Page 57 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

THE AFRICAN PAINTED DOG

Catriona Ward

The LAST VISITOR hangs over the edge of the enclosure, arms spread, head pointing down toward us, skull broken open like another mouth and bloody.

I’ve tried to reach the delicious red trails that trickle down the wall from him, but they’re high, out of reach.

The sky is purple overhead, the moon hangs quiet.

Silence, crickets, the scent of rotting night-flesh.

“Ya ya ya,” I yell. “Ya ya ya!” But no one comes.

Before, they always came if I cried hard enough.

Their pink little chimp paws and pale spaces where their muzzles should be.

Tiny wet eyes, bare skin stinking of fumes and things I don’t know.

“Yayayaya! Bring me your buckets of MEAT.” Silence.

Crickets. I chase my tail, but my tail is not meat.

I gnaw it for a while, but it starts to hurt.

Silence, now, from above, where there was so much talk.

Screaming from the young ones, pointing and exclaiming.

I’m not saying we’re vain, but everyone likes to be noticed, and they came to admire us.

Now there is only silence from the LAST VISITOR and from the many other VISITORS up there.

I can smell them all. The VISITORS sometimes lay down right where they were and didn’t get up.

The spoiling is on the air. There is so much MEAT, but it’s all out of reach.

I can hear it sliding from the bones like a snake.

(I have seen a snake once. It came into the enclosure at night and rippled through the pond.

It was long and dark and smelled of scales and death and dirt.

I knew it right away for what it was. I whistled for Ee Ee Eee and Tak Tak Tak and we waited for it on the shore, tails wagging.

When it touched the lip of the pond, I took its head in my jaws so fast it never knew the difference between the darkness of the night and the inside of my mouth.

I tore its head off and then we all three ate it, venom sacs and all. Ya ya ya.)

We know a little of the language of the VISITORS.

You hear something often enough, it happens.

We are very good at learning. Our name in their language is HereWeCometotheEnclosureofLycaonPictustheAfricanPaintedDog.

That is just our ceremonial name in their tongue, obviously.

We don’t bother with formality when it’s just family.

Though we understand the language of visitors, our own is very different.

Our tongue is like the sound of the bush, of trills and birdsong.

I used to think our name was OhMyGod , but I realize that is just our name at feeding time.

My brother is Tak Tak Tak for the sound he makes when he eats.

I am Chachacha for the sound I make when I drink.

Mother is Ee Ee Eee for the noise she makes when she noses at your coat and licks you with love.

Her coat is empty now, she’s gone. The bones she left behind lie in the pond now, half in, half out.

We heard our name spoken by the VISITORS less and less as the days went on.

Fewer pink muzzle-less faces pointed at us.

They coughed. Gradually, the noises from above died.

Then nothing, for some days. The MEAT came less and less often, and then it stopped.

We were all hungry. I could hear them all in the other enclosures pacing and licking their chops.

TheSpottedHyenasEewLookatThoseGuys ate one of their own.

I heard the cracking of the bones. So, they were doing okay until the LAST VISITOR.

He came on a warm summer morning, like an avalanche.

The LAST VISITOR went around the enclosures one by one and they each dropped dead with a crack . I heard their hearts go still and their blood thicken in their veins.

We could see the heads of the HereWeCometotheReticulatedGiraffe over the top of the fence, their long necks and eyelashes like ferns.

We saw the hit, and then the eyelashes closed bloody.

She stayed upright for a moment after her death, then fell graceful, great bones and rib cage smashing on the concrete.

The LAST VISITOR went on. PantheraLeoAzandicatheNortheastCongoLion were all sleeping as usual, so they didn’t know anything about it, I don’t think.

ThompsonsGazelle were afraid, though. They ran and hid and ran.

I could hear their hearts pounding. It took a while, but the LAST VISITOR got them all in the end.

We heard him walk toward us. We smelled the oil and the smoke, the heated metal death he carried.

We still thought the LAST VISITOR might be bringing buckets of MEAT.

Maybe he would feed us some juicy cuts of HereWeCometotheReticulatedGiraffe.

Mother was very hungry by then. Since she was getting old and we were young and strong, it was her right to eat first. So, Tak Tak Tak and I went to the earth shelter, whose entrance is hidden under a pile of palm fronds.

Eating is a private thing. Our kind have manners. We give others space.

But there was no smell of MEAT. The LAST VISITOR carried nothing. Even inside his mind, I could tell he was empty—like the creatures he left behind in the other enclosures. He was still walking around, but the important parts of him were dead.

Mother went to the place where they bring the buckets, by the metal grille.

She whined for MEAT and waved her tail. The LAST VISITOR looked down at her, and then took aim.

His dead eye looked down at her, along the shining length of metal.

The thunder and the lightning caught her in the chest. She dragged herself to the pond, hoping that a drink would make her better.

She always taught us, if you are sick, drink water.

Her breath sounded like sacking being dragged through her lungs.

She went down onto her forelegs in the pond, and then lay down altogether.

“Ee, Ee,” she said once to us, looking at the place where we hid, a secret message of love, and then she was still.

Then she was gone, leaving her body empty.

The LAST VISITOR looked down at the enclosure.

He looked right at us, too, where we lay beneath the palm fronds.

But we are made for hiding. Even in a place that’s not very big, we can become invisible.

It’s an ancient gift of our kind. Then there was a final crack and the LAST VISITOR’s heart stopped, too.

Now I drink from a puddle. Chachacha. We don’t drink from the pond anymore.

The water stopped running days ago. The pond is still, and full of Mother—and flies and wriggling things.

The puddles are running dry. We’ll be thirsty soon.

Almost none of Mother is left on the bone.

She gave us this other ancient gift, but it won’t last forever. We’ll be hungry again soon, too.

“Ya! Ya Ya!” My voice is so lonely.

“Stop shouting.” Tak Tak Tak is suddenly next to me in his silent way. “No one will come. They didn’t come yesterday, and they won’t come now.” He snaps and neatly catches a moth out of the air. Clever Tak Tak Tak.

All I can think is MEAT. MEAT. Life was so simple before, and so good.

It went like this. Sun, bucket of MEAT. Night, bucket of MEAT.

Sun, bucket of MEAT. Night, bucket of MEAT.

Sun, bucket of MEAT. Night, bucket of MEAT.

Sun, bucket of MEAT. Night, bucket of MEAT.

Then: sun. No bucket of MEAT. Night, no MEAT, and then sun again, and over and over until we started on Mother.

I jump higher and higher, trying to reach the strings of pink inside that are hanging out of the LAST VISITOR. No good.

Wet nose in my flank. “Come inside, Chachacha,” my brother says.

“I think I can reach it next time. Leave me alone.” Tak Tak Tak always thinks he’s the boss of me, even though he’s only one minute older.

Tak Tak Tak chirps. “Taste the air.”

I do as he says and it has buzzing in it, electricity. A storm is coming. I follow him inside. We curl up together beneath the palm fronds, in each other’s warmth. Our two hearts beat together through our flanks.

“You’re a good brother, Tak Tak Tak,” I tell him with my nose.

“You’re a good brother, Chachacha,” he says in our high language, and we kiss.

We need each other. We’re lonely. We’re not supposed to be just two—we’re supposed to be many, charging across the savanna, mouths open and tongues lolling, in a great pack.

I talk to them in my dreams, in the running trill of language that is just ours.

I feel them, the tens of dogs that should be with us, their absence like missing toes.

Soon, if we don’t eat, Tak Tak Tak and I will try to eat each other. I can feel him thinking it, too. It’s in his tongue and his eyes when he looks at me. We don’t blame each other for it.