Hit the Ground Running

Dee stared out the open kitchen window. There wasn't much to see even if she'd really been looking. A stretch of gravel peppered with stalks of scrub grass leading down a hill, past other ramshackle houses, into the endless barren desert that led all the way to Mexico. Tumbleweed desert. Wile E. Coyote desert. Looming, enormous saguaro cacti stood at meaningless attention. From a distance, they were eerily humanoid, arms raised to the scorching sun, waiting rather than growing.

Their early evening was dead still. Silent. No scuttling animals, no traffic. Everything paused, still and mute. Even the acrobatics of the tumbleweeds were stilled by the crippling heat that had already killed the wind. They lay exhausted, inanimate, exposed for what they really were matted, tangled balls of dead weeds. They were only interesting when they moved,becausethey moved. They briefly enlivened the stillness, the mile after mile of Mars-like sand and burnt-red rock.

FromHit the Ground Runningby Alison Hughes 2017. Published by Orca Book Publishers.