Blood

Blood is Vic’s dog, but he is never merely an animal companion or a tool for survival. He hunts, speaks through telepathy, remembers a long history of canine intelligence, and repeatedly forces Vic to confront what knowledge, responsibility, and love might mean after civilization has collapsed. His importance culminates when Vic chooses to stay with the badly wounded Blood rather than leave with Quilla June Holmes, giving the story’s final declaration—“A boy loves his dog.”—its decisive emotional and ethical force.

Identity and Introduction

Blood first appears during a hunt with Vic. It is Blood’s week for annoying his human companion, and he repeatedly calls him Albert because he finds the name amusing. Vic has caught two large water rats for him and a manicured poodle that had been lost off a leash in one of the downunders. Blood has eaten well, yet remains cranky, an appetite and temperament that establish him as both physically capable and wilfully independent.

His intelligence is immediately social rather than merely instinctive. When Vic orders him to find a woman, Blood laughs in his dog’s throat and answers that Vic is funny when he is horny. The exchange makes their relationship unusually reciprocal: Vic gives commands, but Blood mocks him, interprets his desires, and refuses to occupy the submissive role implied by the word “dog.” Their obscenity-laced banter is a habitual language of intimacy, even when Vic threatens to kick him.

Blood also possesses practical knowledge that Vic lacks. Vic acknowledges that Blood taught him how to read and write, add and subtract, and understand the remnants of what the old world considered intelligence. Reading helps Vic identify canned food when supermarket labels have lost their pictures, and Blood’s instruction has made him trust his companion’s claims even when they sound impossible. Blood therefore functions as teacher as well as hunter: he preserves knowledge that the ruined human world has allowed to decay.

Ancestry and War-Bred Intelligence

Blood’s lineage reaches back to the period before the Third War. His history begins with Ginger, a German shepherd bitch owned by Buesing in Cerritos and employed by the Los Angeles Police Department’s narcotics division. Ginger could detect marijuana hidden inside multiple layers of packaging; in a test involving 25,000 boxes, five concealed packages were found within seven minutes.

That canine aptitude was joined to cetacean experimentation. Scientists in Santa Barbara extracted and amplified dolphin spinal fluid, injected it into Chacma baboons and dogs, and carried out altering surgery and grafting. The first successful result was Ahbhu, a two-year-old male Puli capable of communicating sense-impressions telepathically. Further experimentation and cross-breeding produced the first skirmisher dogs, designed for the Third War and trained to track gasoline, troops, poison gas, or radiation while linked to human controllers.

Blood inherits this history through both Ginger and Ahbhu. The traits bred true across Dobermans, greyhounds, akitas, pulis, and schnauzers, making telepathy a developed canine capacity rather than a supernatural anomaly. Blood’s existence thus embodies the blurred boundary between animal nature and human military technology: he descends from animals deliberately reshaped for war, yet his intelligence survives after the institutions that created those animals have disappeared.

Vic has heard the account a thousand times, always in the same form, and has never believed it until the events of the story force him to do so. That delayed recognition changes Blood from an eccentric talking dog into evidence of a lost scientific and historical order. Blood has been telling the truth all along, while Vic’s disbelief reflects the limits of a human survivor who knows less about the world than the supposedly subordinate species beside him.

Companion, Teacher, and Tactical Ally

Blood’s value to Vic is practical before it becomes explicitly emotional. He finds food, tracks opportunities, and reads situations that Vic cannot read alone. During the danger at the YMCA, Blood turns his head toward the front door and identifies the approaching Roverpak, estimating fifteen or twenty attackers, possibly more. His warning gives the pair crucial tactical information, but it also reveals a weakness: when Vic asks how the Roverpak knew they were there, Blood looks chagrined and drops his head, suggesting that his own mistake or disclosure may have exposed them.

Their partnership is therefore not a simple hierarchy. Blood can advise, tease, teach, detect danger, and make errors for which he feels accountable. Vic may issue commands, but he depends on Blood’s judgment and accepts that his companion knows things he does not. The dog’s telepathy makes this dependence literal: communication crosses the human-animal boundary, allowing Blood to participate in decisions rather than merely respond to them.

Blood also articulates a claim upon Vic. During an argument after Quilla June Holmes has raised the subject of love, Blood reminds him that Vic has a responsibility to him. He recalls the time a burnpit-screamer came out of the street and tried to grab Vic, invoking their shared history of mutual rescue. Responsibility here is not an abstract moral principle. It is accumulated through danger, instruction, hunger, and survival, and Blood uses those shared experiences to insist that Vic cannot treat him as disposable.

Wounding, Separation, and Return

The relationship is tested when Vic leaves Blood behind while pursuing escape and returning to Quilla June Holmes. When Vic comes back, Blood is waiting. He looks weak, but the fact that he has waited carries the weight of endurance and trust. Vic lifts his head; Blood opens his eyes and softly says, “Hey.” Vic’s reply that they have made it back expresses relief, but Blood’s greeting is more revealing than any celebration: even gravely injured, he recognizes Vic and receives him.

Blood’s wounds are severe, and he cannot rise. Quilla June urges Vic to hurry, using love as the measure of his obligation: “If you love me, you’ll come on!” Vic understands that he cannot make it alone without Blood. The choice is not between an easy romance and a difficult friendship; it is between an imagined future with Quilla June and the immediate bodily dependence of a companion who may die if abandoned.

Vic builds a small fire too concealed for any Roverpak to see from the city’s outskirts. After Blood eats his fill, Vic carries him to an air duct a mile away, where they spend the night on a narrow ledge. Vic holds him while he sleeps, then tends his wounds in the morning. Blood is strong enough to survive, though he remains limping, and the pair must cross the blasted wasteland slowly in search of another city. Vic gives Blood the food, goes without eating, and adjusts their pace to the dog’s injury.

Love and Narrative Significance

Blood’s central significance lies in the way he turns the story’s language of love into behavior. Quilla June asks Vic whether he has ever been in love, and later presses him to prove his love by leaving the wounded dog. Vic’s answer is not a romantic confession. It is the decision to feed Blood, carry him, shelter him, hold him through the night, and travel at his limping pace.

The ending redefines the book’s title through this choice. Vic hears Quilla June’s question in his head—whether he knows what love is—and answers with certainty that he does. The answer is compressed into the final sentence: “A boy loves his dog.” Blood is thus both character and ethical measure. He exposes Vic’s dependence, receives Vic’s care, and makes visible a bond that crosses species without becoming sentimental or equal in power. The boy and the dog survive not because the wasteland has become safe, but because their shared life remains worth protecting within it.