The Dire Dogs

We always believed that dogs were “man's best friend”. This simple statement seemed to hold true. We loved them, cherished them, and often avoided having our own offspring so that we could care for our loyal and furry companions. What we didn't realize, or what we hadn't prepared for was the fact that betrayal never comes from our enemies, but from the closest allies. We learned this lesson all to well as reality destroyed our preconceived notions about loyalty.

It all started in a small village on the border between Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. A Canadian pharmaceutical company habitually made campaign contributions to the Belizian president in exchange for overlooking the disposal of a the very volatile and very potent hormone in Belizian waters. The Canadians believed that Central America was far away and what happened there had little effect on the far north.

Nature is a bit more interconnected and way more vengeful then the Canadian world view had expected. The hormone made it's way into the ground waters of Belize City and traveled up Booth's river to the town of Azul. The town had been experiencing a rabies outbreak in their wild dog population. These dogs often drank from Booth's river and soon were exposed to the unstable hormone.

It was a match that was made in hell. The hormone supercharged both the virus and the physical stature of the wild dogs. They went from small mutts to near dire wolves in a few days. What made the entire outbreak worse was their enhanced physical conditioning that allowed the infected dogs to travel 90 miles in a day. That was three times what a healthy wolf would be able to travel. The coup-de-grace however came when the virus became airborne. Thousands of dogs were infected within hours and that number grew exponentially as our beloved pets became our most feared nightmare.

When the Americas figured out what happened it was too late. Evolution had played it's hands and through the process of “natural selection through conflict” only the strongest “War Dogs” survived and reproduced. Worse the gestation period was reduced from several weeks to several days and the growth period from a few years to a few weeks. Entire generation of War Dogs hunted us and only the strongest and most ferocious survived.

The worst were the Chihuahuas and poodles. The became roving gangs of fear driven hunters. First they mercilessly turned against their owners. Those that escaped formed savage packs. They tore apart many of the “Karens” of the Americas. It was reported that they brought down entire cattle and ripped into the carcass with an insatiable hunger. It was even said that the poodles would have “blood orgies” in the dead animals eating and mating while drenched in blood. Once considered the pocket pets of the elite, the animals dismembered bovine and human flesh with infamous terror.

We attempted to stem the tide of savagery. First we sought a cure, hoping our intellect would save us. Then we resorted to brutal violence. Our guns and fire bombs just killed the weak however, and taught the dogs of war to dig burrows and hunt at night. Governments fell as the armies across the globe seized power and declared martial law. Humans, tired and in shock, complied with the martial law as they were desperate for any kind of direction.

After many years humanity began to slowly understand that they were no longer the apex predator of the world. They understood that their time had passed. Humanity also realized there was little chance the human race, or any other land animal, would survive. The last survivors had locked away on their floating cities. They had surrendered land to the beast. Many of them laughed at the cruel irony of it all. 12,000 years ago a human took a wolf pup as a pet. It was just one pebble tossed into a calm lake. The ripples of that stone spread through time. It spread through millennia of human eugenics of the canine genome. We bred them for characteristics we liked. We molded them to meet our needs. We changed there form and took away their hunter spirit. We bred out their ferocity and their vicious nature. Ironically, 12,000 years later the virus gave them all of those traits back. These traits had been enhanced and multiplied by the perfect storm and by our own hand.

In the end we thought they were our “pets”, but in reality, were our doom.