Population Zero

Wrath James White
Prologue

Honey's stomach undulated beneath Todd's hand as he rubbed her bloated belly. He could see the faint impressions of little faces and tiny paws stretching her flesh as the puppies moved around inside of her. The Golden Retriever had crawled back into the far corner of the closet, panting heavily, struggling to give birth. Blood and fluid dripped from her vagina while she paced around the tiny closet in a tight circle, squatting occasionally as if she were trying to defecate. Her body quivered and her legs shook from the exertion.

"Come on, Honey. You're doing fine, girl."

He filled her water bowl and Honey lapped feverishly at the water.

"That's a good girl."

Todd stroked her fur while she continued to drink.

He was excited. Honey was his best friend. She had been his since he was just a year old. Todd could not remember a time when she hadn't been by his side. She was, for the most part, his only friend. His mother was deeply religious and had homeschooled him rather than send him to public school, saving him from a "heathenous secular education."

"It's no wonder there's all these kids out there shooting each other, using drugs, alcohol, and smoking cigarettes now that they've taken the bible out of school. They won't even let the kids pray! Then they teach them sex education and wonder why they're all having under-aged premarital sex and making babies out of wedlock. There's no way I'd let my baby go to one of those godless schools. Everything you need to know is right here in the bible."

He wasn't allowed to play with any of the neighborhood kids, which his mother regarded as sinners, deviants, and criminals. So, Honey had been his only playmate. She slept at the foot of his bed, to his mother's chagrin, but the one time his mother had locked the dog out of Todd's room he'd cried himself hoarse. His mother had finally relented and Honey had been sleeping with him ever since. When she had gotten pregnant he'd been so excited. Puppies would mean even more friends to help cure his agonizing loneliness.

Honey began licking herself and then laid down on her side. The first puppy slid out still encased in a sack of amniotic fluid. Honey licked and nibbled at the sack as she pushed out the next small sack. She ate the membrane off of each puppy, as she continued to push them out – chewing them free and then licking them clean. Todd was so happy he was in tears.

"They're beautiful, Honey. Look at all of your babies. You did it, girl."

He reached out and rubbed the dog's head as Honey laid back down, still panting from exhaustion.

"Ah, Jesus! Look at that mess in there!"

Todd's dad stood behind him, still wearing his muddy work boots and his grey Dickies shirt with the sweat stains in the armpits.

"Mom says you shouldn't take the lord's name in vain. I'll clean it up, Dad. Aren't they pretty though? I watched the whole thing. You should have seen it. It was amazing!"

"Yeah? How many of them are there?"

Todd looked back over at Honey who was still cleaning her puppies.

"Eleven."

"Eleven? Jesus, we can't afford to feed eleven puppies. We can barely afford Honey."

"But, Dad, we can't sell 'em!"

"You'd better hope we can sell 'em or else they're going to the animal shelter."

Todd began to cry.

"No. No, Dad. You can't. No."

"Come here, son."

Todd walked over to his father who knelt down beside him.

"Look, son, I know you want to keep them but we can't afford to feed them."

"But on T.V. they said they kill puppies at the animal shelters. They put 'em to sleep."

"Well, if they didn't there'd be dogs and cats everywhere. We'd be drowning in 'em. They'd eat up all of the food and they'd be dying in the streets of starvation and disease. Putting them to sleep is the humane thing to do. It keeps 'em from suffering. In the wild they had predators that helped keep their population down but since we took 'em out of the wild there's nothing to keep 'em from just continuing to reproduce. There's no wolves or lions or anything to compete with for food or kill off the old, the sick and the weak ones."

"Well, what about us?"

"That's what I'm talking about. We help keep their numbers down painlessly and humanely by putting them to sleep when people can't take care of them."

Todd looked back over at Honey. The puppies were now blindly reaching for her nipples, trying to suckle. Honey nudged them gently with her nose to help them find her teats. They looked so weak and helpless. Todd couldn't imagine them being sent to the pound and murdered. He began to sob. His father reached out and hugged him close.

Todd knew that his father loved him even if he didn't always understand him.

"I know. It's hard. But it's the right thing. We just can't afford to feed them all. Either we eat or they do."

"But what about us? We don't have any predators either. What happens when there are too many people?"

"Well, we have diseases and wars and disasters."

"But we keep curing all the diseases."

"There's a whole bunch that we haven't cured."

"The newsman said that there's like six billion people alive right now. Only a hundred thousand people died in the Gulf war."

"A hundred thousand is a lot of people."

"Not compared to six billion."

"Well, there're more wars than that going on. There are wars going on all over the place."

"That's still not enough. If we have to kill Honey's puppies to keep there from being too many dogs then why aren't we doing the same with people?"

"Todd!"

Todd stared up at his father. He could see the man's frustration as he rubbed a coarse calloused hand over his furrowed brow. He was visibly exhausted. His father let out a sigh and reached down to wipe a tear from Todd's eyes. Todd knew that he was just speaking out of anger and frustration but it just didn't make sense to him.

Todd stared back at his father, waiting for an answer, waiting for him to make it all make sense to him. Waiting for his father to explain why it was okay to put his puppies to sleep because there were too many of them while humans were still multiplying like roaches. Past the tears still welling in his son's eyes, Todd's father could see the anger boiling there. He didn't know what to do about it.

"Son, you shouldn't talk like that. What would your Mom say if she heard you talkin' about billions of people dyin'?

That's not very Christian."

"But what's going to happen, Daddy? What's going to happen when there's no more room? What happens when there's not enough food for everybody?"

"I don't know, baby. I'm not sure. But that's probably not something we need to worry about in our lifetime. Maybe that's when the rapture your Momma's always talkin' about will come or maybe we'll all get in a big spaceship and go to another planet."

Todd looked past his father, across the room, and out his bedroom window. The stars were out. They looked so far away. He couldn't imagine everyone on the planet getting in one spaceship and making it so far. It just didn't seem possible. If Jesus didn't come down and get them all, Todd was fairly certain that everyone in the world would look like those pictures of starving children he saw on television once the population inevitably doubled. He looked back over at Honey. One of the puppies was smaller than all the rest. The other puppies weren't letting him in to feed.

"Can I keep the little one?"

"We'll see."

A month later they sold three of the puppies. Two weeks after that, they took the other eight to the animal shelter. Todd cried for a week.