3002

New York, August, 3002

"Don't cry..." I cooed rocking Nettie in my arms. My "sister" was small, only seven, but my twelve year old self was not much larger. Her body lay heavy on my legs. We crunched between two trash receptacles and hoped the soldiers wouldn't find us. Or the rebels for that matter. I brushed her dirty matted brown hair out of the way. "It's gonna be okay." She sniffed and curled closer to me. She tried so hard to be brave.

"Jamie, can I have food?" She asked softly. Her stomach rumbled against mine.

I pulled pieces of a bagel out of my pocket. "Sure." I tore it up carefully, giving her small pieces. She sucked on them. Her teeth were mostly black, and most of the front ones were chipped. Not that mine were much better. We'd both fallen and fought with many things, animals and soldiers alike. Even now, I had just come back from food hunting and found this little angel fighting off a dog with her golf club. It infuriated me. I grabbed an old toaster and strangled it with the chord. She was crying so hard, and it strengthened my skinny malnourished arms.

It lay dead a few feet from our small den.

"Are you still hungry?" I asked Nettie. She thought about it, then admitted to me she was. "How about some meat?" I suggested.

"Jamie no, not the dog!" She gasped. "It's gross and stinky."

I slid her off my lap and grabbed my knife. It was a long kitchen knife, but I made a makeshift sheath for it out of an old wallet and some other junk in an alley a few miles over. We had moved since then. I grabbed the carcass and hauled it away from Nettie's eyes. I skinned it as carefully as I could, trying not to inhale.

A filthy bandana wrapped around my mouth. "Here." Nettie whispered tying it around my nose and mouth.

I nodded my thanks and gestured for her to go start a fire. She scampered away on bare feet. I continued slicing through the tough flesh of the skin and bone heap of fur. I laid the skin out on a black topped trash bin and let the sun dry it. I cut the meat into small chunks, and carefully put one on the tip of my knife, and made my way to Nettie's fire.

"You're not gonna eat it are you?" She asked.

I thought about it. She was right. If I got sick, who would protect her? "Hold this for a few." I handed her the knife. I rummaged through a pile of garbage and finally came across an old birdcage. Someone had used it for an old art project, but it still had a lock so it would do. I knelt a few feet from the old dog and waited. After what seemed like hours on my knees, a rat the size of a housecat came scampering out of an old apartment, having smelled the fresh meat. I jumped on it, and forced it into the cage suffering only a minor cut on my left thumb. Then I returned to Nettie, who had finished cooking the meat. I took it from her and shoved it in the cage. The rat devoured it.

"Now we wait. If he lives, we eat the meat." I explained to her.

"Oh. I thought we were going to have a pet." She said thoughtfully.

I laughed. "You're my only pet." I said patting her head. "Ew, why is this so sticky?" I asked.

She shrugged. We would have to wait until the next rain to get rid of it.

***

A few days later, the rat was still alive, if annoying. The dog skin had dried more or less and was as good a blanket as we could get. Nettie tried to argue, but as the nights became cooler, I made her wrap it around her scrawny shoulders.

"Only for the winter, until I find something better." I promised.

"But it smells!" She whined into my shoulder.