you act like you just saw a ghost

Gabriel de le Poer · 01-08-2011, 11:15 AM

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This is for Sie. It is set in 1994, somewhere in Maine. SSWM: 564

It had been six years since the fall of man.

They still saw them, sometimes, lingering like monsters in the gloom of an apocalyptic world. Still heard gunshots, but now more sparingly—bullets had become as rare as they had. The dogs had realized they could not trust them early on. His father had warned against such things after watching them gun down smaller strays who knew only how to live with men. This was why they had turned to the wild, abandoning human places. There was only death with men.

His family had done well despite their domestic blood. Caliban’s father had often gone hunting with their master, and knew his way around the woods as well as any feral animal. Their mother, whose German breeding had been the only reason she had survived, was far more intuitive than her mate. Despite their presumed inability to live without men, the two had done quite well. The forests outside of their ancestral home had been claimed almost immediately, for there was no dispute that his father owned such land. When men had come to the house, they had hid. When the men had killed each other over the master’s prized items, they had hid. The dogs had no desire to defend a tomb.

Caliban’s litter was the first, and large at that. While both his parents were breeding dogs, they had never copulated together—the results were remarkable. Thick, strong beasts with the intelligence of a German Shepherd and the weight and girth of a Malamute. Dogs that almost looked wild themselves. They were stockier than wolves, by far, but his sable-shaded brother could almost pass for one. Caliban’s blonde coat was obviously domestic, as were his mis-matched eyes. One from each parent, as it was. Those eyes now surveyed the unfamiliar territory before him and knew why the de le Poer’s had hid in their forest for so long.

All around him a dying world rotted. Buildings had been torched and abused, abandoned even by those men who had clung to them so long. The men that had not fled had died, killed by wild beasts or by their own stupidity. Death-scent, a sweet rotting smell, belonged to these such places. But no man-scent. No, they were long gone. Six years had made them flee the smaller cities instinctively, leaving the wild the chance to claim it. Caliban stood above the town that had once worshiped the master whose name the dogs now took as a god and hated what he saw.

He had told his parents he wished to leave and they had not forbade it. His father sought to expand their bloodline as it stood, and having three males was two too many for his taste. His sisters would always be welcome, but they would be forced to bear children in order to survive. The de le Poer bloodline needed fresh blood, like it or not, and Caliban wished no part of the little forest that was his father’s own.

It took him an hour to get through the town, as small as it was, and past then was forest. He had never been so far from home, even in all his three years, and was pleased to think he was the first. Blonde fur a beacon against the summer light, he continued on his way without a destination in mind.

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