Dawn of Fear Read Online Free Page B

away.”
    â€œMark them with stones,” said Geoff, inexorable. “We’ll get some from the road. Come on.”
    He scrambled to the path and made off toward Everett Avenue, and they followed him more slowly, still reluctant, with a vague sense that the proper order of things was being outraged. Sounds of clattering pots came from Mrs. Robinson’s back door as they passed, but they could see no one there. When they caught up with Geoff at the beginning of the Ditch, they found him standing still, gazing across Everett Avenue, at the near end of the White Road. He was watching something with a strange intentness; he looked somehow as if he would have been watching from a secret hiding place if there had been anywhere to hide.
    They saw a group of the Children from the White Road crouched together at the end of their territory, bordering on Everett Avenue. Some hidden, intent activity was going on in the middle of the group, like the quivering of a pot of water about to boil. Then suddenly the children jumped to their feet, the group exploded, and
they could see one boy standing in the center: a weaselly boy in a dirty gray sweater.
    â€œIt’s that David Wiggs,” Derek said scornfully. Then he stopped.
    David Wiggs was holding one arm out, stiffly extended, and jerking it up and down, while the other boys around him capered and laughed. From his hand hung a piece of rope, and at the other end of the rope dangled a struggling black cat, the noose that was around its neck tightening each time David Wiggs’s hand jerked. Another boy was poking it in the belly with a piece of stick while it twitched and strangled. It was a small cat. They could hear it making a small hideous yowling sound.
    Derek stood gaping, paralyzed, watching someone do something he thought no one could possibly ever do; he jumped as Peter at his side yelled indignantly, “Stop it!” He felt rather than saw Peter stoop quickly and grab a handful of stones, and then he was doing the same, and both of them were sending a small fusillade of stones toward the group.
    A small boy at the edge of the group jumped and squealed, rubbing his arm, and began to cry shrilly; the Children from the White Road scattered, and David Wiggs let go his rope and dropped the cat, which turned a somersault, found its feet, streaked away up the road, and at once disappeared. Then the stones were coming back at them; not from all the group, but from David Wiggs and two of the other larger boys. In the first rush
of revenge, they bent down, grabbed, threw; but the rage was not enough to send them rushing into Everett Avenue territory, as it was not enough to make the gang of three carry on their attack now that the wretched anonymous cat had run free.
    So the stones and the throwing died away, and most of the White Road children drifted away, back up the road, leaving only the weaselly Wiggs boy and his henchmen yelling insults. In unspoken agreement Derek, Peter, and Geoffrey loftily turned their backs and walked—taking great care, great breathless care not to run—down to Derek’s gate.
    â€œThat David Wiggs is beastly.”
    â€œHe’s a pig.”
    â€œHe’s a Nazi. And his nose runs.”
    â€œI wonder whose cat that is,” Peter said, looking worried. He loved all animals, even the evil-smelling chickens his parents kept at the end of their garden.
    â€œProbably a stray,” Geoffrey said. “My dad says there are lots more strays about, cats and dogs as well. When people get killed by the bombs, their dogs just run off.”
    â€œWhat do they live on?”
    â€œI dunno. Rats. Mice. Same things wild dogs live on.”
    â€œThere are wild cats, aren’t there?”
    â€œMaybe that cat’ll grow up wild and come back and eat David Wiggs.”
    â€œStinky old Wiggs, he’d taste awful.”
    â€œLike maggots.”
    â€œLike rotten potatoes.”
    â€œThey only go wild in