Green Desert - Chapter 1.2.2 - Bhanar

The bastard in the brown car had blown out the driver’s side window, right where I’d been sitting.

My heart was still racing. A second bullet was in the rifle’s chamber, ready for the car to come back. I lay there, silent except for my heaving lungs. The desert was silent, too. Wind in some brush was all I heard. No distant engine. No more gunshots.

I shivered. Deserts got cold at night, I knew that. And I was lying out here under the twinkling stars in nothing but jeans and a tshirt. I started to get up.

Lights!

I dropped back down and froze. My blood pounded in my ears. Which way was the car coming from? I couldn’t hear! I lifted my head slightly and peered through the cab. Darkness. And the other way, too. Darkness.

And then it dawned on me––the light came from ninety degrees off the road. I twisted my head. A house with a hundred-yard-long driveway. Gravel. Why was there a house out here in the middle of nowhere? The front door opened and a fat old man came out, peered towards me.

The wind tugged at my tshirt and I shivered again. I climbed out of the truck and started walking up the driveway, glancing down the highway where the brown car would surely appear any second, guns blazing.