by McCloud, Wes
The dogs were everywhere, and I still didn’t have names for them. I had long given that up. Maddie, on the other hand, was nothing like me. She had named ALL of them and knew them by those names. She knew every single dog and had a mental roster of exactly how many there were, and they were only growing in number. More seemed to be coming in every day. I would see a German Shepard I didn’t recognize, then a mutt, then a pug ( you just can’t have enough pugs ) they just kept coming, and that was part of the plan. To build a safe haven of dogs the fleas could spread across and ultimately keep the monsters at bay for good. I knew they were still out there, the zombies, millions of them no doubt. But my bigger fear was the deadeaters. Were there more? Would another one rise and create a new zombie, a purple one, a blue one? Time would only tell, but for now, other chores had to be done. The process of removing the dead took over two weeks. I treated it as if it were a job. I’d get up, eat, fire up a bulldozer and start pushing them down the streets. I piled them east so the wind would keep the smell blowing away from the heart of town. Soon, there was a mountain of them. As I stared at that rancid pile of meat towering into the sky, I once again was reminded of what it was actually made of before all this…fathers, daughters, mothers, sons, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, and friends…tens of thousands of hopes and dreams unrealized. A million screams of the sorrows of their fates seemed to echo through my mind as I felt Maddie grasp my hand and squeeze it tightly. She felt it too. The sadness, the loss… They were all long gone, extinguished from this earth along with all the memories they held. And though I hated them, the things that they’d become, I said a prayer for them. I prayed that wherever they were, they found peace. Whether they were reborn as angels, or flowers, or drops of rain. I liked to believe that some of them were reborn as the puppies I began to see the dogs giving birth to in the town, our town. The Dogtown
We hadn’t seen a live zombie in weeks ( a live zombie, that will never not sound stupid ) I was beginning to think, at this point, they might be evolving enough to know that this place meant certain death and the flesh of two humans just wasn’t worth the risk; also part of the plan. And the final stage of the plan? You mean besides having a town full of dogs all to yourself? Okay, yeah there was more to it than just that. I did care about our wellbeing first and foremost, but was never able to truly believe that we were the last ones out there. There were nights I’d dream of people coming here, and to my surprise it joyed my heart. I couldn’t help but think of just how sick I’d grown of human beings, now I was wanting to see one as much as I wanted a real lightsaber ( trust me, that’s a lot ) but how would they find the way here? Maybe they’d just wander in by chance? As the winter set in, I began busying myself with books of radio and frequencies and all that stuff. I recorded a tape and figured out a way to keep it on a loop on a rolling number of frequencies for anyone potentially listening out there…
-“Cleaver here, mayor of Dogtown. Just off I-33. We are a zombie-free zone that has food and shelter and all the dogs you can pet. We’d love to see you. Stay safe and stay rad.”