The author reads the beginning of The Flyball 5: The adventures of 5 abandoned puppies

The Beginning and Chapter 1

PITCH BLACK.

The steady hum of an engine. Vibrating, shifting and sliding.

Excruciatingly hot.   Breathing painful, and becoming more so with every breath.   The world pressing in on itself.

The desire to run away is overwhelming, but it’s impossible to move.

Just when the nightmare seems as though it will go on for ever, the engine’s note starts to change and the vibrations slow.

There’s a series of bumps and judders then, mercifully, rest as the vibrations cease.

The engine is still running buts its hum is much lower now.

The calm lasts but a couple of heartbeats, broken by the screech of a sliding steel door, the crunch of heavy footsteps on concrete, the clunk of a sturdy lock opening and the shrill yawn of a pair of rusting doors being pulled apart.

Glints and shafts of light begin to break through the blackness.   A man grunts and the shafts of lights start to shake and dance.

There’s another longer louder grunt and the shafts of light begin to whirl violently around and the world presses in on itself ever more crushingly.

A sudden blast of icy air and a split second later a bone shaking jolt.

Invisible blows reigning in from every direction. Everything is spinning madly.

A second blast of freezing air immediately followed by somersaults, more stinging blows and one final bone-crunching thump.

Pitch black, again.

Chapter 1

A bulging black plastic bin-bag bounces and careers down a steep grassy bank towards a pond at the edge of a moonlit field.

Just before the bag is about to reach the bottom of the slope and roll into the water, a small tear near the tightly bound top splits asunder and out cascade five dazed puppies.

Relieved of its live cargo, the bag takes one final leap before landing with an almighty splash in the pond and quickly disappearing beneath the inky surface, weighed down by the two house bricks that it still contains.

At the top of the incline, silhouetted against the near cloudless evening sky, stands the malign figure of a tall broad-shouldered heavily-built man, his arms akimbo and hands on his hips.

His laboured breath shimmering in the frosty night air as a cigarette butt glows red in the corner of his mouth.

The man peers down the grassy bank towards the pond for a few moments. He curses under his breath, removes the cigarette from his mouth and flicks it in front of him.

The glowing stub cartwheels away as he swivels sharply on his heels and strides over to a battered old transit van parked a few feet away with its engine still running.

He slams the rear doors closed, then jumps into the driver’s seat and heaves the sliding door shut with a clang, guns the engine and roars out on to the road, the van’s tyres squealing their smoky complaint and spitting gravel.

As the van speeds away, across its grimy back doors the logo “Andrew Stevenson. Pedigree Border Collie Breeder” is briefly illuminated by the headlights of a following car.

Chapter 2

Back in the field the stunned puppies are lying where they have rolled to rest at the edge of the pond.

A male puppy, pure white in colour except for a few black smudges around his eyes and at the base of his ears, is lying with the lower half of his body in the water at the pond’s edge.

Lying next to the white puppy is another male puppy with his nose right on the waterline but with his body facing away from the pond.

He’s almost the complete opposite of his brother, being jet black with a few white smudges around his eyes and ears. He also has a white tip to his tail.

A couple of feet away a third male lies sprawled in the grass. His tail is hanging in the water. He is a light tan colour all over except for his nose, which is a dark chocolate brown.

A few feet further on but still at the edge of the pond there are two female puppies tangled together, one on top of the other.

The puppy on the top is a glossy golden brown with a white chest and tummy while her sister underneath is a rich dark mahogany brown.

She too has a white chest and tummy but in addition she also has a strange white marking in the shape a lightning fork on the top of her neck.

Barely six weeks old and only just fully weaned, they are all roughly nine inches tall and just over eighteen inches from the tips of their noses to the tips of their tails.

Their thick furry coats are between one and two inches long, except around their necks, the back of their legs and their tails where the hairs are between two and three times as long again.

They all have shiny black noses apart from the light tan puppy with his dark chocolate brown snout.

Gradually the puppies begin to stir.

As they open their eyes and start to come to their senses, all they can see at first is the shiny black waters of the freezing pond on one side and some fuzzy large grey shadows to the other side.

As the puppies’ sight adjusts to the moonlight, the shadows darken and appear to shift and merge and take on a more eerie solid form.

A loud throaty “huff” shatters the silence and the shifting shadows start rapidly transforming into huge menacing figures towering over the cowering puppies.

The forbidding apparitions are nothing more dangerous than dairy cows, disturbed from their nightly slumbers by the splash of the bin bag landing in the pond and the sudden arrival of five uninvited canines in their field.

However, to the puppies in their confused and frightened state, the cows appear as terrifying giants.

The puppies stagger to their feet as the increasingly restless cows begin to shift their stance and occasionally stamp their hooves.

Then a series of deeper louder more irritated “huffs” fill the air, sending the petrified puppies running for their lives.

The white and black brothers scramble blindly back up the steep grassy bank towards the road, while the other three panic-stricken puppies spin round in the opposite direction and dive under the cows’ bellies.

The trio weave between the cows’ legs before dashing headlong into the field’s thick grass.

Chapter 3

The black and white puppies pull themselves up on to the level ground at the side of the road, where, panting hard, they pause, turn and look back down the incline behind them to see a herd of black and white cows standing sleepily in the field below.

The cows are nowhere near as scary now when they are looked down upon and with the moonlight picking them out clearly.

The puppies at the top of the bank can also see the tracks made by their litter-mates in the thick grass on the far side of the cows disappearing off into the field’s further dark recesses.

The black and white puppies turn away from looking down at the field below them and are immediately dazzled by a set of headlights rushing towards them.

The headlights belong to a horsebox which is pulling off the road and into the lay-by where the puppies are standing.

The puppies instinctively fling themselves out of the way of the rapidly approaching vehicle.

 The horsebox misses the black puppy by inches as he leaps out of its path but his brother is not so lucky and the left hand corner of the front bumper smacks into the side of his head with sickening force, sending him flying high through the air.

 As the horsebox draws to a halt a dozen yards up the lay-by from the puppies, the black puppy hauls himself to his feet.

As he stands up he holds his right paw slightly off the ground. He looks around for his brother and sees him a few feet away, lying stretched out on his side where he has spun to rest, half in the grass and half on the gravel, where the tarmac of the lay-by meets the grassy verge.

The black puppy limps over to the white one and nuzzles his head.

The prone puppy’s eyes are closed and there is a trickle of dark red blood slowly oozing from one of his ears down the white fur of his cheek towards his muzzle.

He is deathly still and there is no sign of life as his brother licks his face.

The black puppy looks up and sees ahead of him two men getting out of the horsebox’s cab.

The man on the left hand side jumps down nimbly to the ground  but the man getting out on the driver’s side clambers down slowly and carefully.

Both men are shorter than average height and the driver is also noticeably bow legged.

The driver walks around the bonnet of the horsebox and joins the man from the passenger side and they both stare at the front left-hand tyre, the plumes of their breaths rising gently in the frosty evening air.

After staring at the tyre for a couple of seconds and giving it a half-hearted kick, the driver takes a step back and removes his cap, scratches his forehead and says with resignation, “Dam it. Let’s get the spare.”

The men set to work changing the tyre and after a few moments the driver says “Go and check the horse Benny.”

Benny’s full name is Benito Antonio Perez. He is a good looking Spanish youth with deep set dark brown eyes, thick black hair and a wide bright toothy grin that needs only the slightest excuse to beam out.

Benny has recently turned sixteen but, much to his annoyance and despite having been shaving almost every day since he was thirteen, he is invariably assumed to be much younger than he actually is by everyone when they meet him for the first time.

Benny makes his way to the back of the horsebox where he pulls back a couple of large bolts and lets down the loading ramp. Once lowered, he walks briskly up to the top of the ramp, reaches inside and switches on an interior light.

There’s a “whinny” and the sound of a horse shuffling its hooves as Benny enters the horsebox.

A couple of moments later Benny emerges and shouts “She fine Dickie.”

Benny swings down to the ground and goes back to help change the tyre. He leaves the horsebox’s light on and the ramp still lowered.

As the men continue working, the black puppy looks down at his brother and licks his face again but there is still no response.

The light streaming out from the back of the horsebox seems to offer the promise of warmth and safety within. Reluctantly the black puppy leaves his fallen brother and limps hesitantly towards the lowered ramp and while the men are busy with the tyre, he slowly makes his way up the ramp and into the horsebox.

The interior of the horsebox is divided into two stalls and the floor inside the stalls is covered in straw.

Once inside the horsebox, the puppy begins sniffing around. He comes across a half full bucket of water but in his haste to quench his raging thirst he almost climbs inside the bucket to reach the water and ends up tipping it over.

As he laps up the spilt water, he follows it as it spreads across the floor, failing to notice he is moving towards the horse standing quietly in the stall on the right-hand side but, when she suddenly shifts her stance and twitches her long tail as she senses the dog’s presence moving closer, the puppy glances up to see the horse’s massive backside directly above his head.

The horse lifts one of its hooves an inch off the ground and the muscles in her hind-quarters bunch ready to kick out.

The hairs on the back of the puppy’s neck stand on end as he hesitates for a split second unsure whether to bark, bite or back off.

Luckily for him, as there would only be one winner if the lethal metal shooed hooves were to lash out, he chooses the last option and slowly retreats into the adjacent empty stall.

As the puppy backs away, the horse begins to relax as she feels the threat to her withdrawn and she returns to munching on the hay-net hanging in front of her.

As the puppy regains his own composure, he begins to explore the other stall. Just as he is halfway into the empty stall there is sharp click and the light goes out. The puppy instantly crouches down and freezes as he is plunged into darkness.

The men are oblivious to his presence and they put the ramp back up, securing it in place with the hefty bolts.

A few seconds later the engine shudders into life and the horsebox drives away.

As it drives off, the white puppy coughs weakly and fleetingly opens his eyes to see the horsebox disappearing into the darkness before he lapses back into unconsciousness.

In the departing horsebox, the black puppy nervously settles down in the straw at the far end of the empty stall and falls into a fitful sleep.