The Last Dog on Earth

by Adrian J. Walker

  We faced each other in a triangle, our breath crackling with spit and blood.

  ‘FINE,’ said the wolf at last. ‘LIVE AS SLAVES. I CARE NOT.’

  And he limped away, dissolving into the rising mist. When he was gone, Wally collapsed.

  ‘Wally!’ I said, running to him, nuzzling his head and whimpering for him to get up. ‘How did you find me? What are you doing here? Where have you been?’

  He rolled over and I saw the wound on his neck; a tattered gash from which dark blood oozed, staining his fur and the grass beneath him.

  ‘I’ve been tracking you for … two days now,’ he said, labouring. ‘I caught your scent all the way from the other side of the river. Don’t take this the wrong way but I can smell your balls from three miles away.’

  I gave a shivery kind of laugh. ‘I bet you can, mate, I bet you can. Now come on, we’ve got to get you up, get you some water …’

  He winced and wheezed. ‘Too late for that, I think, Linny, too late for that.’

  A fresh gush of blood flowed out from the wound, and I bent down to lick at it. Beneath my desperate urge to help my friend, that ancient feeling once again took hold, and I wonder, if Wally hadn’t nudged me away, would I have been able to stop?

  ‘Nah,’ he grunted. ‘Get off. Don’t do that.’

  ‘I’ve got to help you.’

  ‘I told you, it’s too late.’ He lay back, panting at the sky.

  ‘What happened, Wally? Where did you go after the bombs?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘I lost him, my two-plates, and I wandered about for a bit.’

  ‘What about the others? Scapa, Jez, Wonky, Pebble?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘I thought you were too.’

  I hung my head. As I did, I noticed something around his neck; a tattered purple collar with a brass emblem coated with blood.

  ‘What’s that, Wally? What’s that collar?’

  ‘It’s what they put on me,’ he gasped. ‘It’s what they made me wear in that fucking place. It was horrible, Lin, horrible. But I escaped. I got out, got away.’

  ‘Away from where?’

  ‘Them, those fuckers in the north.’

  ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Lineker, promise me …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Promise me you won’t go north.’

  ‘Why? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Stay south, get further away. They make you do things. They’re not like other humans, Linny, they’re not, they …’ He gulped and gargled as another red fountain splashed from his chops.

  ‘Wally, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t go north,’ he said, straining.

  ‘But I have to. That’s where Reg is going.’

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t be. It’s not safe … telling you … not safe for man nor dog. Promise me, stay south, don’t … go …’

  A dense, hot cloud puffed from his mouth and his chest deflated.

  ‘Wally?’ I nuzzled him. ‘Wally, for fuck’s sake talk to me! Wally!’

  But he was gone.

  There was nothing to be done. I heaved a sigh and lay down by his side, pushing my snout into the folds of his still warm neck flesh. And I whined and I wept and I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again the mist had melted away, and Wally’s still body was steaming in the winter sun.

  South Bank

  REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL

  11TH DECEMBER 2021

  It began to rain about an hour after we started our walk along the dead river. By the time we reached the beginnings of the South Bank a messy north wind was at play, sending cold sprays up and down the track. Mud appeared where dry dirt had been and beads of water clung to our clothes, hair and skin like spiders’ eggs. The further we went, the wetter the mud became and rivulets appeared like the veins of a great leaf, running into pools. Before long the mud was covered in shallow water that occasionally found the shore and lapped it in tiny waves.

  The fog was still thick so I heard the noise before I saw its source – murmurings and shouts, things being dragged along concrete, music, hoarse laughter, thuds and cracks in the distance. When our toes found concrete I saw people moving ahead. Some were stacking wooden pallets along a wall, while others were coiling ropes and running buckets to and from the water’s edge. As the fog cleared I saw that some of the ropes were attached to tall men in wetsuits, masks and waders, who were staggering out in the shallows, knee-deep in the mud. Those on the bank side kept the ropes taut, bracing themselves against the lip of stone left by the broken wall and yanking back if their man got stuck or fell over. I passed three men struggling with one rope, trying to pull out a man who was down to his chest and sinking fast. He waved his hands, screaming at them to exert themselves, but the ordeal was clearly too much for them, and they rolled about, helpless with mirth at the sight of their friend in such peril.

  We walked on, and I wondered what it could be that was making them take such risks. Then I saw one emerge.

  Heave! bellowed his little team as they pulled him out, and with an enormous squelch he hit the concrete spluttering like a landed fish. The stench was foul and Aisha squeezed her nose shut. Even the rope hands held rags to their faces as they gathered him up, and as they did he held out a sack, which one of them – a young woman in baggy jeans and a flapping, orange anorak – took and poured into a bucket. I heard the clatter of shells and saw mussels, oysters and cockles in a dribble of silt.

  The woman worked quickly, scrubbing the creatures one by one and transferring them into a clean bucket. There was an iron pot boiling behind her. She glanced at us as we passed.

  ‘Shells?’ she asked with a brisk smile. ‘Hot shells?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, thank you, I’m looking for somebody. Do you …’

  The woman looked at a couple wandering behind us.

  ‘Shells?’ she said again, ignoring me. ‘Hot shells?’

  ‘Keep moving!’ shouted one of the rope hands, bustling by with a clean sack and a bottle of something brown for the man he had just helped pull from the mud. ‘Dredging work!’

  The man in the wetsuit took the sack, grabbed the bottle and took a long drink. He handed it back and, after a pause, during which he hung his head and the rope hands waited, he nodded and beat his chest twice. The rope hands cheered and readied themselves with the rope, as the dredger slapped his way back to the shore for another try.

  This procession of hot pots, ropes and men hauling other men from the mud lasted for about half a mile along the shoreline. The air was thick with the smell of sewage, mud and steaming shellfish, and all about were cries of alarm, cheers of praise, laughter and the occasional scream. At one point I saw a huddle of rope hands trying to comfort their dredger, who sat on the wall, sobbing with his head in his hands. A young boy in an oversized puffer jacket sat at the pot he was scrubbing, shaking his head.

  As we walked further, I saw what I supposed had caused the dredger’s upset. Sticking from the watery mud were sharp and tattered objects that I realised were human skeletons. The Thames had always had a reputation as a busy graveyard – plagues, fires and suicides feeding it fresh cadavers every week, year and century. I wondered how many more had been emptied into it by those bombs that had dammed it, dried it and robbed it of its ancient bridges; bridges that I now realised had been reduced to huge stubs of brickwork and dangling cables.

  As we left the dredgers we came upon a stretch of market stalls lined up against the back wall. One such stall was stacked with an odd assortment of vessels – plastic, metal and glass – filled with water. Aisha looked up as we neared. I nodded.

  ‘I’m thirsty too,’ I said.

  ‘How much for, er …’ I began, pointing at the rough collection.

  The lady sitting behind the stall looked between us and smiled. Without a word she gestured to one of the bottles near the front.

  ‘I don’t ha
ve any money,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had any for …’

  She frowned and waved my offer away, nodding for me to take the bottle.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, handing it to Aisha, who drank from it in greedy gulps. The woman gave her a hard smile as she came up for air. Aisha stopped and blinked at the woman with water dripping from her open mouth. Then, cautiously, she offered the bottle to her. The woman’s face opened like a flower in an unexpected beam of sunlight, and with a cry she threw up her hands, jumped from her seat and wobbled around the stall to envelop Aisha in a tearful hug. Aisha, rooted to the spot and still holding the water aloft, looked up at me in astonishment until the woman finally released her, wiped her eyes and blubbered happy words in a language I did not recognise.

  Aisha kept her eyebrows raised in surprise, and as we continued through the market, she took my hand. Again, I felt no shock.

  We passed stalls of shrivelled fruit, stacked packets and bent tins. Some even sported supermarket signs, the sellers clothed in shabby versions of the matching uniforms. At each I stopped and said the name ‘Jenkins?’ but everyone we passed shook their heads and waved us on.

  Eventually the stalls petered out and the bank widened. In the larger space, still skirted with mist, were small tables and chairs at which folk sat in hats, coats and mittens nursing steaming drinks and talking in low voices. Between them were flickering fire barrels, jugglers, buskers and dancers all performing for their own crowds.

  All were wrapped up against the cold, which was noticeable now that we were exposed to the wind. I felt Aisha tighten against my arm, whether it was against the drop in temperature or the growth in the crowd I did not know, but the fact that I was able to endure her touch had not escaped me. It was not that my condition had simply vanished – I still took great steps to avoid the rushing limbs of the crowd through which we now walked – it was just that, somehow, her touch had become bearable. More than bearable, in fact. I found that I sought it out as comfort.

  One of the performers, a long-haired, bearded guitarist in a neckerchief and boiler suit, seemed to have drawn a larger crowd than the rest, and we skirted around the edge of them as he hollered and plucked; a simple, dirty kind of song with slaps of his guitar strings and stomps of his feet. The crowd clapped along, drawn, dirty faces pulled into grins.

  I was beginning to wonder why the river had been described to me in such warning tones by Mira and Travis; so far I had only seen hard workers looking after each other, good-natured market tenders and lively music. My discomfort at being so far from home – the shape of my little safe street map still burned in my brain, yearning for me to return – and so close to water, and all these people, was tempered by the strange, familial warmth I felt from the music, and the fires, and the people. Even my abandonment of Lineker felt like a necessary and temporary state of affairs that could be fixed in due course.

  Things, I thought, might just work out for the best. So long as I kept from the crowd, and far from that murky water, and – it was still a surprise to note – holding onto Aisha’s hand, I would finally find this Jenkins fellow and get the girl to safety.

  But I did not have long to enjoy this fantasy because, in the distance, I saw lights moving slowly up into the sky. At first I thought they might be towers, but as we walked on I saw that they formed a huge circle: the London Eye.

  As I was wondering why and how that overgrown ferris wheel might still be turning, or why the lights on each pod were fiercely bright and sweeping the fog in slow arcs, I noticed heads swinging in its direction. Then, as if by some hidden agreement, the crowd contracted until soon Aisha and I were standing quite apart from everyone else. The guitarist stopped abruptly, with his long hair swaying over his instrument, and my relief at the extra space we had been allowed by the crowd was overtaken by a creeping concern for what might have made them move.

  I peered ahead to see what could be happening. There were flurries in the mist, and voices raised in alarm. Three or four of them were shouting at each other, and they seemed to be moving in our direction.

  ‘Aisha,’ I said, and she gripped my hand tight at the sound of my voice. I had never before seen crowds as safe places, but right now this one seemed like the right place to be. ‘Hold on to me.’

  One of the pod lights suddenly swung violently to the bank and, after a furious sweep of the ground, juddered to a halt. It then began a steady track towards us. As it moved, the voices grew louder and more urgent. I heard the clatter of metal, feet hitting concrete and thundering footsteps.

  At this, the crowd lost their new shape and began to disperse with cries and shouts. Suddenly the space filled with people again. The searchlight crept ever faster towards us, and figures emerged from the fog, running wildly. As the first one drew near my insides turned. A boy, I thought at first, but no, she was female.

  A young woman. A terrible sight from a different time.

  She was stick thin with a shaven head and striped pyjamas flapping around her flailing arms. She was running – on what energy I could not begin to fathom, but running she was, as fast as her brittle limbs allowed her. Her breaths came in short, tight gasps, audible even above the growing murmurs of concern from the retreating crowd. She searched madly about and finally looked directly at me, dark eyes widening as if, somehow, I was now her goal – if she could just make those final metres, she would …

  There was a deep crack from the pod and a green flare shot from it, rising in a slow arc and then floating down above us. With a crackling fizz, the fog and the bank side became illuminated in a marshy light and the woman looked up in terror. She stumbled to a halt, arms out, searching the sky. Her eyes shone in the glare.

  The crowd were on the move now, like a hunted herd finding their pace. In the green light five more figures emerged and stopped in the clearing. The woman’s face slackened, her shoulders slumped, and she turned to me again. All panic had left her, replaced by something numb. Slowly, she lifted her arms.

  There was a moment of silence, when even the crowd hushed and all we could hear was the spluttering flare descending. Clouds drifted from the woman’s mouth, slower and smaller with every breath, until finally she blinked and looked down at Aisha.

  A businesslike rattle reported from the pod, and a flower of red appeared on the front of the woman’s shirt. Her eyes widened as she fell. The pod shot five more bursts and, one by one, the figures dropped.

  The crowd erupted and scattered.

  Someone barged my shoulder and yanked me from shock. Suddenly, everywhere I looked was a terrified human face or a hand swinging, inches from me. Someone brushed my back and I shivered, then again on my neck. I gasped, weakened my grip on Aisha’s hand, and before I knew it she was gone.

  ‘Aisha!’

  I peered through the swarm of limbs moving in the mist, looking for a pale face and black hair. I spun on my heels, looking around and losing my bearings in the process.

  ‘Aisha!’

  Panic now. I ducked beneath arms, protecting my head, buffeted between bodies and cowering from the shock of every impact.

  Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, please don’t touch me.

  But it was no good; I couldn’t escape them. Closing my eyes and taking a breath, I plunged in and ran through them all, pushing them aside and calling for Aisha as I endured the hell of a thousand hands, limbs and torsos.

  Angry faces, cries, hands that pushed and shoved and threatened to pull me further within the dense human forest.

  Push back, push back, push back and push through – and suddenly I was out. The crowd retreated and I was stumbling over cracked paving slabs, my arms freewheeling. Somehow I had found my way down a side alley, away from the fleeing crowd. Steam rose from vents along the wall.

  And there she was, standing alone with her hands clasped together. There was a man with her, kneeling down. She saw me and ran to my side, jaw set.

  ‘Aisha!’ I gasped. ‘It’s all right. You’re all right.�
�

  ‘Thank goodness!’ called the man, standing up. His face was flushed with relief. ‘I thought she was lost!’

  ‘No,’ I said, swallowing. ‘She’s with me.’

  The man ambled over. He was young, early thirties and fine-featured with kind, intelligent eyes. He wore scuffed brogues, corduroys and a grey woollen overcoat, with a scarf wrapped loosely around his long neck.

  ‘It’s easy to get lost in this crowd, eh, little one?’ he said, with a gentle ruffle of Aisha’s hair. She blinked as a strand hit her eye.

  ‘I haven’t, er, seen you around here before,’ he ventured with a careful smile.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I live further south.’

  He raised his chin and opened his mouth in understanding. Then a look of concern crossed his face, and he nodded behind me at the riverbank, now abandoned and empty. ‘You just saw all that?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes, what happened?’

  He shook his head. ‘Another failed escape,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know what makes them think they can outrun those things.’

  I coughed and reached for my bad knee, now roaring in pain after my exertion. The man bent down and found my eyes. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said, ‘you look like you could use a drink.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t have time for a drink. I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Who? Perhaps I can help?’

  ‘A man named Jenkins. Someone told me he could get this girl to safety.’

  He paused as a pattern of thoughts danced across his face. Then he smiled. ‘Well, in that case, we can kill two birds with one stone.’

  I frowned. ‘You know him?’

  He bowed his head. ‘I do indeed, and I can take you to him.’

  Something drew his attention to the alleyway behind me. I turned and saw a hooded figure jump from sight.

  ‘We should go,’ he said. ‘It’s not always safe once the crowds depart.’

  He held out his hand. ‘John Farmer,’ he said.

  I hesitated at the human hand held out before me, but somehow, perhaps after my immersion in the crowd, it seemed less monstrous than it normally would have done. ‘Reginald,’ I replied. ‘Reginald Hardy.’