Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

enveloping his whole body, and he turned into a blue blur.

I whistled. “Elves can really move.”

“It’s pronounced Ylef,” the bulldog said, walking back up the ramp into the shuttle. “And if I were you, I think I’d move the other direction.”

That would definitely be the smartest thing to do. But sometimes when a jerk threatens you, all you want to do is what they said not to. I watched the elf—or Ylef—turn into a dot of blue light on the horizon, distorted by heat waves.

“If you head north, you can make it to Dust Bowl in a day or so,” the bulldog said. “Humans can absorb water from the air, right?”

“What?” I shot him a look. “No.”

“Huh. That must be Selkens.” He shrugged and flipped up the lever in the shuttle. The ramp started folding up. “Well then, I’d get somewhere with something to drink. Down in the Shut-Ins is your best bet, but I’d get in and out fast. Once the night sun rises, they’ll be crawling with chaos creatures.”

“Chaos creatures?”

“Hungry ones,” he said.

His squashed face disappeared as the ramp closed with a clang and a hiss.

“Thanks,” I said to the back end of the silver Twinkie. “That doesn’t answer my question at all.”

The shuttle rumbled and started rolling forward. After about ten yards, it rose into the air like a plane taking off even though it didn’t have any wings.

Once the shuttle disappeared into the sky, I realized I probably should’ve followed everybody else’s example and picked a direction while the thing was still there. With the wind scouring the dusty ground, pretty soon all the footprints and slug trails and wheel tracks were gone, and there were no landmarks in any direction. Just miles and miles of flat red land and watery mirages as far as the eye could see.

I turned around in a slow circle. Squinting up at the suns didn’t help. I could tell that they’d moved since we landed, but I couldn’t remember where they were in relation to the towns the bulldog guy had mentioned.

The black sun was creeping higher on my right. More of its curve had peeked over whichever horizon that was. If I just kept that thing at my right side, maybe I could walk in a straight line. That had to be better than wandering in circles.

Unless a straight line led me halfway between two amazing cities with food and water and a magic portal back to Missouri.

I tried to work up some spit so I could get the taste of dust out of my mouth. The water I’d had while I was doing my homework felt a million years away.

I didn’t have any other ideas, so I made sure the black sun was on my right and started walking. Then on second thought, I sped up to a jog. Unless things were super misnamed here, that black orb was probably the “night sun” that made those hungry chaos things come out, and I didn’t want to be hanging around out here all alone when they did.

The watery mirages pulled back as I ran, always staying a ways ahead of me. My skin was starting to burn under the white sun, and I was sweating up a river. My shirt and jeans stuck to me in weird and annoying places. The wind didn’t do much to help besides glue more dusty red sand to me.

Being alone with my thoughts wasn’t a whole lot of fun, either. Gramps probably thought I was dead. I hoped he was all right. My eyes got kind of irritated and wet then, which ended up ticking me off worse because I accidentally rubbed sand in one when I tried to wipe them. I knew from Sunday school and praying and stuff that God and I were tight. If that stupid Reaper had just let me talk to Him, if she hadn’t screwed up in the first place and taken me instead of that methhead, O’Grady or whatever...

I made it another hundred yards before I came to the first indication that I’d picked the wrong direction.

The heat distortions and silvery waves pulled back to reveal huge gorges crisscrossing the flat ground in front of me. They stretched off for miles to my left and right, cutting across each other and making red islands out of unconnected rock chimneys.

I slowed down as I came to the edge of the first one. These had to be the Shut-Ins the bulldog had mentioned. I crept up to the edge and looked down. The bottom of my stomach dropped out, and my head got light.

Usually, I don’t mind heights, but that was a long way down.

Below, I could see some twisted white-barked trees that were kind of like evergreens, but wispy instead of needled, and a wide stream of crystal blue-green water like you see in the real deep holes in spring-fed rivers. Flood debris had built up in the nooks and crannies, and huge boulders lined the creek.

Looking at that water and imagining how cold it was made my throat hurt.

I’d gone the wrong way for New Iron Hills, but now that I was thinking straight and not just doing stuff to show that elf jerk, I didn’t want to go there anyway. Not only would he probably be there, but that zebra lady would be, too. The bulldog had said the Shut-Ins were west, so I had some idea of where I was now. I could climb down, grab a drink, then get back out, reorient myself, and try for the town the bulldog had mentioned to the north, Dust Bowl.

I remembered them talking about another place beyond the Shut-Ins. Everybody had seemed pretty unimpressed with it, but maybe since they were all criminals, that was a good sign for someone who didn’t want to be a criminal. The only downside was I couldn’t see any way to get across the Shut-Ins. There were places off in the distance where islands and highways of red ground stretched