The desert is an oven, and the layered fabric over my back only prevents the UV rays from burning my skin. It doesn’t stop the heat from sucking the water out of my body and cooking my brains. I’ll have a heat stroke if I’m out here for too long, especially without any water.
I’m pretty sure I’m heading in the right direction, back toward the city, but maybe I shouldn’t be. Bheka might send some of his troops after me in their air-conditioned trucks. I’d rather be dead than back in their hands, even if being captured instead of killed means rolling back to the compound with cool air blowing in my sweaty face.
No, I’ll die before any of that. I’ll put the gun to my head and blow my fucking brains out myself before I’ll get into a car with those people. The way they spoke to me, I should’ve known they were bad news, but I kept my mouth shut, and there won’t be a next time or a second chance that I can raise my concerns. What’s done is done, and people died because of my silence.
I could blame myself, and I’m sure I will, but right now, my body has taken over in hopes of bringing me back to safety. I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get back to town, but that’s a future I don’t know whether I’ll have. My goal is to survive the desert, and with every step I take, I doubt more and more that I’ll make it back alive.
I try to swallow, but my throat is so dry that I can’t. There simply isn’t any saliva in my mouth to lubricate my throat. The fine particles of sand in the air have infiltrated my mouth, making it even worse. I cough them out, but they keep returning, and it hurts to keep coughing up the rough grains.
“One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four,” I mutter to myself, counting my steps through the sunbaked sand at my feet. I look down, watching the specks shift and move beneath my shoes as I walk. “One, two, three, four.”
How many hours did it take to get to the Valangana camp?
Two?
I think we were going faster on the way there, and we got picked up for the last part of the trip. It was bad enough in the sun when I had water, but now I’m without it. I’ll sizzle and fry out here like a worm on the sidewalk if this goes on for much longer.
I look forward, squinting through the hazy air toward the horizon. Why does it look like there’s nothing there but more sand? I could’ve sworn I was heading toward the city, but I can’t see a damn thing. Is it really that far away?
“Fuck,” I grumble, but the words leave my throat in a croak. I can’t talk anymore.
The metal on my gun has grown so hot that I have no choice but to put it away. As I tuck it back into the holster on my inner thigh, it burns my skin, leaving an imprint like the branding on a cow. I’ll have the mark on my sensitive thigh for life judging by how the metal sears into my skin. It’s so hot that I can barely feel it, numbing my flesh as it cooks it.
Maybe that’s the adrenaline still coursing through me. My heart is beating loudly, angrily pumping blood out to my extremities in a desperate attempt to keep it cool. It rises to the surface of my skin, stretching my blood vessels and vying for the cool evaporation of sweat off the surface.
The body’s cooling system is intricate and fascinating, but it’s impossible without water. As my sweat floats into the air, lost in the dryness of the desert, the one thing keeping me from overheating runs out, and my skin longer produces sweat.
When I was a pimply teenager, I would’ve loved not to sweat. I used to layer on thick white deodorant under my arms, trying to prevent the musky stench of sweat that I thought only boys should reek of. I didn’t want to smell like a locker room, especially not in front of the guys I had a crush on, but alas, puberty is stronger than antiperspirant. If only I knew that I would be praying for a even a single drop of sweat to cool me off years down the road, maybe I would’ve thought differently.
Then again, even for a young woman in the mafia, I’ve always been a bit of a princess. I’m tough, sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a bit of pampering. When I get home, I’m going to have a tall glass of lemonade and dip in the biggest pool I can find. Water never seemed so precious until now.
I trudge forward, but I feel like the sand I’m walking through is waist-deep, pulling me down like a sick nightmare. I can’t move my legs fast enough to get me back to the city before I roast alive, and they feel like limp noodles holding up a thousand pounds of flesh and bone. I fall to my knees.
I look up, squinting at the fuzzy hint of buildings in the distance. Am I really that close already? I’ve only been walking for about half an hour.
The sand is hot on my bloody palms, cauterizing my wounds and forcing instant blisters into the areas of my skin that haven’t been sliced to shreds. It hurts so bad to be crawling through the desert, but I’m actually moving faster than when I was walking. Four limbs are better than two, it seems, and
