James Herbert - ‘48

We’d travelled some distance before we started to notice shadows moving along the opposite wall, a black shifting against black, and it was the German who brought us to a halt by raising his hand and pointing. Potter, in front, realized we had stopped and when he saw Stern indicating he raised the paraffin lamp, stretching his arm out. Tiny yellow lights shone back at us.

Muriel, close to me, whispered, ‘What are they?’ The reflected lights were quite still now and I guess she thought if she spoke too loudly she’d set them moving again.

I’d already realized what was out there, but it was Stern who gave them identity. ‘Dogs,’ he said quietly. ‘I have witnessed’ – v itnessed – ‘such packs roaming the ruins of Berlin, scavenging for any morsels they can find in the bomb debris. Often they would turn on their own weakest, then devour it. I have’ – haf - ‘even seen them attack a lone child. If these animals are hungry we must be very careful.’

I stared at him for a moment before turning back to those strange yellow globes that glowed like twin moons in a black velvet sky. Neither they, nor we, moved.

Without warning us, Potter produced the flashlight he’d used before from his overalls pocket and aimed its beam across the broad roadway, bleaching the mangy pack with its powerful light. They remained motionless under the glare, the sorriest bunch of skin ‘n’ bone curs you’d ever see outside a Bowery soup kitchen. They skulked, shoulders hunched, heads bowed, their coats dry and matted, and returned our gaze, those eyes now mean, jaws open just enough to show us their ochre teeth.

There might have been others hidden out of sight in the shadows or behind a couple of nearby trams, but I counted seven in the light. The closest one began swaying its shabby old head to and fro, near to the ground, and a low keening came from its throat. The dog wasn’t pleased to see us and, considering what mankind had done to the planet, I couldn’t blame it. One of its pals took up the note, only this one didn’t wave its head around; no, it wrinkled its snout and showed us some more of its discoloured teeth. Its keening descended to a growling and a thick stream of drool sank from its jaw onto the concrete floor. But it was the frothy liquid that bubbled between its teeth that bothered me more.

These animals were sick, and it wasn’t from starvation. Sure, they were rangy, bones jutting like iron tools in canvas bags, but they’d been on a poor diet, eating the wrong things – and I didn’t want my mind to linger on what. I could see the madness in each and every one of them, a catching thing that came from living in the new wilderness.

‘Let’s walk on,’ I suggested to the others, keeping my voice calm and the gun aimed at the pack. ‘Just slide away, smooth ‘n’ easy, no noise and no running. Let’s not get ‘em riled.’

We started to file away, one by one, Potter leading, me taking up the rear, half-turned so that the Colt was still levelled at the animals, a veil that was shadow coming down on them as the light drew away. But that first mutt crept back into the light, following it, crazy old faded eyes never leaving mine. Was it salivating because it was hungry? I wondered, or was that just madness drooling out? It gave a long growling moan and another dog joined it in the retreating light, this one all bristling fur and quivering ears. Then another came back into view, padding past the first two almost to the centre of the road. It sat on its haunches for a moment or two, sized me up, then trotted even closer. It looked as unhealthy as its companions, but was bolder, hardly scared of me at all. Only a couple of yards away, it began stalking me.

I caught more disturbances among the shadows as others sneaked forward. Maybe they wanted a better look. Maybe they were working up the courage to charge. More padded footsteps, still quiet but swifter now, and when I looked to my left I saw a dog descending the winding stairway of a tram just three or four feet away.

I was walking backwards now, gun arm extended, and Potter and the others had made some distance on me, so that I was barely within the wide circle of light, the dogs on the soft fringes. Every time I took a step back, so the lead dogs took a step forward.

I’d come upon packs like this before in my travels across the city, starving creatures made wild by circumstances, and more than once it had been Cagney who’d frightened them off, standing his ground and ready to take on the leader if not all of them. By comparison, he was pretty fit, you see, and a lot stronger than his half-starved city cousins, so a few ferocious barks and a couple of threatening lunges were enough to see them off, no matter how many were in the pack. I can’t say he was braver than those other curs, because some of those wild things had guts born out of desperation; but he was kind of arrogant, like he was superior, you know? Not because he was with me, he had a human and they didn’t; no, my guess was that he’d always been that way.

First time we laid eyes on each other was a year and several months after the first V2s landed. I’d spent the morning working on my back-yard allotments – these little suburban crop plots had always been popular in England, small pieces of land or gardens used for growing fruit and vegetables, becoming almost necessary during the war years when the authorities had even allowed a few public parks to be cultivated for food – and was boiling up some tinned sausages for my lunch on an open fire. Tinned food was my usual diet – easy to find, easy to cook – but I needed fresh vegetables if I was going to stay healthy. When I looked up from my digging to check on the sausages. I found the dog watching me from a bomb-site across the street.

Maybe I was feeling more lonely than usual on that particular day. I’d kept to myself after the Blood Death, you see, avoiding the crazies I met roaming the city, aware that the normals – those that were left – had abandoned the place for fear of epidemics breaking out, or just to get away from all those dead bodies, but there must have been something about that mutt that appealed to me. Sure, there were plenty of strays around, and not just dogs. Cats, chickens – unfortunately for the chickens, they didn’t last long once I’d set eyes on them – pigs – yeah, same thing if I could catch ‘em – horses, and I’d even observed a cow or two wandering along the roads. ‘Cept for releasing horses from carts, putting any injured creature I came upon out of its misery, and slaughtering those mentioned for food, I’d ignored any surviving animals or birds, and mostly they’d ignored me. Oh, and there was one I’d hidden from. From a distance I’d watched a leopard loping along Regent Street – just once, I’d never seen it again – and I’d stayed out of sight in case it got hungry for warm flesh. Like I said earlier, the London Zoo had evacuated most of its dangerous animals, even put some down, at the beginning of the Blitz, so I had no idea where this cat had come from, and still don’t

Well, I must have been feeling pretty lonesome that day, because I called out to the dog. It was wary, though. Cocked one ear, angled its head, and kept well away. I guess it became a kind of game then, a challenge, me and the boiling meat against the canine’s canniness. It looked interested enough, squatting there amid the debris of flattened houses, blackberry and elder poking through the dry earth and bindweed adding some colour to the greyness of it all, but the interest was in the sweet smell of cooking rather than me. I’d noticed by then that all the animals who’d survived the holocaust had become ‘un-used’ to humans, suspicious of us – or at least, of me – as if somehow they knew humans were responsible for the big foul-up. And who could blame ‘em for that? But this run-down, red-haired mongrel’s belly was ready to forgive all, because although it kept its distance, its nose was sniffing the air and one paw was raised as if to take that first step towards me of its own accord. And then an odd thing occurred.