Paschal is afraid. Everything he has known and understood has disappeared. There is no light in the street and a strange smell of burning. The shops are empty. No one is sweeping the pavements, or throwing out rubbish, or standing on the street corners smoking or eating a sandwich, dropping crumbs. No one is yelling at him to get the hell out of here like the dirty dog he is.

Everything is quiet except for a low hissing and crackling from the buildings. He goes into the bakery, but it is empty. Only a scorched and blackened window. The long counter is cracked down the middle, the wood split into jagged splinters. There is no bread. The floor is hot and Paschal is limping. He is searching for voices he recognises, for people who will give him food – bread, scraps or a few bones, anything.

At last he hears low murmurs. The sounds are coming from an alley. Closer, he sees the flickering light of a small fire, and the silhouettes of figures: one, two, perhaps three. He drops on his belly and whines softly as he approaches.

The figures move. One lifts its arm. A shot, followed by a richochet, rings out and echoes up and down the empty, bombed out street. A man’s hand reaches out and pulls the dog’s warm corpse into the doorway and, with a knife, begins to disembowel and joint it for the fire.

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