The Dog Hunters: An Apocalyptic Ice Age Story Read online

  Wilson had heard about money. He’d seen some of it. He smiled and said, “That’s absurd. What good was this money once you were dead?”

  “The dead guy didn’t get the money. It went to his family, or whoever else was designated in the policy. Those were the beneficiaries.”

  “Then it wasn’t life insurance, it was death insurance,” Wilson countered.

  “You couldn’t sell it with a name like that,” the old man said.

  Wilson smiled again.

  “What’s so funny?” the old man asked.

  “We find this money all over the place. I’ll never understand the fascination people in the Golden Age had for it. You’ve said it represented wealth, but I can’t see it. The only good thing I can see about money is that it burns. Otherwise, what good was it? At least if I’ve got goods to barter, and no one wants them, I can still use them. But what good was a sack of money if no one wanted it? Could you eat it? Or hunt with it? Or use it as a tool? And did I mention it doesn’t even make a good fire.” He held up the rifle and the empty can of tomato sauce. “This is wealth.”

  “It was different then,” his grandfather said without explanation.

  Wilson smiled again. “I’ll say it was different. In the Golden Age, people urinated and defecated in their own houses.”

  “I told you before, we used toilets.”

  “You told me about plumbing and toilet paper, but it’s still disgusting. Why all the trouble when it makes more sense to just step outside and relieve yourself?” He was laughing now.

  “That’s enough,” the old man said.

  Wilson loved his grandfather and didn’t want to make fun of him, but the beliefs they had in the Golden Age made it easy for him to see why so few had survived when the ice age began.

  The sauce began to bubble and the old man said, “Wilson, there was a time when money was everything. After the ice age started, it took me several years to accept the fact that it no longer had any value. Those first few years we would collect all we could find, as if it were going to regain its value someday.

  “One day, when Arnold Fogerty was still alive, we found an abandoned armored truck in what used to be Billerica—before Billerica got buried. We spent most of the morning trying to open it. We didn’t know someone was watching and when we finally got it opened, four men ambushed us. We shot at each other for over an hour. I killed one of those men before we got away. Now I ask myself, ‘For what?’ For something that was worthless. But to us, the people who had lived in the Golden Age...”

  Wilson had never heard this story before. He listened quietly.

  The old man continued. “I’ve killed men since. But it was because I had to. The man in the group that ambushed us over money...he was the only one I ever killed for nothing.”

  “Could a dog pull a drag?” Wilson interrupted.

  The old man looked at him for a moment then repeated his grandson’s question to make sure he’d heard it right. “Could a dog pull a drag?”

  “Yeah, pull a drag like the fishermen down there are using. But they’re using slaves.”

  “It would take more than one. You’d need several. Why?”

  Wilson shrugged and served the stew into two steel bowls.

  As an afterthought, his grandfather said, “In some places they used to use dogs to pull dogsleds.”

  “Pull what?” Wilson asked.

  “Dogsleds. They were a little like the drags the Framinghammers use, but lighter. They were used before the ice age began by people who lived up north. It was cold up there most of the year, even in the Golden Age.”

  “Was it like we have now?”

  “Sort of. But there weren’t the ruined cities we have here and I guess they had a real summer, but much of the year it was a snow wilderness and they used dogsleds to get around.”

  “What’s the difference between a dogsled and a drag?” Wilson asked, his interest aroused.

  The old man fished around in his jacket, first one pocket, then another, until he found a pencil, another artifact from the Golden Age that was gradually disappearing. “Well, dogsleds are lighter. Look here,” he said and, as best as he could remember one, he started to sketch a dogsled on the wall.

  He drew a frame and the runners and the harnesses out in front. “They looked something like this...and a team of dogs was hitched up in front...” He drew stick figure dogs. “...by this here harness rig.”

  There were no pictures of dogsleds in any of the books back in the village. Wilson realized that when his grandfather died, all these things in his head would die with him. He had to learn as much from the old man as he could in the time he had left. He reached into his pocket and held the chip.

  “How many dogs?”

  The old man thought. “Eight? Ten? I can’t remember. Maybe twelve.”

  “How’d they feed them?”

  His grandfather thought for a moment, thinking back to the Golden Age when he was a schoolboy and had learned about dogsleds and Eskimos. “Fish,” he said when it came to him. “Yeah, they usually fed the dogs dried fish.”

  Wilson quietly considered the drawing and what his grandfather had said, then he got up and sat on a desk near the window to eat.

  “They’ve finished stowing their equipment,” he said.

  On the snowpack below, the fishermen had begun their trek across the barrens, their drags pulled by the slaves.

  His grandfather joined him at the window. “Good, let’s get ready to get out of here.”

  “Slaves do not live long, prosperous lives,” Wilson remarked as he watched.

  “No one lives a long prosperous life anymore. The world has become barbaric,” the old man said, a word he had used so often it was now drained of any emotion.

  Wilson thought about the books his grandfather kept like treasures back in their village. The history books revolved around a succession of wars since the beginning of time, and they often alluded to with the ultimate horror that would have happened had a nuclear war been fought during the Golden Age. It seemed to him that the world had been just as barbaric, if not more so, back then. But he said nothing.

  “Barbaric,” the old man repeated. “The whole human race has been reduced to barbarism. You can’t imagine what the world was like before the ice age started. It was more than just these empty buildings sticking out of the snow. It was science, art, and literature. It was everything man had done in ten thousand years. But we never realized how fragile it was. Or how it could disappear before the force of nature. God, how puny we are.

  “I know things are bad,” he continued. “When the ice age started, it was worse than anyone had anticipated. In fact, it was global warming we were worried about, not an ice age. But nature took her own course. She didn’t care what we knew—or thought we knew, and we never knew as much as we thought we did. Who the hell could have known that this was going to happen? Now there are glaciers forming much further south than they thought they would or could.” He made no reference as to who “they” were. “The last I heard, they expected them to spread all the way to the Gulf. Perhaps as far south as Yucatan.”

  The Gulf. Wilson knew what the Gulf of Mexico was from his grandfather’s books. There were photographs in the books, and he liked to picture the places his grandfather talked about when he told his stories.

  “But no one expected civilization to be swept away before them, or buried, or frozen, or whatever it is that’s happening to it. It’s just disappearing off the face of the earth.”

  Wilson wondered if the Gulf could freeze. The idea that there were lands somewhere that might never freeze sounded like fairytales, no matter how often he’d heard about them.

  “Everything humanity ever accomplished is being destroyed, and it’s all going to be forgotten. It’ll make the burning of the Library at Alexandria look like a footnote falling out of history.”

  There was no explanation of what this library was. It was the first time his grandfather had ever mentioned it. Wilson
silently wondered where Alexandria was. He would look it up when he got home—or was this one more thing that only survived in his grandfather’s memories?

  “The only technology that’s going to survive is going to be whatever helps us live hand‑to‑mouth. If there’s a bigger payoff in using slaves than in maintaining motors, then men will use slaves, and an entire generation will forget what a motor is. In a few generations they’ll become mysterious objects made by a fabulous civilization from the past.”

  Wilson was confounded by his grandfather’s obsession with motors and vehicles, and as he listened to his grandfather speak, his eye kept returning to the picture of the dogsled drawn on the wall. He reached inside his pocket again and touched the computer chip for luck.

  His grandfather did not miss this move, and it deepened the remorse the old man felt. Though he and Wilson had argued about the talisman, Wilson wouldn’t give it up.

  “Why don’t you throw that thing away?” he asked. “Do you know what it is? Do you know what it did? All it did was add and subtract. It pushed information around. It did idiot work. Its only virtue was that it did it fast.”

  Wilson turned away. He didn’t want to argue with his grandfather. The old man sat glumly over his unfinished meal.

  Wilson stared out the window. The men below were on their way across the snow barrens. He and his grandfather could leave anytime.

  When he was done eating he said, “You should finish your stew.”

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” the old man said.

  Wilson shrugged. “The fishermen are gone. Are we ready to go?”

  The old man nodded and put his meal away.

  They packed their gear and the two books they had found. Together, they descended a stairwell from the thirty‑fourth floor to the twelfth where the snow level began. The floors below were filled with the seepage of melting snow from three decades, and had frozen into ice.

  They stepped out through a broken window and their white clothing blended in with the snow. They pulled white masks over their faces, and donned their cross-country skis and sunglasses.

  Instead of heading north, Wilson skied to the slab of facing the dog had pulled from the snow.

  “Where are you going?” his grandfather asked.

  From up close he was even more surprised at the ease with which the dog had dragged the slab about in the snow.

  “What are you looking at?” his grandfather asked.

  “One of the dogs pulled this out of the snow,” Wilson replied.

  The old man stared at it. “And?” he asked

  “Nothing,” Wilson said. “Let’s follow them.”

  They skied north and quickly picked up the trail of the pack. They followed it through the old Back Bay, crossing the frozen Charles River Basin, into what had once been called Cambridge.

  They skied most of the morning, passing by occasional structures tall enough to still protrude through the snow. Several times they came upon fresh spoor and knew they were closing the distance between themselves and the pack. It looked like a good day for hunting.

  By midmorning they closed to within four hundred yards of the pack. The lead dogs rooted in the snow while others stood guard. The men froze in place and the dogs did not see them. It was a clear shot for Wilson, and at this range his grandfather knew he wouldn’t miss. He kept his eyes on the pack and waited for the bark of the rifle.

  Nothing.

  He slowly turned his head toward Wilson who peered through the scope at the pack. He grew impatient and nudged him.

  Wilson shook his head and the pack moved on.

  “Why didn’t you shoot?” the old man whispered.

  “There’s time,” Wilson said in a hushed voice and skied away from his bewildered grandfather.

  “What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with the rifle?” he asked when he caught up.

  Wilson didn’t reply.

  “Tell me, why didn’t you take the shot?”

  He still wouldn’t answer, and they followed the pack, crossing into what once had been called Somerville.

  Throughout the morning, Wilson didn’t speak of the dogs. His grandfather was thankful that the wind still favored them and the dogs were still unaware they were being pursued.

  But now the pack was a half-mile ahead. If they didn’t catch up soon, it might get away.

  Making time over the open snow was difficult, but only because whenever one of the dogs turned to face them, Wilson and his grandfather had to freeze in place. Only when the entire pack moved could they again follow.

  At noon the dogs went up the south side of Tufts Hill on the old Medford‑Somerville line. Beneath the ice and snow, the ruins of Tufts University and the surrounding neighborhood were buried. Wilson and his grandfather climbed to the crest from where they could see the dogs heading north. But directly before them lay a hole in the snow. Protruding from the hole was the top of a ladder.

  “What’s that?” Wilson asked.

  The old man put his fingers to his lips.

  The call for silence made Wilson ready his rifle and look around.

  But the old man’s attention was focused on the hole.

  “What is it?” Wilson whispered.

  “Someone’s excavating.”

  They crouched silently on their skis and listened for sounds from the hole.

  To the west, a well-worn ski path that went in the direction of what had once been called Arlington. On the downside of the hill was a mound made from the snow taken from the hole, and further north the dog pack crossed the Medford plain.

  Wilson and his grandfather now had to contend with the possibility that whoever had dug the hole was still there. They were no match for a well-armed troop, and there was no place for them to hide if they were discovered on the hill. They crouched and listened for several minutes. Then, on a signal from the old man, they cautiously approached the hole: Wilson with his rifle held ready, his grandfather with an old .357 revolver in his hand. They reached the excavation’s edge and peered in.

  “What is it?” Wilson whispered.

  His grandfather crouched again and indicated that Wilson should do the same. They looked around to assure themselves they were alone.

  “It’s a mining operation,” his grandfather whispered.

  Wilson looked down into the shadows and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I saw a hole like this several years ago in what was once a town called Newton.” With a sweep of his hand the old man indicated the snowy expanse broken only by gentle rises that indicated buried hills. “You know there are houses about a hundred to two hundred feet down. But in some places it’s less. Maybe twenty or thirty feet. They dig these holes to reach them, then they mine the wood and look for salvageable items. You know: tools and stuff. Sometimes, they even find food.”

  He pointed to a collection of long steel rods with threaded ends leaning against the inside walls of the hole.

  “The guys that do this call those sounding rods, and they call themselves miners or excavators. They join the rods together with threaded sleeves, then they poke them through the snow’s crust and look for what they call ‘soft’ snow. That’s snow that hasn’t had a lot of the melts and freezes that create ice. Ice is too hard to get through and it increases the density of the burden, collapsing the structures below. Most of the houses down there are already flattened out. But with the sounding rods, they try to find houses still intact without having to turn the whole countryside over. A man once told me that the north sides of the hills, like this one, are best. They don’t get so much sunlight, so there aren’t as many melts and freezes. And when the wind blows, the unmelted snow can drift off and it isn’t likely to be as deep as the surrounding snow. The houses at the bottom of hills like this have a better chance of staying intact.”

  He peered over the edge and looked down the shaft. “It looks like they hit pay dirt.”

  “They join those rods together and feel through the snow?” Wilson asked.


  His grandfather nodded.

  “Why can’t we do something like this?”

  “It’s a big operation. We don’t have the men or the tools.”

  “Why don’t we take what the miners left here?”

  “There’s no way we could carry it all. We’d need some kind of vehicle.”

  The old man looked west, but his eyes were getting weak with the years. “Can you see anyone approaching?”

  Wilson raised his sunglasses and through the scope he scanned the trail that led west.

  “No one,” he said.

  He looked north and watched the dog pack reach the far side of the Medford plain.

  “I can’t believe anyone would have left this thing unguarded,” his grandfather said.

  “Maybe they already got everything that’s worthwhile,” Wilson said.

  “No, they’d have taken the rods,” the old man said.

  The silence was unbroken but for the sound of their own breathing and the crunch of the snow’s crust when the old man shifted his weight on his skis. Finally, he snapped off his skis and stood up and pocketed his revolver.

  “I’m going down,” he said. “Wait up here until I give you the signal to join me.”

  He went to the ladder and began his descent. Once at the bottom, he picked up an extinguished torch and reluctantly lit it with a match. Every match used was one less match in the world. No one was making them anymore.

  Four tunnels radiated out from where he stood. He chose one and cautiously followed it. It ended at a slanted roof in which the miners had made a hole. Letting his .357 lead the way, he stepped through the hole and stepped inside an attic. He looked around briefly then stepped back out and went to the second tunnel, then the third, and finally the fourth, but he stopped at the bottom of the shaft and gestured up to Wilson each time he passed, to let him know he was okay.

  On a signal from his grandfather, Wilson made a quick survey of his surroundings, made sure there was no one in sight, took off his skis, then made his own descent, forty feet to the bottom of the hole.

  The old man stood over the remains of a campfire the miners had left. He kicked the ashes and shook his head. “They burned books to make a fire,” he said to Wilson.