Matt Hlinak - DoG

The dogs also worried Culann. They’d gone through almost all of the dog food he’d found at Wal-Mart Jr. He’d tried rationing, but the larger dogs shoved aside the smaller ones and ate their fill. Culann had to exert his control over the dogs to get them to share enough to keep them all alive. His own stock of food would keep him going through winter, but not if he shared any with this ravenous pack that grew less tame with each passing day. He was sickened with the thought that he’d have to kill some—most—of his only companions on Earth if any were to survive.

The return of night made him instantly tired. He would deal with the dog situation tomorrow. He finished the last of the whiskey and hobbled back to Alistair’s. When he was halfway there, a dog barked from behind him, then another, and then they all howled in unison. Culann turned back to investigate, stifling a yawn as he tottered through the forest.

When he reached the shore, he spied a light a hundred yards out. It danced up and down and then disappeared. The barking of the dogs echoed off the water. Culann ordered them to be quiet, and they complied. Culann heard the lapping of the waves, but no other sounds. He strained his eyes, focusing on where he’d last seen the light. The moon cast pale rays across the sea, revealing nothing.

“Hello?” a faint voice called out from the blackness.

Culann cleared his throat to reply. He hadn’t spoken to another human being in nearly a month. The dogs obeyed him whether he shouted or whispered, so he’d grown accustomed to speaking softly on the rare occasions he spoke at all.

“Stay away,” he shouted. “It is not safe for you here.”

“Please,” the unmistakably female voice replied, “help me.”

“I am trying to help you. Turn back now.”

“Please, everything went dead. My GPS won’t work, and I can’t see anything. If you don’t help me, I’m going to crash into a rock.”

All along Culann had feared visitors from the mainland arriving at the dock on the east side of the island. He hadn’t expected anyone to come from the open ocean to the west. He could just make out a small sailboat about hundred feet off shore. A slender figure leaned forward at the prow.

“This is your last chance,” Culann shouted. “Turn back before it’s too late. There’s a virus on this island.”

“A what?”

“A virus. Everyone is dead.”

“Please, sir,” the voice replied on the verge of tears, “don’t joke around. I’m going to die if you don’t help me.”

“You’ll die if I do.”

The waves inexorably drove the small craft to ruin. As it neared, the sailor came into view. She was petite, with curly hair that reached midway down her back. She wore a tight, long-sleeved t-shirt and high-cut shorts. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Culann muttered.

“Do you have any lights?” she called out from about twenty feet away. “I can barely see the coastline.”

“I don’t have anything,” Culann replied. “The rocks are pretty bad on this side.

Turn right.”

“Starboard,” she corrected, making Pyrite’s sole survivor feel like a know-nothing greenhorn all over again.

He guided her along as best he could, which wasn’t very well. Her boat ground against some rocks neither of them could see. She let out a dainty curse.

“I’m going to have to swim to shore,” she said. “Do you have something to pull me up with?”

“I’ve got a cane. It’s only about three feet long.”

“I’ll bring a line with me and toss it up to you.”

She pulled her t-shirt over her head and stepped out of her shorts, revealing an athletic-cut bikini. Culann forced himself to look at the water. She dropped a white ring buoy into the water and slid into it. She kicked her way to the island until she reached the sloping slippery rocks that made up its western shore. A sheer cliff of about six feet separated the two of them. She threw a length of rope up to Culann. He reached out with his good left hand, but missed it. She gathered the line up and threw it again. He again missed the catch, but the rope landed on the ground at his feet. He scooped it up.

“Ah, hold on a second,” he replied. “I’m a bit injured. I better anchor this end first.”

He wrapped the end of the line around a tree trunk. He leaned back against the tree and set his good right leg. He gripped the rope with his left hand and clamped his clawed right hand behind the left.

“Okay, I am going to start pulling now.”

She couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, but he was effectively pulling with just one arm and one leg. He pulled with his left arm, held the rope in place by gripping it overhand with his damaged right mitt, and then pulled again with the left. She pressed her bare feet against the slippery rockface and scaled the cliff.

When she reached the top, he grasped her hand and pulled her towards him. She tumbled forward, and the two fell to the ground, her soft skin pressed against his body. Her wet hair fell across his face. She smelled like cinnamon.

“Thanks,” she said with an appealing upturn of her lip.

He swallowed hard and then shoved her aside. He rolled to his belly and started pushing himself to his feet.

“Here, let me help you,” she said, sliding her thin arms around his waist.

“No,” Culann snapped, and she pulled away. He grabbed the trunk of the tree with his good hand and pulled himself up.

“Whoa, what’s with all the dogs?”

The pack churned forward to greet the newcomer. The dogs sniffed and licked and nudged so persistently that the girl nearly toppled back into the sea.

“Stay back,” Culann ordered, and the dogs halted.

“How many do you have?”

“There are forty-eight, although they really aren’t mine.”

“Whose are they?”

“They don’t belong to anyone anymore.”

She gave him a puzzled look but didn’t say anything more. He snatched up his cane and led her through the woods back to the once-inhabited part of the island.

“Thanks again for saving me,” she said as they walked. “It was so weird. All the electronics went dead at the same time. Must’ve been a short circuit or something. Do you know anything about electronics?”

Culann shook his head. He didn’t want to talk to this girl, this girl who tempted him with her nearly-naked body, this girl who would not be alive in twenty-four hours.

“Are you some kind of hermit?”

Culann smiled despite himself. He realized how he must look to her eyes: six weeks’ growth of beard, shaggy hair that reached his collar, limping along with the help of a jury-rigged cane which he gripped in a gnarled hand, and a policeman’s utility belt wrapped around his waist. He was thankful that his injuries had healed sufficiently that he could resume wearing normal clothes instead of simply cloaking himself in a grass-stained bedsheet.

“I guess so,” he said.

“Is that why you won’t look at me?”

“Come on,” Culann said. “Let’s get you some clothes.”

Culann was still alive, and he was confident in way that he hadn’t been with Constance and Schuler that he would continue to be alive, at least until winter hit. He was some sort of chosen one, although he had little faith in this Dog-God who’d done the choosing. He decided that this status had to have been earned, that it couldn’t have been just dumb luck that allowed him to survive when so many people, stronger people, were dead. He just didn’t know how he had earned it. He concluded that there must be some sort of cosmic Calvinism going on here, that he’d been born one of the elect and was only now discovering it. If that was the case, he needed to live a life, however short, of irresistible grace.