Green Desert - Chapter 7.5.6 - Zhíno

Bhanar lay unconscious right in front of me, his head tilted on its side, mouth open. Not a cop, obviously. What happened to the cops? In the foreign kid’s hand, a gun. My gun. How the hell had he gotten my gun? I last had that . . . before I was healed. I probably could use another healing. I’d been ignoring the pain from all over my body––feet cut up, slashes and bashes and bruises all over, blood surely running free from a thousand dirt-filled wounds.

I grabbed my gun, set the flunky’s aside.

“Hey, Zhudıro. Where’d you go?”

Still lying on my stomach in the dirt, I looked backwards. Gogzhuè’s flunky’s white shirt stood out easily in the black woods. He moved––toward me, I think.

“Zhudıro?”

Three quick gunshots from above us and the white shirt dropped, the flunky screaming something awful. At least one cop left. I had to run, but stay hidden. Straight south, away from the gully rim, away from the cop. And hopefully whatever blocked his view of me continued to block his view.

I started sliding sideways, but stopped. Bhanar. I couldn’t just leave him here. The cops might miss him in the dark. I got him into this mess, and like the god said, I had to accept the blame.

Fuck the gods. I started crawling away, my naked body slithering over rocks and fallen branches.

Clothes. Bhanar had clothes.

Up on the rim, rocks and dirt trickled down the slope. Shit. I scrambled over to the kid, grabbed him up onto my shoulder, and booked down into the bushes and trees, running blind in the night.