One Day in a Small-Town Desert, chapter 1, page 5

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Bhanar Narak’s truck smashed into something and he flew forward against the seat restraint, losing his grip on the steering wheel. The truck pitched up into the air, then slammed back to the ground, shuddering to a halt tilted to the right, half in a ditch.

Bhanar bounced back against the seat and caught the steering wheel to steady himself. He blinked his eyes repeatedly.

“What the Tara-fucking Plague of Rívorí just happened?”

Ten seconds late, adrenaline pounded through his bloodstream, jittering his hands and flummoxing his head like nothing since his first sky jump.

His eyes focused on the truck’s windscreen. A web of cracks radiated out from a small hole in the glass, not much bigger than his index finger. He leaned forward. A bullet hole. Someone had shot at him!

The adrenaline redoubled, quicker this time.

Whoever shot at him must have known who Bhanar was, must have known who his father and grandfather were. It could have been completely random, but Bhanar didn’t believe that. Someone was trying to kill Bhanar because of what he had been born into, because he was famous.

The tan young man closed his eyes and inhaled deep. If somebody was trying to kill Bhanar, he would be back at any second. Bhanar had to protect himself. He had to get his rifle.

Bhanar fumbled with his seat restraint’s buckle until finally it unlatched. The truck’s engine still on, he shoved opened the cab door and jumped down to the gravel, landing on a knee. With the truck tilted sideways, the door slammed shut, just missing his head. But Bhanar barely noticed. He was already trying to remember where he packed the gun. Or rather, where the Sarıman border guards had repacked it.

He vaulted up to the side wall of the bed, his first trainer-clad foot slipping on the metal, but the rest of his body tumbling inside. He landed on cardboard boxes, his face pressed up against the spokes of a motorbike wheel.

The young man scrambled to his hands and knees, squinting in the starlight and reflection from his one remaining headlight. Where was the gun? Where was the gun?

He laughed out loud. What a welcome to Sarıma!

Bhanar slapped his own face. “Find the gun, Koro-head.”

The Zhéporé-spawn shooter was going to return any second now--the Zhéporé-spawn could’ve been back a minute ago--and Bhanar still didn’t have his rifle ready.

His addled brain finally dripped out the answer: beside the ironing board his mom had forced him to bring. He dove down across the pile of tilted boxes and laid hands on the thick canvas rifle case just as he saw the headlights.

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