Green Desert - Chapter 5.4.5 - Umo

The dirty, scrub-brush desert spread out into eternity ahead of me, and yet I kept running. Winding trails. Follow the footprints, the turned earth. The breeze hadn’t yet erased the tracks. Hoof prints.

Tracks lasted much longer in the forests of Mokıraozı where I grew up. The wind wouldn’t touch a footprint deep under the trees. Just water, other animals, and plants. Life. Not like this desolate place, covered in craggy rocks and dead-looking plants. Hell, they might indeed be dead. I didn’t stop to check.

Zhíno Zhudıro. I had to concentrate. Let my body run, but don’t let my mind run. Zhudıro had Gogzhuè’s guns somewhere. Before I killed him, I had to get him to tell me. I doubted he would have carried them out here to the gully, but who knows? Maybe he had a hidey-hole cave that he was planning on living in for a while, until he could emerge and sell the guns to someone else.

But that made no sense. Gogzhuè would have paid Zhudıro well. Better than he deserved. Money, land, freedom, anonymity. Now Zhudıro would have none of that. I had no clue what Zhudıro was thinking.

You can’t trust a criminal.

Ahead of me, I saw treetops. Alder or poplar or something like that. They stood out so vividly, I almost convinced myself they were a mirage. But then I crested a slight rise and saw a group of people at their base.