Everything was desert for miles. Dead, crumbling concrete desert. A wasteland of weeds and rotted tires, back-bent guardrails and smashed up car husks. Clouds rumbled but didn't crack. Their rain-heaviness was a dark anger, bellies full of swallowed lightning. It was a gray anger, draining everything it touched of life. Not that there was any life to drain. Just the dog. Alone and alert, narrow snout poised into the wind, one paw lifted like a compass searching for north.

His ears flapped in the wind, but that was all of him that moved. His coat was grown out and shaggy, his face a mass of gnarled scars. He'd been many things in his lifetime, including a chocolate lab, and now he was this: a body that existed to hunger, mind-preying numbness, a pitcher to be filled, a command waiting to be given, a thing that was only to be because he was already there.

The dog's nose twitched, sensing a shift in the wind. It wound through his matted fur, bringing new scents, a change in the aromatic landscape. There was something else here, amid the acid tang of rust and tarry disintegration of pavement. Hiding between the mustiness of old oil and the sea breeze of the abandoned coast. Human and bloody.

Leaping off the corroded car, its back a Rorschach of flaking paint, the dog padded along the splintered highway, something deep inside him directing, scanning, honing. It beeped in his heart and thudded in his veins, pounding in his raggedy ears. He panted, the quick pace reminding him how dry and brittle everything had become, including himself. Nose to the ground, he hurried on, tail vibrating as he got closer. Closer.

The blood was here. Everywhere. A thing cried out, mournful and parched. Just a shadow under the pillaged guts of an old Chevy pickup. The dog barked and the shadow lay still. A plaintive thump on the pavement, a scuttling and scatter of gravel detritus, rolling out to the dog's paws as a fleshy crab crawled out from under the car. Wan and limp, veins too close to the surface, all the nails gone, but definitely human. The dog licked the hand's scraped knuckles and it turned over, palm up. Pleading.

This was what he was here for. To find. To bring home. To save. The dog barked again, placing his paw in the middle of that palm before trotting to the other side of the car and squeezing underneath. The body was rank, many grotesque smells bombarding the dog's nose, so he turned off his smell, easy as a blink, better to get the job done. He bumped his face against the human's side, painting his snout red and sticky. The human groaned, arching just slightly. Barking twice, the dog pushed with his face again, rolling and nudging and cajoling.

The human didn't move easily, but he moved under insistence. The dog was very insistent. Life must be salvaged, must be collected and maintained. Life must be curated. His master had plans for this life, and the dog had plans for the bones.