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the sun went down.
    The step that he slept on was at the back of an alleyway, a nice little dead-end off Old Paradise Street, not far from the station, past a little row of shops with a dancing lady painted on the end of the brick wall. She had a bowl of bananas and oranges and pineapples balanced on her head and Bully gauged how hungry he was by if he ever walked past and even
thought
about eating fruit.
    There were no cars parked in his alleyway. The only thing it was good for was rubbish. Two metal bins as big as cars took up most of the space. Even so, when the rubbish truck came reversing in from the main road on Tuesday nights, he made sure his wheelie bin (that he’d nicked) with all his bedding in was tucked out the way. He didn’t want to have to go looking for new blankets at night.
    He’d been lucky to get it. The first night in town he’d spent wandering around the station. On his second night he was so tired he’d fallen asleep on the steps where the names of the dead train drivers were written into the walls.
COMPANY EMPLOYEES WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR
it said in the stone.
    Alfred Appleby
    John Ardle
    James Bootle…
    He tried to remember which war was the great one, that was so
big
, that everybody got so excited about. It said
1914–1918
on the wall but he wasn’t sure if that was the one with Hitler in or not.
    Phil had told him that in the army the fighting bit, the war bit, was OK, as long as you were pulling the trigger and doing something. And that gave you a bit of a rush, getting away with it for another day, but he’d never said any of it was
great
. And Bully had drifted off that second night thinking about all those dead train drivers driving
ghost
trains after their war and was nearly caught by the Feds.
    It was Chris who had saved him. He’d seen the Feds on their way, come over and given him a tap and got him and Jack moving. Bully’d wandered around for the rest of the night with Tiggs and Chris, in and out of takeaways to keep warm, and in the morning he’d gone round the back of McDonald’s with Jack and found this place.
    He lay down on his step. The doorway was too small and the step too narrow for a big man or even an older boy of much more than five feet and a half to bed down on, and his cardboard crinkled out over the edge. He didn’t know where the door went. No one had opened it while he was there, not while he was awake, anyway. There was no name or number on it, just a keypad, and sometimes he’d punch in numbers to see if he could get it to open. So far, he’d had no luck.
    “What’s this?” he said, picking fluff from his sleeping bag out of Jack’s coarse fur. “There’s a bit of poodle in you, mate.” He thought this was really hilarious and said it most nights even if he couldn’t find any fluff.
    What he spent most of his time picking out of Jack’s coat though was
fleas
. His eyesight was good enough close up. The warm weather the past few days had been breeding them up and yesterday he’d squished thirteen between his nails so that his fingers looked like they were bleeding. The thought of it had Bully checking Jack’s ear. The tear was ragged like a torn ticket and he rubbed a bit of his own spit into it for good measure, though human spit did nothing for dogs.
    Jack whined a little and then nuzzled up to him. Her dog tag touched his sore skin. And because it was metal it felt cold even though the night was warm. He scratched under her jaw with one hand and with the other rubbed the little brass disc between his fingers. His mum had paid out extra to have it engraved and he traced the letters of the name cut into the metal. It reminded Bully of his money.
    Jack suddenly twitched away from him and started up, pointing towards the bins. Her growl ticked over.
    Rats
.
    A small one had got into his sleeping bag in the winter and bitten his ear. Bully had woken up screaming to see Jack shaking her head like she was saying
no, no, no
to the rat