El Pais Seco

The coyote assured them there would be water stations set in the desert by kindly Americanos, but the only one they’d come across in a hundred kilometers of walking was hacked into ruin, the tank shot full of holes and dry as a bone.

Gustavo felt his tongue swelling in his mouth, the sun heavy as a blanket on his neck and shoulders.

He shook the remaining gallon jug of water, mostly gone. The children had long since stopped crying, trudging in silence, one weary foot in front of the other.

The mountains swayed in the heat, never getting closer.

 

Friday Fictioneers

6 thoughts on “El Pais Seco

  1. So sad. So real.
    That people who call themselves ‘pro-life’ (spoiler alert: they aren’t) would go and deliberately destroy water cache in deserts in order to murder children as ‘deterrent’, is a cruelty I cannot understand. Never could. Never will.

  2. Very poignantly described. False information, sabotaged provisions, set there by well-meaning do-gooders. It is not enough to save them, if determined people want them out, and will do anything, and don’t seem to mind the blood on their hands. Very well written. If only it were fiction.

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