I dream a black pillar.

It was stationary —as much as I could distinguish— and far, almost too far away.

However, I could see it, and feel it, growing restless with anticipation and excitement.

Somehow, I knew I was dreaming, and when I decided that I had enough of the impossible pillar and imaginary feelings for a night I opened my eyes and woke up.

Just like that.

There were no yawns or the sense of a fog lifting from my mind. I simply opened my eyes and rolled back on my feet, on all four of them.

For a second, I wondered my fight with Cob had also been a dream because the paw that was supposed to be broken was fine and didn’t hurt when I put my weight on it. I even stretched my back and shoulders —more out of routine than need. However, the red patch of dirt under my feet and the few trampled shoots of weed and grass told me otherwise. Add to it Cobs macabre remains, and I knew all was true.

I deflated back to the ground, unable to face him. I dazed through the setting of the orange sun, wondering where things went wrong. I could hear the cry of pigeons nearby and smell smoke and blood in the air.

In the end, I exhaled out a hurtful whine, a final parting rather than a meaningless question, and started toward the corner which was free of his blood and remains. I stopped midway on the grainy cold sand to consider my feeling and then strode past his cadaver without looking back. I loved Cob and decided our last night’s confrontation wasn’t going to change that. But I couldn’t face him again till the end.

I was rushing as soon as I had turned the corner, unable to control my emotions. Memories of him came flooding into my mind. All I wanted was to run back to my snug brick home and fall into Kanti's arms, but the world was too quiet, too unusual, for me to not care.

The black gate of the first house past eh corner was uninvitingly, wide open. I ignored it, and the bloody footprints coming out of it. There was smoke in the air, suffocating. It burned my lungs and put tears in my eyes, yet I quickened my pace. I jumped over the guava tree that had fallen on the street, blocking the gate of the second house. There was nothing to worry about because the house was similarly dead inside. A dread took root in my chest as I passed it by, becoming aware of the unusual.

Cob’s angry growling face came into my mind's eyes. I pushed it back. I didn’t need another disturbance. The smoke was no help, either. The third house where the street curved again had a headless body lying outside its closed doors, and a mess of superimposed bloody footprints on the patio slope.

I cringed away from the blood and the corpse and followed through into the empty lot on the right side of the house: a shortcut to my destination. My dread deepened as did the sooty smoke lingering near the ground as a black see-through veil. I pushed through, even though I could sparsely breathe.

It was hot here, in the empty lot separating me from reality.

Usually, I would have found Dimple lying at the end of it, haughtily occupying half of the street and challenging the hu-mans to try their luck with him. He wasn’t there when I turned left from the lot, neither was Kanti waiting for me with his arms wide open, nor Ginger and Rusty worried sick.

All there was but more smoke, more heat, and fire. Everything left from there was either burning or was already ash. All the houses at the end of the street were up in flames, including Kanti’s house… our home. Something broke in me. A pillar of smoke rose from the burning houses, and raining ash had the street covered black. I was mortified.

I stood there, gawking. It was impossible. I gave a bark into the crimson smoke. There was no response. I barked again: still nothing. Orange embers fell from the sky, sending my shadow dancing all around. A moment later a second shadow joined mine. Its origin: the old man who lived in the house to my left with his family of four. The family was gone but he was alive —like Cob. The air was so thick with smoke that I didn’t see or sensed him coming. It was only when I more, smelled his rotting sweet-scented stench than heard the hauntingly familiar rasping growl, did I try to find him. He stood at the inner front door of his brick home, gawking first, and as our eyes met, rushing. Hands clawed and teeth bared, the old man came at me with a warning at his lips.

His red eyes and swollen veins awoke my memories of last night. I didn’t see the old man, but Cob in his stead. Rushing at me, lips trembling as red saliva dripped from his flesh marred gums. Terrified, I barked out of fear, a whinny young growl. He was at me before I could shake Cob’s phantom from my mind. The old man’s veiny blood dyed hands reached for me. There was a kind of madness about him, a hunger for something other than my flesh. It was his eyes, I believe, that scared me the most. He didn’t just look at me with those red volatile globes, but looked into me and what I was, through me and what I could be.

The world stood still for a moment. I reprimanded myself for my foolishness. Cob had taught me better than this-this horrible weakness and fear. He had taught me to pick my fights. Run from Hu-mans, adult or cub; talk with a dog, friend or not. I followed his teaching with an uncanny resilience, something I very much needed in that second. I about turned and ran with all my might!

I slipped out of the old man’s fingers, somehow or another. He fell in a tumble of limbs as I got my footing and galloped away, not thinking of a destination, simply riding the strong beats of my thundering heart and running as the street unveiled in front of my eyes. The old man rushed after me a second later. I knew he did. His stench put him just behind me, not falling short. I wasn’t faster than him, even though he was an old man, a hu-man. But I kept ahead.

Another one of the old man’s kind —the screaming, grunting and angry kind— came out of a house at the intersection up ahead and tittered toward me. More howls and groans rang out from the houses further down the street.

My heart pounded further, faster it raced. Throat itched. Body shivered.

My feet took me off the street and into the dark, tight alleyway just shy of the T-junction, and in the direction toward the park. A different park, one where Kanti and I had spent countless mornings together, running and playing. There was another intersection of roads; more blood on the streets, Hu-man things burning, clothes ripped and abandoned, and fallen trees. Then the sweet scent hit me.

A dog stood at the corner bend. Someone I knew.

His stench was sweet, and his body was unbelievably fuller when compared to the empty husks that were the old man and his follower. He was just like Cob. Almost exactly like him. He was salivating.

He had torn a hole in the chest of a hu-man cub, the leader of the pack that used to throw rocks at Dimple and harass him. Now he lay quietly on the road —his angry eyes wide open and shouting mouth frozen with a scream still at his torn lips. The dog had just torn out his thumping pump, his heart.

My surprise lasted for only a moment before the dog growled at me. He raised his lips and bared his fangs; his eyes were red and piercing. He didn’t follow through with the warning. However, I found myself still backed into a wall from both sides.

There was no place to go.

Though the dog was more interested in eating the thumping pump than tackling me, in a few more seconds the old man was going to be right behind me.

I couldn’t let them take me again. I had already survived death once; no way was the miracle going to repeat itself. My life was in my hands. I had to act, and act fast.

The dog, the straight eared, blood-covered, brown spotted dog with his arms and legs pulsating with power, with something sweet and foreign, stood up. He had eaten the heart and was now after me. He started toward me like a beast, like the one monster named truck, stomping, and barking along the way.

Panic seized my heart. I inhaled sharply. Couldn’t move, breathe, or feel. It hurt… my chest. Something burned inside me. Clenching and tearing. Cob, I saw him. He was saying something. Speaking. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear. I heard.

COME TO ME!

I ran.

Something gave away inside me and spread out of my chest. It flowed with my blood —burning, painful, hateful, anger— into my legs, my head, and my eyes. My sight reddened. It was strength. It flowed through me, eating my conscious. I resisted.

COME TO ME!

It was heavier, the feeling, the voice, the pull. It grated at my mind. I was boiling.

We met, the dog and I. I jumped over it, taking flight, high-high and above. The world rolled around me and I felt the ground. I pushed. My legs stomped heavily, and I thundered past, away, far ahead.

I felt happiness, profound, and endearing.

But my strength started leaking, vanishing. I wasn’t breathing. I hadn’t needed to breathe. There was darkness up ahead, sweet, sour, and mouthwatering darkness. And there was empty all-encompassing darkness to my side. I was hungry and tired. My legs took me straight, toward the sweet scents and the awful screams. I swirled my body, forcing it to turn, to choose rest. I rushed into the empty darkness and lost ground. I fell a few feet and then lost consciousness for a time.

When I came to, night had taken over the world, and I was in the basement of the unfinished home whose walls made the corner lip. It was dark in there, and empty. My stomach growled but I ignored it. I had managed to survive once again against a monster much worse than a hu-man. My breath, I was breathing again. I was back to normal. Whatever changes had happened to me had reverted back, not completely, but largely still.

The only window I could have fallen through was near the ceiling of the basement. I had fallen from there I concluded, but I wasn't hurt anywhere. It scared me, the change, the burns, the pain… and the voice. The strength, however, the strength was unforgivable. It had flowed through me, become me. One can’t forget something like that. And it had helped me survive against one of the screamers. I was weak, very weak, and dizzy. And hungry. Hunger I dealt with like I used to deal with it in the past: by ignoring it. The weakness I could do nothing about other than to endure it.

I rested in the dark emptiness for a while then stood up. My legs shook under my weight.

I found the stairs leading up, but the front door was locked and windows barded. I climbed the stairs to the upper floor, then saw moonlight lighting the stairs up ahead and ended up going all the way up to the roof. It was cold at the roof —refreshing. I shook from head to tail out of instinct and sat down facing my home. I could see it from there, smoldering, the pillar of smoke scattered into floating ribbons of black.

I missed my pack. I missed Kanti. I wished they were there with me. I didn’t dare leave the roof that sleepless night. But come morning I couldn’t hold my growling stomach any longer and stepped down the stairs. I peeked from the first-floor balcony for signs of the screamers. There were none —no sounds, no screams, or scents. I hesitated still, but my stomach growled louder, deifying my fear and hesitation, and I ended up making my mind. I jumped from the balcony to the perimeter wall and then to the road in two quick hops.

I learned that climbing a straight container was far more difficult than wall hopping. A voice told me to look over my shoulder. I did and found the building front door dented and crushed, but holding. Its upper hinge had come loose from the pillar proper. Never would have expected one of my kind, a dog, to possess such strength. But the proof was undeniable.

Next door was a domed building that usually smelled of everything savory and fulfilling in the morning, but it was empty inside when I checked. There was nothing to eat. I had to go around, hiding behind pillars and open doors and invade many scary houses only to find someone’s dinner splattered over the table. The rice had turned into a dry, cold cake that had flies buzzing above it. No matter the case, food was food. Even freedom had its chains.

I scrapped it off the table and ate as much as I could. Found a bucket full of water under the kitchen sink and a pool of slimy dark blood in the bedroom. I left soon after. I was fed and no longer thirsty; there was no need to delay my escape. I checked a few more houses. Most didn’t even have dustbins for garbage. I found a few, but they didn’t contain anything eatable or good enough to be carried. All houses had one thing in common though, and that was the signs of dispute, blood, and quiet.

This area was the territory of another group of black-striped dogs, but they weren’t around, thankfully. I was just happy that I didn’t meet any screamers, but neither did I find any marks left by Rusty or the others. They were gone. It hurt and scared me, but could have also meant that they hadn’t come this way. However, I hadn’t the courage to go back from where I had fled.

That is until I smelled the sweet scent again. I fled of course without staying to see who it was. I fled with my ears down and my tail between my legs. There was nothing heroic about it, only survival. The screamer would have followed my scent had we met, calling more of its kind, and then my rooftop would have become inhabitable. I rushed back, in through the light hole to the basement, and up the stairs. A short while later I was at the roof again.

To fight it? THEM? No chance. I had only a vague remembrance of that evening’s occurrence. But I remembered the pain that had hit similar to a flat wooden bat smashed on the ribs, and the expunging of all air out from my chest. Suffocation was not a joke.

However, it wasn’t all bad.

I had no injuries to say anything, and I was different from before. The screamer was blocks away, almost at the threshold of the alleyway connecting the two areas, and I had heard him.

Soon, the pungent smell of blood, rot, and filth filled the street, announcing its arrival. I hadn’t met any hu-mans in the two days, but I was sure I could easily distinguish one from a screamer.

Normal hu-mans could scream, but they could never display the agonizing hate, anger, and hunger that a screamer's rasp could. Eventually, the screamer tottered up in front of the building I occupied. I peeked from the roof and instantly recognized him. His face was unrecognizable thanks to the broken jaw, and his crushed nose, but the hole in his chest and his missing heart only made it easier. I shuddered. It was surprising to see him walking. If Rusty was to be believed, it should have been impossible for anyone to be able to move about with a hole in their chest. Yet, the hu-man was.

Cob had also gotten up and grown stronger.

There was no denying that. The screamer, however, didn’t stay for long. It soon got tired and disappeared from my sight. I couldn’t see whether he turned on any of the streets or went straight, but his presence was enough of a reminder that not all the screamers were gone. Some of them were still around: To find the survivors in hiding. It was inevitable, but the thought that soon I would have to leave, too, in search of food and company, dampened my mood and made my ears hang low. One can live alone only for so long.

That night I dreamed of a shiny day, Cob and Ginger snuggled together while Rusty reprimanded a slouching Dimple for something I didn’t care to know, for I was jovial by simply being in their company.

However, I didn’t even find solace in the dream. It was midnight when something awoke me. It was a scream, high pitched, and crisp. And it delighted me, for it belonged to a hu-man rather than a screamer.