The Last Dog on Earth

by Adrian J. Walker

  We stopped at a pub for food and I had a ploughman’s lunch, which – to Sandra’s great delight – confused and upset Isla because she thought the ploughman might go hungry without it. I had a ginger beer and Sandra had a lager top, because we were on holiday.

  Then we rode a little more. By mid-afternoon we were ready to head back to the B&B.

  ‘I don’t like the look of those clouds,’ I said, looking up and adjusting my collar.

  ‘Swap,’ said Sandra. ‘Let me take Isla on the way back.’

  ‘Are you sure? The weight takes a bit of getting used to.’

  ‘We’ll be fine. Right, Isla?’

  We set off slow but she soon got the hang of it. About half an hour later it started to rain.

  ‘Told you!’ I said. ‘Yuck, we’re going to get soaked.’

  ‘Stop complaining!’ yelled Sandra. ‘It’s only water! Besides, it feels nice!’

  She may have been right for all I know, and if I try I can sometimes remember still feeling happy in those moments – the warm spatter of rain on my face, the click and whizz of my back wheel and the peace of the fields stretching out across the earth like some heavenly dream. But those things don’t stay long.

  A couple of miles from home we saw two boats ahead. Sandra seemed to be flagging.

  ‘Do you want to swap back?’ I said.

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘I’ll be fine, it’s not far. What do you think’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They look like they’re stuck.’

  The two boats were wedged against the bank as if their bows were locked. Two men were arguing on their respective decks about the best course of action.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’

  ‘Need a wee.’

  ‘OK, let’s stop ahead. Maybe Daddy can help these two men.’

  We came to a halt and I laid my bike against the hedge.

  ‘Whoops!’ said Sandra as Isla’s weight almost made her topple. ‘Oh, bollocks, I’m stuck.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ I said to the two men.

  ‘Getting there!’ laughed one. ‘Bit of bother with our lines getting tangled in the water. Do you think you could pass us that rope? It’s tied up in the other one, do you see?’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, picking up the two ropes and examining them. The men busied themselves with a knot of their own.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Sandra from the bike.

  ‘Mummy, I need a wee.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart, Mummy’s got her shorts stuck on the handlebars, that’s all.’

  I glanced round and saw her leaning over the bars, balancing on one toe.

  ‘Reginald, can you help?’

  ‘Yeah, just a second, I’m just untying this.’

  ‘Reginald, please, I’m stuck!’ she laughed.

  ‘Almost done.’

  I heard a plop.

  ‘There,’ I said, freeing the ropes.

  ‘There,’ sighed Sandra. ‘I’m free.’

  I handed the ropes back and turned round. Sandra did the same.

  ‘Isla?’

  She was not in her seat. We looked to the hedgerow, thinking she’d hopped off to sort herself out, but she was not there either.

  I locked eyes with Sandra as our panic rose. We had forgotten to strap her in.

  ‘Good God!’ shouted one of the men from the deck. ‘She’s in the water!’

  We looked down and Sandra shrieked. There in the triangle of black canal between the two boats was a trail of bubbles rising from an expanding swell of circular ripples. I jumped in as a coil of ropes slipped from one of the boats.

  ‘Get her!’ screamed Sandra. ‘Reginald, get her!’

  I dived down, floundering in the growing snake of rope and weed, feeling about for a hand or a leg or piece of her dress, but there was nothing. I resurfaced to the sound of Sandra’s hysterical cries and the splashes of the two men jumping in to help, then I dived down a second time, kicking deeper. This time I found her, a little hand in mine. I pulled and it gripped back.

  ‘Got you,’ I bubbled, and made for the surface.

  But she wouldn’t come. I pulled again. She was caught on something.

  I stared down into the murk, feeling the men’s legs hitting my back and seeing Isla’s face lit in the grey light above. Her eyes were wide, panicking like me. One of the men found me and I placed her hand in his while I went down to free her leg. It was caught in a knot of rope, which was itself tied in a thick clump of weed. I tugged and tugged, feeling my lungs burning, my mind pondering the terrible choice of trading vital seconds at the surface for a better chance of saving her. Just when I thought I could stay down no more, I pulled off her shoe and pushed her foot through the knot, feeling a small snap, then I kicked up and grabbed her hand, pulling her to the surface and dragging her out onto the towpath, where she lay, face down and still as I spluttered and vomited in the dirt.

  Later I found myself in the hospital consultation room, half listening to words of sympathy from a doctor whose face I never saw as Sandra howled in the corner. I felt incalculably numb. The moments passed like flecks of ash on an upward breeze, safely carried away from the agony below. I wished to be with them – to dissolve into time and be no more. But the moments abandoned me. Still I remained.

  Outside in the waiting room a crowd of patients watched the television in dumb horror as two great towers fell into dust. I was barely even aware of them.

  I stopped talking and let the barge creak on. It had been some time since I had told anyone what had happened, and never had I done so in such detail. Perhaps it was the alcohol, or the strains of the past few days, or losing Lineker, or the bond I was feeling with Aisha. Either way, it all now hung between us, naked and vulnerable as the dying flame.

  Charlie stared at the table. She had not made a sound or moved a muscle since I had begun.

  ‘That’s what that woman meant when she said she was sorry when she heard,’ she said. ‘And now I see why Aisha’s safety is so important to you. I am sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to …’

  ‘I’m sorry if I was improper.’

  She smoothed down her skirts and stood, avoiding my gaze. ‘We have an early start tomorrow.’

  She picked up the gun and wandered to the bedroom door, turning when she reached it.

  ‘Goodnight, Reginald,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.

  The Wrong Path

  LINEKER

  I stood stone-still in that empty street. The problem was not that the smell of Reg and the girl had disappeared. The problem was that another one had burst into my consciousness and flattened them to smithereens.

  It was Her again. She was close.

  I lost myself. All thoughts of finding my master drifted from me and, struck dumb, I followed the sour perfume into the darkness. To this day I could not tell you what streets I took or the stories they cradled. They were of no consequence, background noise beneath the siren towards which I was helplessly being pulled. Eventually I found myself sitting, fragile and out of sorts, by some steps and a door, through which I could hear the clanks, shouts and sizzles of a working kitchen. There were smells too, I imagine, though they must have dissolved like everything else. She was in there, somewhere, and I knew it.

  A voice grew near and the door opened. At the top of the steps stood an enormous-bellied man wearing a stained white apron and carrying a tied black bag. He was laughing at something, but he stopped when he saw me.

  ‘Hello there, little fella,’ he said. He waddled down the steps and held out his hand. ‘Where did you come from then, eh?’

  I growled. He was in my way.

  ‘What’s wrong? Don’t be like that, come ’ere …’

  I snapped – a proper bite that caught him on two fingers with my fangs. He yelped and sprang back, shielding his hand. I slunk back to a growl, teeth still bared. His wounded look quickly turned to anger.

  ‘You little bastard!’ he yell
ed, hurling the bag of rubbish at me and retreating inside. The bag hit me square in the head and tore open. I picked through it, dazed, and gnawed half-heartedly on a chicken bone. But before I knew it I had dropped it and was off again, around the side of the building.

  It was clearer than usual, freezing cold, and above the silhouetted skyline the cloud was hooked on a talon of the moon. The place was a pub, still open. Its windows glimmered with candlelight and the raucous sound of slurred words and an aimless fiddle warbled from within. A barrel stood beneath one of the windows and I jumped on top to peer in. Dark shapes, shadows, flickering faces, flithy leers and sweat-drenched cheeks heaved over the tables. Scum, thieves, scoundrels, villains, whores and …

  In the corner, huddled in some furtive discussion with three others I could not see, there She was. All sound muffled, all light blurred until Her face was the only thing I could see, brightly focussed in the surrounding blur. I watched it – the movement of Her bright red lips, the glancing of Her rookish eyes between Her cohorts – I watched until, suddenly, as if She had known I was there all along, She looked right at me.

  My heart machine-gunned – fuckity fuckity fuckity fuckity fuck – and I jumped down behind the barrel, breathing fast. Soon the door opened and She stepped out, hands on hips, scanning the empty street. Her scent roared like a flame in the frozen air. I cowered, heart still pounding. I wanted to run to Her, yearned to close those final few feet and be by Her side. Every muscle twitched to do so, and I think I would have gone had it not been for that last glimmer of reason that told me: She’s still dangerous. You do not want to follow this bliss.

  Hardest thing I ever did. But I did it. And after a few moments more, She returned inside.

  As the door swung shut I sank into the dirt. Whatever spell had entranced me was now gone, like a snatched blanket, leaving me cold and troubled.

  All my lines were blurred. Who was I? That certainty I had felt as I followed Reg’s scent, that feeling of truth, that I was on the right path – if all that could be destroyed by the mere whiff of a stranger, then who the fuck was I? Just some dumb, fur-covered machine. And who was Reg? He was supposed to be my master, he was supposed to look after me like I looked after him. But he had left me to save the girl.

  I knew I should understand why, but the truth was I just didn’t. I didn’t understand anything any more. I was in a strange street, surrounded by strange buildings and strange people, but nothing was stranger than this new place inside my head. I was adrift on strange tides.

  Eventually the distant sound of breaking glass roused me, and I got wearily to my feet. I had no scent to follow and no energy to follow it, so instead I slunk off in search of a place to sleep. I found an overturned, rusted skip and crawled inside. The rats scattered, I turned three circles and lay down, whimpering myself to sleep, confused as hell.

  The Door

  REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL

  12TH DECEMBER 2021

  When I woke up the barge had stretched. I looked down an impossible corridor of galleys, benches, shelves and cupboards all accelerating into a vanishing point at the far end – a minuscule space that streamed with amber daylight, a bed, and curtains wafting in ethereal flames of sun. The rest of the barge was dark and still, stuck inside the cold, stubborn night.

  ‘Come here, Reginald,’ called a distant voice. ‘Come on, come back to bed.’

  I saw miles-away shadows moving in the light; a hand outstretched, and hair falling down across a pillow.

  ‘Sandra?’ I said, my breath freezing.

  ‘Come on,’ giggled the voice.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said to the body I knew was lying beside me with its back turned. I pushed off the blanket and walked out into the dream.

  The boat creaked as I walked its length. Floorboards seemed to wobble with each step, pots and pans quaking when I passed as if my body had some new and dangerous magnetism. I steadied myself on the ceiling, which felt feathery and light against my fingers, bulging at my touch. Halfway there. The bed was clearer now and I saw that it was hers, the one in which we had shared each other’s joy on that July afternoon all those years ago. She lay there, naked and tangled in its covers, warm in the sun that filled her cluttered, dusty bedroom.

  I walked faster but my feet were splashing in something. I heard a trickling sound from my left and saw a hole in the boat’s side. River water was spilling in, forming a rapidly growing pool on the floor.

  ‘Reginald,’ whispered Sandra.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I have to fix it.’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘No, we’ll sink. Just, just let me …’

  I fumbled in a draw full of shotgun shells, all stuck together by a treacly substance. I pulled one from the mess and plugged it into the whole. It fitted and the water stopped, and I continued on my way. As I drew near, Sandra’s face became clear, and she smiled and lifted the sheet, flooding me with arousal at the sight of her young, brown body.

  ‘But how … ?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Come in, it’s cold out there.’

  I reached the bed, feeling lighter somehow, and as I bent down I caught sight of myself in the cracked mirror on the wall above. Hair black and all intact, face clear, body slim – I was me from before as well.

  ‘How … ?’

  ‘I told you, it doesn’t matter, shut up, kiss me.’

  I let myself fall onto her, drowning in the smell of almonds in her hair, and the warmth rising from beneath the covers, and the salt skin of her neck.

  ‘Oh Reginald,’ she moaned, between long mouth kisses. Her legs wrapped around me. ‘Oh Reginald, I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I didn’t know this was possible.’

  ‘Help me.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, breathlessly. Her toe caught in the elastic of my underwear, pulling them down.

  ‘You said help me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Reginald, fuck me, please.’

  ‘No. Help me.’

  I looked over my shoulder as she kissed my neck and rubbed herself, wet, against my thigh.

  ‘Oh, Christ, Reginald, my Reginald.’

  There, at the other end of the corridor, was a different bed. Not the bed I had left, but one from another time, another place. No sunlight in this room, just a cold, grey dawn spilling through drab hospital curtains.

  ‘Help me. I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Sandra, beneath me. ‘Come back, where are you going?’

  ‘Help me.’

  I followed the voice back along the corridor. Now I seemed to be climbing uphill. Pots, pans and bottles slid down shelves, and water from the leak was streaming over my feet. The shell had popped out and the hole had grown worse. Water was gushing in, flooding the barge.

  Halfway back and I saw her in the bed, dark circles under her eyes where freckles should have been. Her hair was in straggles.

  I stopped at the leak, wondering what I could use to block it.

  ‘Help me,’ she croaked. ‘I can’t breathe.’

  ‘There’s a leak. We’ll sink.’

  ‘You can’t fix it.’

  ‘But we’ll drown.’

  ‘You can’t fix it. Help me.’

  ‘But …’

  I woke up again. Frost clung to the air like the dream to my thoughts, and Aisha stood at my bed.

  ‘You were dreaming,’ she said.

  I faltered, thinking that perhaps I still was, for her voice was as clear and unbroken as the moonlight that bathed her.

  ‘You can speak,’ I said, sitting up.

  ‘Were they bad dreams?’

  I shook my head. ‘Yes. Yes, Aisha, they were.’

  Her eyes dropped. ‘I have them too.’

  She was holding a photograph in her hands. ‘But I have good ones sometimes,’ she said.

  I rolled my stiff legs out of the narrow cot. ‘Listen,’ I said, searching for t
he words to explain. ‘The nice lady, Charlie, she—’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  Her eyes were still on the photograph. I was astonished by the sound of her voice, the colour, croak and inflections that had been hiding behind her silence.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘After you’ve found Linn-kaa, where will you go?’

  I hesitated. ‘Home,’ I replied. ‘Home is where I will go.’

  She rubbed the edges of the photograph, then held it proudly out before me. ‘I have a better home,’ she said. ‘You should come and see it.’

  As I sat there, paralysed with awe, the door opened and Charlie entered. She looked between us.

  ‘It’s time to go,’ she said.

  The Crossing

  LINEKER

  Never underestimate the power of sleep. Even when it occurs in a piss-drenched, burned-out skip, it has the power to restore, reset and reignite. I woke up nothing like the dog I had been. The confusion of the previous night had disappeared like a fever, drowned in a distant dream of a sinking barge.

  My eyes sprang open, twin diamonds in the dawn, and I jumped to my feet. I had the scent. Reg and girl were centre-stage once again.

  Sound the bugles!

  Off I went, running, running, running through the early morning streets, past leafless shrubs and wooden shacks. I hurdled the legs of slumbering drunks, dodged buckets of slop thrown from doorways and cleared fences, weightless and dizzy in the liquor of my own volition. I saw a horse. A horse! It was tethered to a barn, still asleep and steaming in the morning frost. The sight made me spin like a top, but I did not slow, I had no time, I had to get on. Somehow I knew where they were, and what’s more, I knew how to get there.

  Sleep! Sleep and a new day – wondrous things, priceless gifts, and I was taking both of them. I ran, ran, ran, down to that stinking river and the skyline beyond, stooped and broken like an army of wounded giants rising from the murk of a battlefield – the buildings full of birds that had once filled my dreams.