A short story I wrote about what happens when the people are gone, and the animals have free reign in the city. It could be the beginning to a longer piece in which I explore what happened to the people, but for now I’m leaving it as a standalone story and leaving the fate of the people to the reader’s imagination.

The people left. That fact remains in their place. With no one to flutter for, the bunting lies still in the wind; the rain clatters against rooftops that no longer have anyone to shelter. Empty paper cups and brightly coloured napkins are the only things to walk down the high street now, garish reminders of what came before. The city is still. Cars are empty on the road, doors still open. A few engines still purr, as if waiting for reassurance.

The people left.

Perhaps they will come back.

The city streets are slick with rain. Rocks slide in the downpour. Mud churns. Alone – the people left, finally! – a fox struts through an empty house. Now the roof gives him shelter, the carpeted floor provides him comfort. The people have gone, and this is his world now, this small world with warm seats and soft beds and stacks of food. The people left, and he  is happy.

In the final room, a squalling child sends him scampering away.

Outside, his vixen waits in the undergrowth. They rub muzzles, but she scoffs when he tells her what he found. “A human cub? And you ran?”

The fox darts a look back to the house. “What do we do with it?”

He has strange notions of taking it in and raising it as their own in this new, humanless world. The vixen snarls. “Kill it. We have our own cubs to feed.”

But when the fox gathers his courage to return up the soft stairs, across that carpeted hallway and into the final room, the child is no longer alone. Big blue eyes look at him curiously over the head of a mutt with spiky dark hair and alert ears.

The mutt is only just as big as the fox. Not to be dissuaded – he thinks of the vixen and their hungry cubs – the fox lowers himself in a predatory position and growls, “Mine.”

The mutt barks. The fox flees.

The people are gone, but they’ll return. The mutt is sure of that. His humans would never leave their pup. He turns back to the child, licks the dried tears off her cheeks with his rough tongue.

“All will be well,” he grumbles, and the child laughs and bops him on the nose. He licks her fingers. “This much I promise.”

He lies down beside the child, and waits.