The abandoned house was clean. It showed the attention to detail of too long spent in the military, and the care of someone who valued their few belongings. These things were not many, but they were his, down to the broken oven where he stored his medical supplies.
Whoever had abandoned this house did so at least fifteen years ago. Most of the appliances were older than that, and half of them looked like they didn't work. There was a bare feeling here. Empty walls and a kitchen table with a few salvaged chairs gathered around it, some with repaired legs. No pictures, no art, but lights that worked, and heat. He didn't use it much. He didn't mind the cold, but it wasn't as chilly as outside. Mostly that was for the benefit of the animals and the people who sometimes visited, anxious pet owners and their charges. The dog Matt had left curled on a blanket in his kitchen the night before was his very first injured stray.
He found the dog on his way home, after a late night at the roadhouse. Sometimes he just wanted to be away from the quiet in the woods without needing to talk to anyone. The roadhouse served that purpose, as well as vodka and whiskey, so it suited him. He could sit at the end of the bar, and think, and get drunk, or come close to it. It wasn't as easy for him as it ought to be. Good thing the shots were cheap.
By the time he was home, after the long walk through the dark trees, he was very nearly sober. It was a stroke of luck for the badly mangled animal not fifteen yards from his doorstep, a huddled lump of fur and blood. He would never have seen it otherwise, barely illuminated in the light over his door.
The dog was alive, but not breathing well, and he'd lost a lot of blood. A dog this size could be trouble for him if it woke up mean, and he didn't have a cage big enough to fit it.
All the same, Matt lifted it up with the broad steel arm under the thin flannel shirt, and carried it inside.
The dog didn't wake up, which meant it might never again. He patched it up anyway, cleaning matted fur with a clean cloth. There was a long gash along its chest and forelegs that he cleaned with antiseptic, but when he went back to stitch it, it was gone.
Matt thought about that for a little while, but he didn't stop working. It had obviously taken a major hit, probably a car on the dirt road a few hundred feet from his door. The internal organs were likely crushed or bruised. The best Matt could really do was get it comfortable and wait until the morning. No owner would be coming for this massive thing. He recognized it now, the stray that sometimes wandered past late at night. Pitch black fur, it was only a matter of time until it got hit on one of its late night rambles.
Wrapped in a blanket and still apparently breathing, the dog seemed content to sleep the night through. Matt did the same, on the stiff couch in the living room adjoining the kitchen, sitting up. He was still there when Rory began stumbling around the kitchen at dawn.
By the time the unexpected visitor made it to the doorway, Matt wasn't on the couch anymore. He was just inside the living room, standing beside the door, out of sight, a knife loose in his right hand. He watched as a tall and completely naked man wrapped in the dog's blanket tried to get his bearings. When the man turned, Matt looked at the bruise, recalling the stiff collection of blood around the dog's spine from the impact of the car.