Tails of the Apocalypse

by David Bruns

  Too close.

  Too dangerously close.

  On the wide stretch of cracked and broken highway, winding through the ruin of a sea of almost identical houses overgrown with weed and sage and vine, they came to the first totem of the Dogeaters.

  Planted in the median, seven lanes of fading gray superhighway on each side. Clusters of housing collapsing along the hillsides above.

  “Well…” whispered the man as Dog crept forward and barked at it.

  Wide-jawed dog skulls, three of them, silently barked from the top of the rebar pole totem. Fresh guts and old skins dangled away from the sign’s crooked arms.

  The man had known the new tribes of yesterday’s survivors to have done such things. To mark out their land with warnings like this. To keep others away. To keep what was within for themselves alone.

  It was, in these hard times, the way things were.

  But there was something about the dog skulls that was more. Something that said much more about the people who’d put them there.

  “Best go wide here,” said the man above Dog’s growl. They moved off the freeway and down along some train tracks, working their way through the dried remains of a small swamp that had once gathered in the bottoms. Among the calcified mud and frozen rubbish of the past, they found another totem. And another further on. In time they were climbing up through dense eucalyptus groves that erupted up from the broken remains of ancient tract homes like the legs of giants, finding another nightmare dog-skull marker within sight of the last.

  In the mosquito-buzzing heat within the shade of a massive, fallen eucalyptus giant that’d crushed three one-story houses all at once and long ago, the man dropped his pack and shed his patchwork armor for the day.

  They were high up on a hill looking down into a bowl of residential ruin almost forty years gone. A planned community that had never planned for the end of the world.

  “This was the last place, Dog,” he almost seemed to cry. “Further up the road and we get to El Lay, and everyone knows to stay clear of the madness that comes from there. Direct hit. Everyone knows that.”

  Dog lay down next to him.

  The man rubbed the velvet fuzz of the chocolate-brown sides of Dog.

  “They find us in there and it won’t be good.” But what he really meant is that it wouldn’t be good for his friend.

  “We’ll go back out into the desert, to the east, and skirt wide. After that, I don’t know where to look anymore. Maybe it’s all gone,” he said, staring out into the ruin and wondering about all those people that had lived there. What had they been like? Had they survived? Were they these Dogeaters?

  He saw it.

  Saw the type of building he was told to look for. Saw it far down there along the dim remains of an old road that wound along a hill above the dead swamp. Well within the borders of the Dogeaters.

  All the years he’d been searching, he raged at himself that night, how many times had he found the exact same type of building. Just like he’d been taught to. And how many times had it been empty? Just fire pits and bones. Not a scrap of the past left in them.

  “Every time,” he muttered within the vine-overgrown remains of an ancient family room that was scoured and brittle. An old, blackened family portrait still hung askew on one of the two walls that remained.

  Every time.

  They watched the fireplace and the fire within. In the night, an old owl hooted from the rafter of some nearby tract home, barely upright after forty years of hard sun and bitter winter.

  * * *

  He did not sleep that night. Late, when the moon was fat and low in the sky, he awoke and stood looking down into the valley once more.

  Could he return and tell them he’d done his best? Searched everywhere to find the past? Could he?

  He remembered her, Maggie. They’d called her Saint Maggie. But he had known her as just Maggie. He remembered the heavy smell of too-sweet flowers on her when she’d first scooped him up as the Doomsday horn rang out over the city and everyone fled. As fighter jets streaked across the sky and cars smashed into one another.

  He remembered her running and saying, “I’m doing my best.”

  Like it was a chant.

  Like it was an explanation.

  Like it was a prayer.

  In the morning the man donned his armor and checked the last three shells. He loaded two and kept one in his jacket pocket.

  “I gotta,” he told Dog. “I gotta do my best. I gotta go down there … and see.”

  Dog had just returned from chasing something in the groves of the sweet-smelling giants that had collapsed across the old places.

  “If we don’t find the past then they, back home, they ain’t got no future, buddy.” He hoisted his old ruck on his back once more. The old ruck that contained the transmitter he could use if ever he found the past. The times he’d shouldered its burden were uncountable. How many more times would he do it again?

  And he could not help but think that today might be his last. Just as he’d thought every day.

  They crossed crumbling terraces and followed overgrown streets down into the bowl of the old places. At noon, near an old intersection where large buildings had all burned down, he heard the bark in the silence. It came from an overgrown hill they were passing beneath. The man’s hand went to the worn stock of his shotgun as Dog tensed. The bark had been so harsh and sharp and sudden, it was as though it had come from nearby. And even now in the silence, its echo seemed to resonate down the long lanes of destruction.

  A moment later it was answered. Not far off. A few streets over maybe.

  And then another.

  And another.

  “C’mon, let’s move, buddy,” said the man, breaking into a trot.

  The slope of the land was now leading downhill into a large section of smashed and broken houses. Their splintered roofs and jagged beams thrust upward like shadows against the dying afternoon. Behind them, a ragged chorus of harsh barking sharply broke the still air.

  The man urged Dog on, his own breath coming in heaving puffs as his old boots knocked against the crumbling pavement of the sidewalk they ran along.

  “In there,” he shouted, pointing toward the catastrophic wreckage that seemed the worst they’d seen in this place. As though all the houses had been crushed instead of burned or blown away. Dog followed a rabbit trail into the mess, and the man, just before getting to his knees to crawl in, turned and saw them coming.

  Dogs. Big, mean, lean, wide-jawed dogs that raced forward, straining at big leather leashes held by rangy men painted in mud stripes beneath the Mohawks on their shaven heads. They waved jagged clubs and came on, ululating in sudden glee.

  The man knew he’d been seen.

  He turned and scrambled into the labyrinth, following Dog through ancient spider webs and past jagged split lumber and jutting metal.

  The rabbit trail went on and on and the man wasn’t convinced it was a warren so much as a series of narrow spaces between the extensive rubble.

  What if we find a bobcat in here, he thought, and remembered the one that had stared him down once from the top of a road alongside some train tracks he’d been following. The thing had radiated menace and, yes, evil.

  But what was there left to do but follow Dog? And so he did and when he got lost, there would be Dog, snouting his way back through the dark and leading him on further into the maze.

  The sounds of the men and dogs faded, and when they came out of the chaos of debris, it was full moonlight and early night. They sat in an ancient drainage ditch, drinking the last of their water. On the hillsides all around, lone torches bumped up and down, and at times packs of wild dogs began to bay.

  They followed the old drainage ditch down into the dead swamp that was calcified mud and piles of dust and debris. The man led them along, looking for the landmarks he’d spotted from the hills. The landmarks that lay next to the building he’d been searching for, for what seemed all his life.

&nbs
p; The count of all his days.

  He stumbled on an exposed root and face planted into the dust. He was exhausted. He got to his knees and knew it was a just a matter of time before the Dogeaters found them.

  A matter of time.

  Dog was back, licking his face. Reminding him to step away from the edge. To step back from the gorge.

  Because that’s where you were, weren’t you? he asked himself. At the gorge again.

  He stood, his mind swimming, wondering if he’d banged his head in the stumble. He checked the shotgun and reminded himself that the three shells could not be counted on. Dog paced back and forth, whining slightly.

  The man stared up and about. Nothing in the night was familiar, and the moon had already crossed over into the other part of the sky. Soon it would be blackest night, and what would they be able to find then? His mind was suddenly terror-struck.

  Stop, he told himself.

  But nothing looked familiar and how long had he lain in the dust?

  How long?

  Dog whined again and started off through the thin, dead, swamp trees.

  Follow him, the man told himself. Your friend knows where to go for safety.

  He stumbled after Dog, occasionally stopping for a few ragged breaths, trying to make as little noise as possible, cringing when some dead stick snapped in the darkness. He followed Dog through the night along the remains of a sandy-bottomed stream, and then up out of the stream and across a carpet of dead, ash-gray leaves.

  The man reached out without thinking and grabbed the rusty iron railing that ran alongside the dusty stone steps leading up and out of the swamp.

  It was the touch of night-cold iron that made him realize he was holding onto it. Holding onto something that could lead him out of the dead swamp. He clung to it for a moment and knew … knew there wasn’t much left in him.

  He reached up to wipe cold sweat from his forehead and found the dried blood.

  Oh… he thought.

  Dog whined from the top of the stairs.

  Slowly, the man began to haul himself up their steep length, pushing away thoughts of sleep and the edge of the gorge that was big enough to take him.

  I can’t leave my friend here now, he thought and smiled up at Dog who beat the air wildly with his tail.

  This is all my fault.

  At the top of the stairs, the man saw a small empty parking lot ringed by an ancient mesh fence, and beyond lay the building he’d been looking for.

  He went to one knee. Dog came up and licked his face.

  “Of course,” said the man. “You’ve been searching all these years with me. You were looking too. All that time.”

  In the distance, another pack of dogs began to bay and howl, like savage coyotes whooped and called in the night. The man knew the Mohawk’d Dogeaters had them by the thick straps of their large leather leashes, following the scent that would bring them straight here.

  Dog bounded off across the parking lot and up the steps of the building.

  The man stood and followed, knowing this would be the last search. Knowing what he would find. He climbed the wide steps, knowing that beyond the double doors of this place he’d find nothing. Again.

  Nothing but….

  Crumbling shelves.

  Ashes in a fire pit.

  Bones.

  And nothing.

  The double door was bricked over with cinderblocks. The man looked about. So were all the windows that usually ringed such places.

  It wasn’t a large building, and they walked its circumference, finding each and every entrance sealed.

  In the distance the Dogeaters were closing. Now they were down along the bottom of the dead swamp, casting about for his trail, baying and shouting bloody murder.

  Dog began to growl and whine all at once.

  “I know…” said the man, and couldn’t think of what he knew except that they were surrounded and out of options.

  He looked up at the roof and thought, That’s all we have left.

  Dropping to the ground and removing the pack, he fished for an old orange electrical cord he’d found long ago. For a moment he began to swoon as the blackness tried to consume his vision. Tried to consume him. The howling of the Dogeaters became distant and hollow all at once.

  And then he was back.

  Quickly he made a harness for Dog and tied the other end around his ruck.

  “Stay,” he told Dog as he shouldered his pack once more. “Stay.”

  He pulled himself up onto a low concrete wall and then reached out for the side of the building. He breathed deep and began to find handholds that would take him up toward the lip, knowing there would be a moment when he would need strength to pull himself off the ground and onto the roof.

  That moment came. It came and he was holding onto the lip of the one-story building, knowing that to fall was to break something he could not afford to pay for. A leg. A hip. An arm. Anything would be a death sentence. Anything was beyond his ability to pay.

  The baying of the Dogeaters along the sandy bottom of the dried-up stream reminded him that he was already under another death sentence.

  “What does one more matter,” he chuckled deliriously and began to pull. He pulled and knew his strength would not be enough. Maybe if he dropped the pack. But the cord was attached to the pack. To drop the pack was to leave his friend.

  “That,” he grunted, as an icy sweat broke out along the fiery iron coursing through his shoulders, “will not happen.”

  But as much as he tried to pull—and he knew his strength was fading and there was not more than the smallest bit of it left—he could not gain the lip of the roof.

  Some massive dog sent up a howl in the night.

  Down near the steps, thought the man.

  Its companions began to moan. He could hear the low, harsh grunts of the men who held the thick leather leashes. The Dogeaters.

  He thought of the gorge that would take him. Of the fall into it.

  It was big enough.

  “Please…” he grunted. “For my friend who found me when I was lost and ready to give up.”

  He almost screamed as he tried once more and instead exhaled a gusty, “please.”

  And he was over the lip, feeling the ancient grit of the roof on his palms. He lay there panting, knowing that he’d pulled some muscle that could never be made right again. He struggled out of his pack and grasped the cord.

  He looked down at his friend.

  His friend who had found him in the night.

  Dog barked.

  And the man began to haul his friend up onto the roof.

  They lay there for hours, silent as the Dogeaters followed the trail and called and called again into the last of the night. In time, in the early hours, they’d gone off on some new scent.

  The man and the dog waited.

  Knowing maybe one of the Dogeaters had remained in the shadows to watch and wait.

  Dawn came and when the man was sure no one had remained—or if they had, they’d gone off—he got to his feet. The day would be beautiful. Golden light filtered down through the ancient eucalyptus giants that seemed to be everywhere.

  In the center of the roof was an old hatch.

  “Let’s go down inside, Dog. Even if there’s nothing left, it’s safe for us.”

  He broke the old lock with his crowbar and peered down into the darkness.

  There was a smell.

  Like one he’d never smelled before.

  Not death.

  Not ash.

  Not decay.

  Not bones.

  He’d smelled those all his days.

  Sweet and almost heavy.

  And his heart began to beat as he remembered the day she’d held one under his nose.

  “I love their smell,” she’d told him one winter’s night, late, when he could not sleep in the refugee camp and there was no food, but she’d found something else to pass the long hours of the night.

  “These are our past,
” she’d said to the little boy he once was.

  Saint Maggie.

  The girl who was becoming her.

  He carried Dog down into the dark. At the bottom of the stairs he lowered his pack and pulled out his tin of matches. He struck one.

  He could hear Dog panting in the darkness.

  They were standing in a small hallway. The floor was smooth. Linoleum. Clean except for the dust.

  And that sweet heavy smell was almost overpowering down here.

  Like it was a dream. Or dreams. Or all the dreams one could imagine. Dreams in sleep that seem so real, they must be. That the world inside the dream is the world and there’s no memory of the one where the sleeper waits for morning.

  So real.

  At the end of the small hallway was a gray door.

  They walked forward, and the man pushed open the door and saw the tremble in his own hand as he heard a soft hiss.

  And beyond its portal lay the past in great stacks and along the shelves. Every book in the world, thought the man who had no idea how big the world had once been. How many books had once been dreamed.

  But to him, by the thin light of the guttering match, it was all the books in the world. Perfect. Preserved. And waiting.

  All the past tomorrow would ever need.

  He began to cry, and the match burned out in his hand with a small hiss that echoed in the silence of the place.

  “We found it,” he repeated over and over while murmuring, “Thank you, thank you,” through his tears as he fell to the floor.

  * * *

  That night on the roof, with Dog by his side, he tuned the old radio he’d carried in his pack after the ancient solar charger had done its work. First star in the west was always the signal for the time to call. The time when they’d be listening.

  He tuned in the station like he’d been taught.

  How many years ago…?

  Crackle. Hiss. A sudden Pop.

  “We found one,” he croaked into the ether and felt Dog’s tail thump the hollow roof above all those waiting books. All that past that might be used again. Saved by some unknown someone who knew man and dog would finally come and find it. And that the world might need the past again one day.

  “We found a library.”

  They’ll wonder who I mean by we, he thought, and laughed as he patted Dog.