One Day in a Small-Town Desert, chapter 3, page 4

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Fírí Parızada clenched her jaw and started walking up the driveway, directly at the foreign kid and his rifle. She couldn’t go back to her car. She couldn’t retreat. Bhanar would see it as weakness and shoot her in the back. No, much better to be killed while standing tall and proud. It’s what Zhíno would’ve done.

If only her legs weren’t so wobbly.

She walked with her hands away from her body. Her left arm burned from the weight of the duffel bag, but she didn’t let it show. She had to act confident. She had to show this Bhanar kid that she wasn’t afraid of him.

“You’re not injured, are you?” she called up the driveway as she walked. “I’m sorry Zhíno shot at you. He went crazy. I left him.”

The wind rustled the desert shrubs and fluttered Fírí’s burgundy sweatshirt. She was glad she had chosen it instead of one of her thin blouses.

The old man bellowed across seventy meters of gravel. “Miss, please put down your bag. Then Bhanar here will point his gun elsewhere and nobody will get shot.”

Who was this old guy, anyway? Was this his house? Or had he been in the truck, too? Was he trying to help Bhanar to make sure she was unarmed so they could kill her easily? Or were they planning to capture her, kidnap her, torture her, rape her?

Ahísıhíta damn it. I shouldn’t have stopped driving. I shouldn’t have gotten out of the auto. And I certainly shouldn’t have started walking up this plagued driveway!

Fírí stopped. If they were going to kidnap her, they’d have to walk the remaining fifty meters themselves.

The foreign kid ordered, “Put down your bag!” He sounded desperate, like he was about to do something irrational.

In a calmer tone, the old man added, “Please.”

Plagues. Fírí didn’t really want to die. If following the crazy kid’s orders and putting down her duffel kept her alive, then she had better do it. Cursing silently, Fírí dropped the shoe bag. It landed with a muffled whumph.

“Thank you,” called the old man, relief in his voice.

Bhanar didn’t redirect his rifle. With a manic voice, he yelled, “Off your shirt!”

“What?” Fírí’s jaw dropped. What kind of sick fantasies did these Zhéporé-spawns have?

Fírí took a calming breath. She didn’t want to die, so she had to play out their perversions at gunpoint. Mentally, she shrugged. She had flashed her breasts for much poorer reasons than that before. Fírí brought in her hands to the hem of her sweatshirt.

Across the desert wind drifted the wail of a siren. A police siren. And it was coming closer.

Before, she had been afraid of the police, but not now. Now, they’d have no recourse but to arrest Bhanar and the old creep. She had no weapon. She had nothing in her duffel bag that was definitively illegal. She was the victim in this situation.

She was saved.

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