by Emily Brewes
“But it’s not my birthday.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s the thought, isn’t it?”
He was gone before I could reply.
Doggo poked his nose out from under the bed. “I was hiding,” he explained.
“Good boy, Doggo. Let’s get out of here.”
WHAT IS THE LAW?
IF ONE POSITIVE THING came out of the end of the world, it was the final death of kings. Nobody was really in charge of the Underground the way they had been on the surface. There were constables in the towers who were pretty much bouncers: well-fed and muscle-bound folks who could be called on to turf the unruly, or haul some poor soul to asset forfeiture. And a given neighbourhood might have a reeve or sheriff or steward, usually the oldest person around who was able and willing to pass judgment.
Neither of these positions meant making new rules or advocating on behalf of the populace. They were abdications of responsibility. Jobs that were looked on in much the way of a butcher, a handler of the dead, or an executioner, depending on where you’re from. Not quite untouchable themselves, but certainly doing things nobody else wanted to.
It takes a special kind of conscience to let you drag another human being, kicking and screaming usually, to the final stage of asset forfeiture. After they’ve redistributed what stuff you had, they shut you up, tie you down, and inoculate your body with chitin sheet spores. Soon enough, everything you were is going to feed families, or get tanned into the leather of the future.
At least these man-eating giants we’d been dodging had the excuse of incest combined with cannibalism to explain their lack of conscience. Me ’n’ Doggo were holed up in a buried silo, holding our breath while a troupe of ogres stalked by. And here was me thinking, bad as our patch of the Underground was, it’s so much worse elsewhere.
I could feel an agitation in my lungs: a cough itching to break free. The noise would get us killed. Part of me wanted to let go and cough my stupid head off. But poor Doggo, his head buried in my armpit to muffle his whimpering, was just so pathetic. Everything I did then was for his benefit. He was like a little kid, except he would never get any smarter.
The ogres moved in perfect silence. Their limbs were long and well muscled, and their eyes possessed piercing sharpness. The young ones, anyway. Some of their elders juddered and shook as they walked. They looked like marionettes moved by an unsteady hand. None of them were as old as me. And that was weird because wouldn’t it take generations for regular human beings to breed and eat their way to such monstrosity? Yet there they were. Plain as the nose on my face.
That same nose was squished so I could hold my eye to the smallest crack, where the silo’s rusted skin has flaked away. I was able to see them, but more as collections of movement than whole figures — a striding leg, a swinging arm, a head bopping to the unheard music of spongiform encephalopathy. I couldn’t tell if they were actively hunting or only moving through the area. I couldn’t see any children with them, which would suggest a hunt over migration, but they could’ve just been sterile.
Back in the day, as the end approached, I had become a bit obsessed with apocalypses. When the library still had power, and the internet, I watched movies and read articles. Once that was gone, I stretched out fuel-gathering visits to hole up in the library, reading novels that took place after the end of the world. Lots of grimdark descriptions of the true cost of cannibalism.
They took forever to pass by. The pain of holding in my coughs was getting bad, and all I really wanted to do was go to sleep. As hidden as we were, I feared closing my eyes, only to open them again and look into one of those faces rubbed white with bone ash. So I kept my vigil.
For Doggo’s sake.
It only took minutes for the last of them to walk out of sight. Even so, the muscles in my neck were seized by cramps that gripped my upper back and head with fiery fingers. My whispered groan became a gasp, which triggered the coughing fit I’d been fighting for what seemed like my whole life.
Doggo’s head shot up from a deep sleep. Half his face was all smooshed in and slack, like he’d had a stroke. It happened sometimes and was temporary but hilarious nonetheless. He shook his head with vigour, his ears slapping my hand and face hard enough to sting.
“Jeez!”
“Are they gone?”
I spared a glance through the crack. With all the noise we’d just made, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d come running back down the path in a slavering lather.
One breath, two …
“Yeah, they’re all gone. If they didn’t come running for that dinner bell we just rang, they must not be hungry.”
“I am hungry, Food Bringer.”
“Witness my complete lack of surprise.”
Silence for a second or two while Doggo looked at me, his tongue lolling in a grin. “It is witnessed. Now may we eat?”
I ruffled his ears and tried to stretch out my neck. Bars of iron relaxed into mere blocks of wood. When I stood, a bad head rush made me sit down again. My hands and head shook, and I couldn’t speak until it had its way with me. I wondered if the sensation was similar to how those old ogres saw the world.
“I want to get as far from here as we can, then we eat.”
Having said that, I dug deep into an inner pocket of my coat. We’d found an old store of vacuum-sealed agricultural feed near a week ago. Couldn’t carry a whole bag, so I’d stuffed as much as I could in my coat pockets. I found a few crumbs to fish out, which I let Doggo lick off my fingers.
“Thank you, Food Bringer! Thank you, thank you!” he said between sounds like Cookie Monster devouring a plate of double chocolate chip.
“Okay, okay — keep it down. We’ve gotta motor.”
I picked him up, the better to climb over the rubble that’d been jammed in there. The mix of objects made even less sense than the usual fare. Hunks of concrete and stone were mixed in with tangles of wire, old shopping carts, and ancient bags of garbage. Usually, buried structures were converted to usable spaces, like living quarters or trading posts. Why bury the thing only to fill it with nonsense?
Together, we picked our way toward what would have been the silo’s top. My hope was that the hatch in the roof led somewhere, maybe even outside. Up, at any rate. At this point, though, I’d have been just as glad for the hatch to lead anywhere at all. It could’ve been lodged shut, buried like the rest of the silo, or it could’ve been underneath a mountain of refuse — another settlement’s equivalent of the Heap.
We found the hatch all right. It was above us, about two or three feet higher than I could touch with my fingers outstretched. I sighed and slumped to the rubble, putting Doggo down as gently as I could. My arm was numb from carrying him, so I sat and took a minute to rub life back into it. Doggo rested his front feet on my leg.
“We eat now?”
I looked up at the hatch. Craning my neck triggered another round of coughing. This one dislodged a hard hunk of phlegm that crawled up my throat and stuck to the back of my tongue. Gagging, I pulled it out with my fingers. Yellow, no blood. Could’ve been worse. I flicked it off my hand before Doggo tried to eat it.
It was a bad place to camp: rough ground in dangerous territory. But looking around, I couldn’t find an excuse not to have a small bite right then. It was dry rations instead of cooking, was all. I slipped out of the duffle bag straps and hauled it ’round to see what was left in the larder. Supplies weren’t low, but the bag was noticeably less full. I came away with a flat can of some kind of fish and a box of crackers containing three sleeves of silvered plastic. I pulled one out and opened it. There was blue-green mould on the crackers I’d been around enough to know wouldn’t kill us.
Doggo got a larger share of the fish, along with all the oil from the bottom of the can. I crushed up a few crackers into the liquid to make a paste and spread it on another cracker for him so he wouldn’t cut his tongue licking directly from the can. Eating made him so happy, I just enjoyed watching him. He tried to grin while
chomping and licking his chops, and it made me laugh.
It occurred to me that I might’ve been dead by then if not for that furry little goblin. I’d have stayed in the neighbourhood, unable to work, maybe getting sicker. Maybe Mr. Metzler would’ve been sent over with a few bowls of soup. And my only company in my dying hour would’ve been a pair of blue shoes with orange stripes.
Gratitude is a stranger in these times, but I felt it strongly in that moment. It was a warming sensation that rose from the ground, enveloping limbs like bathwater. I felt as though I could die and regret nothing more than leaving this helpless mutt to his fate. Overwhelmed by emotion, I wrapped my arms around him. He licked my ear and wiggled free.
“Food Bringer, you’re leaking again.”
“Yeah. Sorry. It’s okay.”
Easily reassured, Doggo replied, “Okay. Oh, good. Is there more food?”
I dusted my palms together then spread my hands to show they were empty. “Sorry, guy. It’s all gone.”
He dropped to his belly, front feet still on my leg, and rolled his eyes to look up at me. His tail wagged hopefully. “Am I a good boy?”
“Of course you are,” I told him.
Doggo raised one front paw, exposing his chest for scritches. I obliged.
“And good boys are good dogs?” he asked, licking his nose.
“Yes, Doggo.”
“Then can I have more food?”
I gave him a good, deep scritch under both front legs, then all down the length of his back to his flanks and back up to his ears. He licked his teeth and made tiny grunting sounds. No matter how many times we went through this routine, he acted like it was the first. I could never tell if it was because he lacked intelligence or possessed a surplus of hope.
“Doggo, I just told you. There is no more food. It’s all gone. You ate it.”
“Oh.” He sat up and gave the inside of his ear a thorough and thoughtful scratch with the long middle claw of his back foot. This done, he held up the foot so he could lick off whatever he’d found. He paused in the midst of his dessert of earwax as though struck by an idea. Foot aloft, Doggo looked up at me and asked, “When can I eat it again?”
I sighed and scritched his head, “How ’bout I tell you a story instead?”
The Girl and the Tiger
There was a young girl, and she loved her father dearly. Her mother and brother had both been carried off by a fever, the same one that had left her with terrible scars all over her body. Against her dark skin, the scars stood out white. As she grew, they stretched into long stripes, earning her the nickname Little Tigerskin.
Little Tigerskin’s father was a poor man, a farmer who scratched away at their dusty patch of land at the jungle’s edge. He grew what he could — some corn, some wheat, some millet — and after the harvest, he would take it into town to sell it. With the money, he paid the rent on their land and bought what was needed with the little that was left. Patching for the cooking pot, sharpening for the cleaver or the hoe blade or the axe head. The next day, he would return, trudging wearily along the faint track that trailed from the road to their farm.
But the day came when Little Tigerskin’s father went to market and did not return. She waited another day, and another. After a week, she gave up hope of his return. Perhaps he’d died along the way, for he was quite old, and they were so very poor.
So, being a determined young woman, she set about planting the seeds they’d saved. If the rains didn’t come to wash them all away, she might manage another harvest before the rent came due. Sadly, the hoe blade had gone with her father, so Little Tigerskin was left to set the furrows with her hands.
At the end of the day, washing the cuts and sores from digging in the hard ground, she sang a song to nobody in particular:
They say I am a tiger
with these stripes upon my skin
But if I were a tiger
I’d never starve again
Hunting through the jungles
and villages at night
they’d come to fear my tiger stripes
as I gulped them out of sight
No sooner had she finished than Little Tigerskin looked up to see an actual tiger before her. Fangs as large and curved as sickles peeked out from his black-lipped grin.
“Well met, Little Tigerskin! And how is your father, then?”
“Missing, sir,” admitted the girl.
The great cat stretched his limbs, exposing claws as long and sharp as kukris. On seeing them, Little Tigerskin shivered and looked away.
“And your mother? How goes her health?”
Little Tigerskin ducked her head. “Only the Gods know, sir. She stayed long enough to give me suck, then was carried away on the back of Death’s pale horse, with my brother in her company.”
Lord Tiger looked at his mighty claws and caressed his great teeth with his tongue. “Then there is no one to miss you should I gobble you up,” he declared.
The girl sighed. Her day had been long and hot, and her future looked bleak. Her best luck would be to marry one of the landlord’s sons, which was truly no luck at all. Jackals and layabouts, the lot of them! So thinking, she raised her eyes to meet the golden discs of the tiger’s.
“Sir, I wish you would, that all my troubles get eaten also. My father is surely dead, and with him went the only person who would protect me from the evils of the world. Therefore, I ask only that you make my death swift.”
So saying, Little Tigerskin closed her eyes tightly, prepared for the killing blow.
Instead, the tiger laid his paw gently on her head.
“You are a noble girl, and too thin to eat besides. Therefore will I save your life this day. Also, I have no children of my own, yet here you are: a human girl in a tiger’s skin. Prove to me your mettle, and I shall make you a tiger like me. Only bring me the men who mean you harm. I will eat them, sating my hungers and proving your worth in one. From that day forward, you will fear no man. What say you?”
Little Tigerskin readily agreed to this, for it seemed to her the only solution to her troubles.
“Excellent!” Lord Tiger clapped his forepaws together. “Do you know the ruin of the jungle temple?”
“I do, sir.”
“Lure these men to that place with whatever promises you might. You will run away and fetch me, then I will gobble them up. What say you?”
Blushing some, Little Tigerskin replied, “The soonest I may, I will meet you there.”
WE WERE PICKING our way out of the rubble-filled silo. Doggo did his best but was getting stuck on some of the higher pieces. I heard his whimper and paused the story to go back and help him.
With my arms around his hindquarters and chest, his stubby legs began reflexively kicking me in the belly.
“Hey, watch it!” I warned. “You keep kicking me like that and I might drop you.”
Once we were on the flatter ground of the corridor and past the first couple of turns, Doggo asked, “Are men made of food?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?” I asked, completely forgetting for the moment that I was in the middle of a story.
“The tiger-cat wants to eat men. I did not know that men are made of food.”
I went silent for a minute, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t see me waking up to a half-devoured face.
“Well,” I began carefully, “they are only food to tigers. For anyone else, men are poisonous. Especially dogs.”
The conversation dropped off again until I found a dryish niche behind a rusted grille that was quilted with fungus. Not an edible kind, the kind that eats metal. That also meant it wasn’t interested in my decidedly non-metallic body. And the niche would provide some protection from the open tunnel and the wet.
“C’mon, bud. In here.”
Doggo hesitated only because the opening was narrow. I’d concluded that he couldn’t see all that well out of his left eye based on previous observations, so I crawled in first.
“See? If I can fit, so can you.”
He hopped inside and curled himself up between my legs. I was thinking about continuing the story when his question came back to my mind.
“Hey, Doggo. When you asked if men were made of food … I mean, you weren’t thinking about eating me, were you?”
He snuffled, then snorted. “You are no man. You are the Food Bringer!”
“Right, right,” I replied. “Almost forgot.”
With the road being so dangerous, Little Tigerskin decided the best plan was to wait at home. Sooner or later, one of the landlord’s clan would come looking for the rent. Which happened sooner than later, as it turned out. Not three days after holding council with the tiger, the landlord’s eldest son came riding into her forecourt. He was tall, with the well-fed look that all wealthy men had. The smugness of his station radiated through the beard surrounding his sneer.
“It is Enkil! Here for the rent. Where are you, farmer?”
Little Tigerskin, dressed in her best sari, entered the yard from the kitchen doorway. She kept her eyes low and her head bowed as she said, “The farmer lives here no longer. Only I remain.”
Enkil dismounted and strode to loom over her. She obliged him by cowering.
“And can you till these lands? Can you sow and reap the crop? Not on your own, surely. Begone, that we may install a worthier family here.”
He was turning on his heel when Little Tigerskin threw herself to the ground at his feet.
“Oh, sir! I beg you not to turn me out so. Only let me be your wife that I may keep a roof above my head.”
The landlord’s son scoffed. “You think I would marry you? And with no dowry nor father to sign the contract? That fever which scarred you so made you mad, to boot.” He kicked her roughly and made to mount his horse.
“Oh, sir!” cried Little Tigerskin. “But I have a dowry. If you know the jungle temple, meet me there at midnight and I will show you such riches as you’ve never seen!”