Then he made a sound I had never heard from a dog before.
It was not fear.
It was mourning.
I straightened slowly, glancing back at the line of stopped vehicles, at the drivers watching with a mix of annoyance and curiosity, and then back toward the trees, where the wind carried something faint and irregular, a sound that did not belong to the forest itself.
Breathing.
Shallow. Wet. Breaking apart.
“Dispatch,” I said into my radio, keeping my voice steady despite the way my pulse had begun to climb. “Possible injured animal off eastbound I-94 near the industrial access road. Traffic is stopped. I’m investigating.”
I climbed over the guardrail.
The puppy scrambled ahead of me immediately, sliding down the snow-packed embankment, pausing every few steps to look back, his tail tucked, his legs barely holding him upright, as though he needed constant confirmation that I had not changed my mind about following him into whatever waited below.
The wind dropped slightly once we were shielded by the trees, but the cold intensified, seeping upward from the frozen ground, biting through my boots as I pushed deeper into the brush. My flashlight cut narrow tunnels through the darkness, illuminating drifts piled against fallen branches, patches of ice that cracked softly underfoot, and then, finally, a shape that did not belong to the landscape.
