The Darkness and Dogs

by Lanchbery, T. S.

  For the first time, he registers that he has reached the town’s Main Street, and gasps as he witnesses the scene of devastation. The last time he had seen the street had been during the first wave of the illness. He had been returning from a weeklong conference across the border that had been cut short after just three days due to the crackdown on public gatherings. It had been clear at the time that the situation was serious, but it had also seemed that it was gradually being brought under control. Returning on a near empty train to Newmarket, he found the shops shuttered and the streets almost completely uninhabited, but otherwise as pristine as usual. The only people he encountered were the paramedics, face masks strapped tight, who made the rounds of the houses of the infected, dropping medicines through the letter box before quickly returning to the safety of their vehicles. He attempted to engage one in conversation, and was shocked as the paramedic dropped the package he was carrying without delivering it and sprinted away from him, screaming for him to return to his home and stay inside. That had been his last memory of the street, and he is shocked at the complete annihilation now evident. He expected to find the shops looted, as indeed they have been, but was unable to comprehend the scale of gratuitous destruction that is now laid out before him, and struggles to imagine which of the residents of this sleepily affluent provincial town would have engaged in such wanton devastation. Main Street had once been the picturesque artery that separated the four distinct quarters of downtown Newmarket. Its combination of artisanal shops and independent retailers housed in smart pre-war brick buildings had attracted a core commuting class to the town, leading it to blossom into the community of discreet prosperity he once knew.

  Now, the street lies in ruins. Every unprotected window has been staved in, and unwanted merchandise lies discarded in all directions. Graffiti covers many of the walls, broadcasting messages of doom and declaring the end of days; a point amply emphasized by the skeletal remains dotted all along the avenue. Here and there stores have been set ablaze, and now remain only as burnt out shells. One such place is a small pet store that stood at the corner of 3rd and Main. Even amidst all of this chaos, it stands out as a recipient of a special level of furious obliteration. Its sign has been ripped off and discarded several meters away, smashed into pieces. All of the stock has been removed, piled high and burnt separately in a pyre before the shop itself has been razed. Outside of the shop, strung up on a curved iron lamppost, hang the remains of a body - a skeleton now - with a large notice board suspended on a rope around its neck. He cannot make out what is written on the sign from where he stands, but he recognizes the body from the distinctive green pinstripe suit it has on, now ragged and faded almost to white, as Frank, the elderly owner of the store. Lowell had not known him well, but had been aware that he was seen as a harmless sort, if somewhat senile and cantankerous, and can’t imagine what could possibly have earned him such a barbaric death. Transfixed, he edges away from the refuge of the doorway and drifts over, straining to read the lettering on the notice. As he gets closer, he can see that the man’s arms end in two bony stumps where his hands have been cut off at the wrists, the hands have been tied on separately with wire and one still accompanies the board around his neck. On the sign, in large, uneven black lettering are the words the hands that fed them. Lowell stands staring at the hanging figure for some time, trying to understand the rage that could lead people to mete out such brutality on an innocent old man. Staggering away, he shakes his head hard as if he is trying to physically work the image out of his brain. The further he ventures into the town, the more disturbed he becomes, and the more that he begins to question his decision to return in the first place. Looking up toward the far end of the street, he sets his sights on the church standing tall in the distance. He can’t see any damage to the structure from where he stands, and reasons that if he could gain access then the bell tower will grant him both the sanctuary he now seeks, as well as a birds eye view across what remains of the town.

  Tracking up the road toward the church, he surveys the rest of the damage with a heavy heart. It is much the same all of the way up, with the exception of the northwest quarter. Here, one of the fires has spread out of control and gutted almost every building. Very few are still standing, affording him a line of sight all the way out to the residential area on that side. From what he can see, the damage wrought there is substantial too, but it seems that Main Street has taken by far the brunt of the devastation. He considers taking a detour across the burnt quadrant to check out the situation a little more closely, but decides that it would be best to scope it out from the high vantage point of the church before rushing in to any new areas. As he walks, his mind goes back over the desolation he has seen. Something isn’t quite adding up, and after a moment he puts his finger on it. Much of the debris that has been looted and cast aside in the street looks old, and well weathered, but not all of it. He pauses as he comes level with a clothing store on the other side of the street. Hurrying over, he inspects some children’s t-shirts that have been left on the sidewalk. Picking one up, he inspects it carefully. It is a bright purple color, and as he turns it inside out and compares the pigment within to that on the surface, he notes that it is nearly identical. Although it was a bit dirty, it was obvious that there is no way that it has been lying there for more than a few days at the most. Has someone been through the store recently? All of a sudden Lowell feels extremely exposed out in the open. He doesn’t know if anyone is out there, but the terrible image of the storeowner swinging gently from the lamppost is imprinted on his mind, setting his gnarled and heavily calloused hands to shaking violently. He hurries on towards the church, eyes darting from window to window. As he goes, he tries hard to force himself to be rational, and tell himself that it could just as easily have been dogs picking through the empty store. For some reason that doesn’t put him at ease in the slightest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lowell stares glumly out toward the town from his vantage point high up in the bell tower. Gaining access had been easy enough, he had just jimmied loose one of the boards, reached in and popped the latch, repairing the damage as well as he could once he was inside. Making it in to the main church hadn’t proved quite as simple though. The main doors were enormous - made of solid oak - and the side door was equally immovable. The only way in that he could think off was either through the stained glass windows at the front – which he had ruled out as unreachable from the ground even if he had managed to break them – or through the roof. He had considered the problem for some time, and at one stage even fixed a rope from the side of the tower with a mind to abseiling down to the roof, before he had noticed the discreet, unlocked inner door, leading straight in from the bottom of the stairwell. Once inside, he had found evidence that a number of people had at one time sought refuge here, and although there was no food to be found, he now had quite a collection of dusty and mouse-infested sleeping bags to choose from. The building looked to have been completely untouched by the mob, but whether this was through some collective sense of piety or merely the sense that there was little worth looting he didn’t know. He had never been a particularly religious man, attending service on special occasions for appearance sake but otherwise barely considering theological questions at all. Now he finds himself conflicted. On the one hand, the idea of some invisible other looking over him and watching his back holds obvious appeal in the desperate situation in which he now finds himself, but on the other, he can’t help but wonder what sort of a god would offer him salvation only to force him to watch a young boy torn apart by a pack of savage animals. In the end, he decides that his head isn’t in the right place for these kinds of questions, and settles for the compromise of not believing in God for the most part, but taking out his anger on Him whenever he found himself in one of his regular spells of intense loneliness and depression. One happy consequence of this spiritual viewpoint being that he now finds himself in possession of an almost inexhaustible supply of fuel for his fires co
urtesy of the assorted bibles, hymnbooks and prayer sheets he found in the side rooms off of the nave – a small pile of which are now merrily burning away in a corner of the rooftop. The other significant upshot is a considerable stockpile of consecrated wine – somehow overlooked by the mob - which consoles him greatly now as he scans the surrounding area from up high.

  After his first fill of pious consolation, he finds himself gripped by a flood of generous spirits quite unlike anything he has felt for a long time. A surge of optimism comes to him that companionship is waiting for him somewhere out there in Newmarket, and that he will find it, whatever it might take. These feelings last until some way into the bottle, by which point he has begun to feel, if anything, dangerously over-consoled. The wine has granted him a heady combination of anger blended with a hazardous, alcohol-fueled overconfidence, and so this is by far the worst time he could have spotted one of his foes, but as he leans unsteadily over the edge of the tower he sees the unmistakable shape of a lone dog weaving its way along the street far below him. Blinking to clear his vision and swaying slightly he stares vacantly at the creature, and then a violent fury rises up in his gut unchecked, and before he knows what is was doing, he has his gun in his hand and is rushing headlong down the steps toward the street.

  Reaching the exit, he clumsily unbolts the door and stumbles out towards the street. As he strides forward, he fumbles with the locking mechanism of his weapon, eventually managing to slide it free as he reaches the corner of the church and peers blurrily around the sidewall. The dog is twenty meters ahead of him standing on the corner of the road opposite with its back to him. It is noisily rooting through a pile of garbage, occasionally pausing to choke down some rotting morsel before continuing to poke around for anything else remotely edible. His breath quickens now and, struggling to keep down a series of bilious, acidic hiccoughs that risk giving him away, he steps out onto the street. Out in the open, the courage he had felt in the safety of the bell tower begins to diminish rapidly, but still the haze of alcohol-fueled anger drives him on. Picking his way unsteadily towards his target, he keeps his gaze fixed on the dog, gradually flanking round to its side as he goes. With ten meters left to go, the dog still hasn’t moved or looked up, as the noise of its scavenging drowns out that of Lowell’s clumsy footsteps until it is too late. He raises his gun, sighting through a haze, and aims it unsurely at the dog’s head, the barrel wavering unsteadily from side to side as he does so, then breaths deeply to hold his sight steady and squeezes the trigger.

  *****

  Lowell isn’t able to make it out through the alcoholic fug that has muddled his mind, but the dog is one of the lowly ranked Labradors from the very same pack he had so recently encountered. As he approaches, she is completely engrossed in the half-rotted body of a large rat, which has become stuck and subsequently expired whilst doing some scavenging of its own. She is overjoyed at her find, so rare is it that she gets to have a meal to herself without ceding a share to her alpha, and chokes it down hurriedly, pausing halfway to regurgitate a morsel that won’t stay down and then quickly consume it once again. As soon as the meal is finished she allows herself a moment of contented respite - whilst busily extracting every last scrap from her teeth and reaching her long tongue out to remove any incriminating evidence from around her mouth. As she licks herself clean, she gradually becomes aware of the noise of someone approaching behind her. Expecting to find one of her pack, she spends a few seconds longer with her back turned, making sure every hint of her meal is gone before guiltily turning around, only to come face to face with Lowell, his gun pointed directly at her head. As soon as she sees him a red mist descends in front of her eyes. It is like an inner switch has been pressed that swept away all of her distracted thoughts of a moment earlier and fixes her mind solely on the destruction of the hated creature before her. Her instincts kick in a split second later, and with bared teeth and a savage snarl she leaps forward to strike.

  *****

  As the dog rushes forward, Lowell stands stock still, staring uncertainly at the gun with a bemused expression on his face, then, as he realizes his mistake, he stumbles back, horrified, in the face of the onrushing beast. Survival instincts and a sudden rush of adrenaline combine to sharpen his mind and reactions, and his body works on its own to force him to cock the pistol that he had failed to load in his ill considered quest for revenge. As he lifts the gun once more, the dog hurtles through the air, crashing into the weapon and barreling forward to knock him off his feet. As he hits the ground hard the gun flies out of his hand and slides along the pavement, coming to rest well out of his reach. As he falls backwards, he manages to twist in the air, throwing the dog forward with its own momentum. She lands hard on her side, scrabbling for purchase for a second before forcing herself to her feet and charging towards him once more. Still on the ground, he swivels round desperately to face the dog. She comes to a halt a few feet in front of him, and stands still, appraising him, growling ferociously, her eyes fixed on Lowell’s jugular and her head weaving from side to side as she looks for the perfect moment to attack. He is in luck. Had it been the scarred leader of the pack in front of him then he would likely already have been mauled. As it is, the dog he now faces has spent so long in a lowly position in the pack hierarchy that it is momentarily stalled by an uncertainty as to how to attack without its allies. Sensing his enemy’s indecision, Lowell uses this momentary respite to his advantage, and begins to crawl to where the gun lies at the side of the road. Seeing this, the dog lets out a furious growl and leaps onto Lowell, pushing him away from the weapon and onto his back. Standing over him, she rages like she is possessed, snarling and snapping in all directions. Struggling desperately to free himself, he manages to catch one hand beneath each of her haunches and then strains frantically to hold her aloft as her jaws repeatedly close within inches of his face. He struggles to hold her clear, fighting wildly as the last of his strength gradually saps away. In desperation, he manages to force his feet up until they are wedged tight against the dog’s belly and with one last force of will he pushes as hard as he can, sending the animal sailing away to land stunned on the asphalt. She stays there gasping with effort for a moment before rising again, pressing off nimbly against the ground and then hurling her body forward for another attack. This time though, Lowell is ready, and as the dog springs upwards he waits for her to come onto him and then rolls to one side to reveal her belly and then launch forward, pulling his machete free from his belt and punching it home hard into her soft underside in one swift moment. The dog lets out a desperate yelp and drops backwards, the machete still protruding from between her ribs. Landing on her back, she lies still for a second and then twists round slowly, attempting to rise, her legs kicking and scrabbling for purchase. Her knees buckle under her, she drops down, and as she falls the machete handle came into contact with the ground and presses itself deeper into her wound. As the dog feels the long blade reaching up into her guts she lets out a long drawn out keening, made tremulous by the deep, difficult breaths now wracking her body, and returns to her supine position. Laying still, her head tilts slowly to one side, and her big, watery brown eyes lock on to his. In defeat, she is instantly transformed. There is no malice within her any more, but rather what appears to be an immense sadness, and Lowell feels for his part an unaccountably deep melancholy at the slow painful passing of his foe. Tentatively he crawls forward then reaches out one hand and placed it on to the wiry fur of her rear haunch and gently strokes her leg. He sits with her then for several minutes, his rage now thoroughly spent, their eyes locked together as her blood pools out beneath her and she grows ever weaker until, with a last shudder and a final beseeching whine, she slips quietly away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As soon as the dog is lying completely still, Lowell pulls the machete free from her belly, regards the bloody blade sadly for a moment, then shrugs despondently, wipes it clean on her back, and slides it securely back in place in his belt. Retrieving the
gun, then clambering to his feet, he glances nervously up the street in both directions and then hurries as fast as possible back towards the safety of the church. Once inside, he rushes to the top of the bell tower, and peers over the edge of the wall to where the body of the dog lies far below. Some time later, he sees what he has been waiting for. From around the corner at the far end of the street stalks the alpha, head held imperiously high, the remaining five of his pack following closely behind. As they approach, the alpha presses his nose to the ground and breathes deeply. Quickly picking up on the scent of their fallen companion, he lifts his head high once again and barks softly. He waits a moment for an answering call and then, hearing nothing in response, continues to stalk down the street in the direction she had travelled, the others following his lead. As soon as they spot the corpse of their pack mate, they set into a run. The leader approaches first, briefly nudging the prone form with his nose, walking quickly around the body before stalking away, nostrils fixed to the ground and sniffing deeply in all directions. The Bernese, Shi Tzu and his two pups take to his shadow at once, pacing close to his tail and bristling as the multitude of odors vividly recount the story of their companion’s demise. Only the other of the lowly ranked Labradors hangs back. When the others have each paid their respects, she approaches the corpse tentatively, inhales deeply, and then moves to the head, nudging it repeatedly with her nose and licking the muzzle gently. Receiving no response, she throws her head back, lets out a long, mournful howl, and lies down next to the body, resting her head tenderly on the neck of her dead sister. As the soulful, melancholic melody of her mourning fills the air, the other dogs quickly pick up on Lowell’s scent, and begin to follow their unerring noses all of the way across the road to the church door. They worry the door for a while and then, as the alpha lies in front of the entrance, the others sniff all around the perimeter searching for some way in. Finding none, they return to the alpha and lay down to wait.