“Hey Dad, just living it up in Spencerville with squad, Daisy and Max. Apparently, apocalypse ain’t so bad when you’re king (of a kingdom of one). Plus, Daisy found more cheese – joy flips are imminent. Oh, and in case you’re counting: squirrels 0, your boy Marley, 1. Miss ya. – Marley.”

Listen to the story here.

They say cheese is how you conjure Marley. Yeah, imagine that. A post-apocalyptic Spencerville, and Marley is just about ready to twirl for a slab of Cheddar.

It was yesterday, or a hundred yesterdays ago, I lose track here, the sun sank, and the air hummed with an opaque silence – the kind only Marley’s thunderous barks could penetrate. He streaked through the quiet, a blur of late-autumn leaves against the steel-gray backdrop.

We were under that ancient oak tree, that stubborn old geezer, refusing to wilt even when the worlds did. Marley held court there, like some sort of barking idiot king, reigning over a kingdom of one. Judge, Jury, and crotchety wrinkles, meticulously counting every squirrel that dashed by.

That day Marley was draped around his tatty-old teddy. That thing has suffered more stitches than my jeans during my chubby phase. Stiffened by old age and stale adventures, it had gone from his fellow mischief-maker to more of a trinket of nostalgia. A symbol of days when disease was microscopic and apocalypse just a word.

We tread lightly, not a broccoli in sight. Almost got him to flip in joy when Daisy, that quirky Poodle acting as a scout, reported a cheese hoard at Waggle n’ Wok. Truth be told, Spencerville had always seemed made for pets, but I didn’t realize it was so ruddy perfect even amidst an apocalypse. But then again, this is Marley’s world and we’re just living in it, or surviving in it, to be more accurate.

Max, the Beagle, always had the look of a canine ready to take on an army of undead squirrels. And Marley, well, he twisted and turned life like he did his taste buds – a kaleidoscope whirlpool of random cheese feasts and stuffed-toy mementos.

I pat his head, his chest rising and falling like a miniature storm brewing beneath his gleaming coat. We were waiting, biding our time – not like it mattered anymore – until the rusted orange of the sunset gave way to darker blues. “Just another day in our version of paradise, huh, Marley?” I asked.

His bark echoed in the deserted streets, rebounding off the silent buildings and reverberating into the coming night. It was comforting, in a way, like a familiar song hummed under one’s breath. Falling to a hush under that ancient oak tree, we sighed together, Spencerville’s finest pet and his human, snug in the twilight of a world that was no more.

And in that quiet, Marley’s tale requires no end because, at the heart of it, we’re all just stories living on borrowed time. But with a cheese-loving, teddy-toting Irish Setter for company, who’s keeping track?

After all, they do say Marley’s the indomitable spirit of Spencerville. He’s just waiting for the right kind of cheese.

The End.