face-to-face with Pollo and Will in the enclosure below.

  ‘They’ll spot us straight off if they come out here,’ cried Pollo. ‘Keep flapping, Chicken Man! I’ll try to rope up Ear and Shorn Connery.’

  While Will flapped away at the confused guard dog, Pollo found the loose end of Shorn Connery’s rope, slippery with sheep droppings, and tied it as best she could around Ear’s neck. Light was trickling now through the gaps around the exit door onto the pavement. Someone rattled the door handle. The dog suddenly turned and hurtled along the concrete path to the door. It crouched in front of it, ears straining, hind legs twitching, ready to leap.

  Pollo grabbed the middle of the rope. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  Pulling Shorn Connery and Ear, Will and Pollo shoved their way back through the squeeze of sheep, keeping low. They were nearly at the first fence — the empty pen on the other side and the unloading dock clear in the distance — when they heard the exit door clunk open. They snuck a backwards look over their shoulders. Through the opening, in the pulsing blue security light, they saw the half-silhouette of someone’s head and shoulders.

  The dog lurched at the gap between door and wall. But instead of calming the animal as a nightwatchman would, the person yelped and tried to pull shut the door. The animal leapt. The dog snarled, a cuff of trousers in its teeth. From behind the door the leg kicked madly, the dog’s jaws locked around it, trying to drag the leg’s owner outside.

  ‘Something’s not right,’ whispered Pollo.

  ‘Drop! Back! Get away! Go home!’ It was a male voice. Young. Frightened. In the leaping beam of his flailing torch, Will and Pollo could now see his shoulder braced against the door, the peak of his cap catching the frame and tilting upward as the dog tried to drag him out. ‘Let go! Stop!’ he yelled.