The End Has Come

Rex barks air: “Clk! Clk! Aaap!” The new clicking means his left lung has locked. The sound echoes, lodging into my spine.

“Stay with me boy. We’ll get through this.”

He looks at me with a wise and weary expression, then snuggles against my chest as if to say, Okay, big guy. Whatever you say. Just, please, make this better.

Fairy lights in plastic, wind-powered packets glow as I pass down the first, second, and third flights, where Linus waits. We’re deep down enough that our signals don’t connect.

Old tunnels like this cover most of the globe. People hid inside them when the asteroid Aporia first hit. Their design was pretty uniform — narrow openings that headed down a few hundred or thousand feet, then a flat base with tunnels spiraling out like plant roots. The roots kept fallout to a minimum. People expected Above air to clear up after a decade. To be safe, they took enough supplies to last twenty years. But the air never did clear up. Not even a hundred years later.

The things they did to survive. It’s good no one took pictures.

We descend to the wide bottom base. Rusted, illegible signs point into the mouths of eleven darkened tunnels. Nine of them are caved in. The other two need clearing. This shelter is shallower than I’d expected — just two hundred feet. There must be a granite bedrock.

Graffiti’s scrawled all along the walls:

Down the with cyborgs!

Mike loves Dori

Fuck All Who Enter Here, Literally.

Chitin is for pleibs!

I see you walking around tunnels

With the man I love and I’m like

Haiku.

Linus and I take off our suits and shake the sand out, then reapply. The fabric is sturdy and sheer, sticking like liquid paint once it’s on. I’m wishing Rex’s body would take to it as I bend over and pet his grumbling belly. He’s too tired to stand. But his color’s still pink, so at least he’s getting oxygen.

“Do you know when they cleared this place of survivors?” I ask Linus. Our ports aren’t connecting, so I actually have to use words.

“They didn’t clear it,” he answers. His voice is sand-clogged. “Not worth the effort. The specimens down here all had radiation poisoning. Genetic abnormalities. F-Class brains. Let ’em rot.”

So there might still be a few hanging around.

I look to the ceiling. There’s a crude old drawing up there of a town with a main street and stick figure people waving outside old-fashioned ranch houses. I remember the designer: Frank Lloyd Wright. A tempura yellow-white sun shines bright. It used to be such a wonderful world.

I remember the musician: Louie Armstrong. He sang happy songs, even when he didn’t have much to be happy about.

I clear the sand from Rex’s ears. I don’t dare touch his nose: He’s bleeding at the fusion sites where his metal respiratory tract and his organic tissue meet.

A gust of wind rushes down from the manhole. It ushers a sand devil with it. The whirling monster bears down. I’m knocked to the ground.

Stunned, eyes closed, I count to three. I dig at the mound I've found myself buried inside until I’m out. I keep digging, frantic, until I feel him. Rex!

“Help me, Linus!” I cry.

“No, it’s just a dog.”

“Fuck you.” I climb back up by myself.

Sand has collected on the steps. I crawl to get to the top. Then I grab the edges of the iron cover with joint-achy hands and use the soft part of my head to balance it closed.

Click! The wind’s shriek hushes to a whisper.

I go back down to find Rex laboring on a bed of sand at the bottom, but Linus is gone.

“Good boy. Hold on.”

I pull one of the metal rebars peeling down from a caved-in tunnel and gong it against the graffiti wall. The sound echoes all through. Linus, that jackass, doesn’t come back. Maybe he got scared. Maybe the sand got into his brain somehow and he went crazy.

I hate Class Cs.

Yellow goop has glued Rex’s eyes closed. His nose is clotted. I need two things: a medical kit, and water. I’ve got two tunnels that I can check for old supplies. I pick the left one, because I figure warriors always go right, artists left.

“I’m going to find medicine,” I tell him. Then I scratch under his chin, the only place where it looks like he’s not hurting. “I love you.”

Rex nods, and I swear to God, it’s because he wants me to know he loves me, too.

The tunnel’s too caved to walk through, so I crawl. Granite rocks fall around me, heavy enough to break my back. I know it’s stupid to do this for a dog. Rationally, I belong in the city with a modern lab and assistants. I ought to get over this disdain I harbor for my own kind and make real friends. If I did that, I wouldn’t feel so alone. I wouldn’t talk to myself and imagine that my dog understands me. Except, he does understand me. And they don’t.

I keep crawling.