He has seen people wearing special suits and breathing apparatus sweeping the hillsides with strange gadgets, walking in lines and flushing out any living thing ahead of them. He only avoids detection because he knows these hillsides well, and he hides in an old hollow oak.

From high in the tree he sees a fox in the distance, climbing up out of the valley. It has blood around its mouth and is growling, hissing, head darting left and right as if looking for something to kill. It does not look afraid. It looks vicious.

He sees deer and squirrels and rabbits shot as they’re frightened out of hiding ahead of the lines of people. Not every person carries a gun, but most of them do. They bag up the creatures’ corpses, tie the bags and then bag them again. Then they leave them out in the open, attaching a small balloon filled with helium which floats a couple of metres above the ground. So they can find and collect them later, he thinks. He used to like balloons.

A scurrying thing runs close by the entrance to the hollow tree. He hears its ragged breathing accompanied by a series of pained grunts, and when he glances down from a crack high in the tree he locks eyes with a Labrador puppy. He thinks it might be Lucas, the Thompsons’ dog, but it looks different. Muddy, wet, there is also blood spattered around its nose and across its face. He worries that the dog has been injured, but then he sees its eyes.

This is no longer the friendly family pet he stroked a few days ago. They said they’d named him after the Star Wars guy. The boy said they should have called him Chewie. His mother laughed.

Lucas growls and runs at him, and he only just ducks back inside the tree before the dog strikes the opening, scrabbling with oversized puppy paws, growling and spitting as it does its best to get at him.

The boy climbs quickly back up inside the tree. He’s done this before, but never with a mad dog trying to bite him. He wants to shout and cry, but a strong part of him he never realised was there takes control, guiding his hands and feet as he heaves himself up and away from the sick puppy. It’s inside the tree now, but he’s beyond its reach. It cannot climb.

He sits high up for what seems like hours while the dog growls and leaps beneath him. Calling its name does nothing. He even tries “Chewie”. There’s no sign of recognition, no indication at all that the puppy knows its own name or knows him. Teeth are its only response.

Later, as the sun climbs high, the puppy tires of trying to reach him and leaves. Later still he hears a bark and a single gunshot.