SOME OTHER EMERGENCY

Rain. There’d been eight straight days of it. Somehow Matthew hadn’t really noticed. He’d been at work. But now it was Saturday and the creek had burst its banks, and there were sirens down by the coast, evacuations. Another one-in-50-year flood, the radio said.

Not that the rain had deterred Rags. Still she insisted on her walk, whining at the door until Matthew took her out and up the zigzag track above the motorway. And when they came to a giant new rut in the track, knee-deep with rainwater, she refused to turn back, her old neck and legs braced against the leash.

Matthew laughed at her. “Bossy old bitch.” It was barely wider than his boot, the edge of track Rags pulled him up to get round that rut, and when he stepped on it he felt a strange looseness. Frowning, he looked down, and tried to replant his boot. Then the track changed form beneath him; he saw it slump. A wet sound, and then he was falling with it, falling among the wetness and rock.

A slip, he thought – falling. I’m in a landslip. Something yanked tight round his wrist. Rags. Her leash. He caught a glimpse of her above him, eyeing the disloyal earth. Then she was dragged under, mud cresting right over her back.

He shouted, tried to pull her close. But then the mud and rock claimed his legs, wrenched his arm down with the leash, while it pushed the rest of him further downhill. His ears full of wet and grinding earth.

Then the hill stopped. It went quiet.

Rags.

He tried to pull himself up, tried to see her, but couldn’t.

There was no noise of his dog. No one to help. Just rain – the sound of it hitting the exposed parts of his parka and the mud all round him. Far below, the cars swishing with wet. And a siren, further off – but going the wrong way, for him. Down to the coast. To some other emergency, some flooded house.