By Wednesday the storm deepened into a permanent state of menace. A gray substance fell over the landscape dulling it to huddled mounds indistinct one from another. Those who risked the outdoors returned gasping for air through seared lungs. The sky – if there was indeed a sky – was not visible through the gloom. Heat was a thing they learned to endure along with the incredible stench of too many bodies too close together in an enclosed space. That and the sulphurous atmosphere outside worried Thomas. All his days had become nights and a nervous tick now ran the length of his body. He couldn't leave the house, even with a cloth over his eyes and nose to protect his lungs – not without burning the pads of his feet and singeing his back. The world was black and gray without relief. Nothing worked as it had before the storm began. No lights, television, radio. Nothing. They were marooned without comfort.

     Even the Old Woman refused to leave her porch. And worse, she had done without food for some time now. She just sat in the dark, weeping, hacking and mewling. She was useless to any of them. He made attempts to connect with her, to get her up and moving. Without luck. She seemed dazed. Thomas knew they were alone in this misery – that she had somehow fled into herself and left them – he and Daphne and the others.

     He took to walking through the house, stopping to reassure the immigrants who invaded his home. Turf battles would do no one any good right now. Where could they go if he forced them out? And so he prowled through the dark expecting everything and nothing. Hoping for something to happen that would tell him what he must do.

     It was on one of these treks that he heard a deep moan coming from near the dining room fireplace. At first he was afraid that the Old Woman had finally come to her last. But the smell was not that of the Old Woman. He crept closer, turning his head left and right, straining to see into the deepest shadows. Movement. He needed some movement with which to focus. Even with his eyes, it was difficult to make out what, exactly, was in the corner. He moved toward his own terror. He crept forward until at last he could smell the breath of his quarry amidst the fouler stink of its body. When he was nearly touching his fear and as his eyes adjusted to the deeper shade where the intruder lay, he realized what it was. He twitched so hard it made him jump.

     It was a dog. But this was no dog in the usual sense. It was huge. And thin enough that Thomas could see the angles of its hip and shoulder bones through scars and scorch marks on its brindled hide. The creature's skin looked like a thin, scarred chamois laid over knife blades. The way the dog cowered in the blackness, curled in on itself, reminded Thomas of the Old Woman. Still, the beast was menacing because of its great size. At that moment the dog lifted its head and uttered a sound that sent Thomas scurrying for cover. It resonated like no sound Thomas had ever heard from a dog's throat. He was terrified. The dog's language reminded Thomas of the Old Woman's. Though he couldn't understand it, he recognized something familiar in it. He felt himself quaking the way the earth had done when the storm arrived.

     And so he ran to find the Old Woman. To call her back for all their sakes. But he found instead, Daphne. Daphne for whom he had fought off innumerable rivals. Daphne. The one with no tail who had given him so many offspring he could no longer count them. The one who's children bore their tailless state as a badge of honor. She had more courage than any female he had ever met and so he took her to see the dog that spoke the same tongue as the Old Woman.

     Even Daphne was struck dumb by the miserable creature in their midst. But when once again it uttered the sound Thomas had heard before – low, even, exhausted – she drew up into a sharp arch and hissed at him to get the beast out of here before it murdered them all in their sleep.

     Thomas calmed her as best he could. He avoided a confrontation by deftly sidestepping her demands with observations about the dog's language being similar to the Old Woman's. Even Daphne had to admit that, yes, the sound was a familiar one. She connected it with the time of eating – the time when the Old Woman filled their dishes. It was the sound the Woman made as she fed them. Daphne had always felt that this was a language – like their own – except unique to the Old Woman. Her curiosity peaked and she spent some moments trying to provoke the dog into uttering the sound again. She stabbed at its raw haunch with unsheathed claws. But the dog only pulled tighter into itself. In this way it was even more like the Old Woman.

     The Old Woman! Thomas had forgotten. He must rouse her. She would know what to do. She would understand the dog's language. He was sure of it. Once again he wove his way through the gloom of endless evening that had descended on them.

     For the first time since the darkness spread itself, Thomas felt an awareness when he stepped onto the porch. He was certain that the Old Woman had come back to herself. When he rubbed against her legs and felt her recoil, he was reassured and leaped into her lap. She began to stroke him as she had always done. But he vaulted down and called for her to follow him. He was so insistent that she pushed out of the chair, groping for the small object on the table beside her. At last he saw its brightness and recognized her move to follow him. He led her straight to the dog.

     She didn't see it quivering in the corner, at first, but it moaned and she turned the tight little beam on a heap in the darkness. She moved toward the beast, speaking its language in a soothing tone, holding her free hand out in front of her in a gesture not unlike the way she approached Thomas occasionally. That was when the dog spoke and the beam she carried fell to the floor with a sharp clatter. The Old Woman sat abruptly. Thomas feared that she would go back into her distant place again. He rushed to reassure her, rubbing against her side, vibrating so that she would think he was happy and all was well. She pushed him away and picked up the beam, shining it directly in the dog's face. This monstrosity seemed to recognize her fear. Even Thomas could smell its acrid aroma. The dog sighed and sounded his language again in a long series of noises. The voice was quiet, soothing perhaps. The Old Woman sat staring and nodding. She made no response of her own. But she stayed and witnessed the dog's long sounding. When it was over she rose and went into the kitchen. Thomas followed her. She filled a bowl with water and carried it back to the dog who slathered at it and then vomited. The Old Woman returned to the kitchen with Thomas on her heels. This time she brought food and set it before the dog. While this tattered rag of dog ate, she cleaned up the vomit and spoke. The dog answered. All the while, immigrants gathered behind Thomas, gawking at the spectacle.

     One senile old timer thought the dog must be a human in disguise. He tried to convince the others that now they would be fed regularly. Now there were two humans to care for them. A youngster argued that if this were a human, how could it walk on all fours like a true animal. It must be an animal, like them, but of some order more closely related to human. The fact that it was able to speak the Old Woman's language could benefit them all. They could ask the dog to petition the Old Woman when one of the immigrants needed special attention. A young female laughed outright at this notion. It would be impossible, she said, to ask it anything, as this would be exactly like speaking to the Old Woman. He couldn't understand them as other dogs did. He didn't speak their language. She felt that the dog was dangerous to all of them. And not simply because it was a big dog. She felt the dog was a danger because it could easily displace them in the Old Woman's affections. All dogs were devious this way. She urged them to plague the dog unrelentingly and drive it out of their lives. Thomas feared it was too late for any of this. Here was what the Old Woman needed all along. Thomas couldn't communicate with her except through very primitive signs. None of them could. The dog not only could, he did. There would be no driving this beast out of their midst. Not now. The burden weighed heavily on him. Had he simply left the dog to die quietly in a shadowed corner, Thomas might have had to deal with the disposal of its carcass, but that was a minor thing compared to the threat it represented to all of them now. Now the Old Woman as theirs alone was at risk.

     The days grew lighter and the air cooler, easier to breathe. The Old Woman began to care for them again. Food, though less plentiful than it had been, appeared in bowls. Water was replenished regularly. Immigrants gathered to watch the dog at all hours in the watery gray light that began to seep into their world. The dog and the Old Woman spent long hours voicing their language together. At those times the rabble was subdued and stood off at a distance mesmerized by the back and forth between the two. But when the Old Woman wasn't with the dog, they tormented it mercilessly. Thomas watched puzzled. It was clear to him that the dog could easily kill its torturers, but chose not to for some reason. Over the long days after its discovery, the dog's appearance improved and its smell became less offensive. Thomas suspected that he had only grown used to the stink and normalized it.

     Thomas watched from a hidden place as the days brightened to dull tin and strength returned to the beast. The dog was secretive about taking its exercise. It waited until the immigrants had braved the outdoors, until they were gone from sight, before it began flexing its long muscular legs or fetching the ball the Old Woman tossed. At first this monster moved stiffly, with great difficulty. Its hind legs sometimes splayed out from under the bulk of its body and it landed haphazardly on the floor. It knocked things off tables and struggled to stay upright as it caromed through the dimly lit house. Every time it fell, it got up again, faster and faster with each recovery.

     Thomas was torn by his wish to do the creature no harm and his wish to see it out of his home and his life as soon as possible. He watched from his cupboard. He watched ­ and all the while prayed. It was a prayer that asked the impossible ­ longed for it. "Leave. Leave now." was the mantra he intoned over and over again. He had never shared the affections of the Old Woman as he was now forced to do with this intruder. It left him off balance and uncertain about his future. He had reached a point of such agitation that he jumped at the slightest provocation. And yet he was forced to tolerate the intolerable. So every waking moment he watched and he prayed.

     The sun returned like a bright disk drifting in sky the color of the Old Woman's eyes. The ground cooled but huge drifts of gray debris still covered everything. It made hunting next to impossible for a creature of Thomas' short stature. The dog, though, had taken to long walks with the Old Woman ­ easily stepping over or plowing through whatever blocked their progress. Every day they went farther and farther ­ all the while Thomas willing the dog to go and not to come back. To disappear. To leave the Old Woman with them where she belonged. Each time the dog set out with the Old Woman, it made Thomas' throat ache with the cry he couldn't release. His dignity wouldn't allow it. And so he willed the dog to leave, never to return.

     The day his prayer was answered, he could have torn the eyes out of that dog, for he took the Old Woman with him and Thomas never saw her again.