D0G by Tania Fordwalker (audio)

You're listening to yet another Clark's World magazine podcast.

I'm your host and narrator, Kate Baker, and I hope that you are doing well, all things considered.

This is our second story for the month of April, 2026.

Issue 235 and is brought to you by your ongoing support.

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Our piece is titled,

Dog by Tanya Ford Walker.

Tanya Ford Walker lives on an island down under, appreciating the utility of a really big

moat.

A member of the Clarion West 22 cohort, her stories have appeared in light speed beneath

Seatless Guys, Gizmodo, Podcastle, and more.

She collects conifers, hobbies, and pleasingly round rocks, and sports a doctorate in creative

writing.

The clicky wrists of a former Disney animator, strong opinions about airlocks, tick-borne

red meat allergy, worst super power ever, at least three defunct careers, and ADHD, obviously.

So my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

When Dog hears the scream and streaks ahead down the leaf-strewn road through the fallbright

birch and beach and maple, I remember what my sister Taylor used to say.

There are no bad dogs, only bad owners.

I shouldn't have had him chained, complacency kills.

So does Dog.

I catch the shout before it leaves my throat, loud is a mistake, besides whoever screaming

is making enough noise for us both.

Shockingly swift despite his missing hind leg, elastic as a greyhound beneath his paint-streaked

carapace.

Dog pelts around a bend in the road ahead and is swallowed by the trees.

I swing my leg over the bicycle and pedal hard and pursuit, breaking the cardinal rule

of this quiet new world.

When you hear a scream, run the other way.

The downhill grade of the road ceases the weight of my bike's bulging saddlebags and overloaded

trailer, and I fly toward the shrill screams almost as fast as any dog, standing on the

pedals, handlebars warm and damp in my sweaty grip.

Flashing beneath my tires, a decade thick layer of rotted leaves cloaks the tarmac and slick

treachery.

Ahead, Dog flashes and stuttered glimpses between tree trunks, like a slice of forest

come to life.

My God, damn wisdom, I painted his carapace in fall colors for camouflage, and now even

I can barely fucking see him.

There, beyond my sprinting dog, at the base of a gnarled hemlock, a huddled form a boy

claws at the trunk like he's trying to climb, but has lost the strength in his limbs.

His mouth is a stretched black, oh, of terror.

He's unarmed, even so, dog arrows toward him.

For a frantic moment, I'm certain the worst has finally happened.

Dog has reverted to his original programming, but a flash of bobble-bright color drags

my eye further down the road ahead, reminding me that there are other worst things.

A glossy carapace, sunshine yellow beneath spatters of mud, a sleek wedged head like

a candy banana.

Shiny black almond-shaped eyes fixed on the shrieking kid, stalking him with the oily

precision of a hunter built not born.

Dog.

If I were on my own two feet, I'd run, but instead I recoil stomping the brake.

The bikes overburdened back tires gates across the slick leaves and slips out from under

me, and I waste my frozen airborne moment of clarity on self-pity.

This is how I die, eating it off of my bike just two miles from home, and hit the dirt

cushioned road hard in a tangle of pedal, and tire, and flesh, skidding, rotten leaves

shoving cold wet fingers up my jacket and tank top, and up and under the only good sports

bra I have left.

Shit.

Shit.

I'm on my feet among my spilled supplies before the bike comes to rest, left elbow shrieking

a falsetto of pain as I fresk myself for injuries, because while you're busy looking

over your shoulder for a dog, it's this stupid bullshit.

That'll sneak up and kill you.

He's an ankle twisted on a slick river rock, a tibious snapped across a jutting root,

a thoughtless cut on a finger turning pink, and purple, and spreading black roots into

your veins, and making you beg for the military mercy of a dog to the throat.

Numbness blossoms up my thigh, but my legs take my weight.

I'm okay, and I can run, run before it sees me.

A single fresh apple drops from the corner of a saddlebag, and rolls down the slope toward

the yellow dog bouncing as it picks up speed.

I freeze, yellows sleek head jerks up, and points at me like an accusation.

In a crash, my dog is on the yellow one.

They roll scattering leaves and dirt, fighting in eerie silence, but for the awful clang

and scrape of metal, I can't tear my eyes away from the dented carapace across my

dog's chest, which I had to screw back down myself.

You took taste of sweat in the slow-sacrifice of almost every diamond tip drill bit in my possession

to get through his outer armor.

All that, just to thread the two little screws that kept his chest plate attached.

Oh, if yellow finds my dog's weak spot, I swallow my protective instinct down and

sane to think I could ever protect him and make myself hang back at what you call a

safe distance.

If any distance within, I shot of a dog could be called safe.

Yellow is accustomed to fighting people, not its own kind, and it's still dragging its

razor claws uselessly along my dog's underbelly with a blackboard shriek when dog's plasma

cutter hisses to life, spraying blinding blue sparks from between the tangled metal bodies.

I've never seen him use the cutter on another dog before, and it rattles my already jangling

nerves.

Is he learning, is this new or just new to me?

The pair struggles on smoldering pine needles lock together and yellow topples at last in

a spasmodic tangle of limbs, the spider death dance signaling an unrecoverable error in its

crystalline brain.

My dog twists and wrenches at yellow's throat with the crushing clamp of his jaws, periodically

softening the alloy at the joint with a fresh blast of blue plasma.

The wedge of yellow's head tumbles free, bounces.

It lands at the feet of the terrified kid whose face is a frozen bone white smudge over

his drab wall woolens, his scream soundless now, his fist clenched together in front of

his face in a pointless prayer.

As I limp over to inspect the carcass, dog wrenches at the wires trailing from yellow's neck.

That won't do.

I still want these things as attacked as possible for whatever good it does.

Sit.

Dog steps back and planks his metal backside down on the leaves, moistened membrane flickers

sideways across his diamond lens dyes, clearing flecks of dry leaf away.

He turns his scratched up head to the kid.

His one good ear pricks.

We see it together, the bright point of metal jutting from the kid's fists, oh God,

and dog instantly drops into a malevolent crouch.

Drop it.

I snap at the boy not dog, dog can't hear me now.

Drop it if you want to live.

The kid pants like a rabbit in shock, eyes wet and uncomprehending behind the trembling

blade of the pocket knife.

I lunge at him, clawing at his fists, trying to peel his sweat slick fingers from the

knife without slicing myself.

It's a Swiss army knife for shit's sake, a toy, but it's enough to trigger dog's defense

algorithm.

I only have seconds.

The crisp of dry leaves behind me, betrays dogs slow, lopsided tread beside me now.

I slap the kid so hard the back of his head bounces off the trunk.

The knife falls to the carpet of pine needles, and I claw great scoops of leaves and dirt

over it, burying it, hiding it from something, touches my scraped up thigh, cold through

the tooth and material of my worn fatigues, I whirl, dog tilts his head quizzically, then

noses a pine cone against my knee.

Coming back on his haunches, he stomps his sleek black, anodized paws rapidly in the leaves

like a kneading cat, inviting me to play.

Breathing out slowly, I remind myself there's no point strangling the kid we just saved.

A child cannot be blamed for not understanding a stupid algorithm programmed by stupid men

long since dead, anymore than a dog can be blamed for acting on it.

That's all dog was doing.

You can't teach old dogs new tricks, God knows I've tried, and dogs aren't creative

when it comes to killing not in the way we are.

Ignoring the whimpering kid, I cupped dogs face in one hand.

The lenses deep in his eyes dilate, a deeper black softening, the black, something deep

in me softens an answer.

Taylor, who loved flesh and blood dogs as much as she loved, ironically, repurposing

mom slang would have called dog, friend shaped.

Funny, the way our species spends several millennia coaxing wolves into friends only to turn

around and make newer, better wolves, travel-sized, armor-plated, significantly deadlier.

And yet that same fundamental shape, enemy, friend, enemy, I examine the joints of dogs

three remaining legs, check that the water intake at the end of his muzzle is clear,

and run my hands over the flexible cobalt chromium alloy of his carapace.

Fresh scratches score his brindled DIY paint job, revealing glimpses of his original

color.

Candy, apple, red.

Otherwise, he's unharmed.

Good boy, I remember, good job.

Way face, the kid clamors to his feet, bends double and heaves up a string of drool.

Adrenaline leaches out of me into the cold ground.

Oh, you goddamn idiot!

Why are you outside the wall?

He's staring at the dog healed calmly by my side.

Eyes wild, the kid takes a shaky step back, but I'm faster, and his wrist bones are

shockingly delicate under my grip.

Listen, I say, and that's as far as I get before he crumples to the pine needles at my feet.

Great.

All this, and now I'm supposed to, what?

Carry the little bastard?

That at least won't be hard.

He's half starved.

It's easier to look directly at him now, but he's not looking back, and I lean into

examine his slack face and immediately wish I hadn't.

He's about the same age Olly was back then.

Thirteen, maybe fourteen, got that stringy, underdeveloped look kids have nowadays.

Oh, not that I've run across many lately.

Our curls tease around the torn edges of his knitted hood, and that reminds me of Olly

too.

And the pain hasn't blunted itself in twenty years.

I should leave him here.

His injuries are superficial, scratches, bruises, shock, maybe.

And his head hit that tree pretty hard, and maybe that was because of me.

But he is not my responsibility.

He'll probably make it back to wall just fine.

There aren't as many dogs in the woods as there used to be.

Ah, there aren't none either.

The rumble of thunder rolls overhead, slow, and deliberate.

God, damn it.

If I track this little shit to my skiff and row him to wall, I'll be rowing back home

against the current.

It'll add at least two hours to my trip, all of it with dog in tow.

And what if they catch me?

A kid blabbing?

Hey, guess what?

The crazy lady on the island upriver is hiding.

It's one thing.

Who's going to believe him?

But while catching me with an actual dog in my boat is another, what choice do I have

though?

I'm not taking him home, and I guess I can't leave him here.

Dog nuzzles at the kid's freckled cheek and chirps interrogatively.

Yeah, you just had to be a hero.

Hasteily repacking my supplies, frees up enough room to fold the unconscious boy into

the trailer.

I'll ask both parts of the decapitated yellow dog atop the load on the bike's rear rack.

By the time I reach the river and haul the branches off of my skiff, fat drops of rain

are splatting off my head and beating on dogs' carapace.

By the time I'm done overloading the boat, carefully tetressing boy and dog and supplies

to distribute to the extra weight, it's raining so hard that breathing feels like drowning.

My raincoat is crushed deep in the bottom of my pack.

Too late now, anyway, chill water gathers in my scrunched eyebrows and drips off the

end of my nose.

Overloaded, the skiff rides unsettlingly low in the turbulent river.

Forget getting caught, I don't think I can make it to wall without getting sunk.

If he did, I haul on an oar, jerking the skiff's prow, homeward.

I don't like this, bringing someone back to my island.

Haven't had a visitor since shotgun man, and he came uninvited.

Skinning the black water, swelling high around the skiff's flanks, dog chirps uneasily and

wedges his head against my muddy calves.

He doesn't like this either, but he never likes this part of the trip.

He can't swim.

No dog can, too heavy, somewhere in the millions of lines of code driving them, necessarily

a directive on that point, which manifests as a cat-like terror of deep water.

I've seen dogs climb trees to escape flooding.

I've seen them climb in an attempt to reach my island, too.

After I fired my hard-won shotgun for the first and only time, three of them arrived

within the hour, drawn by the sound, slipping like moonlight through the trees.

They scaled the big pine on the far river bank and perched, close as they could get one

lime green, one sky blue, one shiny gold, shining among the bows like bobbles on a Christmas

tree.

I'd hidden the gun long before they'd arrived, but these were real dogs, not as easily

placated as mine.

They kept a vigil as I buried shotgun man, tracking me with bright black intent.

My penance haunting the edge of the river for weeks, and my nightmares far longer.

Home is a set of four log cappons, stilted up on the shore of a pine-studded island where

the river broadens ahead of moose-head lake.

I use all four cappons, one a home, one for storage, one a workshop, and the ramshuckle

one on the end to cannibalize for materials to keep the other three in good repair.

The Canadian border isn't far north of here, not that borders mean anything now.

More relevant is the fact that I'm only a mile upstream from wall.

They know I'm here, and they leave me be, I prefer to keep it that way.

In my workshop, I push aside my soldering iron and lay the boy out under a ratty blanket

on the workbench, bringing him here is not ideal.

But it beats the alternative.

I don't want him in my house, that feels much too close.

In the storehouse?

No.

A few times I've had to trade with wall.

I've always underplayed my hand.

Best they don't find out that one of my cabins is well-stocked with birch syrup, sugar,

maple seeds, ready to soak and roast.

Potatoes to be planted in the spring.

Dried mushrooms and beach nuts to grind into something almost like coffee.

The white pines on this island provide cones and seeds for stewing.

Xylem for filtering water.

Pitch for treating wounds and waterproofing gear.

Soft inner bark for drying and grinding into flour and needles to boil into a herbal tea

with a higher vitamin C content than oranges, which pairs nicely with the fat salmon and

trout I pull from the river.

My chickens provide me meat and eggs too.

It's enough for me, but it's not enough to feed a village.

Of course, the workshop is an exactly the best place to bring a stranger, either.

A glance at the curtain-dough section up the end, making sure that the curtain is pulled

tight, no gaps.

Forget my stores, if wall ever finds out what I'm keeping in there.

I've got to get this kid out of here.

But first, I've got to change because I don't like this persistent scratch in my throat.

Clammy and shivering, I retreat to the bathroom to peel off my modicaked fatiques.

I'll in the workshop, something thumps.

When I rush back, calling a knitted sweater over my head, the boy is crouched on the floor,

stroking, dog.

My heart sinks.

Don't touch him.

He's tame.

The kid is still pale, but his eyes are a light with wonder.

How?

None of your damn business.

Why are you doing outside the wall?

None of your damn business, he mimics.

Ah, kids are annoying.

I'd almost forgotten.

Now that this one's awake and where he doesn't look as much as Ollie as I thought.

At 14, my nephew's face still clung to the lingering softness of childhood, and to other

childish things.

Curiosity.

Enthusiasm.

He thought it was cool, the work I did.

Ollie thought more of me than I deserved.

Because boy from wall is smaller than Ollie was.

Kids now are all elbows and teeth and suspicious squints, but older, maybe.

I'm not sure he's ever been a child in the way we used to use the word.

And if he ever were, he skipped straight to adults.

Teenagers are a luxury this world can't afford.

He's still a dumbass with an underdeveloped brain, though.

What am I going to do with him?

He flashes into my head then, the thing I've been trying not to think about, blanket shrouded

in the back of the closet, the shotgun.

No!

God!

No!

Bag, bargain, bribes, rent, none of my options are great, but that, no.

No, I'm not a monster.

The kid stands slowly, leaving my traitorous dog, pawing at his patched denim jeans and

stairs around my workshop, taking in the three mismatched computers hooked up to my

solar array, the soldering iron, and the curtained off section at the end of the room.

I tense up ready to intercept him if he moves that way, but his gaze slides on by to the

neatly labeled wall of tools, the plastic drawers of nuts and bolts, the rolls of colored

wire ranged by gauge.

I reset everything daily, it gives me a sense of control.

Judging by the kid's weary expression, it might also give me an aura of mad scientist.

Where are we, he says?

Grady's echo camp and wilderness experience, I mutter.

The kid makes a face and I can't say it, I blame him.

Practically every word of that sentence must be gibberish to someone his age.

My place?

Up, river.

It took me years to start thinking of it as mine, back when bits of paper counted for

something, this was Max Grady's uncle's place.

I wasn't even supposed to be here.

If Max Grady's uncle hadn't bought it dirt cheap during the war when nobody was taking

holidays anymore, if I hadn't had that stupid fight with my sister when she told me I needed

to start showing up for a change, if it hadn't been for the end of the world party, when

I was still so angry I showed up and downed half a bottle of tequila and banged Max Grady

on the balcony of his best friend's parents house, if I hadn't still been so drunk that

when Max fucking Grady said let's take this party to the great outdoors, either a fistful

of clean laundry and a toothbrush into a ridiculously small weekend bag and stumbled into his

car.

I still have that bag, I use it for carting firewood.

You're the, you're the tinker, mom says you, the kid cuts himself off, flushing, I bet

you can guess what his mom says, I try to refocus, been a minute since I've had to hold a conversation

and this one's important, listen, we need to talk about where's my knife, eyes widening

he pats his pockets, oh, your knife, that little piece of crap that almost got us both

killed, I left it out there.

The kid dashes a hand through his curls and clear frustration, whincing at some bruise

hit in there, I went all the way to the town to find that.

It took me four years to work out the courage to scavenge, greenville, dogs see better and

move faster in urban environments, this kid is insane.

The hell do you need with a knife anyway?

Or whoa, doesn't matter, he scowls down at his boots, rabbit for uppers stitched onto

car, tire souls, look, I try again, can we just, you're going to kill me or what?

His bright blue eyes lock onto mine, no, Jesus, I can't keep up with this kid, I just saved

you.

Maybe you're keeping me fresh, he says darkly, it sinks in, that's what they think I do here.

I can press my lips against the laugh building in my chest, does this, does this look like

a gingerbread house to you?

Well, you got no crops, no sheep, so you eat people, that's what everyone says.

I shrug, let them, I'm not about to explain what I got, go in here, after I tracked to

the neighboring national parks, tourist information center and scrounged up every book, I could

find about the flora of the area, that was after my third winter, the first bad one when

I'd finally run out of the stockpile of tin food and never claimed by Max Grady's uncle,

rest his soul.

And I resorted to eating the squirrel who'd been my only companion, rest his soul.

Since the end of week one when Max and the others went to look for their families in

Boston, rest their souls, but they're wrong, aren't they?

The kid goes on, you hunt, don't you, with it.

Statements, not questions, spoken with the iron-clad conviction of someone who doesn't know shit.

We both glance at dog who was chasing a pine cone around the wooden floor, all the skitter

and screeches and helping me focus on it, my brain feels like hot porridge behind my

eyes.

Dog doesn't kill animals, my mother.

Why?

Animals aren't packing, unlike some.

My antipathy toward having aging crossbows waved in my face as the other reason I rarely

trade with wall.

The kid barely seems to register the rebuke, so that's why he kills other dogs.

Is there weapons?

Thrown by how fast he put it together, I grunt an affirmative before I think better of

it.

But that's amazing.

He could help us.

And there it is, sitting between us like a rapidly cooling dump on a dining room table.

No, he can't.

Nobody else can know about this.

His blue eyes clout over.

Why?

Because I said so, I immediately feel ridiculous and his audible scoff doesn't help.

Because I saved your life.

The kid jabs a finger at dog.

He saved my life.

Pleased by the attention, dog stomps his three paws in a joyful flurry, a tiny tap dance

on the floorboards, unexpectedly, the kid smiles.

I lean in slow.

The tickle in my throat is threatening to collapse into a cough.

What makes you think I'm not actively saving your life right now?

You already said you're not going to kill me, he says smugly.

Well, that was before you made it so fucking tempting.

I narrow my eyes.

Anyone know you're out here?

Yeah, he says too fast.

And they're looking for me right now.

Bullshit.

He scoffs again, bequieter this time, and his eyes flicker back and forth like he's worrying

over something.

I bet I know what.

Oh, you'll be in deep shit if they find out, I murmur.

Won't you?

The kid reaches down to stroke dogs head.

So will you.

Oh, a mutually assured destruction, great idea.

That always works out so well.

Hmm.

I guess I can keep my mouse shut.

The kid says not, shall I, me?

If you let me come visit.

Visit?

Is he serious?

I never should have brought him here in the first place, especially not with what's hidden

behind the curtain a few feet away.

Why the hell would you want to?

It's better than home, I guess.

The statement hangs in the air, an invitation to ask.

I don't.

My head hurts.

I just want him gone.

Once he's safely back in a wall, he won't come back, surely.

Not after the scare he had out there this time.

Fine, I rasp.

Whatever.

But you lie to them.

You understand?

What a word about what happened or where you were.

Nothing about me.

Promise?

Promise.

Fine, beaming, he looks like Ollie again for a moment.

When I row the kid down river, I wear my raincoat, but it's too little too late.

The next morning, I wake up burning and shivering with the throat full of razors.

The day after that, I only stumble upright once to reach the bedpan.

I want tea, but the fire is out, promising myself I'll light the fire later.

I burrow back under the covers beside dogs, comforting late.

Later.

Later, I'll go back to Boston, I will.

Taylor's last call scared me.

The screams of all those drones drowning out her voice.

Ollie grabbed the phone from her shaky hands and tried to film what they were seeing

off the balcony of their sixth floor apartment.

Don't worry, Auntie Bill, no explosion, see?

Maybe they're dropping supplies.

The picture glitched, Ollie's laugh fragmented into a digital shutter.

Look, it's raining candy.

The call froze then as the network went down under the load.

It rose and held long enough to draw my eye to something clinging to the side of a building,

far beyond Ollie's shoulder, frozen in a blur of motion, purple as a grape, lollipop.

When the power went down to Max and the others and I huddled together roasting marshmallows

in his uncle's retirement plan, picking over what had happened.

The others kept looking at me.

They knew what I'd been working on.

I mean, what I'd glimpsed on Taylor's call wasn't the work of our side, obviously, but

we'd engineered our own dogs to handle exactly that kind of deployment.

So it was safe to assume the other side had two.

In the end, we only agreed on one thing.

Whatever had happened out there, it wasn't nukes.

Those had been the week before.

Who knew who'd launched first?

Every nation had a finger hovering so close over the button, you'd probably need a slow

motion replay to pick a winner.

I'm sure we would have found out eventually, but things got worse.

And then there were no historians left to decide who did what to whom.

The nukes didn't end it anyway.

Satsis and various national point defense networks in orbit saw to that, shooting most

of those birds from the sky at the apex of their parabolic arcs.

And history is last and least, festive fireworks display.

You'd think the near miss would have sent us scurrying for the shelter, cease fire.

And sure there were peace talks or talk of peace talks.

That's what the end of the world party was about.

Our giddy certainty that peering over the edge of annihilation had finally scared us straight.

That's how the movie's always ended, right?

We realize what's important and save ourselves.

You multicultural cheering montage.

Only to no one other nation tried to exterminate you with such finality.

Turned out there was no coming back from that, not for the guys in charge.

Having failed to destroy the world, they set their ambitions, undestroying each other.

That's when they released the dogs.

I say they, to be clear, I'm pretty sure we sent to ours first.

I opened my eyes and Max Grady is staring out at me from the open window of his car,

his disbelief sowering into contempt.

How can you stand not knowing?

Later, it's been a month.

I could go after them, but I'll wait just a little longer.

Later.

Too dangerous in the snow.

I'll go in the summer.

Later.

No point to going if I'll starve on the way.

I'll figure out the food situation first.

Later.

Five years later.

Ten years.

Twenty.

Later.

The cloth, cool and wet, drapes across my forehead.

Water pools around my closed and burning eyes.

Trickles between my parched lips.

Dog settles on the blanket at my feet, his dense weight anchoring me to the world.

Later I wake up and Olly.

My Olly is sitting on the end of my bed, holding a damp cloth, and the joy burns so bright,

tears sizzle down the sides of my face, and later still I wake up for real, and he's still there.

But he's not Olly, no.

Olly is dead.

Hey, my croak.

Hey, the kid says unsmiling.

I looked behind the curtain.

We stand together in my workshop, Russian dolled up in three layers of oversized sweaters.

I'm nursing pine needle tea in a scratched mug that once belonged to Max Grady's uncle,

who was quite the aficionado of the pithy slogan.

This mug reads, in my defense, I was left unsupervised.

The kid left the curtain, gaping open, I imagine he wrenched it back with the flourish worthy

of the magnitude of my secret.

I should be terrified, but Olly can muster is a grim resignation when the inevitable finally

comes.

It's almost a relief, isn't it?

Wondering if I'm still running a fever, I take another sip of tea.

In the alcove, beyond the curtain, Florida ceiling shelves a bow under an array of candy-colored

carapaces, with their sleek black legs folded neatly beneath them, their wedged heads resting

on their paws, their hot pink orange as a clownfish, lime green, the iridescent blue of a peacock

throat, cyan as a robin's egg, and every shade between, I've arranged them by you because

it pleases me, you kind of say something.

The kid murmurs, eyes fixed on the dead dogs.

The other thing is wild, I remark, they wanted us to see them coming.

That's not entirely accurate.

The whole point of dogs, as compact, autonomous ground weapons, was to accomplish what drones

couldn't.

Everyone had drones, and radar, and lidar, and automated ground-to-air defenses.

By the end, the drones were just $100,000 clay pigeons.

Well, when they go high, you go low, and dogs were the lowest of the low, swift and small

and silent, brilliant at finding cover, and so thermally neutral they slipped under the

radar, literally, and figuratively.

The best way to spot a dog was with human eyes.

Of course, by the time a dog got close enough to see, the beholder was already screwed,

so they didn't just want us dead.

They wanted us to verify before we went.

I sit my tea, beats the shit out of Kim, all right?

The kid quivers in horror, maybe fascination.

Do you make dogs, right, in my state-of-the-art log at cabin, I lose my laugh to a coughing

fit.

He's not entirely wrong, though.

I did a long time ago, I was, in words, MIT, an internship won't mean anything to him.

I was learning to make them.

We were all working on weapons in the end.

Why?

Great question, kid.

Great fucking question.

Back then, I would have said the salary, the funding, the secure job market.

There wasn't a cyberneticist alive then who hadn't been turned to the war.

Every resource, every dollar of your mind, the war took everything.

And then the war took everything.

Understandably, the kid opens his mouth to ask a follow-up question.

It was one of the oldest professions I simplify.

Even older than the other one.

Ever since a human first picked up a big stick, we've been asking, how can I swing my

stick harder than the enemies?

How can I throw my rock further, make it hurt more, kill faster?

All history is, just guys hitting each other with bigger and bigger sticks.

With my feet, dog bats a pine cone across the floorboards.

My sister trained dogs for a living, the flesh and blood kind.

Actually, she cracks me from some pocket in my memory.

I trained the owners.

The dog is only as good as its owner.

Ugh, she was poor as shit.

She was happy.

God, I hope she was happy.

So you didn't make them.

One's out there.

The boy waves at the window encompassing his whole world.

No, the ones I helped make are far away in another country killing someone else.

Kneeling he runs a hand over the parabolic curve of dogs intact here.

And how'd you get him?

Him.

Not it.

There it is again, that part of our brain, that dog somehow domesticated, that part

that looks at something wool-shaped and sees.

Friend.

Oh, I can't make this kid unknown my secret, but I can give him a good reason to keep it.

What could be more natural than a boy befriending a dog or a killer robot for that matter?

There were whole movies about that.

I found him, I say slowly, I've barely talked to another person in years, let alone

persuaded one.

He was pinned under a boulder, hurt, and alone.

I'd been picking my way across a landslide that buried that section of road when I just

about stepped on him, it, I thought back then.

Their engine red, danger wedge deep between two rocks at just the wrong angle of spot.

I thought it was dead, until it looked at me.

A ran, obviously, God, I practically jetted out of there on a steam of hot piss, never

would have come back that way either if it hadn't been the easiest route to the apple

orchard.

I figured the dog would either cut itself free in the end or die drying, took me a month

to work up the nerve to go back.

I wanted to find it was still there, still trapped, still broken.

If it were capable of freeing itself, it would have done so.

I got my apples and went home, but after that it kept me awake at night more awake than

usual.

The memory of how quietly that dog had watched me.

The thought of him lying alone in the dark, his deep black eyes turned to the wheeling

stars.

I left him there, I murmur, for a long time, but you know that scene in the old movies

where someone slowly tames an animal by sitting and waiting for the animal to come to them?

It was like that only.

I guess I was the animal.

The kid looks blank.

I could tell he didn't want to hurt me, I explained.

He wasn't like the other is not anymore, but why?

Well that's the billion dollar question, isn't it?

The more immediate question is how do I explain programming to someone wearing rabbits can

choose?

The damage he took reset him to a factory default.

Another blank stare, I try again.

The boulder hit him so hard it knocked the badness out of him.

My uncle got hit and hit by a branch one time and it didn't make him any nicer.

Yeah, well, all dogs were nice to begin with.

Before the war, they weren't killing machines.

Back then they were programmed, well trained, the guard property or work as part of a squad.

Police, military, made to protect, not attack.

Dogs, like that, would only respond if someone who wasn't on their personnel whitelist

a stranger came at them armed.

Nothing like the dogs out there now, they kill indiscriminately, they were made to fight

a war of attrition.

The thing is, nobody went and built whole new dogs for that.

They just took the old ones and retrain them.

Portally I don't add in haste and spite vibe coding the end of the world.

So the old kind of dog, the protector, is still in there underneath.

I touch my heart, though not out of sentimentality, it's where a dog's primary processor is housed.

This dog isn't like the others.

He killed that other dog.

He neutralized a threat, then he stopped.

This fierce compulsion to defend my pet murder machine takes me by surprise.

Would a normal dog have stopped?

The kid tips his head, allowing the point.

When it comes to weapons, his attack responds, oh, it's like my trail off lost in thought.

I still don't fully understand the nature of my dog's damage, but experience allows me

to make some safe assumptions.

Yes, the sight of a weapon incites him to violence, but hiding that weapon drops him out

of it just as instantaneously.

Oh, well, it's like he lost his object perminence.

That's the difference.

He knows how to stop.

The kid's attention is wandering, his gaze flicking hungrily over the shelves and their

candy-colored array of dogs.

Can you make these ones good too?

I'm trying, I say flatly.

The damn things are programmed and it's a relic.

He accepts this without question, probably accustomed to adults coming out with incomprehensible

nonsense and waves at the shelf.

Well, are you going to give dog a new leg, then?

You've got heaps.

The problem is that they're all attached, and the armor on a dog is just about indestructible

at least with the tools I can get my hands on.

Or with hands for that matter, dogs were built by machines with strength and dexterity

and tools and materials so far beyond human capabilities they might as well be magic.

But they can be broken.

The kid insists.

He touches dogs' chest plate, tracing his fingers along the visible scores in the armor.

Sure, by half a fucking mountain, that rock slide cracked him open like a macadet

Damian nut.

Nature and entropy will get the rest of them too, eventually, fires, floods, give it a

century or so, and the problem will take care of itself.

The kid stares at me like I've just said, sure, you've got eight leopards on your ass,

but at least it's not ten.

Look, kid, I'm, I'm doing my best, but in real life there's no fucking secret exhaust

port waiting for the rebels.

You can't just shoot a bullet up its ass and call it a day, you know?

You want to believe how many drill bits I burn through just to fix this.

My tap dogs chest plate, which rattles faintly against the two screws holding it in place.

Kind of flimsy, he says, critically.

Turns out I still have some professional pride and it can be bruised.

That's on purpose.

Why?

I hesitate feeling shitty about it.

Take out one screw and the whole chest plate swivels open on the axis of the other to reveal

dogs crystalline heart, tender and unarmored.

He doesn't register a screwdriver as a weapon.

So if I ever feel like I'm not in control, well, I thought you used to comfort me.

Now I'm thinking maybe at some point I should go ahead and add a third screw.

There's one day, I say at last, lightly.

I might need to shoot a bullet up his ass.

The kid rakes a critical stare along the shelves full of dead dogs.

This is some Frankenstein shit.

Surprise, I lower my mug.

You've heard Frankenstein?

We're not idiots, I know you think we are, but we're not.

We have a school, you know?

Okay, Jesus.

Sorry.

Wait, I can use this.

So you get it then.

Get what?

Why you can't tell anyone about him?

He goes uncharacteristically silent chewing his lip.

They'd understand, he says at last, but the grading certainty is gone.

If we explain, no, but no, he scoffs.

Why not?

You've read Frankenstein, I say.

You know what people do to the monster.

A week later, the kid comes back again.

This time, his left eye is surrounded by a swollen mass of purple and yellow.

He scowls at me as though daring me to comment.

As I make tea for us both, I consider taking the dare.

It wouldn't just be a comment, though.

It would be a conversation.

I would be getting involved.

For so long, I've been in a holding pattern.

The endless tinkering on the dogs, the stalled progress.

Everything started and nothing finished.

Everything later and nothing now.

But this boy is here.

Now, here again, and three times is a pattern.

He's going to keep coming.

I can't put this off any longer.

What's your name?

Kane.

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

What's yours?

Billy.

That's a boy's name.

Jesus Christ.

End of the world's coming on.

But the patriarchy endures like a cockroach.

Billy, with an i-e.

My mom named us, my sister and I, after her favorite pop stars.

Grandpa told me about pop stars.

They were hot and crunchy with sweet stuff inside.

You don't even have to make anything to bake them.

I don't bother to correct him.

He's probably had his fill of old farts reminiscing.

The mug I sat down in front of him

features a cartoon goose wielding a knife alongside the words.

Peace was never an option.

Kane's niffs his tea, sixths the tip of his tongue in,

takes a sip, wrinkles his nose.

And there's that flash of child again.

Someone hit you, Kane.

I keep my eyes fixed on dogs stretched out

below the window, recharging in a sunbeam.

He glairs at me through the steam curling off his mug.

You don't care?

Nobody does.

Try me.

A sullen shrug.

It's this kid, Liza.

He hates me, says I'm mouthy.

Imagine that.

And he's huge.

Bad combo.

I wore my hands on my own mug, which reads,

I'm only here till I win the lottery.

You told your parents?

Yeah, I told my parents, he mutters.

Dad said I should never start a fight,

but I should always finish one.

If Liza hits me, I got to hit harder,

so I hit him back and guess what?

He hits me again even harder.

So what am I supposed to do now?

Kane folds his arms thunderous.

If you hadn't stolen my knife, that's what the knife was for.

I suppress the laugh to shank another kid.

What do you want me to do?

Just take it.

Dad says I should man up and solve my own problems

by bringing a knife to a fist fight.

I just wanted to scare him.

Kane says hotly, and a sunbeam under the window

dog raises his head and chirps.

With a Swiss army knife, that thing wouldn't spook a squirrel.

Whatever.

Kane probes at his split lip with the tip of his tongue,

his dark lashes lowered as he regards dog who

picks himself up and trots over to lay his chin

on the kid's knee.

Kane murmurs, I'm just going to go find it, aren't I, boy?

I dress saying dog, I say, going out there alone

worked out so well for him last time.

Hey, boy, for a moment, Kane looks like he might cry.

My exasperation crumbles into pity.

There's a can of coke stashed under the floorboards

of my storehouse.

I've been saving it for a special occasion.

But I never really liked coke anyway.

I plunked my half-jong tea on the workbench and get up.

I know what it really scare him, Kane mumbles.

Hmm?

I'm still thinking wistfully about the coke.

I could borrow dog.

Kane says in a rush, just for an hour.

My jolt around to glared him so fast,

my elbow sends the mug hurtling to the floor

where it shatters and a spray of tea and ceramic.

Crouching, I gather my composure along with the shards.

That would be fucking stupid, now wouldn't it?

But find another way.

It's so easy for you.

You've got him.

You don't know what it's like to be scared.

I scoff.

I've been alone on this island for 20 years, asshole.

Yeah, with dog.

I didn't always have, and a gun.

I never told, Kane about the shotgun,

broken ceramic bites into the palm of my hand.

How do you know about that?

When you were sick, he mutters.

I was looking for medicine.

I checked the closet, and there was something

in there covered in a blanket.

The blanket fools dogs algorithm.

I say tonelessly, because I'm about to puke up my heart.

I swear to God.

For an instant, I hate Kane for this.

For getting under my skin so fast and planting

the seed of fear, this old familiar fucking fear,

creeping back in, taking root ready to blossom

into an inescapable dread.

I keeps growing inside me right up until the day

it inevitably proves itself founded the day the worst happens.

And it withers to pain, and I have to live with it.

Fucking live with the dry, dead roots of it tangled

in my ribs.

I can't stand it.

Not again, and it will happen again,

because people are fragile.

People die.

When I find my voice again, it's a scream.

Christ, Kane.

What the fuck were you thinking?

He flinches.

What's dog there when I'm not stupid?

We're still here, right?

You're still here?

He jobs a finger at me, because I helped you.

Why would you help me?

What part of secret is unclear to you?

With effort, I encrown my fingers on the shard of broken mug,

live at pink lines, score my palm.

But it still be a secret.

He almost knocks over his tea in his haze

to lean toward me, blue eyes fierce as a mid-summer sky.

I could get lined up to come outside the walls,

where nobody would see nobody would believe him.

I said no.

Not ever.

Conversation over.

This is the first real argument I've had in years.

My heart punches to my ribcage, wanting out.

I dumped the shards on the workbench.

He's not even yours, Kane mutters.

Anyone could have found him.

I badly want to send him packing,

but then his continued silence is probably

the only thing standing between me and an angry mob from wall.

I take a deep breath.

I know you're frustrated, and I promise you, whatever

he pushes his mug away and stands.

I knew he wouldn't care.

I want to help you, Kane, but not like this.

We're going to use our brains, OK?

Where'd that ever get you?

He hefts his knapsack over his shoulder

and walks out the door without waiting for an answer,

which is just as well, because I don't have one.

He won't come back.

Or he will, and he won't be alone.

When I sink to the workshop floor,

Dog comes to see me wedging his head

under my arm and leaning, his solid weight against my side.

In his deep black eyes, I see my own face reflected,

an unfamiliar mask of creeping age and exhaustion.

And this may.

I could always leave.

I remember running the idea past him.

Dog winds.

In the end, like always, I do nothing.

For several days, nobody comes.

It's threatening to snow a miserable weather,

but this is the best time of year

to strip the soft inner bark from the white fur.

The chore mindless enough to keep my circling thoughts

from eating me alive.

That's what I'm doing among the pines, dog by my side.

When Cain finds us, sorry, he says softly,

the bruise ringing his eye has faded to yellow.

On some help, I'm so relieved that I dropped my scraper.

Before I can bend to pick it up,

Cain holds out his Swiss army knife,

a sliver of shining metal pointed at me.

For an instant, nothing moves, but the lens is deep in dog's eyes,

dilating black.

Before he relaxes and drops into a play crouch

to nose at a pine cone.

It's just a chisel.

Cain says, swallowing the water,

twinge in my guts, I pick up my scraper.

Yeah, you shouldn't have gone back out there.

I can handle myself.

Cain sets his chisel and clumsy enthusiasm to the bark.

I want to ask if he's still planning

to wave that ridiculous little thing in his bully's face,

but we only just got that can of warm, sealed shut.

For the rest of the afternoon, Cain helps.

He peels potatoes for dinner, splits logs,

and in the end goes off with a dog to gather kinling.

Feeling the promise of snow in the air,

I retreat to my workshop and mix

small pots of powdered pigment, blue and gray and white

to paint dogs' carapace for winter.

I glance out the window now and then

to pick out dog and boy playing fetch with pine cones

through the trees.

The wind ruffling, Ollie, Cain's curls.

Sometime later, I absorbed in my pigments and linseed oil.

I realized I haven't heard them in a while.

Wiping my hands on a towel I step out of my workshop

into the late afternoon chill.

It's so quiet.

I think I know, and it's the quiver in my belly,

a warning delivered too late.

The wild denial that follows it.

It'll appear between the pines.

Any minutes, and I'll feel a swoop of nauseating relief

of a kind I haven't felt in decades.

And later I'll ask myself how the hell I let this happen again.

And what I'm going to do with it, this new precariousness

that comes from having something to lose.

My armor is not as strong as dogs.

I hurry around the boundary of the cabins,

not quite running, yet calling dog, calling Cain,

each shout of plea edged and thinly cloaked terror.

Nothing, just a silence of solitude, the boats.

Now I run, Cain's boat is gone, of course, it's gone.

But mine is still tied up on the shore,

a flutter of tan on the beach seat catches my eye,

a scrap of canvas from the workshop weighed down

with a rock marked in hasty charcoal scroll.

Barrowed dog back soon, sorry.

Horror roots me to the muddy sand.

How much of a head start does he have 40 minutes an hour?

It makes no difference, 40 minutes is already too many.

Whatever's happening downriver is unfolding without me.

The only rational thing to do is wait.

Cain might be back before dark, live in triumphant,

no harm done until I shake him to death anyhow.

Or he might not come back at all.

And I can go fetch my dog, secure the knowledge

that no one can harm me because anyone dangerous enough

to hold a weapon isn't a danger anymore.

I should wait, like I always have, waiting works.

Waiting is why I'm still here.

I'll just wait until there's no.

No dad's dispensing bad advice.

No grandfather's reminiscing about pop tarts.

Nobody sowing rabbits can boots.

No bullies, no brash boys with dark curls peaking around the edge

of a knitted hood brandishing their foolish little knives.

I sprint to the workshop to fetch the blanket wrap shotgun

and a wrap of hand tools laying these bundles across the benches

of my skiff, like I laid cane down not long ago.

A small limb body wrapped in my coat.

The tools are the ones I use when I clean and oil dogs

delicate insides with a cracked armor

no longer keeps dust and dirt wholly at bay.

Every time I do it, I check that the screws I rigged

still turn smoothly, admitting me to the crystalline tangle

in his chest, his heart, his mind.

For dog, those are one and the same.

He's always so good and quiet when I clean him,

so trusting when I reach beneath his armor

to touch the fragile palace of his soul.

I push off, letting the current draw me down, River,

letting it carry me to wall.

Like a fairy tale castle in the mist,

wall rises from the island in the center of Moose

Head Lake where the deep water serves as a natural moat.

Survivors who found this place in the aftermath

first taking over the cabins and trailers

of the old campsite on the island,

and gradually adding a sprawling assortment of campers,

shanties, and broken down RVs, built the high wall that

gives the island its name.

In much like a fairy tale castle

it's protected by three kinds of magic,

water, stone, and flesh.

Those last two, the wall in the guard to patrol it,

shield the place from other people,

but neither can stop a dog.

The only magic with any real power here

is the unbroken expansive lake between two piers,

one jutting from the island.

The other from the shore, each terminating abruptly

and crumbling charcoal, the two vestigial ends

of a bridge long since burned.

I row closer through half-hearted flurries of snow,

a loveless finger is aching and blistering,

fucking skiffs.

I have to sit facing the stern to row,

have to approach wall with my back turned,

and the water is so still,

it feels like I'm trapped in place

and it's wall that is in motion,

creeping up behind me.

The terror I've been fighting to keep at bay

taps me on the shoulder and I jolt around.

Wall is still wall with a softening veil of mist

thins, I approach, stripping away the magic

to reveal an ugly jumble of stone and wood

and rustling sheet metal patched with cement,

topped with battlements like broken teeth

where whenever I've come before,

guards stood watching with tight eyes and tight lips,

fingers tight on the triggers of crossbows, strong, tight.

Today, there are no cards,

and the mist isn't just mist,

I didn't spot the columns as smoke before

because the icy wind shreds them,

the moment they peek over the battlements.

The sour stench of burning plastic

and God knows what else threads the cold air.

In the shadow of wall,

boats as to crowd the wet sand,

no mass exodus than just a telling quiet

of an absence so vast at beats at my eardrums like thunder,

and I wish something would break it,

a shouted warning and alarm bell,

the thread of a crossbow bolt to the head, anything.

Please.

Thump.

My skiff strikes something solid,

drifting below the black surface of the lake.

My heart sloshes in the bilge of my guts, I don't wanna look,

but it's draped around the bow,

dragging me, of course, a dead weight,

gripping the ores so tight,

my knuckles crack, I lean over the black lake.

She floats face down.

Her pale hair fanned out in the water,

bare arms and bare feet modeled gray with cold.

She must have been indoors before,

to flee into this freezing air,

coatless, shoeless,

to fling herself into this frigid water,

her panic must have bordered on madness.

She didn't drown or she would have sunk,

maybe hypothermia or maybe,

I can't bring myself to turn her over to look for injuries.

It doesn't matter.

With one or I pushed the floating body aside and row on.

The island's side pier rises to meet me,

I fling a hasty loop of rope around a piling

and gather the blanket wrap shotgun in my arms,

cradleing it against my shoulder like a sleeping child.

Careful not to let even an inch of dark metal show.

As long as dog can't see it, I'm safe.

Fingers numb, I haul myself one armed up the rickety ladder,

my eyes draw level to the deck of the pier

and to the gates in wall.

Open drawbridge down to the pile of rags

and broken limbs all spills out across it.

As though it's final convulsions

a town vomited up its debt.

Most are unarmed.

This wasn't dog or not just dog.

This was panic, a crush.

They were trying to flee through a solitary exit

that was opened much too late.

The corpses must be four deep in places.

I can't pick my weight past.

There's no solid ground to stand on.

Only the dead, but I have to get inside,

have to find dog who is certainly alive and can

who still could be.

So, allowing saliva, I close my eyes

and scramble over the jumble of backs and limbs,

trying to do it in as few steps as I can,

but my legs are water.

And all this flesh below my boots is treacherously soft

and my foot sinks to the knee

between someone's thigh and someone else's stomach.

Jesus, God, it's still warm.

My throat clenches around a scream

and I claw free and crawl across the rest of them

until all at once I'm clear, sprawling forward

to land atop the blanketed shock

on the wet packed earth gritting under my fingernails.

Panting, I meet the sightless stare

of a guard slumped over the job-ridge release.

His crossbow still stood on his back,

his throat, a lear of bone and gore,

a moan deep in the pile behind me.

Only wind in the battlements.

I don't turn back.

Olly isn't there.

Dog isn't alert around another guard face down

and broken in a congealing pool of blood.

He fell from his post who was dragged from it.

There are fresh gouges deep in the stoneward dog,

climbed claws plunging into the grout,

zeroing in on the first weapons he saw.

I skirt the charred skeleton of an RV,

popping and cracking melted rubber still trickling

a placard smoke that mingles

with the awful copper tang of blood in the air.

Through stinging tears, displayed bodies

I pass by swim and jolt with the illusion of life.

The small ones are children.

I've hurt my eyes, but I can't stop my imagination

filling in the missing pieces.

In the triple slash of diamond claws,

fragments of skull staved in the blistered blackening

left by a plasma cutter.

I'm cold.

I'm so cold, I can't feel a thing.

In the open space of walls,

central square, ablaze of fall color lies.

Curled pin need beside a splayed body captive

with a tangle of dark curls.

Kane, one outflung hand clenched in the mud

as though he's clinging to the world.

What black patches of blood soak his willoms,

but his chest is moving.

Dog's good ear pricks and he rises stomping

his nimble paws and a welcome dance.

All my tangled up horror and shame and relief,

heave out of me.

He's here.

He's alive.

I don't remember crossing the square,

but I remember the mud soaking through my jeans

when I kneel in front of them,

lowering the bundled shotgun to the ground careful.

Careful.

Kane's eyes crack open, vivid blue in his milky face.

His chest is open to three slashes across the heart.

Shallow cuts as though dog held back.

Shallow breaths to each,

pushing out a sluggish trickle of blood.

This cold slows everything even death.

I could get him back home in time,

I think, stitches antibiotics.

I could nurse him back to health.

Like he did for me.

Keep him alive another day,

then another another.

And then what?

People are weak.

People die.

Dog nudges my thigh,

leaving a crimson smudge behind.

The gore streaking his carapace mercifully lost among

his autumn camouflage.

I lift his chin to wipe his face clean,

and that's when I see the cool glimmer at his chest.

His armor hangs on a single screw, exposing his heart.

My insides turn crystalline, too.

What did you do?

I don't know who I'm asking.

Kane's eyes roll to dog in desperate terror,

and his throat clicks three times.

Mechanical sound.

Before he gets the words out.

And the mud, his fingers twitch,

revealing a flash of candy, apple, red.

His Swiss army knife, I lunge.

Like the first day we met working,

they exposed blade out from under his fingers,

and hiding it from dog.

The still branding a line of cold fire across my palm.

Two lines, both the screwdriver

and the knife attachments have been swung out.

Oh stupid boy, he used the screwdriver to open dog up

and dog let him, because he doesn't understand

that a screwdriver can kill just as well as a blade.

And because Kane doesn't understand that either,

he switched to a knife to finish the job.

And when Kane turned to a weapon, so did dog.

People are weak.

People kill, I kill it sticks knives,

and big red buttons and dogs and guns.

The weapons change, but the hands holding them all.

The long always, so the one species we could never tame.

And so here we are again, in amorous of fire

and blood of our own creation.

This isn't the kid's fault, it's mine.

Of all people, I should know there are some things

that can't be reprogrammed, I'm so tired.

Under the dragging blanket, the shotgun is an impossible weight.

My arms tremble beneath it.

I fumble through the soft folds for the safety.

As a boy sags in relief, dog tilts his head

to one side, his dark, trusting eyes,

turned up to mine, reflecting the silver sky.

Do it, Kane and murmurs.

Tears freezing on my face, I lift the shrouded gun.

Let's do what I must.

That night, my lies swaddled in blankets

and the warmth of the hearth,

enured from the vast emptiness outside.

It's quiet here with just the two of us.

Dog watches over me, his eyes alive

with reflected firelight, his weight bearing me down into sleep.

I drift away without a care in the world.

What are your thoughts on the story?

You can send me an email, Kate at clerksworldmaxine.com.

We have a bunch of more stories left for you

for the month of April,

and I do hope you'll come back in less than should you so choose.

Until then, my dear listener,

I bid you a very, very, very fond,

and hopefully very, very temporary, very well.

.

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