When she approached, it lowered itself, cowering, and then rolled to its side, submissive; and, squinting, Ammalie could see it was a she, and that there was no blood on the underside, just on the head.

“What’s up with you?” She glanced around—white aspen and green pines and deepening blue sky—and then carefully approached wearing thick leather work gloves from her Survival Bucket, but the dog was clearly not going to bite her. It was tied or tangled with an old rope collar to an aspen tree. She freed the dog, and then, because the dog didn’t move, she brought over her water bottle and her camp kit bowl. The dog sat partially up and lapped the water furiously as Ammalie scanned the area, and then tried to scan the dog’s head.

Had the dog been tied up by a hiker?

Had the dog escaped from a nearby home and gotten tangled? But no, the rope had been tied in a knot around the tree.

The longer she stared at the cut head, the more her brain started to make sense of what she was seeing. She reached out to wipe away the blood with a bandanna, and while the dog ducked, it didn’t snarl or wince, and so she poured water on the blood and gently swiped again on the forehead, above the right ear. The dog had been cut with something sharp. Cut purposefully. Cut with three straight lines! They seemed to form a K, or something similar, and it confused her even more. Cut to tattoo? Or to punish?

“What the fucking fuck? Who would do this to you? And why?” she whispered to the dog, and the dog looked up from the water bowl at the same time her heart really started thumping. Fear, but also a surge of anger blasting with hot fury in her chest and cheeks—truthfully, she’d have liked for about half of humanity to be wiped from the face of this special planet; whether it was nuclear warheads or abused dogs, there just wasn’t time for this shit anymore.

She ran her fingers over the dog, feeling bony ribs, and paused on the dog’s haunches at a raspy area. She parted the fur to peer by headlamp. Surely, by god, those were not cigarette burns? She bit her lip. She should go. Something here was fucked up. Tears flurried into her eyes. Where was the nearest humane society? Or veterinarian? What should she do? And god, why couldn’t she think? She felt so foggy-headed and confused. The only clear thought she had was a certain knowledge that she wasn’t thinking through stuff the way she used to; some sense of perspective or clarity was lacking. So she tried listing truths:

One: The dog was hurt, though not in a life-threatening way, but it shouldn’t sit bleeding out here all night long.

Two: There seemed to be no human around, which was good.

Three: The dog might be associated with a bad dude who might show up, and that was not good.

Four: Night was now closing in. The vet clinic would be closed, and what was the nearest town, anyway? That little cluster of buildings near the gas station? Surely there was no vet clinic there.

Five: She’d had the wine, and shouldn’t drive.

Six: Yes, she was going to drive the dog back to the cabin. Obviously. And then she’d take it from there.

She dug her fingernails into her head to think, which is when she heard another sound. A low male voice, something about Where the fuck are you, you bitch?

“You fuck,” she hissed in the direction of his voice. The words came out of her before she could stop them, and she slapped her palm over her mouth. Then she whispered to the dog, “Not you. Him.” Then she and the dog both cocked their heads in the direction of the man’s voice, which now sounded like a vague string of cursing, though she couldn’t make out any specific words. But it was clear that a man was walking through the trees and coming toward her as dusk was turning into cold night, and now her heart was really going berserk. She wrapped her fingers around her pepper spray with one hand and put her other on the soft nose of the dog. Shhhhh, shhhh. The last thing she wanted was for the dog to start barking again. Then a clear phrase came out of the forest, much closer now: “Where’d you go, you fucking fucking fucking bitch? You bark all goddamn day and now you’re quiet?”

Without further thought, Ammalie untied the rope and gathered the dog in her arms at the same time she heard the man. “Where are you, you fucking bitch!”

You fucking bastard, she thought, but she kept her mouth closed this time as she lifted the dog slowly, bending at her knees, trying to ascertain if she had the strength to do this. The dog was heavy and bulky and she stumbled forward, but quietly. She couldn’t look over her shoulder at the same time as walk in the dark, so instead she just winced and prayed and coaxed herself, Just go go go go go.

By the time she got to the Grey Goose, she was gasping, but the dog had thankfully stayed quiet except for some low grunts. She’d left behind her water bottle, but it didn’t matter—this littering was justified! She heaved the pup into the Grey Goose and winced again as she started the car—anyone would be able to hear that!—and at the same moment heard gunshots. Boom, boom, boom. She ducked, instinctually, but drove off, fast, no headlights, wheels spinning the dirt, glancing in the rearview mirror, though no one appeared on the dirt road in the darkening sky.

Then the road turned, and she was out of view. She turned on her lights. “Glory hell!” she yelped, and she could not think and so drove past the cabin and to the top of the ridge. She was hoping to throw anyone off the scent that she was staying there, and also just needing a quiet minute to fucking think. And to get her heart to stop thundering. When she found a pullout a good distance past the cabin, she put one hand on the dog and powered up her phone for the first time, and stared. She’d been hoping to go a full month without it—part of her being a true female explorer and all—even if there was cell or Wi-Fi at the cabin, but something about a lit-up phone just brought security, and that was what she needed now. The feel of it in her hand helped her breathe. Beside her, the dog panted. She panted. They panted in unison.

She tried to slow her heartbeat as she read her texts. A few from the usual suspects—Mari, Apricot, the car place reminding her she was due for an oil change—and one call. But wait, what? She stared at her phone in confusion as she listened to the message.

Somebody named Officer A. Alzone. The police had called her?

“This is the Park County Sheriff’s Office,” the message simply said. “We’re wondering if you can give us a call immediately. Again, this is Officer A. Alzone.”

What, what, what, what, what? Oh god, she’d been caught breaking into the house. Or stealing a dog. Already? But that didn’t make sense!

She had all her stuff in her car. She should just go. Except that she’d wanted to wipe down countertops—to erase fingerprints as well as be polite—and do a once-over on the house. Although the police didn’t have her fingerprints; she’d never been arrested for anything, had she? Just that one time in college for underage drinking, but they hadn’t taken her prints.

And she was a bit tipsy!

And also, how had she been caught? Who had seen her?

The darkness felt stunning, the trees and sky being nearly indistinguishable. The cold felt stunning; she was shivering badly now. The dog’s injuries felt stunning. The phone call was stunning. Her slowness seemed stunning. She was sitting in the car in the dark, shaking even though she’d turned on the heat, when the phone rang, startling her so much that she yelped. She looked down. The same number: the sheriff. Oh no oh no oh no, and she started to cry and thought Just fucking do it, face the music, and answered before she could back out.

“This is Ammalie,” she sniffled. She put the phone down and on speaker.

“Ammalie Brinks?”

“Yes.”

The woman on the other end of the phone sighed. “We’ve been trying to reach you—”

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave right now. Can you tell the cabin’s owner—also, the dog, well, it’s hard to explain, but the dog—there’s a guy, a guy who I think is bad—”

“Were you on Kenosha Pass yesterday?” the woman interrupted her, briskly, and clearly annoyed. “Your vehicle is a gray Subaru, Illinois license plate RME909?”

“Um, yes.” Ammalie squinted hard at the dog, as if that might squeeze out the confusion in her brain. She touched the greenstone and brass key on her necklace and then reached out to push her hand into the dog’s fluffy neck fur. The dog whimpered, and then three gunshots sounded from far away. “Yes. It’s me. I’m Ammalie Brinks and I’m so sorry—”

“There was a series of car break-ins, including one that—”

“Uh, there’s somebody shooting and I found a dog—and wait, my phone, wait, what?”

“Car break-ins, including one that went badly—”

But more gunshots had Ammalie pressing the gas, U-turning on the dirt road so fast that rocks spun, and she gunned it. The phone lost the signal of its own accord. She drove back to the cabin, car bumping mightily on gravel ruts. It seemed crazy to drive back toward the danger, but at least there she could lock the doors. Now she felt furious and strong. It was her goddamn house—kind of. And she deserved to feel safe there. And who the hell hurts a dog? She wanted to strangle whoever it was. Lock the door, lock the door, lock the door. Safe, safe, safe.

—

She pulled into the area at the back of the house, walked the dog in, locked the door, cleaned off the paws quickly by the light of her headlamp. When she let go of the collar, the dog walked inside, but slowly, head drooping, not trotting as a dog normally would. Ammalie moved fast, putting down bowls of water and leftover rice with slices of turkey, which is all she had. The dog gobbled and drank and then lay down right there, by the food, and closed its eyes, and so she ran and found it a thick blanket, the hard floor not looking comfortable at all, and coaxed the dog onto it. The pup put her head between her paws and closed her eyes, as if that was all there was to be done.

Ammalie gathered a knife, a baseball bat she’d seen in a closet, and her pepper spray. She also had her car keys at the ready, not only to drive off if need be, but so that she could press the red alert button on them—her car had been made the first year they were available and she always figured that an annoyingly honking car would be a good alarm; someone might eventually come see what it was about. She also had her phone on, next to her, and set to Wi-Fi calling, so that she could call 911 if need be, though that, of course, would lead to other problems.

She sat on the kitchen floor beside the dog and stroked her neck and gently touched the cut on the head, trying to calm herself. It was painful to see, the soft fur streaked with blood, but she could tell the bleeding was stopping. Ammalie ran her hands over the dog’s ribs and legs and watched the dog’s reaction—no wincing, no pulling away.

“Horrible people are out there,” she said to the dog, who thumped its tail on the floor. “I’m so sorry.”

She bit at her fingernails and then picked at the skin around them. So, the police were coming. Surely they could ping her cell phone or triangulate it or whatever it was called, and they were coming.

Well, fine. She had her story ready to go. She’d make sure the dog went to a shelter. Surely she’d be arrested and fined or whatever, and she’d call Mari, who would call Maximo’s brother, who was a lawyer, and Maximo himself was a paralegal, and in the end, it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Who would really put a middle-aged grieving possibly-crazy woman in jail for very long for simply staying a few nights in a house?

The Panics were coming. She had to do something repetitive and calming or her fingernails would soon be shreds. In the Before Days, she would have counted tip money, lining up bills, or perhaps opened a drawer and straightened the items, or, if at work, wrapped the silverware in cloth napkins. She needed to touch things. Line them up. Make sense of them. So she looked around the room and her eyes settled on the small first aid kit she’d used to bandage her hand, and then the other two larger ones she’d brought in and set by the door so they wouldn’t freeze.

Her Holy Trinity of first aid kits, each with its own specialty.

My god, yes, that’s what she needed. Safety. Preparedness. Tangible help. She laid them out on the floor by the window, where moonlight was streaming in, and put the lanterns and headlamps nearby, and then unpacked each one, lining up its items outside the container, and the dog walked over and joined her, curling up near her thigh.

“Car camping enthusiasts should be jailed. But so should first aid kit makers,” she said to the dog, if only because talking felt calming. “All of them, everywhere. They should be jailed for offering a false sense of security, by offering items that are almost of no value. For example, now. Your cut head. Nothing in a stupid premade, store-bought first aid kit would be all that useful. No Band-Aid would be of any help. What one really needs is gauze, a lot of gauze, not some stupid package with one wimpy piece of gauze.” She held up the enormous package of gauze she’d put together herself and showed it to the dog. “What one really needs is a long bandage to wrap around the head, possibly in a couple of directions, depending on the length and location of the cut, because heads are round and hairy or furry, depending on the creature, and Band-Aids won’t stick. You see what I’m saying?”

The dog thumped her tail.