DRY PLANET

Chapter 5 – The Scavenger’s Road

DRY PLANET

by Manilyn Nalaunan

The desert was not empty. It only pretended to be.

For three days Elsie and Maru trudged across dunes that stretched like a golden sea, their feet sinking into sand that scorched through their worn boots. The heat pressed down with the weight of a hammer, stealing their strength by the hour. Each breath was fire; each step was defiance. At night, they wrapped themselves in thin cloths and huddled beneath the vast sweep of stars, whispering little to each other. Words cost water, and water they did not have.

But on the fourth morning, the horizon changed. Rising before them, half-buried in sand, were the bones of a city.

The ruins jutted upward like broken teeth—rusted towers leaning, windows shattered, walls collapsed in heaps of stone and steel. Time and storms had devoured its heart, leaving only fragments scattered like bones across the desert. Elsie slowed as they approached, her chest tightening. She had never seen a city outside Solara. It was like staring at a corpse of a giant.

“What do you think it was called?” she asked quietly.

Maru shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now.” His eyes swept the shadows warily. “Places like this don’t stay empty.”

He was right.

They wound their way through streets choked with sand, past skeletons of machines whose wheels had rusted solid, past walls scrawled with messages too faded to read. It was silent except for the hiss of wind carrying grit across stone. Yet the silence felt… watched.

Then, from the rubble, shapes emerged.

Men and women, gaunt and sharp-eyed, their clothes patched with scraps of leather and metal, their hands gripping knives, clubs, and scavenged rifles. Their faces were burned by sun and sand, their eyes hollow but glittering with hunger. Scavengers.

Elsie’s heart thudded painfully. She stepped closer to Maru, who already had his hand near the small blade at his belt.

One of the scavengers, taller than the rest, stepped forward. His teeth gleamed when he smiled, though there was no warmth in it. “Travelers,” he drawled, his voice hoarse as dry reeds. “Far from Solara, aren’t you?”

Maru said nothing. He angled himself between Elsie and the man.

The scavenger’s gaze shifted, sharp as a blade, landing on Elsie’s boots—on the faint bulge where the folded map was hidden. His grin widened. “Carrying something precious, are you?”

Elsie’s pulse quickened. She pressed her heel hard against the parchment tucked inside, praying it would stay unseen.

“We have nothing,” Maru said firmly. “Only what we need to survive.”

The scavenger chuckled, and the sound rippled through his band. “That’s where you’re wrong. Everyone has something. And we take what we need.”

They moved closer, circling. Elsie’s breath caught in her throat. She could see their ribs pressing against skin, see the way their eyes flicked toward her pack, her boots, even her flask. They weren’t just scavengers of metal or scraps. They scavenged hope itself.

Kael drew his knife. “Stay back.”

The leader laughed, harsh and jagged. “Brave. Foolish.”

Then the fight broke.

The scavengers lunged as one, a storm of desperate bodies. Maru slashed with his blade, driving one back, but another swung a rusted club that sent him staggering. Elsie screamed, ducking as hands clawed at her cloak. She twisted, kicking hard, her boot connecting with bone.

In the chaos, the map slipped, half-tugged free from her boot. For a heartbeat, its scorched edge gleamed in the sun.

The leader’s eyes locked on it. “There! The map!”

Elsie’s blood went cold. With trembling hands, she yanked the parchment out, heart hammering with panic. She couldn’t let them take it—not the one thing that mattered, not the hope her grandmother had given her.

So she did the only thing she could.

She tore it.

The parchment ripped down the middle, jagged and uneven. She shoved the half marked with the water symbol into her boot once more, clutching the other half in her hand.

“Take it, then!” she shouted, throwing the useless fragment into the sand.

The scavengers dove for it like starving dogs. Their leader snatched it up, his face flushed with triumph. He didn’t notice the missing piece, didn’t see the desperate cunning in Elsie’s eyes.

“Come on!” Maru grabbed her wrist, pulling her through the gap while the scavengers fought among themselves over the fragment. They ran, feet pounding over sand, lungs burning. Behind them, shouts echoed through the ruins, but no pursuit came. The scavengers were too busy clutching at their false prize.

At last, breathless, they collapsed behind a dune. Elsie pressed her face to the sand, chest heaving. Maru sat beside her, blood running from a cut on his brow.

“You ripped it,” he gasped. “You—Elsie, what if—”

“I kept the only part that matters,” she said fiercely, pulling the half-map from her boot. The mark of water still gleamed faintly. “Let them chase ashes. We’ll keep the truth.”

Maru stared at her, his eyes dark with both fear and admiration. “You’re mad,” he whispered.

Elsie looked toward the horizon, where the dunes stretched endless and the air shimmered like fire. She tucked the half-map safely away again. Her voice was quiet but steady.

“Mad, maybe. But not hopeless.”

The scavengers’ road lay behind them, littered with ruins and false promises. Ahead stretched the desert, vast and merciless.

And Elsie knew—every step now carried them closer to the spring.

Or to death.