The smell at the shore smacks my nose like a fist—hard and impossible to dodge. It's getting worse each day.

Ma keeps telling me the beach is dangerous.

That's daft. You're safe if you avoid the scavenger gangs. They comb the rubbish, looking for anything useful or edible or weak. But they're afraid of dogs, and I've Yelp with me.

Today he's restless, pulling at his leash, dragging me through the twisted and torn plastic trash littering the sand.

"Hey, Yelp, what's the matter, boy?" I ask.

He looks back at me, tilting his head, his good ear perked up. The village doc has cut off the other one when it got infected.

Yelp barks once, turns away and leaps over a foul puddle. The sudden motion makes me lose my grip on his leash.

"Wait for me!"

~~~

When I find the dog again, close to where the waves stir tiredly under a blanket of plastic bottles, he has buried his nose in a gray carcass the size of a rock, wagging his brown mongrel's tail. The stink of death makes me gag.

"Whatcha got there?" Curious, I get closer. Yelp munches noisily, chewing at a bloody opening torn into fur.

I hesitate, my mind trying to connect the creature he's feeding on to the name I only know from stories and vids. "That's... a seal."

Ma has said they're extinct, killed by the trash and poison in the waters. Yet here's the doggish head, the long body, and the fins—this is a seal. Was a seal.

Maybe the last one.

Its eyes have lost their gleam, but they stare right at me, like Ma when she's sad-mad. Dried bloodstains run from its snout down to its neck, where some green stuff of plastic cuts into its skin.

Like a gaudy collar of death.

A gash runs along its side, and Yelp is busy expanding it, tearing into it.

"Eeew! Get away from that." I seize his leash and pull, stopping when I hear the voices.

It's four guys, clad in rags, approaching along the shore. Scavengers. I know them. They're calling themselves The Sand Kings.

"Hey girl," one of them shouts, "this beach is ours. What have you got there?"

I don't answer, and I don't wait. You don't talk to The Sand Kings, nor do you wait for them. Yanking Yelp away from the body, I run. Two of them follow me, but panic fuels my running.

I lose them in the ruined harbor.

~~~

Two days later, Yelp is dead. He ends his life with a whine, a mournful, last look at me, and bloodied drool seeping from his mouth. Ma squeezes my shoulder, knowing that words won't help.

Next day I hear that three of The Sand Kings have died, too, and the fourth one is retching his guts out in the village doctor's hospital.

~~~

And the last seal's stare finds me whenever I close my eyes.