Survival of a Mutant Dog in a Zombie Apocalypse

Old Men and Kind Smiles

"I was once called Kodak."

By a kind, sickly man who gave me all that I could have ever asked for. I'd grown up among the streets, scrounging food in the alleys. Kicked and scorned by the nicely dressed humans as they walked by. Scowling at my dirty fur and scrawny legs.

But humans are strange. Not all, but some.

I found the odd group by accident, running away from a junkyard dog that had been raised to chase off intruders. I found many of them during my life. However, unlike the humans I'd always known. These ones looked like me.

Dirty, thin and desperate. Yet they looked happier than the humans who laughed and flaunted their wealth to each other like a bird in the spring.

I had always been stranger than the rest of my kind. Dogs- I mean. I didn't care about loyalty, because I had never been given any. And I didn't know a thing about defending who or what was mine, because I never had it.

But, the man they called Alfred was strange. When I tried to sneak by, unseen, he tossed an old bone with a bit of meat left on it. His shaking hands still ruffling through his little bag to pull out and toss another.

I didn't want it at first, I had known my fair share of poisoning by humans. But it smelled good, and something about this Alfred's wrinkled face and kind smile made it feel safe. I suppose, that it was my old friend Alfred that kept me sane long after he passed.

"I'd have been lost without him."