I had been jogging in barren countryside by the line of barbed wire fence marking the DMZ corridor when I witnessed the accident.

The driver of the SUV did not stop, leaving the man—a little man, no less—to grasp at shins mashed into the grain of the asphalt like bloodied pastry. He was in so much pain his screams came only as silence.

Fumbling, muted temporarily by my disbelief, I called 911 on my cell phone and gave a sketchy report to the emergency operator, my voice choked with worry. I’m here on a business trip and don’t come from this sector, I explained to the monotone feminine voice on the other end. I stammered as I described the signless and generic T-shaped intersection where the little man lay, writhing.

I live inland, where safer roads funded by local philanthropists allow little men to be seen when they travel. They’re only knee high, after all. Smaller than children. Perfect in proportion to average men, unlike dwarfed human beings. In my sector, we elevate the sidewalks so everyone can pass by, eye to eye. Like brothers. It’s the law.

At this moment, I don’t know what bothers me more: that the driver didn’t notice he’d struck someone, or that the little man had been walking this unrelenting stretch of yellow-striped asphalt in the first place. I could barely jog it myself, the road offering little shoulder worth hugging even for an average man.

I stared down empty border lanes stretching from either end of the intersection, hoping an agent might drive by or the errant driver might return, his conscience re-ignited. I saw only the cameras mounted every few yards on the paralleling fence posts, and I waved my arms furiously.

“Hello?” Did nobody see the accident on the monitors at the security depot?

“Hang tight, little dude. Help is on the way.” Not that I believed it; in that bleak moment, I realized that even the vultures famous for circling the corridor, looking for strays, had fled.

I wanted to ask the little man his name, why he had been there, in that godforsaken stretch of road, in the first place, but then he purpled, then whitened, then blued—three shades in three seconds—and his eyes threatened to roll back into his tiny head, so I spared him the trouble.

“Stay with me, little dude.” My voice ricocheted off the bald boulders lining the dry ditch between the road and the fence. No man’s land. The little man’s shallow breathing melted into the electric buzz of the DMZ fence. I took his limp fingers in mine, and my heart pounded out the little man’s frenetic rhythm in unison.

When the ambulance arrived, two EMTs leaped from the vehicle in a whirl of flashing lights and wailing sirens, only to stop cold in their tracks.

“Come on!” I held up the little man’s tiny hand, felt for a flash his diminutive, thready pulse. “He’s still alive!” I recognized triumph in my voice.

The EMTs grimaced. One tapped into a collar mic and began to issue a report I couldn’t discern; the other squeezed his eyes shut and ran his fingers through thick blond hair.

“Don’t tell me this is the hit and run.”

I heard soft gurgling in the little man’s labored exhale. Our eyes locked for an instant. “Isn’t it freakin’ obvious?” I screamed for the both of us.

“We didn’t know it was one of them,” came the reply from the blond one.

“What does it matter?”

The radio crackled from the other EMT’s collar. He tapped off his mic, then struck an official pose: legs astride, arms folded, mirror lenses flashing. “Sir, the law requires you to report all details of an accident.”

“What more did you need to know? Isn’t ‘hit and run’ pretty straightforward?” Christ.

“Sir, if you cause further trouble, we are prepared to cite you for false dispatch of emergency services. It’s a federal offense in this sector.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“No, sir.” The EMT slid his sunglasses down his nose to reveal piercing blue eyes. “Listen. You look like a smart man, so let me offer you a suggestion. Call out a team. The service is free.” He handed me a business card:

CLEAN SWEEP INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES, a division of Border Security

DMZ Easement Grooming • Camera Balancing • Motion Detection Calibration

Before I could protest, the EMTs retook their ambulance and drove away. No lights. No sirens.

I looked down at the quaking little man, his teeth chattering so percussively that I grimaced to think they might chip and shatter under such stress. Blood from his eviscerated lower half saturated the ground around us.

Unbelievably, he was still lucid when he accepted my offer to pick him up off the ground.

“But your legs—“

“Leave ‘em,” he croaked. “They’re no use…anymore.”

I pulled my shirt off to fashion into whatever bandage I could, then lifted him up from under his armpits. It was horrible, tugging to release him from the flesh he’d sacrificed to the pavement. He shuddered—Hell, I shuddered—but he didn’t scream, even when I did. It was as if he knew his survival required that he conserve every ounce of energy he still possessed.

I wrapped my shirt around his legs, which hung in jellied rags below the knees, and hugged his body to mine. He looked like a miniature war veteran freshly pulled from the line of fire. I found him unbelievably light, hardly a burden at all, and his sweat smelled sweet, like brown sugar. Or vanilla.

“Sorry for any discomfort,” I told him as I began jogging back the way I came, pressing his body against mine, “but I think I saw a clinic near the security checkpoint, and the sooner we can get a doctor—”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” he whisper-hissed before shutting his eyes. “You’ve already done more than is humanly possible or even expected.”

At that moment, as the last breath escaped the little man’s body, I swore he gained a solid fifty pounds—if he gained an ounce— and, as much as I labored at it, I found I could no longer carry him.

I had no other choice. Weeping silently, I left him there, safely embedded in a soft brace of tufted crabgrass, and I ran back to my hotel to pick up my rental car so I could more properly transport his body.

I drove the length of the DMZ corridor more times than I could later recall, but there wasn’t anything left of the little man, not even the stain of his flesh on the asphalt.