Read Online Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace - Free Book Online Page A

face-to-face with a barbed-wire fence. I jinked left, panicked, and almost sent myself flying over the handlebars as I grabbed the front brake. The bike slid and ended up on its side.
    â€œ
Get up!
” Ivan yelled, and he slowed past me.
    But I couldn’t right the bike on my own so now he was really mad. He looked about and the kudu was nowhere in sight.
    Ivan parked up at the edge of a tobacco field to squeeze a few frustrated rounds off at some rats, only they were all too quick and he ended up screaming at them.
    He jammed the gun into my hand.
    â€œYou do it if you think it’s so easy.”
    The gun was light and fit surprisingly well. The kick wasn’t what I’d imagined, either, almost nothing, but I’d never fired anything before and my first shot went wild.
    â€œSee? Useless Pommie.” Ivan’s face was red.
    My second went nowhere, too, and when Ivan began to laugh I didn’t want to play anymore. I was about to hand the gun back when a gray flash caught my eye. I didn’t even think. In a single movement I spun and squeezed and the thing scurrying across the road more than twenty feet away lifted into the air.
    My stomach swirled with disgust and excitement as the rat thumped back onto the dust. Ivan’s mouth stayed open but the laughter had stopped.
    He grabbed the gun and changed the clip.
    â€œDo that again.”
    I felt like I was floating. I took aim, pressured the trigger, and another rat rolled out of the world.
    And another.
    â€œJeez, Jacklin. This is your first time?”
    â€œ
Ja
,” I said, absurdly proud.
    â€œWell, where the bloody hell were you during the war? We could have done with you. You should be in the school rifle club.”
    I thought now was a good time to approach what had happened yesterday.
    â€œYour old man was pretty mad last night, hey?”
    Ivan snatched the gun back, stamped his engine back to life, and shouted over the revs.
    â€œMy old man hates two things in life: blacks and queers. My boet’s a poof, okay? But if you tell
anyone
there’s a faggot in my family you’re dead.”
    Now we just seemed to be going wherever, and Ivan stopped to take potshots at anything: birds, mostly, a few lizards, a snake . . . He missed them all. I was allowed a go at a bullfrog and obliterated it from fifteen meters. Ivan was getting fed up and I could see the clouds over him getting lower and lower.
    We finally started heading back to the house when Ivan stood on his brake and slew to a stop. He stared at the ground with wild eyes.
    â€œLook,” he pointed, and I saw clear imprints of antelope hoofs cutting a path. Alongside, droplets of blood. “I
did
get it.”
    He abandoned the bike and darted off road. The kudu must have been close; the blood was still fresh. Ivan was making a mad, charging cry. We scampered over rocks, around ant mounds. Low acacias grabbed my clothes with thorny fingers. I wanted to stop only he just kept going.
    And then he
did
stop. All at once, crouching low, he put his finger to his lips and pointed to a wall of bristle grass.
    â€œOn three.” I could barely hear him. He held the gun tenderly against his cheek. “Then watch me kill.”
    His pupils were dilated and black.
    â€œOne . . . two . . .”
    If he said three I didn’t catch it. He burst through, pouncing in an explosion of leaves and twigs.
    What met us on the other side wasn’t a dying animal struggling to make a last bid for freedom. It was one of the workers in blue overalls crouching over an irrigation pipe, his tightly curled hair all bumpy and uneven, and with a cigarette rolled from newspaper between his lips. He jumped, spinning as we came, eyes wide and white against his chocolate skin. It was Luckmore, the tall, thin bossboy. I remembered him instantly as the one jumping out of the way of Mr. Hascott’s pickup.
    â€œ
My weh!
” he yelped. His