Does Simon Eat the Puppy in the End?

Dedicated to Man’s Best Friend.

A puppy rummaged through a pile of trash near a garbage bin, nuzzling a pizza box. “No food in there, little friend,” Simon muttered, spying the little animal with his binoculars from atop a double-decker bus. The puppy’s fur was brown, though it was hard to tell just how much of that brown was dirt. Its ribs showed, its belly was bloated, and the thing was ugly beyond words. It stuck its head in a can of food to get whatever remnants it could. It then raised its can-encased head, not panicking quite yet, the can’s half-rusted metal glinting in the sunlight, as it looked left and right.

Simon had to admit, ugly as it was, the puppy was a cute little bastard. But he couldn’t be having those thoughts. It would only make what he had to do all the more difficult. His stomach growled.

The puppy began panicking, shaking its head, trying to get the can off. When that didn’t work, it tried running around blindly, this way and that, scattering the trash pile around. “Careful now,” Simon whispered, gripping his binoculars tight: the puppy came close to colliding with the garbage bin, missing it narrowly. “If you hit that thing, everyone will—” As if it could hear him, the puppy turned around and ran towards the bin, impacting hard, the sound ringing like a dinner bell for any and all hungry creatures in the area.

Simon shoved his binoculars into his backpack and sprang into action, climbing downstairs to the lower deck, speeding through the bus’s open doors. Mossy overgrowth underfoot and roots piercing through concrete, the urban greys and Nature greens blurred by as he ran to the puppy.

When he got there, he crouched over it protectively like a wolf guarding its prey, glancing one way then the other, listening. A rustle of a plastic bag. A crow cawing. But no one else seemed to be coming for the puppy, not its mother, not any survivor. It was all his.

He pulled the can off its head. The little bag-of-bones was only semi-conscious, and it was even uglier up close. Some of its fur was missing—mange—and its head looked too big for its body. It reminded Simon of a gremlin as it blinked in and out consciousness.

Nearby, there was a whistle that didn’t sound like a bird, which meant it was time to get the hell out of there.

Quickly, Simon stuffed the gremlin-pup into the smaller front pocket of his backpack, keeping its head outside. Then he flung the backpack over his shoulders and bolted. No one was going to take the puppy from him: it had been too long since he’d had some meat.

After a few blocks and alleyways, after going into and out of random buildings, after he was sure he wasn’t being followed, he headed for home. Down into the subway he went, where the abandoned trains lived. He walked through their tunnels, greeting the immobile machines as he went past them. He had names for each of them.

On he went until he found Crash, a train whose cars were strewn about a long-forgotten station, abandoned decades before the pandemic. The train itself was much newer. It must’ve derailed during the zenith of the chaos of the illness as its snake-like body careened its way through here at maximum speed. One would expect there to be hundreds of human carcasses aboard, but there was only one: the operator’s. Simon imagined he derailed on purpose. To die in a blaze of glory down below, rather than waste away from the illness that ravaged the world above: it was beautiful in a way.

A single ray of sunlight poured in through a circle of roots above, and a few strategically-placed mirrors below spread the light around. Roots often grew over the hole of light, creating shadowy fingers that would reach out over the forgotten station floor. Simon had to go to the surface and clear the roots out, but one day he would be gone. Light would forget the station existed, and night would fall forever.

Simon approached a curtained train car, the one he called home. Once inside, he took off his shoes, opened up a curtain for light, and he laid his backpack down on a plastic table, taking a seat on an equally plastic chair. The puppy was still drifting in and out of consciousness. It must’ve exhausted all the strength it had left running around, and the impact to the head may have given the poor creature a concussion.

Simon sharpened his knife with a leather belt. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “I’ll make it quick as I can.” Though his mouth watered, he felt sick thinking about ending the puppy’s life. He’d never killed a dog for food, let alone a puppy, and he’d had a dog he loved when he was a kid: a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Mister. The puppy looked nothing like Mister, but its listless eyes reminded Simon of when Mister was kicked by a horse. It had hidden away in a bush, breathing heavily, eyes all sunken and weary. Simon thought his canine friend was heading for an early grave, but Mister pulled through and Simon nearly squeezed the life out of the poor dog with a hug.

Mister was long dead now, passed away from old age just a year before the pandemic started eight years ago. But if he was still alive, Simon thought, would I be able to butcher him for meat? The puppy closed its eyes and went to sleep, and Simon wasn’t sure it would wake up. There’d be no harm in waiting for it to die on its own, he thought, but part of him knew this choice was weakness, borne from a life long past, when the only blood on his hands was from nosebleeds, and the worst he had to worry about was how much homework he had to finish before he could play video games—no need for scavenging or hunting: three meals a day just materialised for him.

The dog breathed deeply now, expanding the pocket of the bag in which it slept. You could scarcely tell it was injured at all, peaceful as it was.

There’d be no harm in waiting, he repeated to himself. And so he did. He grabbed a book, and waited for the puppy to die.

Except it didn’t. It woke up a few hours later.

He would have to kill it himself after all, though maybe not right away. He still had some canned food left, so it wasn’t all that imperative that he eat the dog at that very moment. He could wait, fatten it up a little bit, make it healthier before butchering it. Fat healthy animal equals fat healthy meat, he thought. A couple of weeks, then I’ll kill it. This was yet more weakness, he knew. It would be a waste of food that he couldn’t afford to lose. But he convinced himself that it would just be a couple of weeks. Delayed gratification, he argued with himself, remembering a fragment of some documentary. It’ll be worth it. Just a couple of weeks.

Those couple of weeks turned into a couple of months. And all the while, the puppy grew. Simon treated its mange, gave it whatever scraps he could, trained it to fetch, stay, and follow. But the worst thing he did was that he gave it a name: Gremlin. It was going to be a lot harder to kill it now, when the day came.

And that day did come eventually. They were out scavenging together through the guts of an abandoned warehouse, searching between rows of massive shelves. They hadn’t had any food in a couple of days. Simon felt lightheaded and his stomach ached from the hunger.

Gremlin was up ahead of him, sniffing around through empty collapsed crates. This place had already been picked clean: they weren’t likely to find anything here. “Let’s rest for a bit, Grem,” he said, sitting down inside a large crate. It was big enough for him to lie down with his legs sticking out. He took off his backpack, and laid his rifle down next to him as he lay inside the crate. His back ached so good.

Gremlin squeezed in there with him, licking his face.

“Quit it,” he said with a laugh, holding the face-licking gremlin back. She’d grown into a beautiful adolescent puppy with soft fur and lively brown eyes. She didn’t look like a gremlin anymore, but to Simon, she’d always be the little puppy he found. “You’ll always be my gremlin,” he said hoarsely, scratching the last friend he had behind the ear. It always made her sleepy, and she was soon dozing.

They stayed there for a bit, Simon caressing Gremlin’s fur, trying to ignore the hunger. He put his arm around her neck. I could squeeze as hard as I can, the thought entered his mind, it would only hurt for a few moments and then she’d be free. He was a survivor, he tried to tell himself. The person he once was no longer existed. He had killed people for food, stolen it from those who needed it more than him, but he couldn’t kill a stupid mutt? Why? Because he was lonely? Because she made him feel human again? The hunger was making him delirious, but it was a perfectly rational fact that, if he died, then Gremlin died too, so why not sacrifice one so the other could live?

He hugged her tight. The thought of hurting her was too difficult to bear with her sleeping on him, so he convinced himself that he’d do it once they finished searching the warehouse, from distance, with his eyes closed.

They got up.

Searched.

Found nothing.

As they exited the warehouse into the late afternoon air, the sun was setting somewhere behind the downtown skyscrapers, painting the clouds orange. Simon raised his rifle at Gremlin, who was sniffing around anxiously, ears perked up. She stopped, raised a paw as she listened to something in the distance. Simon lined up the shot before closing his eyes. Then he fired.

Ping! The bullet had ricocheted off the ground and hit a flagpole as Gremlin moved out of the way, running off onto a street with traffic frozen in time. He sprang into a chase. She scurried under cars and Simon went over them. He lost her as she crawled under a fire truck and he had to go around, but he caught a glimpse of her brown fur going into a building, and he fired off another shot. It might’ve hit her, but he wasn’t sure. The thought of it made him feel sick, but the hunger burned in his veins with the fever of the hunt.

“I fed you!” Simon the Hunter called after her, as he entered the building. “I took care of you!” His voice echoed off the walls. A receptionist’s desk was covered in the dust of dead memories.

He could hear noises coming from an elevator off to the side. It was Gremlin growling, gnawing at something on the elevator floor.

Simon took aim.

Gremlin looked over her shoulder at him, blood on her muzzle.

Did I hit her? He fingered the trigger as a mix of guilt and hunger battled inside him.

Gremlin picked up something white and furry between her jaws.

The trigger was half-way pulled, a hair-width away from firing, before he realised the white furry thing between her jaws was a rabbit. He couldn’t believe it. “That’s why you ran?” he said. “Not because I shot at you but because you were chasing a rabbit?”

She laid the bloody corpse by his feet, wagging her tail, looking up at him with those innocent eyes. “Did I do a good job?” she seemed to say. “Am I good girl?”

A breeze passed through the building and cooled the sweat on the back of his neck. “You stupid dog,” he said, tears stinging his eyes. “I was trying to kill you.”

She nudged the rabbit, then looked up at him, giving him a hearty bark. She was starving and yet she wanted to share her kill, just as he had shared his food with her. This dog was the last piece of humanity left in the world, a better friend than Simon deserved. And it was all just too much to take. He sat down and cried, tears rolling down into his scruffy beard.

He tried to push her away, telling her to take the rabbit and go, but she ducked under his hands and licked his tears away, covering his face with saliva and rabbit blood until the tears turned to laughter.