Green Desert - Chapter 1.2.5 - Bhanar

The old guy talked so fast I could only understand one word in ten. I was going to have to get a lot better at speaking Sarıman if I wasn’t going to flunk out of college here. Four years of high-school classes and a couple vacations don’t mean you know the language.

He had me wrapped in his puffy coat, herding me to the house. I still had my gun, though. But only one bullet. I stopped.

The old man bumped into my back, almost pushing me over. “What’s wrong?”

I didn’t know the word in Sarıman, so I pointed at the bullet chamber and said “bullets” in Zhuphísan as I turned back to the pickup.

Five steps and I heard a car coming––from the other direction this time, I spotted the headlights.

“Get down!” I barked at the old man even though he hadn’t listened before. I dropped to the gravel, pointing the rifle down the driveway.

The car got closer, slowed––it was the same old brown car! My pulse throbbed as I aimed the rifle, the gun slippery with sweat. The car stopped directly across the road. I held my fire. The door opened and out stepped a skinny blonde woman about fourteen years old––mid-twenties in Earth years. Dark sweatshirt and light-blue jeans. Was this really who’d been trying to kill me? She didn’t have a gun in her hands. I couldn’t see if anyone else was in the car. Maybe the gun was under the baggy sweatshirt, tucked in her belt. I blinked sweat from my eyes and held my aim as she looked both ways and crossed the highway to my pickup. She’d come back to finish me off. She looked in the cab, glanced at the back, and only then looked up the driveway at me.