Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  "Seat belt," Dell shouted. No idea if she understood. No time to strap himself in.

  The door at the back of the camper shell burst open and banged madly as the truck barreled forward. No lights in the rearview and for a moment Dell thought he'd lost them. Then his headlamps dimmed through dust and he saw the haunch of a yellow truck swerving in ahead of him. He fought the wheel hard right into a slide and felt the back of the Toyota glance off the yellow vehicle, leaving the pickup yawing and weaving like a drunk.

  A Pajero had got in front of them and the Toyota's cracked windshield disintegrated in a shower of glass. Dell thought they were under fire but realized it was a rock, hurled by the rear wheels of the SUV.

  The yellow truck was at their side and the third vehicle came in at them from the right. The Pajero's brake lights burned red as jewels and the flanking vehicles boxed them, a vise closing. Dell saw the passenger to his right withdrawing the snout of his AK-47 before it was sandwiched.

  Dell stood on the brakes. The girl braced herself against the dash. His father's body smashed into the rear of Dell's seat. The Toyota skidded to a stop, flinging up a curtain of dust. Dell spun the wheel one-eighty and floored the gas.

  Checked the mirrors for lights. Heard the girl scream. Saw a rock face looming. No time for brakes. A detonation of metal and glass and his chest smashed into the steering wheel, hard enough to crush the wind from his lungs. He smelled smoke and the engine died. Fighting for breath he looked back. The Pajero turned in a dusty slide, shook itself like a wet dog, then charged forward again. The other two trucks falling in behind.

  Dell tasted blood in his mouth. Spat. Felt for the pistol at his waist. Still there.

  The girl opened the side door and took off into the night. Dell reached for his door handle and shoved. Wouldn't budge. As he struggled across to the passenger side, the rear door of the truck swung open and his father stood up, silhouetted in the fast-approaching beams. Firing the rifle on automatic.

  Inja saw the girl fall from the Toyota, kneeling in the sand. Staring into their lights. Then she pushed up like a sprinter from the blocks and took off into the night.

  "Follow her," he shouted to the driver.

  A hard rattle of an automatic rifle and the driver's window exploded. The man slumped over the wheel, dead foot still tramping the gas, sending them full speed into the rear of the truck. Inja's head starred the windshield.

  Goodbread walked toward the light. Felt the rifle bucking in his arms. His weak goddam old man's arms. Nearly dropped the weapon. Stitched a couple of rounds uselessly into the earth, then fought the rifle up and heard bullets drumming on metal. Glass shattered and the SUV shimmied then hurtled forward.

  Passed by him so close that its wind tugged at his clothes, just before it rammed the Toyota. Another truck was loping across, spotlight flaring in Goodbread's eyes. He shot the light out. Kept walking forward. Firing. Empty. Hammer clicking like a Zulu tongue. Grabbed the hot magazine from the weapon. Dropped it.

  Felt a bullet take him in the leg. Sank to one knee. Rammed the spare magazine home. Something hit him hard in the shoulder. Burned like a bastard. Raised the rifle and closed his finger and felt the weapon buck and chew and spit.

  Then everything was quiet and slow and Goodbread felt the warm sand enfold him. He lay on his back, staring up at a terrible light that was at once the moon and something else entirely.

  Sunday ran into the night. Kicked off her shoes, her feet flying over the rocks, skin toughened by years of climbing these hills. Her arms pumped, breath strong and even. She was a born runner. Always something to run from, in this place.

  She saw a slope ahead, rising black against the moon. If she could reach it she would be safe. No car could follow her. Forced more speed into her legs. Told her lungs not to burn. Not far now.

  Zondi heard the gunfire and the sound of tearing metal. A pause. Then the chatter of automatic weapons, coming from below him. He'd been holding a parallel course to the vehicles that pursued the Toyota, trying to outflank them. Found himself above them now, bouncing across an eroded plateau lying silver in the moonlight.

  He edged the old Ford close to the slope, ratcheted up the brake and left the truck with its door open, engine idling unevenly. He crouched low and approached the rocky edge. Looked down. Saw a pair of vehicles jammed together like mating dogs, while the two trucks roamed the plain.

  One set of headlamps sent yellow fingers into the night and snagged a running figure. From the lightness of the runner, it could only be the girl. Sprinting across the sand toward the slope. Toward him.

  The truck surged after the girl, headlamps throwing a halo around her. Zondi drew the pistol and took a bead on the lights as they bucked and weaved. Too far for an accurate shot. He fired. Knew he'd missed. Saw the girl look back over her shoulder. Wanted to shout. Tell her to keep running. Saw her stumble.

  Sunday felt her body leave the ground. Seemed to take forever before she hit, the palms of her hands tearing on the gravel, the breath smashed from her. She sucked dusty air, pulled herself to her knees, saw lights warming the sand around her.

  The truck was beside her, door opening, voices shouting. She tried to get up and run again but a man's arms grabbed her and pulled her onto his lap. The truck flew away, door flapping like a broken wing.

  She tried to fight the arms off, to fling herself out the door that swung wide. But the man tightened his grip around her ribs, squeezing the air from her lungs. She could smell his sour breath. Feel the rough scrape of his beard against her cheek. Sunday stopped fighting. Let herself go slack.

  The man reached over and pulled the door shut and the truck bounced across to where the old dog stood waiting.

  Inja wiped blood from his eye. He had a gash on his forehead but he was alive. The medicine had worked. The yellow truck slid to a halt, the girl up front, slumped in the lap of his soldier.

  "Is she hurt?" Inja asked, stepping toward the truck.

  The big soldier with a shaven head, skull bearing the dent of an old axe wound, pushed the door open with his boot and stood up, still gripping the girl, her bare feet dangling. "No, Induna."

  "Put her down."

  The gunman lowered the girl. She stood a moment, head hanging, then she folded into a squat, skinny arms drooping onto the dirt. In the spill of the dome light Inja saw she was crying. "Stay with her," he said.

  Inja went back to the Pajero and removed a flashlight from the glove box. Whipped the beam around, taking stock. The driver was dead. The soldier in the rear gut-shot, lying with his face pressed up against the window glass, blood leaking from his lips.

  Inja's beam found the body of the old white man, lying on his back on the sand, arms flung wide.

  "Where is the other white man?" Inja asked.

  His crew shrugged, waiting for his fury. Inja stood a while, sniffing the air.

  The big soldier approached him. "Do you want us to search for him, Induna?"

  Inja shook his head. "No. Where can he go? He won't be able to hide his pale ass in the morning."

  Inja ordered his soldiers to remove the driver's body. Throw it into the rear of the Pajero with the dying man, who was weeping and pleading for water and for his mother.

  Inja ignored him. Got behind the wheel of the SUV and started the car, jammed it into reverse gear. Heard tearing and grinding, then the Pajero was free of the Toyota. Headlamps smashed and blinded, but the car good to be driven. He left the SUV idling when he stepped down.

  Inja crossed to where the old man lay, the beam of his flashlight bouncing off the dead eyes. He called for a knife. Took it from the soldier who held it out to him and passed the man the flashlight. "Shine this on him," he said.

  Inja knelt beside the old man. Lifted the shirt, saw the pale, wasted body stitched with gunshot wounds. Loosened the dead man's belt and pulled the khaki pants down past his hips.

  He stabbed the blade into the old man's white flesh just above his pubes and pulled the knife up to th
e sternum. Disemboweled him. The way his ancestors used to disembowel their enemy, to make sure they could never return to haunt the battlefields. Then he moved the blade up to the old man's face and took out his eyes. So his spirit wouldn't be able to see Inja from the shadowlands.

  Dell scrambled up a hill, loose rocks tumbling. Telling the men below where he was. He stopped. Crouched down. Do I honest-to-god care? Wondered what impulse still made him run. Why not just stop and take a bullet? End it all.

  He sat with his back to a rock, holding the pistol. Waiting. At least he'd take some of them with him. Then he heard an explosion and the sky beyond the rocks glowed orange. He edged forward and looked down. The Toyota was burning, flames kicking high into the night. Doors slammed and the two trucks and the Pajero took off, the SUV running without lights.

  Dell watched the flaming Toyota. Saw the Volvo tumbling. Burning. Back in the morgue as the fumes from the gasoline fire grabbed at his throat.

  The convoy rumbled up the track to Inja's homestead. His wives peered out of the doorways of their huts, children clotting their legs like ticks. When they saw Inja stand up out of the lead truck, they clucked the brats back inside and locked their doors. Inja put aside the thought that they would have danced if it were he lying dead in the rear of the Pajero.

  His sister waddled down the steps from his house. "Brother, you are bleeding."

  He swatted her fat hand away from his forehead. Looked across to where the girl sat between his two men, in the yellow truck. "Sister, you take that girl. Stay with her in there until morning." Pointing at the newly completed hut. "I am locking the two of you inside. You don't close your eyes. Watch her. If she wants to piss or shit she does it in a bucket. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, brother."

  Inja looked on as the big woman dragged the girl into the hut. He locked the door after them and turned to his men. Pointed to four of them. "You stay here and keep guard. If I catch a man sleeping he will follow the swallows." He drew a finger across his throat.

  The men nodded and took up positions around the hut.

  Inja addressed the last pair. "Take those," pointing at the bodies of his two soldiers, lying in a tangle of limbs in the rear of the Pajero, "and bury them."

  The men looked at each other. The big man with the dented skull found the courage to speak. "Induna, they have wives and children that need to mourn them."

  Inja stepped up to his soldier, and even though he reached barely to his chin the man took a step back and dropped his eyes to the earth. "And you? You have a family?" Inja asked.

  "Yes, Induna."

  "Then you do as I say or they will mourn you. And once they have cried their tears and wiped their snot, I'll fuck your women and kill your sons. Understand?"

  The man nodded and Inja walked up to his house, feeling the stirrings of the sickness in him again, the weakness that robbed his limbs of power. Waited until the door closed behind him before he allowed himself to sink to the floor, the room spinning, sweat dripping from his forehead.

  It was late when Zondi got back to the room at the hospital and he felt hollow and meaningless. The drapes were open and moonlight washed the bare walls. He didn't switch on the light. Shut the door, took the gun from his waistband and put it down on the table beside the bed. The bedsprings creaked as he sat down. Wished he had a bottle of Glenmorangie.

  He didn't know how long he sat there, in the dark, before he heard the slap of shoes in the corridor. The footsteps stopped at the room next to his and a key scraped in a lock.

  Before he could think he crossed the room and stepped out into the corridor, catching the Belgian doctor as her door was closing. She paused, stethoscope gleaming between her breasts, the fluorescent light painting her white coat blue. Nothing was said. Zondi moved back, allowing her to step out, lock her door and follow him into his room.

  He sat down on the bed and clicked on the lamp. She reached across him and killed it, a loose strand of her hair brushing his face. They were kissing and he pushed her down onto the bed. Crouched over her. Pulled off her jeans and panties. Leaving her in a T-shirt and white coat that stank of chloroform and human waste and disease and death. He heard a metallic clink as she dropped her stethoscope onto the side table, on top of his gun.

  Zondi found a condom in his wallet and she took it from him. Rolling the tube onto his flesh was the only foreplay. She fell back on the bed and pulled him into her. It was fast. Sex as an analgesic.

  When it was done they lay side by side and she found her cigarettes in the pocket of her coat. He heard the scrape of a match, caught the sulfur smell and watched her face turn orange as she lit the cigarette. She shook the flame dead and sucked smoke. The long sigh of her exhalation. Louder than her climax.

  "So, Disaster Zondi, tell me about your name. It is a . . . nickname?"

  "No. It's on my birth certificate."

  "Is that what you were, maybe, for your parents? A disaster?"

  "They were illiterate Zulus. Knew no English. They thought a disaster was something good."

  The Belgian laughed smoke. "Sometimes it is."

  She touched him and felt that he was ready again. The next time was slower and she let herself go. Cried out. Then she lifted herself off him and dressed quickly.

  "I hope you sleep well," she said as she walked to the door. Like she was leaving a patient's bedside.

  Dell sat shivering under the moon that hung pale and ugly over the torn landscape. Not shivering from the cold, because heat still rose from the hard earth and the rocks. He heard the ring of metal against stone and realized that he held the pistol in his trembling hand. He lifted the gun, studied its blue glow in the moonlight.

  Dell opened his mouth and swallowed the barrel. Tasted the sharpness of the gun powder, the bitterness of the metal and something almost sweet that must have been gun oil. Felt the arc of the front sight pressing up against his palate. The slight serrations of the trigger under his index finger. Shut his eyes. Increased the pressure on the trigger. Wanting this release.

  His finger froze when he saw his family. Not the charred meat in the morgue: his wife and children as he remembered them. Laughing. Happy. Alive.

  Rosie. Mary. Tommy.

  Dell opened his eyes and slid the barrel from his mouth. His breath ragged and irregular. But he wasn't shaking anymore. Knew whoever he once had been, he was no longer. He wanted to die. But not yet. Not until he had reckoned with Inja Mazibuko.

  Dell settled back against a rock. Listened to the night. Cicadas. A bird call. A distant whoop of some animal. He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes sunrise bled pink into the sky on the horizon. His mouth was dry and he knew there was no water to be had.

  Dell stood and started down the slope, toward the torched truck. When he heard a bark unlike a dog's, he stopped. Moved forward cautiously, rounding the blackened hood of the Toyota. A hyena was feeding on his father's entrails. The animal looked up at him, muzzle wet with blood. It bared its teeth.

  Dell reached down for a rock and threw it at the scavenger. Hit it up near its ribcage, bones sticking through its dusty skin like corrugated sheet iron. The animal shuffled back a step and growled again. He could see its eyes, close-set, yellow, feral. Wearing its spotted fur like a bad suit. Dell's fingers found another rock and he hurled it, all of his rage and grief focused in the release. Hit the hyena up near its blunt snout and it yelped. Then it turned and slunk away, scrawny assed and knock-kneed, growling over its shoulder before it disappeared into a gulley.

  His father lay sprawled on his back in a mess of viscera. A bullet had drilled a neat hole in his temple. His mouth sagged open, tongue showing blue, as if he were licking his lips. Meat flies clustered around the gaping wounds where his eyes had been. Dell looked up at the twists of charred paper floating in the sky. Vultures.

  Guess I owe you this much, old man, he said as he grabbed his father's ankles and dragged him, rolling his body into a ditch, trying not to hear the wet sl
ap of his entrails. Made sure the body fell on its front, so he didn't have to look into the gaping eye sockets.

  Then he set to work covering the corpse with rocks. Even this early the day was hot and soon he was sweating. Tongue swollen with thirst. He stepped back. A small mound of red rocks covered the body. He sat a while, catching his breath, thinking about his father, the man he'd always hated. Had anything changed?

  No. Nothing had changed.

  Dell stood. He needed water. He set off toward a cluster of huts flung up against the slope of a distant hill, iron roofs catching the rising sun.

  Sunday lay listening to the deep bass boom of the drum. The drummer stood outside the main house, sending a message out to the valley that this was the day that she was to become Induna Mazibuko's fourth wife. Each smack on the cowhide brought her closer to the moment the old dog would take her.

  She hadn't slept, lying awake in the hut. Hearing the snores of the fat woman, who had fallen asleep despite her brother's commands. The room stank of the woman's sweat and the slop bucket in the corner. Auntie Mavis had used it to empty her bowels before she slept, a foul and noisy business. Sunday needed to pass urine but there was no way she could go near that bucket.

  She closed her eyes and prayed. Praying away the stench and the monotonous pulse of the drum that seemed to mirror her heartbeat. Praying that she would hear her mother's voice. Instead Sunday heard a key in the lock and she sat up, wrapping herself in the blanket as the door opened. Inja Mazibuko stood in the doorway, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. As skinny as a cane rat. A pink Band-Aid on his forehead.

  "Sister!" he bellowed in that voice that seemed to come from a bigger man. The fat whale surfaced grunting and moaning from the blankets, blinking her eyes at the light. "Get this girl dressed and ready. The guests will be arriving soon."

  The old dog stared down at Sunday. She tried to stare back but she couldn't, and she dropped her gaze. Terrified of the hunger in his eyes.