The Dog Hunters: An Apocalyptic Ice Age Story

by John Silveira

  Wilson looked about. More torches lay on the snow and the old man picked up one of them and lit it from the one he held. He handed the torch to Wilson and, after glancing up at the ceiling to assure himself it wouldn’t collapse, he beckoned his grandson to follow.

  As they entered one of the tunnels, Wilson realized they had passed through a partially collapsed roof and now stood inside a house.

  “This is a living room,” Wilson’s grandfather whispered. “We’re probably on the second floor of a two-family house.”

  Wilson looked at a piece of furniture in the corner. He recognized it from pictures he had seen in books back at the village. “That’s a television.”

  His grandfather nodded.

  “It’s huge!”

  “They got big,” the old man said, nodding at the flat-screen. “I forgot just how big they got.”

  “All the chairs are facing it.” Wilson laughed. “Must really have been the center of attention.”

  “More than you can imagine,” the old man replied.

  The old man glanced up at the ceiling again then they moved deeper into the house, their shadows leaping like acrobats in the flickering light from the flames.

  In another room was a desk with a computer. Wilson approached it reverently and lightly put his hand on the monitor. He’d seen computers on some of their scavenging forays. He reached into his pocket and touched his chip.

  “You’d have liked to have one of those,” his grandfather said.

  “Everyone had them, didn’t they.”

  “Just about. We all had computers, TVs, cars, cell phones, the Internet, radios...” His voice trailed off.

  “Why do you keep looking at the ceiling?” Wilson asked.

  “It just seems like it could all give way,” his grandfather said and they moved on.

  Now Wilson kept glancing up at the ceiling.

  At the back of the house they discovered a cave‑in in what had once been a kitchen. Cupboards had exploded open and spilled their contents. Shards from broken cups, dishes, and glasses were mixed with splinters of wood and chunks of ice. The excavators had tunneled through to get knives, forks, pots, and pans. There was evidence they had also salvaged part of the wood from the structure, leaving just enough so the roof would not collapse.

  The old man admired the miners’ engineering and said, “Looks like they know what they’re doing.”

  A stairway led to a lower level. In the light of their torches they could see ice below and a stairway that had collapsed.

  “We won’t go down there,” Wilson’s grandfather said. “It looks too dangerous.”

  They crossed the living room to a door that opened into a bedroom. There appeared to be bodies under the covers.

  Wilson unconsciously reached into his pocket and clutched the computer chip. His grandfather noticed, but said nothing. As the old man stepped across the threshold he asked, “You coming?”

  Wilson shook his head no.

  “The excavators leave these rooms alone,” the old man said when he reached the bed and his voice trailed off as he reached to pull the blankets back.

  Wilson took a step backward from the doorway. He understood the reluctance of the excavators to enter the room.

  The old man lifted the blankets. A young couple was lying in the bed. The bodies, frozen for over twenty‑five years, were desiccated. Their eyes were half open, their mouths slightly agape in gruesome smiles.

  “There’s a baby between them,” he said to Wilson. “There’s going to be a lot of this down here.”

  He gently lowered the blanket back over the corpses and he and his grandson left through the hole in the roof and entered another tunnel and found themselves in yet another house. They stood in a kitchen that was structurally intact, though looted of anything useful.

  In another room was another computer and it caught Wilson’s eye. He stopped in front of it and reached in his pocket to touch the chip again.

  “Don’t take it,” his grandfather said. “We’re going to have enough to carry. You’ve got four of them at home and they’re never going to run again.”

  “Never?”

  “They’re probably still using them some places. But they’ll wear out and I don’t think anyone’s building new ones.”

  In a bedroom there were more bodies in bed. Once again, Wilson wouldn’t enter.

  But in another room was a section of recently collapsed roof and freshly frozen blood.

  “That’s why there’s no one here,” the old man said as he pointed. “There’s been an accident with the excavators. They’ve taken someone who’s either dead or injured back to their village. Must have been some big honcho for everyone to have left. Go up top and make sure they’re not coming back.”

  Wilson quickly went back through the tunnels and climbed the ladder that led to the top while his grandfather looked through the other tunnels for things he could salvage.

  From up top Wilson could see no one approaching and looking north he could see that the dogs were out of sight. He descended back into the hole and, using wood from the excavation, he started a fire in the pack stove. When the fire was burning well, he began their lunch while his grandfather still foraged through the houses.

  He heated some dried fish along with his grandfather’s unfinished breakfast. He melted snow for drinking water.

  As the meal warmed, his grandfather returned with a pillowcase stuffed with loot. He sat down near the stove and began to remove the contents while they ate. First he showed Wilson two boxes of salt. “I can’t believe our fortune at finding this. It’s iodized,” he said without explaining its importance.

  But Wilson remembered his grandfather talking about something magic called iodine.

  Then the old man took a large kitchen knife from the sack, then two screwdrivers, a hammer, a small can filled with nails and screws, and a box with book matches and a small can.

  “What’s in the can?” Wilson asked.

  “It’s called lighter fluid. It burns.”

  Wilson took the can, removed the cap, and smelled. He made a face.

  “It’ll come in handy,” the old man said. “There’s a lot of other good stuff down here, so we should get going soon ‘cause it means they’re going to be back. There are other tools here that are too big for us to carry. I wish we had time and more men from the village with us, or some sort of vehicle to carry this stuff off.”

  Wilson didn’t answer. He looked around. This hole, even after having been picked over by the excavators, represented unimaginable wealth.

  His grandfather reached into the sack and took out a coil of nylon rope that he showed to Wilson. “This was theirs, too. As you know, there are never-ending uses for rope.

  “And,” his grandfather said as, with a flourish, he picked up a box, “in here we have some things your mother and sister might like.” He opened it to expose gold jewelry. “It was in the debris near the cave‑in. It must have been because of the accident that they left it.”

  He held up a necklace of pearls and asked, “Do you know whose neck these would look nice on?”

  Wilson stared.

  “Laura,” his grandfather said.

  Wilson stopped eating and took them in his hand. The thought of Laura made him flush. Theirs was a small village in a natural bowl that had once been Salem Harbor. Laura was now seventeen, four years younger than he. He’d only begun to notice her six months ago. His family was negotiating with her family so he might take her as a bride.

  He tried to hand the pearls back to his grandfather. “Laura’s practical. Coming home from a successful trip with tools and meat will make a better impression than coming back with trinkets.”

  His grandfather wouldn’t take them. “You really don’t know women,” he laughed. “Just trust me on this one thing. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about women during the Golden Age or women today, if you bring her this it will be remembered long after the food we bring home is gone and the tools have w
orn out.”

  Wilson shrugged and reluctantly pocketed the pearls, then began examining other stuff his grandfather had found.

  “And this was in the closet,” the old man said holding up a red hooded sweatshirt. “This would look beautiful on her. There are some other clothes, but we can’t carry them all. When they come back, the miners will grab what’s left.”

  Wilson held the hoodie up. He wouldn’t say it to his grandfather, but it would look beautiful on Laura.

  His grandfather watched him stuff it into his pack.

  “Lastly...,” his grandfather said as he removed a small, clear plastic bag from his pocket, “...you’re never going to guess what this stuff is. There’s really no way for you to know.”

  He handed Wilson the bag. Wilson looked at it. There was a small, green glass object in it and about a half-cup of greenish-brown matter.”

  Wilson shook his head.

  “The glass thing is called a pipe. The other stuff’s called marijuana.”

  “What’s it for?” Wilson asked.

  “I’ll show you when we make camp tonight.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “You’ll see. It used to be that you could go to jail for just having it. People wound up in prison for life for possessing less than what’s in this bag. But it was becoming legal, most places, before the ice age started.”

  “Is it valuable?”

  The old man thought a second. “Maybe. I’m lucky I found it. It was right out in plain sight. As cold as it is down here, it’s probably still pretty good, too.”

  “Good for what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Wilson held the plastic bag up and looked at it again. “Why didn’t the miners take it? Seems like it would have been easy to stick in a pocket.”

  “Only someone who crossed over from the Golden Age would recognize it. Unless there’s an old-timer in the miners’ crew, they’d never know what this is.”

  Wilson handed the bag back to his grandfather who put it in a pocket inside his coat.

  “You should have shot the dog,” he said to Wilson. “Why didn’t you? I’ve never seen you miss at that distance.”

  Wilson shrugged.

  “Talk to me about it.”

  Wilson examined more of his grandfather’s finds. “What if we had a dogsled?” he asked without looking at the old man.

  “Is that why you didn’t shoot it?” the old man asked critically. “Because of the damned dogsled I drew? Do you think that somehow we’re going to catch one of those dogs? A single dog is useless.”

  “One of the bitches was milking,” Wilson replied.

  His grandfather asked, “What of it?”

  “That means there’s babies.”

  “Puppies,” his grandfather corrected. Always educating.

  “Okay, puppies. Could we raise these puppies if we found them? I mean, could we take care...”

  “Without a bitch, it’s work—and I doubt we could take the bitch alive. Plus there’d be nothing to feed them. We need meat. You should have shot one when you had the chance.”

  “Meat?” Wilson blurted. “We shoot a dog, we kill a seal, we bring back a slew of fish, and in a few days they’re gone. Look around us. Look what’s here. We could be taking unbelievable treasures back if we had some dogs and we built one of those dogsleds. Hunting and fishing would be easier, and we could travel further and faster on these scavenging trips…”

  “No, no, no,” his grandfather said.

  But Wilson wouldn’t be interrupted, “…and the inland settlements aren’t going to have dogsleds because food is scarcer there, and dogs are hard to feed” he continued. “But for those who can feed dogs, having them will make, in your own words, trips out to the ocean—and everywhere else—easier, and we’ll be able to do things other people can’t. We could even make them bring back their own food when we go to the ocean.”

  The old man shook his head angrily. “Right now we need meat. We’ll consider dogs and dogsleds when we’re not hungry.”

  “We’re always hungry,” Wilson countered.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” the old man said in a tone that told Wilson the discussion was over. “Let’s eat, we’ll get together what we can carry, and we’re gone. There’s no telling when they’ll be back. There’s a bumper jack near the bottom of the ladder. Grab it as we leave.”

  “What’s a bumper jack?”

  “That,” the old man said, pointing to some metal objects tied together with rope.

  Wilson went to look at the bundle. “What are they for?”

  “When you put them together, you have a tool for multiplying mechanical force,” the old man said. “It’ll come in handy.”

  What was mechanical force? Wilson asked himself. More stuff he had to learn before the old man was gone.

  “We could be taking all this stuff,” Wilson whispered loud enough for his grandfather to hear.

  The old man sighed. “Don’t gamble with our future, Wilson. Let’s get going and see if we can pick up the trail of that pack again.”

  Wilson nodded. Still, he surveyed all that they were leaving. “We could be taking it all,” he whispered.

  But the old man wasn’t in the mood to argue and he put the bounty back in the sack and they continued their meal in silence until Wilson said, “People just died in their beds, didn’t they.”

  “That’s what they did,” his grandfather said. “A lot of people got cold, hungry, and discouraged. And when they saw there was not going to be an end to it, that no help was coming, and they were going to die anyway, they went to bed with their children and died.”

  “Not you,” Wilson said.

  “Not me,” his grandfather replied and thought back to the early days of the ice age when so many of his family and friends had given up.

  “We’re not quitters, are we,” Wilson said and smiled.

  The old man shook his head. “No, I’d be down here under the snow, like the families in these beds, if I’d been a quitter.”

  They finished eating and packed up.

  Wilson grabbed the bumper jack. “This is heavy,” he said.

  “Yeah,” his grandfather said. “But it’ll be worth it.”

  They carried their finds up the ladder. At the top of the hole they paused.

  Wilson looked westward. “There are men about two and a half miles away.” He raised his sunglasses and brought up the rifle in one motion to look through the scope. “There are thirteen coming. And they’re all armed,” he said.

  “Do they have skis?” his grandfather asked.

  “One...no two of the lead ones do. The rest have a lot of gear and are on snowshoes.”

  “Only two on skis. That’s good. We’ll head north. There’ll only be those two to deal with if they try to follow us. Let’s go.”

  “These are going to slow us down,” Wilson said as he nodded to jack parts he was holding.

  The old man paused. “Leave it.”

  Wilson dropped the bundle back down the shaft and they turned and skied down the hillside, hunching low over their skis, knowing their clothing would camouflage them against the snowy backdrop. They were over a half-mile from the bottom of the hill when Wilson stopped and looked back through the scope. “They’re still heading for their hole. They’re not hurrying. They haven’t seen us.”

  “Let’s keep going,” his grandfather said. “By the time they realize we’ve been there, it’ll be too late.”

  They sprinted across the snow, reaching what had once been known as the Fellsway, at the foot of the Fulton Heights. Wilson raised the rifle and looked back again.

  “We’re still not being followed. They haven’t even reached the hole and they’re still not hurrying.”

  “Good,” his grandfather said, snapped off his skis and sat down on the snow.

  Wilson watched him. The old man was tired.

  They lingered for several minutes. Wilson knew it was inevitable that there’d come a day when
the old man couldn’t go with him. He had to learn as much as he could from him before that day came.

  “The wind is shifting,” the old man said. “We’re going to have to be more careful or the pack will catch our scent.”

  Wilson nodded. Regrets about not having taken the shot in the morning were beginning to tumble through his mind. If the dogs got too far ahead, he would have only himself to blame for the shortage of meat back in the village.

  The old man’s breathing became more regular. “Let’s go,” he said, stood, and put his skis back on.

  They made the climb into the Fulton Heights and just when they thought their luck had run out, they caught sight of the pack, again.

  They crossed what had once been called the Middlesex Fells Reservation and Wilson’s optimism returned. They were gaining on the pack. In the late afternoon they were skiing over a town once called Stoneham and they closed to within three hundred and fifty yards, the closest they had been since morning. It was an easy shot for Wilson.

  “Take one now,” the old man whispered. “If it gets dark, we’re going to lose them.”

  “We may be near their den,” Wilson protested.

  His grandfather shook his head. “Shoot one now.”

  The sun was getting closer to the western horizon.

  “We’ll follow them as far as we can,” Wilson whispered. “If they’re not to their den by night fall, I’ll cull one of the males, I promise.”

  “No. You’re risking too much. Shoot now. Every minute you waste makes it more likely we’ll return to the village without meat.” His grandfather reached over and clutched Wilson’s shoulder. He loved Wilson, and didn’t want to reprimand him. But the risk of failure was becoming greater.

  “Shoot,” he hissed.

  “Okay,” Wilson said and he slid off the safety.

  The dogs rooted in the snow and a sudden shot rang out across the snow, and the lead male fell. The rest of the pack broke into a panicked run and headed north.

  A second shot, and the milking bitch fell.

  Wilson and his grandfather fell face down on the snow. They watched as the rest of the dogs disappeared. Only the yelps of the wounded bitch cut the silence.

  In the distance six men crawled from the concealment of holes dug in the snow and converged on the downed dogs. The bitch had been shot in the hip and was struggling to get up. One of the men finished her with a club, then rolled her over and started to skin her.