The Dog Who Saved the World Read online

  “Jolly good, Georgie. Off you go!”

  Ramzy’s face was contorted in puzzlement as we walked away. “What the heck was that?” he said, easily loud enough for the vicar to hear.

  “Shhh! No idea. It’s old Bible stuff. The vicar likes it. It’s kinda fun, and he—”

  “Wait. He’s a vicar?”

  “Used to be. He doesn’t wear the gear. Grab that bucket there. This was his church. Then I guess no one came anymore, so they turned it into St. Woof’s and allowed him to stay on.”

  Most of the old wooden church seats have gone. Instead, in the center of the church is an indoor exercise pen covered in sawdust. Around the sides are all of the kennels. It’s pretty awesome.

  My station, the vicar had said. I love that. It’s like the four dogs in the adjacent pens on the first level actually belong to me. My name goes on the board like this:

  STATION 4

  SATURDAY VOLUNTEER: GEORGINA SANTOS

  and I feel a little surge of pride even though it’s just handwritten on a whiteboard.

  The dogs on Station 4 are some of the longest residents at St. Woof’s, who have a promise that they will never, ever “put a dog to sleep.”

  That’s what some other dog shelters do. If they can’t rehome a dog, or find its original owner, then after a few months the vet comes and…

  Do you know what? Even thinking about it upsets me. That’s why I love St. Woof’s. They will try to rehome dogs, but if they can’t, well…they become long-term residents.

  With Ramzy following me, I gave him a tour and I just couldn’t help sounding a little important as I pointed out the cages, and the care sheets hanging outside each one. It’s quite old-fashioned: things are written down by hand on the sheets, like fresh-water top-up (check, with a pencil on a string), daily brushing (check), stool analysis (check), and so on.

  And as for the dogs themselves:

  Ben. Jack Russell mixed with something else, possibly spaniel. Black, white, and brown. Age—about six. Quite snarly with new people, which is why he hasn’t found a home yet.

  Ben bared his teeth at Ramzy, who backed off.

  “It’s OK,” I reassured him. “His bark really is worse than his bite.”

  “He bites as well?”

  “No! Not usually. He gave me a little nip once, but I think he was playing.”

  Ramzy didn’t seem reassured and kept his distance while I topped off Ben’s water, picked up a poo with a poo-picker, and put it in the bucket that Ramzy was holding at arm’s length.

  Sally-Ann. Sally-Ann’s a “paying guest” because her owner, Mrs. Abercrombie, is very old and is often in a care home. She’s brown and white, very hairy, and always has a haughty look on her flat face. (The dog, that is, not Mrs. Abercrombie, although come to think of it they are quite alike.) Sally-Ann is a purebred Lhasa apso.

  Dudley. A brown Staffie/bulldog cross who looks terrifying because half of one ear is missing, plus some teeth, one eye, and a patch of hair on his side. We think he was in a fight and he’s now very timid.

  He shrank away from Ramzy, trembling. He’s OK with me, though, and I felt a little smug when he let me pat him.

  And finally my favorite:

  Mr. Mash. You’ve already met him, but that day he was especially friendly, wagging his tail and rolling onto his back for a tummy rub. I think Ramzy fell for him too.

  The other people at St. Woof’s are also nice. They’re all older than me, but they don’t treat me like a kid. Well, apart from Saskia Hennessey, who is older than me—by a whole eight months—and treats me like I’m about five, even though she only walks the dogs and certainly doesn’t have her own station.

  I happen to know (from Ellie McDonald at school) that Sass’s mum pays her to be a volunteer dog-walker, which if you ask me is totally weird. It’s not volunteering if you get paid for it. On top of that, I don’t even think Sass likes dogs all that much.

  That day she was standing by the poop chute in the old vestry when Ramzy and I came in with the bucket, and I felt my good mood deflate just a little.

  The poop chute is a wide, square tunnel that leads to a big pit outside, where all the dog poo goes. You lift the lid of the hatch and tip the poo down it, and then add a cupful of activator, which breaks down the poo into compost, which the vicar then spreads on his allotment. (I’ve only just found this out. We’ve been eating his home-grown stuff for years. Eww.)

  You can imagine: twenty-five dogs produce a lot of poo, and doing the poop chute is the only bit of St. Woof’s that I don’t really like, although, because of Ramzy, I was trying not to show it.

  Sass is in our year at school but looks about fifteen. She’s already got boobs and hips, plus a double chin and a round belly to go with them. She’s really strong and can lift up the twins, Roddy and Robyn Lee, one under each arm.

  My stomach fluttered when I saw her because, although she’s not exactly a bully (Marine Drive Elementary has a zero-tolerance approach to bullying), she still manages to be scary.

  “Wow—look who it isn’t!” she said, fixing her small eyes on Ramzy. “You two make a happy couple walking up the aisle together!”

  I gave her a tight smile, pretending to find her comment funny, but I didn’t say anything, which I find is usually the best approach. Sass crossed her arms and tilted her chin toward Ramzy. “Is that your school shirt you’re wearing? At the weekend? You are allowed to change, you know.”

  I hadn’t noticed till then, but Ramzy was indeed wearing his blue school polo shirt under his too-big jacket. Ramzy shrugged and murmured, “It’s clean. And I like it.”

  She’s quite intimidating, and as I lifted the lid of the poop chute, Sass took a step forward and said, “Careful you don’t fall in.”

  It made me flinch, as though she was going to push me. I kept quiet as I tipped the contents of the bucket down the hatch. Ramzy, though, never keeps quiet.

  “At least she’d fit,” he murmured. Ramzy, I thought. That’s not necessary.

  “What was that? Are you making fun of—” She was cut off midsentence by the vicar, who came in, rubbing his hands.

  “Ah! Good work, good work! The hands that removeth the dog poo are blessed in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Is that the Bible?” asked Ramzy.

  “No, no—that’s just one of mine,” said the vicar.

  As Ramzy and I left, Sass scowled at us.

  That’s the thing with her. You know that expression “If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing?” Well, Sass seems to have got it the wrong way round: “If you can’t say anything mean, say nothing.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a mean comment by Sass Hennessey that, a few weeks later, nearly caused the end of the world. And if you think I’m exaggerating, then let me explain.

  You see, up until recently, all of the dogs in St. Woof’s were healthy. And now…well, now they’re not.

  And it is all down to me.

  It has become a big thing in the last year or two: Disease Transmission Risk. At school it’s DTR this, DTR that, and the only good thing about it is that you only need to cough in class to get sent home.

  Last year, every classroom at Marine Drive Elementary had a hand sanitizer installed by the door. I think it was a new law.

  So one of my jobs when I’m at St. Woof’s is the maintenance of the sani-mats and hand-sans in the quarantine area. The sani-mats are wet, spongy mats that clean the bottom of your shoes when you go in and out of the quarantine area, which is where dogs go when they’re sick.

  Anyway, it all happened a few days after our first visit to Dr. Pretorius and the dome.

  I had topped up the disinfectant in the sani-mats first; then I went into the quarantine section to see Dudley, who had a tummy bug. It wasn’t his first time there, so
I wasn’t especially worried. If you remember, he’d been gnawing on a dead seagull at the beach, and I thought that might have been the cause.

  He was behind a fence of wire mesh that comes up to my chin. There were rain boots and rubber gloves by the entrance gate, which I put on before I went in. He wagged his bent tail weakly.

  “Hello, you funny old thing!” I said. “Are you feeling better?” Normally, I’d let Dudley lick my face, but we’re not allowed to do that with the quarantined dogs, so instead I gave him a good old tickle on his tummy. It wasn’t quite the same with rubber gloves, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  A family had been in to see him a few days before, perhaps to adopt him, but I think he was just too odd-looking.

  “The little girl thought he was cute,” said the vicar, “and she said something to her mum in Chinese. Then they all had a long conversation that I didn’t understand—except the dad was pointing to Dudley’s eye, and his teeth and his ear, and then they left.”

  Poor, ugly Dudley! I thought of the little girl from China falling in love with him and then her dad saying he was too strange-looking.

  Secretly, though, I was very relieved. I know it’s better for a dog to be with a family rather than in St. Woof’s, but I couldn’t bear it if Dudley was adopted.

  I looked at him carefully. He didn’t seem very well, poor doggie. He hadn’t eaten much of his food, but he had drunk his water and done a poo in the sand tray, which I washed out and sanitized, and I did everything right, exactly according to the rules. Then I threw his soggy tennis ball for him a little, but it didn’t excite him very much and anyway I bounced it too hard so that it went over the fence and rolled away and we had to stop.

  I was coming out of the quarantine area, I’d done the sani-mats, and I was about to do the hand-sans (which were empty) and who was standing there but Sass Hennessey. She did this little hair flick and stood with one hand on her hip.

  “Hiiiii!” she said, but there was zero warmth in her eyes.

  “Hello, Saskia,” I said.

  “I was just saying to Maurice that he’s got the place looking really nice now,” she said.

  Maurice? Maurice? Nobody calls the vicar Maurice, apart from my dad, who’s known him for years. Everyone else calls him Reverend Cleghorn. It was so typical of Sass to call him by his first name, though. I was annoyed already, and what came next was worse.

  “That ugly old mutt in there,” she said with her head to one side, all fake sorrow. “It really would be kinder just to put him down, don’t you reckon?”

  That was it: the mean comment I mentioned before. It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking about Dudley. Dudley—my second-favorite dog in the whole of St. Woof’s! I could feel my jaw working up and down, without any sound coming out.

  “Are you OK, Georgie?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, Sass.” But I wasn’t. I was furious. In silence, I refilled the hand-sans, removed my gloves, and put some of the gel on my hands, rubbing it in angrily while she just stood there. Then I took off the boots.

  “Look, I didn’t mean—”

  “You know we don’t do that here. So why did you even say it?” I was furious.

  “But if he’s very ill and old—”

  I snapped, loudly: “He’s not that ill and he’s not that old. All right?”

  I could tell Sass was a bit taken aback. She said quietly, “Ooo-kaaay,” and I thought for once I might have got the better of her.

  She bent down and gingerly picked up Dudley’s spit-soaked ball, which had rolled toward the door. She handed it to me and I was forced to say “Thanks.” It was an odd sort of peace offering.

  I turned the ball over in my hands as I watched her walk away, and then tossed it back to Dudley, shutting the quarantine door behind me.

  I was still mad when I got back to my station. Ramzy was waiting for me, and he was holding Ben, the snarly Jack Russell, who was trying to lick his face.

  “Look!” he laughed, all proud. “I’ve made a friend!”

  “So you have,” I said. “Good boy, Ben,” and I let him nuzzle my hand. Then I went round the rest of the dogs in the station, giving them a final pat before I left.

  “Bye, Vicar!” I said, pulling on the big door.

  “Goodbye, Sergeant Santos and Private Rahman!” said the vicar, giving another salute. “Jolly good work!”

  * * *

  —

  So that was it. Damage done. I had started the End of the World.

  Obviously, I didn’t know it at the time. I’ve kept the secret till now: how I handled the tennis ball that was infected with Dudley’s germs, germs that he had picked up from the little girl who had wanted to adopt him. I then passed on the infection to poor Ben by letting him lick my germy hands, and then to the other dogs…

  Turns out that all the DTR lessons in the world can’t stop someone from being stupid.

  Or—for that matter—being so furious at Sass’s mean comment that my mind was all over the place. Which amounts to pretty much the same as being stupid.

  “Give me a week,” Dr. Pretorius had said. It was seldom out of my thoughts. Another week of secret-keeping.

  Secrets are easy to keep so long as no one finds out.

  So long as no one sees you. Someone who knows your brother, say. Someone who has just started working at the Spanish City and notices you coming out of the door at the back of the arcade.

  Sass Hennessey’s sister, Anna, for example, who is in the same school year as my brother Clem and whose mum had got her a Saturday job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms.

  Give me a week, give me a week. It was going around in my head, like some annoying song that gets stuck, as I was walking back from the Spanish City, up our lane, swinging my school bag. I was surprised to see Clem come out of Dad’s workshop, wiping his oily hands on a towel.

  We live in a farmhouse, although it’s not a proper working farm anymore. Nearly all of the other farms around us have been sold for development. You can stand by Mum’s tree in the top field with the cows and see houses and cranes and half-built complexes in every direction except from the east, where the sea glints silver in the distance. (The cows are not ours, though I wish they were.)

  Down the lane from our farmhouse is Dad’s workshop where he restores old cars, and a barn with bits of engines, exhausts, and car doors and stuff.

  It looked like Clem had been expecting me.

  “Hi, Pie-face,” he said. He was cheery. He used his nickname for me for the first time in ages. This made me suspicious, but I smiled.

  “Been anywhere exciting?” he asked.

  The truth? I had been a participant in a medieval jousting tournament, charging toward Ramzy on a virtual horse (made from an old piano stool and the saddle I had seen on the first day in the loading bay).

  “St. Woof’s,” I lied. I hated lying, even to Clem. I could feel my cheeks going red.

  “And how is he?”

  “Who?”

  “That dog. Ben?”

  “Oh, fine! We went on the beach. The usual. He’s great.” Clem was watching me carefully, and I didn’t like it.

  He paused for what seemed like forever before saying, “Instant recovery, then?”

  I gave Clem my “puzzled but innocent” look: half-smile, blinking.

  Clem said, “The vicar called me. He’s been trying to call you but your phone’s been off.”

  That was true: we always switched our phones off in Dr. Pretorius’s studio—something to do with electromagnetism. I’d forgotten to switch mine back on.

  “Let’s keep this simple, shall we?” Clem counted off on his blackened fingers as he said: “One: some dog called Ben is sick. He’s in quarantine. That’s the vicar’s message. Two: Anna Hennessey’s seen you at the Spanish City with your buddy Ramzy Whatsisname and som
e spooky old lady. Three: you’re lying to me, because you’re blushing. And four: I want to know why.”

  “Or what?” You’ve got to remember: this is my brother. He’s supposed to be on my side.

  “Or I’m telling Dad.”

  OK, so maybe he’s not on my side anymore. Clem nodded, pushed his glasses up his nose with an oily hand, and turned to go back into the workshop, expecting me to follow him.

  Did I have a choice?

  I’ve hardly seen Clem for weeks, it seems. He’s finished his exams, so he isn’t back at school till September. He was supposed to be going to Scotland with his friends, but it all fell through when one of them got a girlfriend. So he hasn’t got much to do before we all go to Spain later in the summer.

  For the last couple of weeks, he has occupied himself by messaging people, listening to music, helping Dad in his workshop, and growing a patchy beard. He now looks about twenty.

  The thing is: I miss him. Something happened to Clem maybe a year ago. The brother I grew up with—the boy who played with me when I was tiny, who let me ride on his back for what seemed like hours, who lied for me when he didn’t have to when I left the faucet on and the bath overflowed, who told me his screen login so I could watch stuff when Dad said I couldn’t, who once laughed so hard at my impression of Norman Two-Kids at the corner shop that he fell off the bed and banged his head…

  …that boy had moved out of our house.

  In his place had come a boy who looked exactly the same but behaved differently. A boy who hardly smiled, let alone laughed. A boy who wanted to eat different food from us and, when Dad refused to cook separate meals, got shouty; a boy who could spend a whole weekend (I’m not joking) in his room, emerging only to go to the bathroom; a boy whose response to pretty much everything was to roll his eyes as if it were the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

  Dad said it was normal.