‘Was it me?’ she squealed excitedly to Father, who had lined Red up in his sights. Hugging the ground as he ran, he streaked from one patch of stalks to another. Father pulled the trigger and the bullet whizzed past Red, barely missing his back. He picked up a woman’s bloated leg in his razor-sharp teeth and began to eat, each powerful bite making a loud crunch as the bone shattered. Mother fired; her bullet struck the dark earth in front of Red and spattered his face with mud. He shook his head violently, then picked up the pale leg and ran off. Wang Guang and Dezhi wounded several dogs, whose blood smeared the corpses and whose whimpers struck terror into the hunters’ hearts.
When the pack retreated, the hunters closed up ranks so they could clean their weapons. Since they were running low on ammunition, Father reminded them to make every bullet count, emphasising the importance of eliminating the leaders of the pack. ‘They’re as slippery as loaches,’ Wang Guang said. ‘They always slink away before I can reload.’
Dezhi blinked his rheumy eyes and said, ‘Douguan, how about a sneak attack?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, they have to go somewhere to rest,’ Dezhi said, ‘and I’ll bet it’s near the Black Water River. After stuffing their bellies, they probably go there for the water.’
‘He’s got a point,’ Gimpy agreed.
‘Then let’s go,’ Father said.
‘Not so fast,’ Dezhi cautioned. ‘Let’s go back and get some grenades. We’ll blow ’em up.’
Father, Mother, Wang Guang, and Dezhi split up to follow two separate paths made by the dogs in the muddy earth, which had turned springy from all the claws that had passed over it. The paths led straight to the Black Water River, where Father and Mother could hear the roar of water and the sounds of the dogs. The paths converged as they neared the riverbank to form a broad single path.
That’s where Father and Mother met up with Wang Guang and Dezhi. And that’s where they spotted more than two hundred dogs spread out over the weed-covered riverbank; most were crouching, although some were gnawing at shiny clods of black earth stuck between their toes. A few stood at the water’s edge, raising their legs to piss into the river, while others were drinking. Now that their bellies were full, they circled the area, passing dark-brown canine farts. The weeds were nearly covered with reddish or white dogshit, and the odour of the turds and farts was different from any Father and the others had ever smelled. It was easy to spot the three leaders, even though they were spread out among the others.
‘Shall we toss them now, Douguan?’ Wang Guang asked.
‘Get ready,’ Father said. ‘We’ll lob them together.’
They were each holding two petal-shaped muskmelon hand grenades. After pulling the pins, they banged the grenades together. ‘Now!’ Father yelled, and eight arching missiles landed amid the dogs, who first watched with curiosity as the black oblong objects fell from the sky, then instinctively crouched down. Father marvelled at the incredible intelligence of the three dogs from our family, who cunningly flattened out on the ground just before the eight superior Japanese grenades exploded, almost at the same instant, the frightful blast spraying dark shrapnel in all directions. A dozen or more dogs were blown to bits, at least twenty others gravely wounded. Dog blood and dog meat sailed into the air above the river and splattered on the surface like hailstones. White eels, blood eaters, swarmed to the spot, squealing as they fought over the dog meat and dog blood. The pitiful whimpering of the wounded dogs was terrifying. Those that had escaped injury scattered, some dashing wildly down the riverbank, others leaping into the Black Water River to swim frantically to the opposite bank.
Father wished he hadn’t left his rifle behind, for some of the dogs, blinded by the blast, were running in circles on the riverbank, whimpering in panic, their faces covered with blood. It was a pitiful, exhilarating sight. Our three dogs swam across the river, followed by about thirty others, and clambered up onto the opposite bank with their tails between their legs, their wet fur stuck to their skin; they, too, were a sorry sight, but once they reached solid ground, they shook themselves violently, sending beads of water flying from their tails, their bellies, and their chins. Red glared hatefully at Father and barked, as though accusing him and his friends of violating a tacit agreement by invading their bivouac area and using new, cruelly undoglike weapons.
‘Lob some across the river!’ Father said.
They picked up more grenades and heaved them with all their might towards the opposite bank. When the dogs saw the black objects arching above the water, they raised an imploring howl, as though calling for their mothers and fathers, then leaped and rolled down the riverbank, making a quick dash to the sorghum field on the southern bank. Father and the others weren’t strong enough to reach the bank with their grenades, which landed harmlessly in the river and sent up four columns of silvery water. The surface roiled for a moment, as a school of fat white eels floated belly up.
The dogs stayed away from the sight of the massacre for two days following the sneak attack, a time during which canine and human forces maintained strict vigilance as they made battle preparations.
Father and his friends, recognising the enormous power of the grenades, held a strategy session to find ways of putting them to even better use. When Wang Guang returned from a reconnaissance mission to the riverbank, he brought news that all that remained were a few canine corpses, a blanket of fur and dogshit, and an overpowering stench. Not a single living dog – which meant they’d moved to another bivouac area.
According to Dezhi, since the leaders of the routed dog pack had been spared, it would only be a matter of time before they closed up ranks and returned to fight over the corpses. Their counterattack was bound to be particularly ferocious, since the survivors now had rich battle experience.
The final suggestion was made by Mother, who recommended arming the wooden-handled grenades and burying them along the paths. Her suggestion met with unanimous approval, so they split up into groups to bury forty-three of the grenades beneath the three paths. Of the fifty-seven muskmelon grenades they’d started with, twelve had been used during the attack on the Black Water River shoal, so there were forty-five left – fifteen for each group.
Cracks developed in the unity of the canine forces over the two days as a result of casualties and desertion, which depleted their number to 120 or so. The three original brigades were reformed into a single unified force of crack troops. Since their bivouac area had been overrun by those four bastards with their strange, exploding dung-beetles, they were forced to move three li downriver to a spot on the southern bank just east of the stone bridge.
It was to be a morning of great significance. The dogs, itching for a fight, snarled and snapped at one another as they made their way to the new bivouac area, sneaking an occasional glance at their leaders, who were calmly sizing each other up. Once they reached a spot east of the bridge, they formed a circle on the shoal, sat back on their haunches, and howled at the overcast sky. Blackie and Green were twitching noticeably, causing the fur on their backs to ripple like ocean waves. Months of vagabond lives and feasting on rotting meat had awakened primal memories anaesthetised over aeons of domestication. A hatred of humans – those two-legged creatures that walked erect – seethed in their hearts, and eating human flesh held greater significance than just filling their growling bellies; more important was the vague sensation that they were exacting terrible revenge upon those rulers who had enslaved them and forced them into the demeaning existence of living off scraps. The only ones capable of translating these primitive impulses into high theory, however, were the three dogs from our family. That was why they enjoyed the support of the pack dogs, although that alone would have been insufficient; their size and strength, their quickness, and their willingness to martyr themselves by attacking with unparalleled ferocity all made them natural leaders. Now, though, they had begun to fight among themselves for sole dominion over the pack.