New Flash Fiction: Post Apocalyptic Poodle by Sarena Ulibarri

As it happens, I've a dachshund who came from a rescue charity but who I suspect is actually an alien in an unfortunate disguise, so I can well empathise with the characters in this tale (or should it be tail?): Post Apocalyptic Poodle by Sarena Ulibarri. Sarena is a graduate of the Clarion Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers' Workshop and earned an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, The Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere.


Post Apocalyptic Poodle
by Sarena Ulibarri

 
Post-apocalyptic Poodle has no master. She runs free in the ruins of her former master’s city. She ravages the Dumpsters, the roadside recycling, the industrial bins. Other survivors skulk around the alleyways and snarl at her. She rolls in mud until it cakes her hypoallergenic locks, positions sticks along her back like spikes, and snarls back.
            
Before the end, Post-apocalyptic Poodle was a lap dog named Twinkle Toes. All she ever saw of the city was the backyard, and the fifteen minute stretch of road on the way to the grooming salon. Occasionally, she got to ride in the shopping cart at a massive and overstimulating supermarket. She was no one. Just another bark in the night wind, just another scent on the grass. But after – after – she was still here. And now, these streets are hers.

Post-apocalyptic Poodle runs with packs of other Post-apocalyptic Dogs: the Bulldogs, the Pitts, the Dobermans from the other side of the tracks. She is fierce; she is alpha. They all respect her. She romps with them, determined to repopulate the world with Poobulls and Pittles and Doberpoos. Except, of course, that she was spayed long ago. 
            
She wonders sometimes what became of the other poodles she knew from the grooming salon, and that Maltese with the high whine, and the Schnauzer that shivered on the table so much his toenails clicked. She wonders if they blew away in ash like her master. They were not tough, like her.
            
Post-apocalyptic Poodle leads her gang toward the scavenge of a lifetime: to the supermarket where she sometimes rode in the child’s seat of the shopping cart. It’s the Holy Grail, the El Dorado of the Apocalypse, and she’s been searching for it ever since she first dug her way out of the yard. Now, she has found it, and she leads her pack there with promises of deli meat and cheese puffs.
            
Only, they’re not the first ones there. Her arch-nemesis, Dystopia Dachshund, has beat her there, and he stands guard at the automatic front doors while his pack ravages the supermarket. A collar too big for him hangs heavy around his neck, with rusty spikes and a bright pink rabies tag. Post-apocalyptic Poodle narrows her eyes at him and growls. He wags his tail in response. 
            
The tussle is fast, but ferocious. Post-apocalyptic Poodle loses, yet manages to dart into the supermarket anyway, racing down the cereal aisle. Dystopia Dachshund’s pack blocks her escape on either end of the aisle.
            
Post-apocalyptic Poodle blinks up at the lights, the swaying sign, the rows of cereal boxes. This isn’t the supermarket where she rode in the shopping cart, she realizes. The aisles are shorter, the symbols on the signs are different. Dystopia Dachshund gives a commanding bark, and his pack closes in on her. But the sudden understanding that there are other supermarkets spurs her on. Post-apocalyptic Poodle charges toward the cereal boxes. They teeter, tumble, spill open. Dystopia Dachshund and his crew slaver at the loops and marshmallows littering the floor, and Post-apocalyptic Poodle darts past them and out the door. She leads her pack away.
            
​Dystopia Dachshund may have thwarted her this time, but there is at least one more supermarket out there. Post-apocalyptic Poodle will find it, and she will live and fight another day.