Dog
By JT Pearson
Copyright 2013 Joseph Pearson
Enormous breasts, so big that you could barely hold them, and brains so tiny that you barely had to worry about them going anywhere. It took us generations to modify them that way. Chickens. They’re long gone now. I’d say they might well be the strangest looking animal that I can remember. I got a chance to spend a day on my Uncle Martin’s hobby farm when I was seven. After that I always wanted to be a farmer.
That was a long time ago. Now I work on a farm. It has fifty seven floors, growing everything from asparagus to lentils, with each floor bedded with high grade topsoil, the crops fed with artificial sunlight and an efficient hydro release system. I’m one of the men that guard the farm from bands of marauders that don’t care to do all of the work that it takes to grow food in the toxic conditions that still remain from the war. The marauders just show up and try to breach our perimeter, get into the building, and take everything we’ve grown. I work the night shift. Night Guard Jonny Ryder. I’m one of the roughly twenty thousand people in North America that we know of who survived the famine that followed the war.
Instead of overalls and flannel like my uncle wore, I wear body armor and a Kevlar helmet. Rather than a shovel or a pitchfork I carry an m16 and a tactical knife. My horse is a small six wheeled all terrain mobile that holds a fifty caliber machine gun, and a heat detecting scope for identifying the advancing enemies that have good camouflage. I kill anything that comes at us and that’s only people because all of the animals are already dead. And all the ghosts in your head just stare at you when you shoot them anyway.
After the war, the sun was blocked from the earth with a veil of red ash that surrounded the entire planet. Nights were as black as sharks’ eyes without the stars and during the day we lived in a glowing red haze. The vegetation stopped growing and the animals that eat that vegetation soon followed. The plankton died which caused a chain reaction throughout ocean life until it was gone and then went the sea life.
Canned meat and vegetables became bricks of gold. People used them monetarily until there was no value you could place on them anymore. No one was willing to give them up. Many people had felt it coming, stored food and water. Finding their secret bunkers and breaking into them was like searching for buried treasure. Most of them were located underground – hidden by fake trees and shrubs. I lived like one of those B movie zombies traveling in hungry pacts devouring anything we could get our hands on, even people that had passed on. At least I can say that I never cannibalized the living like many others did.
Nearly all of the survivors that hadn’t the wealth to stockpile food, weapons, and build some elaborate safe house with surveillance and steel walls had something in common. We were all former fatties. It’s true. I learned the phrase survival of the fittest in my ninth grade Health class from Mr. Funderburke, the asshole that ran behind me during every PE class and told me to pick up my feet and my pace, but when the shit hit the fan it turned out that it actually came down to survival of the fattest, not the fittest.
All of those low metabolisms that had cursed us all of our lives were what enabled us to survive. The genes that kept our ancestors alive during famine finally came back into play. All of the lean sinewy athletes and bony model types were quickly gone.
Eventually, with food so scarce, we all slimmed down. I hadn’t been under a hundred and ninety pounds since I was in the eighth grade. It was almost a shock one morning when I looked down and I could actually see my penis.
I had a fat friend that I grew up with and he survived the famine too. Bobby Jackman, Big Boy to his friends – Fat Boy by the bullies at school. He laughed and smiled a lot but I really don’t think he was too happy about being fat and teased. I know I wasn’t.
After the famine, Jackman couldn’t get over how skinny he’d become. He thought he was the sexiest cat that ever crawled this hazy red and brown marble. Truth of the matter was that even now Jackman had a saggy belly and his chest was still at least a B cup, a hairy B cup, but still a B cup. He was happy about how he looked for the first time in his life. Who was I to burst his bubble?
Jackman and I had the western side of the farm to protect every night. We were supposed to walk our perimeter like those old British guards with the red coats and tall black hats but Jackman and I were still lazy even though we were thin now so we generally parked our asses in the middle of the block, sitting on the sidewalk and leaning up against the farm. We’d take out our bags of food rations and eat slowly so that they would last.
I said that all of the animals had died off and that wasn’t entirely true. Every once in a while, by some miracle, you’d see a bird or a rat or even a dog that had somehow survived through all of this without being eaten. Jackman had befriended a dog that would sneak out of the shadows and beg for something to eat. The dog was possibly the most repulsive creature I’d ever seen. Its teeth continually shown like it hadn’t enough lip to cover them and it had long pointed ears that made it look a little bit like a bat. Its hair was spiked with dry bood in some places and missing or matted in others and it had plenty of scars including one that ran across one of his eyes. That eye bulged from its head like a big grey gum ball. It was obviously dead but the other moved around pretty well. This dog was truly a survivor just like us. Jackman made me promise to keep him a secret because there were many people on the farm that would’ve done almost anything for a taste of meat again.
For Jackman to give up food was unheard of so I knew how much he loved that dog. The dog would only come so close before inhaling the bit of food he set out for him and running off. I guess that’s why he had survived so long. Trust no one. Many of us had lived by that code for a long time.
It was as peaceful a night as we ever saw but still I could tell that something was bothering Jackman, and so far he hadn’t come out and said whatever it was so I waited. He couldn’t keep anything inside. I knew that he’d spill any moment.
“Did you hear about Pruitt, Ryder? He got caught with some bean sprouts that he had been hiding in his cube. Hunter found them during a routine search. Think they’ll put him in the basement?”
“He’ll never see the outside again. He’ll rot down there in that seed room and he deserves it. Rule number one. You don’t steal food from the community.”
“They’ll have to train a new day guard.”
“I imagine so.”
“Here he comes. Look. There’s my puppy. See him, Ryder?” asked Jackman, holding his hand out, palm down, hoping to finally touch what often seemed like a mirage.
The dog – his dog, sort of, slowly approached from the shadows. His head down but his eye alert for danger, cautiously advancing.
“Come on, boy. It’s okay. Who’s hungry tonight?”
The hideous refugee of the apocalypse wagged its tail and moved closer.
“I can’t believe you share your food with that mangy mutation.”
“Hey! Come on, Ryder. You’ll hurt his feelings. Didn’t you ever have a dog when you were young?”
“Not like that thing. I never would’ve slept again. That thing would’ve given me nightmares.”
“Here, boy. C’mere. Ya hungry? I’ll bet you are. Come on.”
“Just looking at that thing is killing my apetite.”
“That’s enough, Ryder. I love dogs. I always had a special relationship with them – like when Spock from Star Trek could communicate directly with someone else’s mind – only with me, it’s with dogs. I think they can read my mind.”
“That’s maybe the dumbest thing you’ve ever told me, Jackman. Dogs can’t read your mind.”
“I’m pretty sure they can. When I was nine I fell in a creek and was drowning and I couldn’t even scream except for in my head because of all the
water and suddenly this Labrador was dragging me to safety.”
“He give you mouth to mouth too?”
“You always have to make fun. I know it’s real.”
The dog gobbled up the nuts and vegetables while Jackman watched on with a silly grin.
“Look at him go, Ryder. He was really hungry tonight.”
“He’s really hungry every night just like the rest of us. If you want to give up your rations so easily I’ll crawl over to you and piss on your shoe and snap at your fingers with my teeth and you can feed your rations to me.”
The dog finished the food and licked the ground clean where it had been before looking up and running back into the shadows.
“Goodnight, Dog,” Jackman called after him.
“You named him Dog. That’s real creative of you, Jackman.”
“He might be the last one. The last dog on the earth. Think about it. That makes his name pretty fitting,” said Jackman stretching out on the sidewalk and looking up at the sky.
“You ever meet Sheryl Tate over in distribution?”
“I’ve seen her. I wouldn’t say that I’ve met her.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s got a thing for me, Ryder.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“She does. You should see the way she looks at me.”
“I said, SHE DOES, Jackman.”
“But you’re being sarcastic right now.”
“I