The Last Dog on Earth Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Adrian J Walker

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Bosh

  Marvellous Binoculars

  Pack

  Another Life

  Smell

  Reasons to be Fearful

  Purples

  Worry

  Fear

  Shit Bit

  Target

  Consequences

  Part 2

  Her

  The Gift of Not Caring

  Connection

  Mira’s Place

  Stars

  Fixing Beardsley

  Collective 17

  Looking Back

  Fire

  Where the Day Begins

  Alone

  The Dome

  The Bit With the Wolf

  South Bank

  Death

  Jenkins

  London’s Fuckfest of Smells

  Charlie’s Barge

  Norfolk

  The Wrong Path

  The Door

  The Crossing

  Part 3

  Children

  Routine

  Protection

  Sex

  Work

  Human

  Bliss

  Sunrise

  Work

  Choice

  Story

  Shapes

  Touch

  David

  Magic

  Time

  Kill

  England

  Epilogue

  Read on for an extract from The End of the World Running Club

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The year is 2021, and London has fallen.

  This is the story of:

  A nervous man, fearful of straying too far from home.

  An abandoned orphan, who needs to be taken to safety.

  And one incredibly sweary dog, who just wants to chase squirrels…

  When the world is going to the dogs, will YOU be the one to take a stand?

  About the Author

  Adrian J Walker was born in the bush suburbs of Sydney, Australia, in the mid-’70s. After his father found a camper van in a ditch, he renovated it and moved his family back to the UK, where Adrian was raised. Ever since he can remember, Adrian has been interested in three things: words, music and technology, and when he graduated from the University of Leeds, he found a career in software.

  He lives in London with his wife and two children. To find out more visit: www.adrianjwalker.com

  ALSO BY ADRIAN J WALKER

  The End of the World Running Club

  For Bronte, and all the dogs of Peckham Rye Park

  PART 1

  Bosh

  LINEKER

  The machine goes on and – BOSH! – we’re away. This is a good bit, definitely. I get the smell first, graveyard dirt, burned grass and old lemons fingering their way up my snout. Then I hear the gurgle and roar of the water, the drip, drip, drip into the pot and I open my eyes and see the green light in the kitchen. That’s another good bit. It’s 5 a.m., still dark outside, but my head’s up, tail wagging, looking at the door, waiting as the coffee fills, waiting, waiting, waiting …

  And then, finally, the door opens and there he is. There he fucking is in all his fucking glory. What a body. What a mind. What a man. What a fucking god.

  I’m skittering and sliding, halfway across the floor before I even know I’ve left my bed. And he’s rubbing his hairy face and scratching that huge arse of his, releasing that heavenly aroma of salt, peat and tripe that’s all for me and before he knows what’s happening I’m in the air and bouncing at him – bounce, bounce, bounce until he gets down and gives me a scratch, both hands behind my ears, face-to-face so I get the sweet fog of his breath, a rich soup of saliva and half-digested food that’s been marinating beautifully for the past eight hours. And it’s too much, I just have to lick him, so I do, and he lets me, and it’s fucking brilliant.

  I love him. Reg. My master. Without fail, the best bit.

  Reg gets his coffee – UHT cream and three sugars for Reg, being a man of substance – while I scurry in a daze of ecstasy around his frayed slippers. He drinks it and sighs – a good bit because here comes more breath, more bliss for us down here on the linoleum. I’m reminded of what he ate last night, which is usually something hot with meat and a lot of cheese or bread or spices – oh fuck me those spices, like ants exploding up my nostrils – and I’m dizzy just thinking about it. Because I’m hungry. I’m always hungry. This is in no small way down to the fact that our gaff smells constantly of food – fermented cow’s milk, mostly. It’s our very own house of cheese. But it’s also because I am a dog, and therefore my throat, my belly and my tongue are like a single organism; a gnawing, insatiable beast that only lives to consume any fucking thing it comes into contact with. Meat, vegetables, eggs, grain, wood, hair, shit – yes please, lots of that, ta very much – meat, concrete, insects, spiders, chicken skin, fish skin, my own skin, Reg’s skin, fruit, old fruit, rotten fruit, rotten meat, oh yes indeed, crockery, bone, leather, plastic, polyester, wool, sock, pant, shoe, skirting board, and did I mention meat?

  All of it. Down my gob, bish bash bosh, thank you and good night.

  Except apples. I can’t fucking stand apples.

  Anyway. I’m hungry, and Reg, God bless his fetid socks, knows this all too well. So he fills my bowl.

  Now, I will admit that there is an element of tension at this point in proceedings. I have no idea what I’m going to get for breakfast. It could be dry, it could be wet. It could be some delicious slop from a plate in the fridge, or fat-smeared crusts from his bacon sandwich. My belly beast is straining to feed and it has no idea what it’s going to get. I can’t control it, and the anticipation is killing me.

  Know this about dogs: this is how we spend most of our existence. We are endlessly at the mercy of things beyond our control. Hunger, thirst, heat, sex, sleep, itching, violence, flying objects, scent, meat. Something’s always there leading us on to the next moment. Act and react, that’s what we do.

  So I stand on the brink of this new world of breakfast, trembling like a pilgrim father in the waters of Cape Cod.

  And then it comes and the smell smashes into me and my mouth’s flooded and it doesn’t even matter any more. A fucking good bit. My bowl’s on the floor and I’m in it, chomping it, inhaling it. By the time it’s done, I can barely remember who I am or what it was I just ate, and, quite frankly, I couldn’t give a shit.

  Nice bit of water for pud – lovely – and I’m off again, spring in my step, belly beast sated for the time being. What’s next? Reg has opened the curtains by now so I get up on my hind legs, paws against the glass of the balcony doors so I can see out. We’re so high up I can see for miles. My entire kingdom is laid out before me in the creeping dawn; the roads, streets and terraces crawling about, knotted together like worms in turned soil. I know it all by heart. Every shrub and hedgerow in The Rye, every crevice and tar-caked bin on the high street, every piss-stained corner, every burned-out car, every fallen, vine-strewn building, every smashed window and human skeleton. I know it all, and I fucking love it.

  My name’s Lineker and I live in South London. I don’t know what I am. Bit of this, bit of that, bit of the other. Terrier, retriever, hound. I never knew my dad, and my mum’s just a big warm, milky memory – her tongue on my brow, pink and wet and smelling of heaven, me crowding against her tits with the rest of them little fuckers, pulling out that rich white elixir and feeling my strength swell. Ah, me old mum. Pro
bably kicked the bucket now, I expect.

  So no, haven’t got a Scooby what my breed is, pardon the pun. I used to hear people say I was ‘Heinz 57’, on account of the beans, which, to be completely honest with you, is confusing, not to mention insulting. I’m not beans and I’m not a watered-down version of other dogs – I’m an original. Special edition. Custom shop. Mould broken. One in a fucking million.

  What I do know – what I am fairly fucking sure about, as it happens – is that I am the last dog on earth.

  I know!

  Me and Reg – my master, my two-plates (plates of meat, feet, keep up) – we’re bachelors. We live alone in our palace – sixth floor of a Peckham high-rise with stairs so dank with urine I could swoon. Forty, fifty years of the stuff, all spread about on top of each other, just amazing. Anyway, it’s just us. We don’t have time for ladies. Too busy.

  Actually, when I say we don’t have time, that’s not strictly true. Little porky. I would have time, it’s just, you know, there aren’t any ladies to have the old time with. No skirt for Lineker any more, ho hum, woe is my poor old todger, etc., etc.

  Reg? Well, I can’t speak for him but I couldn’t tell you when he last had a female two-plates back in Casa del Formaggio, even before things got quiet out there. Don’t know why. Fair enough, he doesn’t match your average Prince Charming photofit and you wouldn’t hear many gussets slapping onto the balcony tiles if he ever crooned up in that voice of his, which I’m afraid has the timbre of a bookish mole – that adenoidal tenor you associate with cardigans, electronics catalogues and notebooks full of train numbers but which I think is simply the mark of a man who knows his fucking onions.

  Yeah, Reg is prime material in my book. Tall, wide, hairy, lovely guffs and a huge heart – almost huge enough to match his breath, which is fucking enormous. It’s beyond me why he’s not been snapped up, but there you go. What do I know?

  Maybe it’s because he works so hard. He’s a writer, you see. An author. A wordsmith. That’s why he’s awake every day before dawn, scribbling away in that book of his to crack out a few pages before we head out. I’ll wander around and have a snooze somewhere, floating in breakfast’s dreams. I’ll slumber till he’s done, unless he decides to masturbate, of course, in which case I am very much awake. It is a privilege to witness this, an honour. So I sit up, back straight, paws together in solemn reflection as this beautiful act unfolds. I tell you, it’s enough to make a grown dog weep.

  What else about Reg … oh, yes, Reg’s favourite thing is football, or rather, a very short period of football history spanning the late ’80s and early ’90s, during which the English football team got further than usual in the World Cup. That’s why I’m called Lineker, after his hero, Gary. He watches old tapes of the matches, and one in particular that ends in a penalty shoot-out. Every time he cheers them on as if he doesn’t know how it’s going to end. Sometimes even I’m surprised when they fail, which they always do.

  So that’s Reg: writing, football and me.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. How does yours truly know so much about all of this? I am, after all, just a dog. I understand. You like asking yourselves questions like that, don’t you? You clever little monkeys.

  How best to answer? Hum hum … well, couple of ways I could do it: I could try to explain to you how we think in different speeds, or how we can tell what you’re thinking just by looking at the way your shoulders slump, or how we talk to you and to each other, not just with sounds but with smells and looks and the way we position our bodies (which, actually, isn’t a whole lot different to you).

  I could try to tell you how dogs don’t just pick up fleas and sticks but everything. Things you never see, like the quiver of a cat’s whisker (don’t, just don’t, get me started) or the flash in a man’s eye that tells me he’s nervous, or excited, or that he’s about to do something he shouldn’t. I could try to tell you that every little thing you do, everything you say, every little expression that flickers upon your chops: it all goes in these furry noggins and that’s where it stays, whether you like it or not. (Me, I like it. I like it very much indeed, thank you.)

  I could try telling you what it’s like when we find ourselves awake in the middle of the night, triggered by nothing more than a tightening in the air, as if space has been suddenly gripped by some unknown hand, and that this twist in the fabric of things carries with it messages encoded in ways that cannot be turned into words, and we have to get up and see what’s what.

  I could try to explain things in this way, using simple sentences and facts, but sometimes plain language just does not cut the mustard.

  Poetry, however – now there’s a mustard cutter. That’ll chop your Coleman’s right down the middle.

  Now I … ahem … I dabble in the old poetry myself, as it happens – STOP LAUGHING – I do. It’s hard not to when you live with a literary giant such as Reg. I’ve picked up the craft and I practise for hours, looking out of our window at the city and the infinite shapes and colours it makes. I’ve had a little go at explaining how exactly I know all these things, and so far this is the best I can come up with.

  So here, if you’ll humour me, is my poetic meditation upon the mysteries of canine intuition.

  The world howls.

  Yeah. You’re disappointed. I’m sorry. Really, I am – I hate it when you’re disappointed. Makes me feel fucking awful if you want the truth of it. But … bollocks … what can I say? That’s all I’ve got right now.

  Gulp.

  Don’t worry, I’ll keep trying, I promise.

  Anyway, the point is I do – know about all this stuff, I mean. So don’t be surprised or scared if I happen to know certain things about you; whatever it is you think you’ve done, you naughty monkey, I still think you’re fucking magic.

  Now, where was I? Oh yeah, life! Our fucking brilliant, stupendous life.

  After breakfast, Reg and I hit The Rye.

  Peckham Rye is where we take our walks, Reg and me. It’s what you might call my territory, my turf, my manor. Not exclusively mine, of course. Plenty of other dogs tread The Rye – at least they used to. I can still smell most of them, still tell where and when they took their last pisses before … well, I’ll get to that in a bit.

  It’s winter now so our walks are cold. I don’t mind it. It’s not as though summer’s much to write home about these days anyway. Winter’s all right by me. And the smells. We’ll get to smells too.

  Quite often I’ll lose track of time on The Rye. I’ll find myself deep in the tall grass, dodging this way and that, jumping up occasionally so I can get my bearings and see where Reg is, chasing those little wisps of things that have been and gone either the night before or decades past. And then I’ll stop and I wonder where I’ve been. There’s nothing but the blades rustling and the heavy clouds brooding above. Sometimes, I swear, I even forget who I am.

  And then I remember: I’m the last dog on earth.

  Then I hear Reg’s whistle, sharp as a magpie, and it all comes back and I’ll dart out to meet him.

  We usually have to collect a few things afterwards. Reg has his favourite haunts, of course; very predictable, my Reg. Doesn’t take us into places we’ve never been before, no shops we haven’t already been round a million times, stairways we’ve not checked, doors we’ve not already opened. And he’s punctual, too. Never one to be late, this fella, oh no. If we’re out for too long he gets anxious, quickens his step and lengthens his stride. Got to get back bang on the dot. Solid as a rock, he is. As a rock.

  Once inside it’s free time, really. He might give me a snack and something for himself. Cup of Rosie or a King Lear for his lordship, depending on his mood. Then it’s more writing for him and more nap time for yours truly. By now I’m properly pooped, so I slump down on the sofa and drift away to the scribbling of his pencil, already ravaged by the morning, and of the fact that this is and will be a day like every other day of our glorious lives.

  Marvellous Binoculars />
  REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL

  3RD DECEMBER 2021

  Your own problems always outweigh those of the world.

  I am looking out at a dead city. A black hole where once a hundred million stars shimmered – the happy lights of homes, offices, restaurants, pubs and cars. Their absence should dismay me but, in fact, it is only the absence of one which does.

  I have a feeling that Beardsley is on the move. Either that or he is dead.

  I hope he is dead.

  Beardsley is not his real name, of course, just the one I gave him. It could be a man or a woman, or men, or women. He could even be a family, though I doubt it. I cannot imagine the technicalities of raising children here now.

  Shilton looks a little dim tonight, too. One or two of his bulbs dead, I expect. Either that or he’s conserving them for fuel. I wonder where he gets his supplies? Pearce looks all right and Butcher’s erratic as usual, but Beardsley … well, he’s not been on for five nights now.

  Perhaps you’re sitting in the wrong position, Reginald, I thought to myself when I first noticed. Unlikely, I thought back, but I recalibrated, just to be sure.

  Always be within reach of a tape measure. That’s a good rule for the book.

  Diagonal distance from Reginald’s left eyeball to left corner of balcony window = 35⅛ inches (I’m an imperial man): check.

  Diagonal distance from Reginald’s right eyeball to balcony door handle = 31¾ inches: check.

  Seat height = 18⅞ inches: check.

  Gaffer tape strip on seat matches gaffer tape strip on floor matches gaffer tape strip at base of balcony door: check.

  Window clean: check.

  Straight back, head facing forwards: check.

  Commence light count.

  Shilton: check

  Pearce: check

  Walker: check

  Butcher: check

  Parker: check

  Wright: check

  Waddle: check

  Gascoigne: check

  Platt: check

  Lineker: that’s us, check

  Beardsley: nothing.