I never liked dogs. They’d always struck me as uncivilized, drooling over flesh and bone like something half-prehistoric. A relic that the more evolved among us had no need of. Then, one summer afternoon, I looked up and counted six stars shining in the daytime sky. Nine. Twenty. Mom called to let me know that everyone was dead.
Together, we drove west, away from the pancaked coast and its cell-rending nuclear fallout, to the old family farm in a place almost untouched. It was hard living, even for those of us who survived, and two silent springs later, I buried Mom alone.
I woke that next morning to find a pack of dogs tearing at her uncovered corpse. Feral things. All noise and teeth, just as they’d been in our human world. I wailed and hurled rocks at them, driving them off across the long-empty tobacco fields. Had they been disappointed to dig Mom up and find nothing but skin and bones? Trembling from my own hunger, I reburied what scraps remained and stood watch over her fresh grave. The pack’s leader, an orange-colored speck against the distant trees, seemed to watch me back.
Refugees told of an empty hell beyond the farm. Of the blackened bones of cities and feral dogs left to pick at the carcasses. Half-starved scavengers, not unlike the rest of us. I guarded Mom’s body from the lingering pack for hours until the truth came to me at last—that I was hungry, and they were fed. That there was nothing left for me on that farm but a slow death with no one to bury me.
So, when the dogs moved on, I followed. At a distance, for a while. Riding an old bike along empty roads. After a time they seemed to forgive our coarse introduction, growing accustomed to my far-off presence. I counted six of them from the next hill. Their orange-spotted leader always ate first, snarling and snapping if any of the others tried to break rank. I named him Redbone. The rest were all manner of mongrel, skinny beneath short or matted coats. They regarded humans with fear, scavenging through our empty towns for whatever hard food remained. I wondered which of them, if any, had been born before the missiles. When at last I drew near enough to make out Redbone’s angry, yellow eyes, I saw a familiar loss in them.
As the pack let me get closer, I was able to prove my usefulness. I followed them into a ruined Walmart and showed I could move objects, climb ladders, retrieve cans from the high shelves and puncture them with an old pair of gardening shears. I wanted to show the pack that we could help each other. That I could be a bridge between their world and whatever fruits remained of our old one, in hopes they might offer me the same.
It was protection I needed most of all. I learned firsthand one pre-dawn when a pair of ravaged outlaws came upon us and showed me the gleaming blade of a machete. What did I have but Granddad’s hunting knife and four limbs weak with hunger? Redbone caught one man by the calf and tore him up so badly that his friend just left him behind. Like a drunk executioner, I missed his neck and left the machete sticking out of his sternum instead. The dogs stopped his screaming. After that, it seemed we were friends.
Together, we navigated this ruin between the old world and a new and wilder one. The dogs had their noses and razor teeth. I had my human hands and my memories. Deer started to come back that next year, and the pack took quickly to hunting. They left me my share. Warm bone marrow beats a four-year-old can of pie filling, and I soon figured out how to messily dismantle a kill and cook it over my fire. It was by that fire that I helped Redbone’s wife, a skinny coonhound, deliver a litter of skinny puppies.
The puppies changed things. They’ve never known me as anything but a dog.
The pack has something cornered this morning. Their feral symphony leads me down to the creek where the woods are wet and fragrant, shaking off winter in sprays of redbud and dogwood. It’s the first spring in six years that has arrived properly. Our prey—a yearling buck—is a sign of resurrection. I swear I can smell him. The sound of gnashing teeth meets me at the water’s edge.
They want my knife, I know. The buck thrashes at bay, so hard it’s a fight to get the blade to him. His screaming and the metal reek of his blood make my mouth water. I shake the gore off my hands once he draws still.
The pack clears a path for Redbone, who takes his share first. His yellow eyes flash up at me and I step away, too. Then it’s my turn. I kneel and begin to hack with the serrated edge of Granddad’s knife. One of the puppies—leggy and skittish in his adolescence—moves in too close, and I whirl, brandishing the blade. He understands the baring of teeth in our inter-species creole, and backs away.
I pop the joint on the buck’s haunch and take my share in my arms. Tonight, I’ll roast it and give the puppies what I can’t eat. They’ve grown to love these primitive table scraps, and don’t fear my fire like the others do. In them, I feel phantoms of the old world, and some world before that one. A pact of blood and teeth and fire. Redbone watches us from the shadows, golden eyes flashing in the firelight, and I wonder if he remembers.
♡
June 7, 2026
