Tails of the Apocalypse

A Word from Edward W. Robertson

Growing up, my family had a golden retriever named Lady. She’s been dead for close to twenty years now, but my family still tells the occasional story about her. Like when we got a kitten who was so small she would curl up on Lady’s back to sleep. Or the time my dad went pheasant hunting in his friend’s asparagus field; my dad got one bird, his friend got one, and so did Lady—she’d found a hen out in the maze of asparagus gone to seed and done as her instincts suggested.

But Lady was the only dog I had as a kid. After her, it was nothing but cats. As recently as my late twenties, I didn’t think too much of dogs. I had nothing against them, but I had no desire to own one. And I definitely didn’t like little yappers.

Then I started dating someone whose mom had two dogs: a little orange terrier and a mutt—maybe a Chihuahua/miniature greyhound—named Vinnie. I thought the terrier was okay, but Vinnie was an ambassador to dog skeptics. Funny. Playful. Loyal. One time, when we came by the house for the first time in a few weeks, Vinnie threw back his head and howled when he saw me.

Six years later, I own two dogs. Little ones. One’s a mutt from an LA shelter. The other’s a Chihuahua we got as a puppy from a family at the dog park. She bears a suspicious resemblance to Knife. Both my dogs are yappers, but they make up for it in other ways.

In LA, sometimes it seems like there are more dogs than people. Most of my Breakers books are set in this area. When I thought about what the end would bring, I had no problem squashing seven billion people. But I never liked to think about what would happen to all those dogs.

In this corner of the universe, it turns out they helped a little girl through the loss of everything she knew.