Tails of the Apocalypse

Unconditional ^{by Chris Pourteau}

He wasn’t old, the dog. Not too old to run. Not so old that he felt the need to wander into the woods and simply lie down until death took him. Not so old that he didn’t miss the boy terribly. He was still young enough to enjoy life and love the boy’s sharing it with him.

But now he was on his own. Alone.

He’d lost the boy. After the Storm of Teeth, when his pack had been forced from its home. Then came the time of fear and scavenging. And searching for the boy.

That’s how he thought of him—the boy. Not like the Man, who sometimes forgot him outside when it was too cold. Not like the Woman, who was kind more often than not and sometimes slipped scraps from the table into his bowl.

Not like the Baby. Once when she pulled his tail, he’d nipped at her, and the Man had whipped him. Pulling his tail had hurt, and he’d barely scratched the Baby with his teeth. Less than fearsome, more than playful, to teach her a lesson that hurt begat hurt. But the Man had given the same lesson to him.

The whipping had scared him more than hurt him then, but now he was glad for it. Without it, he might never have learned to think before he acted. And lately, that lesson had served him well.

All the other members of the pack outranked him. Even the Baby. He was and always had been the runt. Except for the boy. The boy had always just been the boy. After the Baby joined their pack, the boy had also become a runt, like him. Last in line to eat, behind the Baby. Sometimes forgotten entirely and left to fend for himself. But those times were the dog’s favorite, when the boy would seek him out for companionship. They explored runthood together.

The boy would come and find him, and they would happily flee the squalls of the Baby to run a squirrel up a tree or a rabbit into the brush. Unlike the Man or the Woman or the Baby, the boy had never treated him as anything other than equal. Never made him do anything he didn’t want to do. Never beat him. Never shouted at him. Never asserted senior runt rank in any way.

And so he loved the boy as a playmate, a second self, a twin runt. They shared everything. Sometimes it was a ball the boy threw. Sometimes he grabbed one of the boy’s furs because it smelled so much like him, and the boy would pull on it and try to take it back. That was a fun game. And play-fighting. The boy would offer his hand, knowing his second self would never do him harm. He’d gnaw the boy’s fingers and the boy would make disgusted sounds and wipe his hand, and he’d chase the hand under the fur the boy used to dry it. Sometimes he’d catch the hand, and their game would start all over again.

Each had absolute access to whatever the other had. Except the boy refused to eat from his bowl. Though when the Man and the Woman weren’t looking, sometimes the boy let him eat from his bowl. But otherwise, they shared everything.

Mostly that was love, one for the other. Without expectations or conditions or demands, other than to know the one would always be there for the other. Would always protect the other. As they proved with the stray, on the day they’d even shared danger for the first time.

Long before the Storm of Teeth had come, they were walking in the woods near their home. A stray ran up on them, baring its teeth and looking for trouble. The boy froze in place, and though the dog was small, he moved between the boy and the stray to protect his twin. Teeth bared. Spinal fur erect. The stray had been much bigger than him. Most dogs were. More desperate seeming. Hungry, even.

That day, for the first time, he’d heard the boy shout. It surprised him. It wasn’t like his own bark, but it sort of was. The same, but with different sounds mashed into one. His bared teeth and the boy’s loud barking had scared the larger dog off.

So they shared this instinct too, he’d realized then. The instinct to look out for one another. As he was trying to protect the boy, so the boy had used his strange bark, aimed at the stray, to protect him. Twins in more than just spirit then, he’d decided. Love was also one runt sacrificing for the other. Theirs was a shared runt love.

That thought made him happy, but remembering it and the day they’d faced down the stray also made him sad. It made him miss the boy all the more. Part of him feared walking in the world made by the Storm of Teeth without the boy’s bark beside him to protect him. Part of him feared not walking beside the boy to shield him from that world with his own teeth. All of him missed the boy entirely. His stomach ached with the longing for his twin’s companionship. To chase a squirrel or a rabbit or a ball. To do anything, really, as long as it was done together.

In the days following the Storm of Teeth, his memory was one long stretch of boredom punctuated by flashes of terror. Eating when he could. Hiding and waiting until it was safe to move again. At those times, his thoughts couldn’t help but turn to the boy, and each day he felt a hole open wider inside him where the boy had been. He whimpered when he was sure he was alone and no one—and nothing—could hear.

His pack had left him behind. They’d all run out the front door of the house only a few nights ago, though it felt like forever. He remembered that night, when the Storm of Teeth had come.

He was in the backyard, lying on a bed of leaves on a cool evening that was sure to turn cold later on. On those nights, the boy often slipped him into his room without the Man knowing and snuggled with him under the covers. His twin would rub his belly, and he’d arch his head in the air and moan and the boy would laugh. On those nights, love would smell to him like the warm scent of the boy radiating beneath the covers. And they would sleep, curled up as one, until the next morning.

But it was too early for him to be inside on this particular evening. The pack was eating their dinner, and so he was outside in the backyard, awaiting a runt’s turn at his bowl. Then the storm came—slavering, growling, more frightening than even the stray had been. Than a hundred strays could ever be.

Their scent reached him on the wind long before he could see them. It was impossible not to smell them. The wind didn’t carry the scent of a good death, the natural odor of an animal after its life had ended. The scent of a food source he could roll around in and bring back to the boy. No, this was the smell of un-life, walking when it should be still.

He wanted to stand and bark, to be brave and warn the boy and the others, even the Baby. But the stench on the wind was so overpowering, so rank and fetid, that he merely dug under the leaves and woofed his fear. Then, when the creatures were closer, he hid his voice as well. Haunches shaking, he watched from his hiding place as they came into view.

The Storm of Teeth moved upright when they should be dormant and dead. They seemed to drag the cold with them as they lurched through the open yard behind his pack’s home. He cowered in his corner of the yard, far away from their path, where the Man had tied him to the corner of the house. They moved together, like a pack, but random and stumbling. They moved like a pack, but they didn’t hunt like one. They were slow and ponderous, not fast, but they never stopped or slowed down. They just kept coming. Like locusts looking for flesh.

He could smell the plague they carried as they moved past his hiding place, straight for his pack’s home. The smell marched into his nose on tiny feet, overpowering and putrid like its source. Dead and worse, like rotten meat infested with worms. Nothing should be walking and hunting like these creatures did. They kept moving when they should only lie still and let the worms do their work.

Had he been able, he would’ve stood and run away from them, as far as he could get. Every instinct in him demanded it, overwhelming his courage. But the Man had tied him with a rope, and it kept him from running.

They crossed the yard and scraped and clawed at the side of the house. The Man and the Woman screamed and fought. The Baby, useless, merely squalled, drawing more of the creatures. He remembered the boy shouting his name. But unlike the day when they’d stood together and faced the stray, the Storm of Teeth and the rope that held him separated them. If he moved at all, he knew the creatures would see him and come for him. Kill him. He wanted to avoid death. Death would mean he’d never see the boy again.

Finally, the creatures had broken in, and his pack had fled from the other end of the house, leaving him behind. The last thing he heard was the boy, screaming his name again. He’d wanted to run after him, but the rope had kept him from it. So instead he remembered the Man’s lesson.

He lay beneath his fur of leaves and waited. He’d always wanted to be bigger, especially on the day when they’d faced the stray. But now, as he hid himself from the slobbering herd, he was glad the lump he made beneath the leaves was small. Maybe the creatures wouldn’t notice. Maybe the leaves would hide his smell from them.

Some of the creatures pursued his pack, but others milled around the house for hours. He was alone among them. He’d never been so frightened. As the night’s cold descended through his fur and into his bones, he shook and wanted so badly to whine. But he remembered the Man’s lesson.

They tore and slavered and hissed and looked for more to eat. Their appetite seemed insatiable. But he remembered to think before acting, and so he waited and waited and waited longer. While the rope held him, there was nothing else he could do.

He learned to dart his eyes from creature to creature without moving his head. He watched them roam and stagger and slam against the house again and again, until the moon was rising in the sky. Finally they moved on, leaving him shivering beneath his leaves, exhausted. But he dared not move yet. He had to be sure they were gone. He fell into a fitful sleep.

He jerked awake, his paws kicking. He’d been running in a dream. A nightmare, then? Only a bad dream.

The night was cooling fast. It’d be a perfect night for him to scratch softly at the window, the promise of warm love waiting beneath the boy’s furs. It’d make having the nightmare worthwhile.

But then he saw the hole in the side of the house and his sadness, like the cold, settled deep into him. It hadn’t been a dream after all.

He sniffed to make sure he could no longer smell them. When he was sure they’d gone, he stood and stretched. His fur was soaked. His legs were stiff, despite their dream-running. The leaves clung to him with the night’s dew, sealing in the cold.

But he waggled off the leaves and dropped to his belly again and began to gnaw. The rope was bitter and stringy and rough against his tongue. It tasted like hay smelled. But he thought of finding the boy again, and that gave him strength.

He chewed. Time passed.

Once he thought he heard one of the creatures, but it was only a cat. The cat walked by him and watched him gnawing and he growled at it without stopping. The cat had simply turned away as if he weren’t worth her time and, mewing, walked on.

By the time the moon was full overhead, he’d eaten his way through the rope. His harness remained, but he didn’t mind that. It reminded him of the boy and their walks. Of the day they’d stood down the stray together. And that gave him courage. And hope.

He went inside the house, through the hole the creatures had made. His pack’s scent was everywhere. It mixed with the stench of the invaders. And something else. The smell of food. Real food.

His eyes followed his nose around the room. Whenever the Man or Woman wanted him to do something, they’d bark their strange sound, and he’d come running to this room. After he did the thing, they’d give him a reward. Next to the boy’s room, this was his favorite room in the house.

There were treats all over the table. His pack had been feeding when the attack happened. He stood up on his hind legs and sniffed. He began to salivate. The smorgasbord of smells almost overpowered the lingering, wormy reek of the creatures. He looked around left, then right. An old habit. But the Man and the Woman weren’t here to bark a warning at him. He was glad and sad at the same time for that.

He leapt up on one of their seats and stared at the table. Food covered it in wide, flat bowls. He was famished, he realized, now that the danger had passed. As hungry as the creatures seemed to be.

No, not like them. Never like them.

Placing his front paws on the table’s edge, he looked around one last time, then leapt up on the table and filled his jaws. He ate for the pure joy of eating while standing on the tabletop. He’d dreamed of it many times. He looked around again, just to make sure he wouldn’t get into trouble, then remembered: they were gone. The boy was gone. His sadness found solace as he gorged himself.

When he was finished, he tumbled down, first to the chair, then to the floor. His belly was fat and he felt sleepy. So he went back to the hole in the side of the house, looked left and right to make sure none of the creatures were around, then pooped in the backyard. Eating from the table was one thing. Pooping in the house? That just wasn’t right.

He walked back inside and to his favorite room in the house, where his twin runt slept, and clambered beneath the boy’s furs. He buried his body in them, just as he’d burrowed beneath the leaves. He wanted to absorb the boy’s scent into his own fur. He wanted it to be all he could smell, ever again. As he inhaled deeply and his belly spread full beneath him like a fat pillow, the sorrow returned. If he left here, he knew, eventually the boy’s scent would leave him. Especially now that the heavy odor of the Storm of Teeth lay across everything. He fell asleep, buried in the furs and painting a permanent memory of the boy’s scent into his nose.

Dawn brought more of the creatures. He awoke to them moving through the house. As he had the night before, he inhaled deeply to stamp the boy’s smell on his brain one last time. Then he poked his nose from beneath the covers.

One of them dragged a foot aimlessly down the hallway as it passed the door to the boy’s room. Eventually, he knew, he had to move. The longer he delayed, the further away the boy was. There was no rope binding him now. He must move soon if he were ever to find the boy.

He stood, ready to hop down, and his stomach roiled with his earlier feast. The creature’s shadow hesitated. He stood stock still, the boy’s furs around his head and shoulders. The creature grunted as it turned to come back up the hallway.

Fear coursed through him. His brain prepared his body for combat. He wanted to growl, to warn the creature away, as he and the boy had warned the stray away. But they were too big, much bigger than the stray, and they never stopped until they fed. Even after they fed. His growl would only bring their attention to him, he knew.

He had only one choice, then.

Leaping from the bed, he darted through the doorway, ignoring the groan of hunger behind him. He waddled down the hall, last night’s binge weighing him down.

Shambling shadows appeared in the living room, attracted by the first creature’s frustration. One of them was small like the Baby, only crawling. It dragged itself across the floor of the living room toward the hall. His eyes darted back and forth, looking for a path to freedom.

The crawling creature reached for him, and he was tempted to nip at the hand like he had the Baby’s. But he thought before acting. He wasn’t sure what biting one of the creatures would mean. Would he change too? Would he become one of them, no matter who bit first?

He feinted left, then jogged right and past the crawler’s clutching hands. Another creature stood between him and the open front door, but he darted between its legs and tumbled outside.

Creatures moved randomly in the street as the others in the house turned to pursue him. He could see bodies of the members of other packs sprawled around in death. At least some of them had stayed dead, as they should.

Now that he was out in the open, it was easy to avoid the creatures. His leg muscles bested the weight of his stomach, and he moved from body to body, making sure they were not the boy or the other members of his own pack. When he was satisfied, he moved into the woods behind the neighborhood and began his search.

His strategy was simple. He hid when the creatures were around and tracked when they weren’t. But tracking the boy was difficult. His scent was almost impossible to find.

As the Storm of Teeth grew in ferocity and size, as its biters spread their plague, the stench of the dead was everywhere. They were everywhere. Always hungry. Always eating. His fur was up more often than it wasn’t. He began to feel awake, even while sleeping.

The first day he spent going to the places he and the boy had always gone. The dog park. The route they walked, where the stray had attacked them. The fishing hole. But each time he failed to find the boy, his sadness deepened, his desperation grew. For three days he searched and tracked and found nothing but danger and grief.

On the third night, a bat attacked him, and he ran into cover on instinct. The bat carried a disease like the creatures. He could smell it. Only this disease was older, one he knew to avoid without thinking. He knew that if the bat bit him, he’d die. Death would be agony. He knew this. And he’d try to spread the bat’s disease to others, too.

Maybe the plague of the creatures was like the bat’s disease, then. He’d seen it turn members of other packs rabid after they were bitten. They joined the Storm of Teeth and became spreaders of the plague. Deep in his bones, he knew if a creature bit him, the plague would take him too. The same as would happen if the bat bit him. At last, the answer to the question. Whether he bit a creature or it bit him, he’d become a plague carrier. And go mad.

He resolved in that moment never to become like them. Not just for himself, but for the boy too. What if he found the boy after becoming plagued? He knew he’d try and hurt him, try to spread the sickness. Like the bat had tried to hurt him. And hurting wasn’t love. Not even runt love. And he didn’t want to hurt anyone, not ever.

That night, he returned to the fishing hole and laid his head near the edge of the pond. Maybe the boy would come back here after all, he decided. Maybe he’d remember this place, their refuge on lazy afternoons.

As he rested, the thought suddenly came upon him: what if the boy had been bitten by a creature? He whimpered quietly. Missing his second self made him ache inside. But it hurt even worse to think of the boy as a plaguebearer. Drooling, ravenous, and spreading madness to others like the bat.

No longer a boy. No longer his boy. An un-boy.

His twin wouldn’t want that, he decided. The boy was just like him and would never want to hurt anyone. He’d only ever barked the once, when the stray had threatened them. He’d never barked again, not even when the Baby cried all the time and everyone else began to bark at one another, aggravated.

He and the boy shared the desire to never hurt another soul. Better to die a natural death than walk, eternally ravenous, through an unnatural un-life. He slipped into the waking sleep that now passed for rest.

Before dawn, a noise startled him awake. His eyes popped open. That night in the yard, he’d learned to look first without turning his head. But the noise was off to the left. His spinal fur was already up, alerted by his nose. His ears too had warned him before his eyes had opened. It was the shambling noise. The shuffling, methodical step… step… step of eternal appetite. The hungry, persistent tread of a creature that should be still and dead. He sniffed quietly, but the wind was moving in the wrong direction.

He turned his head slowly to see how many.

Only one.

The only one that mattered.

The only one that mattered at all.

He whined.

The boy’s clothes were shredded and dirty. His eyes were yellow and rheumy. His mouth was red and shredded, as if he’d gnawed his own lips away to stave off starvation.

The wind shifted and he caught the scent. It wasn’t the boy’s sweet smell, the smell of runt love and playtime and warm furs on cold nights. It was the rotting stench of un-life.

He couldn’t stop his sadness from becoming sound. His whine of fear became a moan of hope stolen away. Attracted by the noise, the boy turned and reached out for him.

He stood up. He barked. He didn’t care if other creatures heard. He wanted to warn this one away. To somehow scare the plague out of the boy and make it give his twin back to him. To be a champion again for his second self.

All his searching. All his caution.

He wanted the boy back!

The un-boy marched forward, moaning. A sad sound. But as with the other creatures, hunger ruled all. The un-boy bared his teeth through a ragged, receding mouth.

Reaching.

The dog growled and backed away. He’d never growled at the boy in anger. Only in play. But as the two of them stalked one another along the same shore where they’d shared so many afternoons dozing in the sun, he knew this creature was no longer his twin.

One moved forward, hungry; the other back, frightened.

Other sounds. Other creatures. From the other side of the shore.

He glanced to his right. There were several.

Then more.

Then many.

Too many.

He turned back to the creature that had been the boy. His whine erupted into a ragged, desperate stream of barking. The un-boy’s fingers worked the air, clutching for him. He remembered the boy’s scent, his real scent, and how much it smelled like love. How much it filled him up to share everything with the boy—to share a reason for living as a friend, each a champion for the other.

Then, he decided. Despite every instinct that begged him to run, as he’d run at the house, he stayed and stood his ground.

He knew his second self would never want to be this un-boy, hurting others. And he didn’t want it either—for either of them. But the boy couldn’t protect himself now. It was up to him to stand between the boy and the stray again. To free the boy who was his best friend from the un-life that should never have been.

A final moment to share together.

He leapt into the un-boy’s outstretched arms and ripped out his throat.