Dust Devils Read Free Page A

Mary, Tommy . Wings flapped and he opened his eyes as a bird landed. A Cape vulture with a bald head, hooked beak wobbling on a skinny pink neck, dusty wings like an undertaker's coat. Wrinkled gray talons scuffed through the ash toward Dell.
    He sat up, shouted and waved an arm. His skin was patterned with blood and one sleeve of his shirt was torn away at the shoulder. The bird made a sound like an old man coughing and lifted off, suddenly graceful as it fell away into the void and found its wings.
    As Dell shouted, blood bubbled from his mouth and fragments of shattered glass glittered like diamonds when he spat onto the sand between his feet. He saw his shoes were gone. And one sock.
    Dell stood up and the world spun, nearly sending him over the edge. He heard an engine straining up the rise, in low gear. Staggered out into the road, waving a bloody arm. A small green Japanese car came straight at him. As it braked Dell saw a man driving, sun catching his freckled hands on the wheel. A woman sat beside the driver, her face blank with shock.
    Then the car accelerated and veered around Dell, speeding away. Two blond children stared at him through the rear window as the car disappeared behind a shelf of torn rock. He was unsurprised. This was South Africa where good Samaritans were gunpointed at fake accident scenes.
    Dell found his cell phone in his jeans. The glass face was cracked and when he tried to dial an emergency number the phone stayed mute. He dropped the useless thing back in his pocket and started to walk along the road that snaked down to the dry river. Down to his family. He didn't get far. The blacktop rose up and smacked him in the head.

    Inja drove for an hour, toward Cape Town. He smoked a fat hand-rolled spliff, heavy with the potent weed of his home. Durban Poison. Famous the world over for its almost hallucinogenic power. Not a drug in his culture. A medicinal herb. The weed that had sent Zulu warriors into battle against the Boers and the British, eyes red with bloodlust.
    Durban Poison grew green and profuse on the rocky red hills of Inja's home, and he had made a fortune out of it over the years. Using the locals to tend and harvest his illegal crop. Shipping it down to Durban for export. It was his first smoke of the day and he felt that familiar sense of his own strength. His own power and invincibility. A feeling he thought he had lost.
    Inja was on the freeway into Cape Town, the flat-topped mountain in the distance, when he saw an exit leading to a gas station and a diner. His rumbling belly demanded he stop. It would be white man's food, tasteless and without nourishment, but it would hold him until he could get a sheep's head later.
    Inja whistled as he left the freeway and parked the Toyota outside the diner. He walked in and took a seat in a booth by the window, with a view over the car park and the gas station. Ordered a double cheeseburger, fries and well-done eggs on the side.
    His order came and he ignored the looks of the white and half-breed families as he shoveled food into his mouth. He waited for his stomach to rebel, his appetite to turn itself off like a faucet, leaving him sweating and sick, the curses of the ancestors bouncing off the bones of his skull. But the food stayed in his gut and the plate was nearly empty before he started to feel satisfied. Slowed down. Burped. His stomach swelling happily against his belt. The warmth in his belly spreading down to his testicles.
    He reached into his pocket and removed his wallet, flipped it open to reveal the snapshot inside. A beautiful virgin from the Zululand hills, her bare breasts like buds. Sixteen years old. Inja would take her as his bride one week from today. His fourth wife. He stared at the photo as he chewed.
    Inja heard a dog bark and looked across to the parking lot. A cop car had stopped next to his truck and two uniforms, one white, one half-breed, stepped out. The white cop let a police dog – a big thing on choke