All creatures …

As the snow began to fall on her upturned face, Addie remembered those winters when it had been possible to think of spring. Not now though. Not since the impact. How many megatonnes had gone up? She couldn’t recall, and anyway, what did it matter? Addie pulled the perspex snow screen down over her eyes and the connecting buff up over her nose, clipped the two together with a solid clack. She tapped at the thermometer gauge on her wrist – minus 40^oC; balmy, she thought, trying to raise a frosted eyebrow in an ironic arch.

‘Mush! Let’s go girls!’ The dogs, three collies and a retriever wearing leather boots made from the pelt of her old Labrador, heaved forwards and the sledge slowly creaked out of the drift that was gathering around it. Mrs Engle, fifty eight and with gangrene in two toes after getting trapped in her shed by ferals, needed surgery and Addie was on her way to provide it.

Time was, it would have been Mrs Engle’s spaniel that got Addie’s attention; fleas, worms, ears and balls; the stuff of a junior vet’s life. And the warm surgery, the cosy coffees delivered by thoughtful receptionists in between the consults that always ran late. She could smell that coffee! The thought pulled her back with its warmth and she almost licked her lips. Dangerous move, that.

‘Left, left, left, Shady Lady!’ she yelled above the rising blizzard at her lead dog.  No one had pets now. Animals were tools, workmates or food since the predicted but unpredictable cataclysm of NEO impact. No medics either, here, so Addie had tagged humans onto her repertoire of species.

Everybody knew about Near Earth Objects. Presidents had blathered financially neutral hogwash about them. But Addie had seen the films and, to the sceptical hootings of acquaintances, quietly stocked up on tins and packets and crammed newspaper into all the cracks in her walls and floorboards.  With tears and apologies, she had put her cats to sleep then held them until their little bodies cooled to room temperature. Then she had held her breath – if the asteroid missed, they would have died pointlessly. Addie had picked and picked at her finger nails in traumatised conflict.

Then the rock had hit and, while the world watched, blogged and twittered, a small corner of South America seemed to implode. Fascinated, curiously detached, most of Europe had been sitting on its sofas and eating pizzas as the implosion settled, paused, and then reversed with incremental ferocity to hurl out scorching flames, molten rock, and finally the billions of tonnes of particles that would shut out the world’s sun for years to come. A nuclear winter without the bomb, Addie reflected. What price all those peace talks, eh? God stuck it to his idiot creation all by Himself!

She reigned in the dogs, felt for the field hospital surgical crib sheet in her pocket and braced herself. This would have been difficult enough with the right anaesthetic.

Suzane Conboy-Hill (2015)