The wives we share our dens with welcome us gladly because they too are short of number, their own males scarce even before the dwindling of the world, but they cannot give us human children, cannot keep our lines from drifting toward wildness.
They cannot, and if we complain they cry bitterly, for they do not see why our children should look only like us, why they should not also take after their mothers.
They say this, but it is not their race that is disappeared, and so our sorrow is not theirs to share. They do not mind their children who are only wolves, only cougars, only bears and boars, because what else should they desire but more of themselves, new packs made stronger by our mingled blood and seed?
When the meeting is over—when the moon enters the waning that awaits it on the other side of our words—only then do we give up one language for another, to come together as one people, one troubled nation of tribes. As one mouth we combine our voices, a cacophony rising as if to crack the earth, as if to shake the heavens, as if to loose the turning moon from her mount and bring it crashing down upon us, the only mass heavy enough to bury our giant grief.
There is this big noise, and then afterward there is my prone form, whole of body but spirit-quaked, hope-bloodied.
All around me, my wolf-children gather, licking my face and chest, pulling loose what matters they find fouled upon my fur, while beside them my beast-headed boys stroke my coat with clawed fingers, make what few words their dumb tongues can make.
All these children, these many pups, and yet gathered to me are no true sons, no sons I wanted, in their place rise only these altered generations, these boys who will not grow up to be their father, not without the mothers I wanted them to have.
And if I refuse to stand? If, like the other alphas, I demand to be left here at the meeting place, the high rock of the woods? If I tell my sons and grandsons that I have failed, that I am no longer worthy to lead their pack, what then follows my quitting them, their family?
Then the song of farewell. Then the song of forgiveness. Then the song of funeral.
Then the song of their teeth upon my throat, upon my haunch and perineum and tendons, the soft spots of the easy kill.
Then in my mind only the face of my own father, the last human visage I saw, which I never again brought forth upon this wilding world, despite all my efforts to prevent his line’s extinction, despite all my attempts to raise these lost boys in his image.
Virgil, Virotte, Vitalis
Starting from the middle of the country, we follow the rumors, the talk that there are no more women, no more mothers or daughters, none remaining to bear our future forth except those afloat beyond the last lands of the west, collected aboard a ship, some tanker meant to carry them away, to keep them safe.
What I know, despite those rumors: There are no women left, except the one beside me, this daughter disguised as a son, who I must somehow see aboard that ship.
On our way west, I cull her hair every few days, steal her layers of clothing from abandoned storefronts, thick shirts and thermal underwear and patterned button-ups distracting enough so that what lies beneath might be harder to see, to suss out and desire. As we walk, I tell her that once this sandy stretch of waste was a plain state, was all fields of waving wheat and corn. Mile after mile, I offer her some bit of this world I’ve known, some memory of what once lay on either side of the wide freeways littered with abandoned cars. For a thousand foot-sore miles I do this, not running out of stories until we cross the last state line, the last desert. Until we enter the last city, perched at the far end of the earth, where we climb down to the shore, our descent cut with broken roads providing unsure passage, switchbacking to the crowded docks leading out above the tossing water.
And there in the distance: The tanker we’d hoped to catch, too quickly departed, left without my daughter.
What choice do we have? No other option but to go out onto the docks anyway, to push through this great crowd of men, only and always men, all armed, all fat with fury, all crowding the shore or else wading out into the oil-black of the water, its brackish thickness, their voices begging, cajoling, demanding the ship to turn back, to return to them these last few mothers and daughters, these final receptacles for the making of legacy, a continuation of our failure.
We push through, my daughter’s hand in my hand, in the one not clutched around my revolver, my own six chances to clear the way. I pull my daughter close, wrap her tight in the leather of my duster, and in the distance the tanker taunts us with its purpose, its promise to stay afloat until all us men are gone, until at least the worst of us have passed, leaving the world for those more deserving of its inheritance—
And then my daughter saying, Look.
Then her eyes peeking out from the blanket of my coat, her hand pointing over the water, and her saying, Look, Daddy.
There, Daddy. There.
How few they are: All the good women of the world. All gathered except for my daughter, who should be among their number.
How few, and how far, but perhaps still close enough.
I nod, open my duster, tell her to get ready.
I tell her, When I start shooting, you run for the end of the dock, and no matter what you keep running.
I tell her, You swim as fast as you can, and pray they rescue you.
She sobs once as I raise the heavy hammer of my revolver, but there is no time for goodbye, and no other word I wish to say that our thousand shared miles did not already allow. I push her out of my duster, follow her into the space my bullets tear free of the men blocking her way, and with each shot I get her one falling body closer to the end of the dock, our escape hung out over the water.
And then my hand scrabbling fresh shells from my pocket, then my hand reloading, then six more shots making six holes in six men, making ten feet of running-space.
And then my daughter, covered in the blood of those who would want only what she is, never who, men waiting to mar her, to tear her away, to hold back her body they desire.
And then reload and fire, reload and fire, and then we run until there are no more men ahead, until we tumble off the edge of the dock, fall far into the cold waves, where the ocean fills my mouth and nostrils, drenches my heavy clothes so tight I can barely kick to get my head above the surface, to suck again the sickened air.
What I know: My daughter is no longer nearby, no longer close at hand, but surely she can’t be lost.
As I am dragged ashore by the kin of the men I have struck down, as they beat the angry stocks of their rifles against my face and chest, as they take from me what satisfaction they could not take from my daughter, then I tell myself that I know she swims on unmolested, that without us men to hold her back she kicks by the buoys that mark the end of this world’s dominion, makes what powerful strokes she needs to take her out past the breakwater, toward the waiting tanker and then into the future, that far flatness beyond.
Walker, Wallace, Warren
Now to make a memorial, a memory meant to outlast those recently gone from my head, lost through the holes eaten by this new wind blowing across my farm, bleached blank by the cloudy water that climbs thick and sluggish from my well. In goggles and duster, I gather my tools, go out of the house and into the ashy remains of the yard, this family orchard once lush and full of apples.
And all around me: Only stilled wood, dead branches over dirty ground. Only this lonely world grown atop my buried children, my planted wife.
With awl and adze, with hammer and chisel, I carve my oldest out of the first tree. I remake him as best I remember, shaping the roundness of his cheeks, grooving out the spaces between his teeth and toes.