Renierstad is probably not the worst place to end up homeless, Rain thought as he locked up his tiny bachelor flat for what might be the last time.

It was four years since he’d left his parents’ farm in Blikkiesdorp, Nowhere, to study at the University of Renierstad — UR — in pursuit of a life involving something other than dust, sheep, and arguments with the twelve other families in the area about the best way to cook potjiekos. 

Four years was long enough to run up a tidy sum of student debt, earn a degree in chemistry with some just-barely passing marks, and discover that the chemical industry was basically dead unless you had a postgraduate specialising in one of three things. Which Rain couldn’t afford.

Unwilling to face the prospect of returning home with his tail between his legs and less money than he’d left with instead of more, he’d stiffened his upper lip, worked a series of menial minimally-skilled jobs, and made a new discovery: data entry didn’t really pay Renierstad rent when you also had a loan to deal with.

Anyway, this all led up to Rain’s current situation, as he jiggled the key in the lock on the rusty security gate in the lobby. It’s about a microcosm of my life, he reflected. I’m spending money I barely have to get transport to a job I might get that might pay off. His phone buzzed angrily in his pocket and he clenched his teeth, finally forcing the gate locked and spinning to jog to the extremely battered VW CitiGolf that passed for his Uber to the latest interview.

The driver briefly exchanged greetings with him, then clammed up and focused on the road, driving hunched over the wheel like it might fly off the steering column if he didn’t hang onto it and hold it down. That suited Rain just fine, and it was probably the result of his severe frown anyway. The nerves set him on edge so much that he wasn’t just stressed, he was stressed and angry because any little thing that could frustrate him did.

Of course, all job interviews are at least a little stressful. The interview to which Rain was going, though, quite apart from costing him R57 in Uber fees (a week’s food, as long as he was eating just to survive), was hardly ordinary. In the first place, he’d found out about it from a leaflet dropped in his postbox, which he didn’t realise was a way people still advertised jobs. In the second place, it was supposedly a security position. Now, Rain was hardly the usual security guard fare — to put it bluntly, if he wasn’t too white he was definitely too English — but the pay was inexplicably good for the hours, and it advertised flexible thinking and problem solving as a bonus. He was hoping that having a degree on his CV would give him a better shot at it than the presumably hundreds of other applicants, unemployment crisis and all.

Outside the window the view slowly shifted from the standard intra-Renierstad highway to rows of warehousing, and then the open veld. Rain’s frown deepened.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” He finally broke his self-imposed silence to ask.

“Yes, boss,” the driver answered briefly, taking a hand off the wheel to point at the cracked smartphone on the dash without breaking his rigidly hunched posture.

Rain bit his lip. He didn’t have long to worry about it, though, as a minute later they pulled over and the driver rolled to a stop on the brown dirt of the shoulder outside a rickety wood-and-wire gate. Reluctantly, he disembarked (after taking two tries to unjam the door and get it open) and climbed out of the confines of the car into the dusty air of the side of a highveld highway in high summer at high noon.

“Alright, thank you,” he said dubiously as he closed the door. “Drive safely.” It took another painfully awkward attempt to open and slam the door again to get it to close properly, the driver leaning over the passenger seat to grab it and pull from the inside as well. With the drawn out squeak of a slipping fanbelt, the car pulled off in a low cloud of dust, leaving Rain standing by the side of the road and feeling less sure of himself by the second.

He sighed. “Well, nothing else for it,” he said to nowhere in particular, and marched up to the gate. Two minutes of the sort of awkward walking up and down one does when one is trying either to find an intercom or see if there is someone coming to open the gate passed before he summoned up his courage, gave one last look around, and tried the gate.

To his surprise, it wasn’t locked, and he stepped through with the slightly baffled hesitation of someone who expected to meet with more resistance. The knot in his stomach was steadily taking on more definition, of the “I hope I was supposed to do that and the person who was going to meet me at the gate wasn’t just late” kind, but in the spirit of his earlier comment to the world in general he resolved to press on up the driveway. There was no particular destination in sight, but it seemed like the right thing to do, or at least the only thing to do if he didn’t want to stand awkwardly waiting at a deserted gate by the side of a near-deserted highway. He hadn’t been paying proper attention to the way here, and didn’t know the area either. For all he knew this particular stretch of road could go nowhere but back to Blikkiesdorp. A well-meaning stranger stopping to offer him a lift would probably put the last nail in his coffin. They won’t even need to cremate me, I’ll spontaneously combust from mortification. Then they can write “died of awkwardness” on my urn, he thought.

The area was almost unnaturally deserted, for how short the ride out of Renierstad had felt. As far as he could see in most directions there was nothing but the open veld, grass up past his knees studded with the occasional clump of low bushes or lonely acacia tree casting a patch of shade for whatever creatures had survived the rapacious appetites of humanity this close to a metropolis. The fug of smoke and haze above Renierstad was the only thing left to proclaim its existence to him. In fact, when he fished his cellphone out of his pocket with the intention of phoning the company, he discovered there was no signal out here either.

It was with this mix of clawing anxiety about having made a mistake, existential dread about his position in the universe, and vague fear of the unknown that Rain began trekking up one of the worn-down ruts in the driveway. The sun beat down mercilessly and almost instantly he had to shed his blazer, loosen his tie, and roll up his sleeves, wishing he was wearing tekkies instead of dress shoes. And shorts instead of chinos. And a short sleeve instead of a dress shirt. In short, he wished he had dressed for a hike, not a job interview.

The driveway wound around a small koppie, hiding any kind of destination from Rain’s view, but gradually the tin roof of a building came into sight, crouched amid a scattering of low bushes. Some of the panic subsided with the certainty that there was at least something here, but he hurried his pace anyway. Quite aside from everything else, he was sweating quite a bit and wishing more and more for a glass of water by the minute.

As he got closer to the building, more of the tension subconsciously escaped him as he noticed similarities with home, or with game reserves. The constant droning zhii zhii of bugs in the grass, the way the dried stalks crunched under his feet and the sun flashed off the zinc-plated corrugated roof. The smell of fresh creosote on poles, of cut grass and thatch drying out in the sun, of hot blood somewhere mixing with the dust in a sticky-slippery layer that steamed in the heat—

Blood? Interview forgotten, Rain’s brow furrowed and he sped up as much as he could, half-jogging down the slope. His shoes offered precious little traction on the smooth grass, and he had to split his attention between trying not to fall and madly swivelling his head this way and that trying to see the any possible source of the smell, jacket flapping wildly over one arm while the other hand shielded his eyes.

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He was thoroughly winded by the time he reached the cleared area around the house, shirt now clinging to his skin despite the greedy speed with which the dry air wicked away sweat. In central Renierstad, one did not go jogging in the streets, and Rain was not in good shape.

“Hello?” He called loudly as soon as he had the breath. “Is anyone there?”

The words echoed briefly off the lime-white house walls before being swallowed up by the expanse of dead-still yellow grass and glaring white-blue sky. Apart from the smell, drifting now and then into Rain’s nose as it was carried on the lazy half-whispers of wind that were all a Renierstad summer had to offer, it was an ordinary farm house. Peeling white-painted steel poles held up a patio stretching the length of the building; the grass, here where it was cut short in an effort to tame it, had partly given way to the mix of rocks and red clay dust of the bare ground; a wire patio table sat flanked by two uncomfortable looking chairs, just as wiry and twice as rusty. A few green potted plants broke up the monotony of rusty dirt and drying grass. All that was missing was the overweight boerbul padding around and the sound of working people shouting to each other across the building.

In the normalcy a splash of maroon-red on the corner of the concrete stoep caught Rain’s eye. That’s not stoep paint, he thought. A moment later he connected the dots with a disturbance in the dusty grass. Drag marks of some kind, moving away from the house. He tossed his jacket and tie onto the picnic table and pulled in a few heavy breaths of the boiling air, mouth feeling as dry as the ground. Then he gritted his teeth and started jogging again, following the trail.

Come on, idiot, he scolded himself mentally, This is downright nice compared to the Karoo weather you used to run around the farm in. One foot in front of the other, now.

At the edge of the cleared ground he skidded to a halt, head desperately flicking from side to side. There. The grass was obviously crushed down by something, and striped with red. Another gasp of breath and he kicked off again, springing over the stalks with high steps that each made his whole leg burn and his pants rub. The trail was clear enough for a blind man to follow, which was good, because Rain was never a tracker.

Abruptly the smell of blood and gore became choking and he brought himself to a halt, nearly tumbling backwards in his haste. Lying beside the trail and pressing down a bundle of grass was the mangled carcass of… something Rain couldn’t identify, at least not any more. Not a person, he didn’t think, but it was… shredded, torn up. Not like leopard prey — the only reason he hadn’t already thrown up his early lunch was having seen leopard or hyaena kills back on the farm before — not claw slices and bite gouges, but bloody mangling.

The track kept on though, so he swallowed hard, swept some of the sweat from his forehead with a just as sweaty hand, and tried to keep his breathing even as he stepped over the bloody mess and started running again. The blood was patchier here, and the trail swerved towards a small koppie covered in bushes like a fur coat.

A thin cry wavered through the still air from the koppie and Rain found a burst of stamina somewhere, digging deep into wells depleted by sedentary living and poor eating. Even as he sped up, only metres from the koppie, a yawning pit opened in his stomach: something was moving through the grass towards him. At least two somethings, in fact. With desperation driving him he bounded the last few steps to leap up to the top of a rock, tottering and spinning before falling to one knee, one hand on the rock and one hand raised in front of himself defensively.

The next moment passed simultaneously very slowly and very quickly for Rain. Out of the grass something low and reddish leapt, heading straight for him. He had an impression of many flailing legs for a second, no, less than a second, before the deafening crack of a gunshot shattered the heavy air and the red thing vanished from his vision, snatched away as though flicked by the finger of a god.

Ears ringing, eyes watering, and mind reeling, Rain froze on the rock until he realised someone was talking.

“Hey! Hey! Ai for fuck’s sake are you there?” A woman, shouting at him. His head twitched up from where it had dropped. “Are you here for the interview?”

What? The banality of the question shocked Rain from his stupor. “The—” He choked, swallowing drily. “The hell kind of question is that?” He gasped out. Further away the grass rippled.

“Just answer it, idiot!”

Rain pushed himself up, chest heaving. “Ja, why else?”

“Good! Do you want the job?”

“What?”

“Do you want the damn job?”

Rain’s eyes were fixed on the moving grass, rippling patches moving closer. “Yes!” He shouted, cutting off the woman before she could ask again.

“Good!” She repeated. A small aluminium case, of the kind that usually contained fragile or precision equipment, crashed on the rock next to him. “Take the weapon, get up the high ground!”

“What?” The yawning chasm in Rain’s stomach hadn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it was steadily expanding, devouring all the reason in the world as it went.

“Take the box and move! No time to explain!” Her voice was already moving as she said the last, the grass splitting and moving behind Rain.

With one more glance at the unknown things shoving their way through the veld towards him, Rain scooped up the case and made another call on his desperation reserves, scrambling up the rocks on his hands as much as his feet, grasping at the bushes for handholds with his free hand, barking his shins and skinning his palms. His eyes widened at the top.

What looked like a small family was cowering there in a little dip between the rocks on the crown of the koppie, two kids and a woman. Blankly, his mind still mostly on his instructions, he did the first thing his mind presented and offered them a small nod. “Howzit,” he gasped.

Then he turned and dropped to his knees, fumbling with the clasps. It took him two tries with his shaking hands, but he managed to pop them open and flip the lid off, staring at the weapon the woman had told him to take.

“Hey!” He shouted, vaguely behind him. “This is a pair of bloody gloves! Where’s the gun?”

“There is no gun!” The reply came from surprisingly close — somewhere down and to the left, he thought. “Just put them on, idiot!”

Easier said than done, Rain thought, trying to wipe his hands on his shirt before realising it was as soaked with sweat as if he’d taken a swim. His chinos didn’t offer much help either. Frustrated, he pulled the left glove out of the box. They looked completely useless for this situation: sky blue, with some kind of subtle pattern, and made out of thin fabric. To his surprise, it slipped on easily over his sweaty hand instead of sticking. The cuff was a bit thicker than the rest of the glove, broad enough to reach four fingers past his wrist bones, and long enough to wrap around twice. It had no buttons or velcro, but somehow stayed closed when he pulled it tight.

Without the time to question it, Rain yanked on the right glove as well. It felt almost as though they weren’t there. The fabric moulded itself perfectly around his fingers no matter how he moved them, but without the elastic resistance of the latex gloves he’d worn so many times in the lab.

The kicker, though, was what happened when he fastened the right cuff. Abruptly, he became aware of… something like an extra limb. One moment he was ordinary Rain — right as Rain, like Dad liked to say, if not quite “right” at the moment — the next there was the feeling of a muscle he’d never had before.

And then with a rustling of grass and far too little other noise except the occasional click of a leg on rock, there was a red thing rushing up the koppie. The clap of the shouting woman’s shotgun sounded out again and again, but nothing happened.

“I can only cover this side!” Her voice drifted through the ringing in Rain’s ears. “Kill the fucking demon!”

Then it was there flying through the air towards him again, a nightmare vision of too many legs and teeth and jaws and tail and claws and— In a panic, Rain lashed out with a fist and flexed the mysterious limb.

In a movement like vomiting through his soul something enveloped his hand and smashed into the monster. With a feeling like the pop of treading on a cockroach, the entire creature blasted into smithereens of carapace, gobbets of blood, flying teeth. The crunch played over and over in Rain’s mind as he dropped back to his knees, heaving until he threw up over the mangled remains.