In the alleyway, Albert was almost at the man in his flamboyant suit, but did he go to him or to the young woman? The chivalrous part of him directed that he had to attend to the woman first, but then a politically correct voice popped into his head to argue that such views were no longer appropriate, insisting that to favour her suggested he thought the woman less capable of managing. Unable to decide, it was the woman ripping her coat open to reveal the baby tucked inside it that sealed the vote in her favour.
The young mum was screeching with fear and for good reason: the baby was strapped to her front inside a papoose type sling thing and she had fallen on it.
‘Goodness are you alright?’ he asked, arriving at her side, and doing his best to crouch next to where she knelt.
The baby gurgled up at mummy, clearly unharmed and most likely wondering why mummy had tears streaking down her face.
Sobbing, the young woman managed to start cooing at her child, gently cradling its head which was when Albert noticed the cuts to her hands from breaking her fall. Feeling his eyes flare, he pulled out his phone and began dialling.
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ he told her. In the two seconds it took to connect, Albert swung his attention to the man in the suit. ‘Sir, are you injured? Did he take anything?’ The man’s briefcase was clutched to his chest, the contents safely locked back inside, but he wasn’t looking at Albert, he was staring down the alleyway, back toward the other street where Rex and Albert had come from. Albert’s shout caught his attention, snapping his head around where he gawped, unable to form words.
Doing his best to calm the young mother, Albert was about to repeat his question to the man in the suit when Rex whizzed back past the mouth of the alley from left to right. He was in the road with the traffic and chasing a moped on which the attacker in the balaclava now rode pillion. The sight made Albert’s eyes bug out and instantly drew his attention away from either of the victims. Bellowing, ‘Rex, no!’ had no effect whatsoever. He pushed on his thighs to get to his feet and shouted again as Rex disappeared behind a parked car.
In the road, Rex was incensed that the human opted to cheat. Using a motorised vehicle was not in the rules of chase and bite! The miscreant was getting away, the moped’s superior speed enough to outpace Rex, yet he wasn’t giving up and the relative difference in speed wasn’t that great.
Rex barked his anger as he pounded after the tiny bike. Weighed down by the extra person, it took its sweet time getting up to full speed, but once there it was going to escape if Rex didn’t come up with a way to stop it or slow it down.
Rex didn’t understand traffic. He got that there were cars and lorries and they went on the road and not the pavement. However, they would be going along a road, all flowing in the same direction and then inexplicably all decide to stop. Then cars would flow in front of them going in a different direction, or perhaps some humans would cross the road. How the decision to all stop was communicated he was yet to fathom, but it was happening now. The line of cars he was running alongside all began to slow as the ones at the front came to a stop. The moped, like Rex, was whipping along the gap between the parked cars and the ones which had been moving. The moped would have to slow down, Rex realised with excitement. They would slow and he would get them then. It would make this game of chase and bite the best ever because the human had cheated and still lost.
However, the moped didn’t slow. The passenger was shouting something to the driver - Rex couldn’t hear it, there was too much noise, but when they reached the front of the queue of cars and trucks, the moped carried on, whipping across the road which crossed in front of them without slowing down one bit.
Rex heard a cacophony of horns and tyres skidding followed by the sound of two or more cars colliding. The moped sailed through the gap between cars, as drivers in the cross street tried to avoid them by slamming on their brakes.
Unwilling to give up, despite the knowledge that he was running head long into traffic, Rex kept his head down and trusted to luck. The moped slowed to manoeuvre around one car but made it to the other side of the road losing only a few yards. Rex jumped over the bonnet of the same car, gaining yards, but that was as close as he got, for once clear of the junction, the street angled downward enough to give the moped the extra speed it needed to leave Rex behind.
He kept it in sight for as long as he could, but when it made a left turn, Rex was over a hundred yards behind and beginning to slow through fatigue. Out of breath, he slowed to a steady jog and followed his nose.
Back at the scene of the attack, Albert was trying to bury his concern over Rex. He hadn’t been able to watch as the moped and dog flew through the junction against the traffic, but despite hiding his face, he saw Rex make it to the other side and then vanish from sight as the street angled down. There was nothing he could do except hope Rex would stop running before he left the city. Shortly, Albert would excuse himself and go looking for
