Mongrel

Marko could not take his eyes off of it. It was a thing of beauty, being devoured by the most horrendous sink hole he had come across this week. Glinting in the hard sun, a piece of metal the size of a useless bottle cap was caught on a broken piece of wood.

He did not usually stop to look too hard at the sink holes that now pock-marked the city. But with the world gone to crap and nothing to occupy him but ceaseless days of survival, a sink hole or two was somewhat entertaining. He thought of the time when he only saw these things on his computer. He missed the internet. Oh how pointless it all seemed now.

The metal glinted again, blinding him for a second after sliding down the wood a few inches. He had his claw hand, maybe he could pull it off before it was lost to the earth.

Marko shrugged off his blood-stained backpack and tugged out the claw hand he had put in his camping gear for the fun of it. He will never underestimate seemingly normal items again. This claw hand had come in handy more times than he could count.

Pulling out the claw hand he stretched it to its full capacity and knelt down as close as he dared to the wood. Opening the mechanical grip he reached over, just enough to grip it before he heard a growling sound behind him. Oh no, he thought, not again.

The growling grew more intense.

“Okay you mongrel”, he soothed, “we have been through this before, and I do not appreciate your attitude”.

The dog growled even harder.

Marko turned slowly and calmly, pulling the object with him.

“Here’s what is going to happen fluff mongrel”, he reached over slowly, “I am going to grab my bag, stand up and walk away. You are going to go on with your mongrel ways and we can all just…”

With a terrible roar the beast pounced on him.

Marko panicked. He yanked his bag. Pulled it in front of him. It was too late. The mongrel had marked him.

A foul stench entered his nostrils and he yelled into the mongrels strange looking face.

“Eugh, you little shit!”

Happy now, the mongrel was pacing in front of him, tongue lolling to the side. This is how it always went.

Some ugly old grandma’s mongrel dog had survived the event. Not even his own dog survived, and this craggy excuse of an animal had made it. The thing acted extremely odd.

“Why can’t you go pee on one of the millions of trees over there!” he gestured to the park across the littered street. “Just because you don’t like me, doesn’t mean you have to do this!” he gestured to his backpack.

At least it was not on his clothes, he realised. Then he remembered the bit of metal. He swung his claw arm around and grabbed it.

He placed the claw arm in his now stinking, blood-stained backpack. He sat down and brushed off bits of dirt and muck off of the metal.

A locket. A heart shaped locket.

The dog came closer and looked almost scared.

“Well, it’s not as useless as a bottle cap but it's still useless.” He raised his arm to throw it back to the sink hole.

“No, don’t throw it back!”

Marko froze. No, it couldn’t be. He looked over to the dog.

“Give it to me!” the dog barked.

“What…” the beast padded up to him and breathed into his face as he said, “Listen human, I don’t fetch, so don’t even think of throwing that!”

Marko dropped the locket, too shocked to say anything. Then he heard a siren, a truck was speeding towards them.

People, he thought. Marko jumped to his feet, ran from the dog and chased after the truck.

“Help!” he cried as the truck stopped and two hazmat wearing men came towards him. They had been around this neighbourhood before, taking sick people back to their lab. They were the only help available to people now. They stopped the truck, came over to him and raised their hands concerningly.

“Are you okay boy?” the tall one asked.

“The dog”, he pointed at the mongrel, “It spoke to me!”

The hazmat men looked at each other, shaking their heads.

“Let’s get him back to the lab with the others.”

They lunged forward and grabbed Markos arms, dragging him to the truck. He didn’t understand, why won’t they believe him?

“But the dog spoke, I swear! I’m not crazy, please!” He cried as he struggled to drag him to the truck.

The taller man in the hazmat suit sighed to his partner as he held his grip on Marko.

“It must be gasses or something leaking from the broken pipes. There’s been more than one claim of talking animals and lockets.”

“I know”, the shorter hazmat suit snorted. “Can you imagine? I know it’s the end of the world but honestly!”

They dragged him to the truck despite his protests, threw him in the back seat.

As they sped off in a cloud of dust the dog sighed and reached a paw to his collar.

“Brolum, I tried.” He spoke into the speaker. “But he was going to throw it back, and the funny looking cloud people took him.”

He waited a moment, then shifted. A short grey alien stood where the dog had been. A voice emanated from his neck.

“That's okay Mongreel,” the voice teased, “you can come back to the ship and we will reassign you.”

“That’s not my name!” the alien cried. He never understood why the boy called him that. It was hard enough pretending to be a dog. But really, they thought the humans worshipped them! Or was it god they worshipped? Shaking his oval-shaped head, the alien picked up the locket.

These humans were definitely harder to study now that their shipment of translators had fallen to the ground last full moon.