Amanda lived in the upper floor of an abandoned ranger station near what used to be a state park. Her parents were gone. They evacuated south two years earlier when the food trucks stopped reaching their town. Amanda stayed because she was stubborn. And because this broken place was still home.

Ralphy, her German Shepherd, was all ribs and muscle now, his fur thickened by endless cold. He never left her side. He was loyal.

Amanda scavenged cans from flooded basements, set traps for rabbits that rarely came, melted snow in a blackened pot when the streams froze solid. Her fingers were always cracked. Her boots were two sizes too big, stuffed with rags. Hunger lived in her stomach.

The storms were the worst. Raging winds that could move rocks, endless snow, floods. Every time she walked outside, she could feel the intensity.

Amanda didn’t hear the lake surge until Ralphy tackled her.

They were checking a trap near the old road when the water came rushing through the trees, a sudden wall of gray. Ralphy slammed into her legs, knocking her flat, then clamped his teeth onto her coat and dragged. Amanda screamed.

Ralphy didn’t stop. He pulled, hauling her uphill toward the ranger station. The surge flooded the road seconds later, swallowing the trap, the path and everything she had been standing on.

After that, things changed. Amanda learned to listen to Ralphy. To trust his growls at distant ice cracks, his refusal to cross thinning ground, the way he always woke her before storms.

They survived together. At night, when the wind howled through broken trees and the lake crept closer, Amanda whispered plans into Ralphy’s ear. Spring traps. A garden, maybe. Another winter. Ralphy listened, head on her chest, heart steady.