The Devil's Breath by David Gilman

pain never hurt anybody, was Chang’s motto.
    He stood on the huge balcony. Thirty meters below him, the fort’s gates opened. This would be an excellent start tothe day. A juicy slice of melon melted on his tongue. He forked another piece into his mouth from the bowl of chilled mixed fruits that he always had for breakfast and gazed indulgently at his beloved crocodiles by the river. He loved to spoil them. So much so that he had decided to give the monstrous creatures a morsel for breakfast. The driver.
    He watched as the small motorboat chugged out into midstream. The crocodiles on the sandbanks lifted their snouts. Who needed guard dogs when any intruder would have to get past them? The screaming man, held firmly by the very men who had accompanied him in the pickup, was unceremoniously bundled over the side, and the vessel beat a hasty retreat. The floundering man was very much the center of attention as half a dozen crocodiles powered towards him. How nice to be wanted, Shaka Chang thought as he squelched a ripe grape between his teeth. He turned to Slye. “I do hope he doesn’t give the crocodiles indigestion—they are a protected species.”
    Finally the horrifying screams stopped. The churned water settled. Chang nodded to a white-gloved servant: he would have his coffee now. A low rumble of thunder groaned across the horizon; perhaps there would be some rain in a couple of days. Either that or it was the crocodiles’ stomachs, dealing with their breakfast.
    A cool breeze, or even a full-blown storm, would have been welcome so far as Max was concerned. He and !Koga had set out at dawn, heading for the distant mountains, but within a couple of hours the temperature was already over fortydegrees Celsius. !Koga reckoned they could reach the foot-hills of the peaks by that night if they moved quickly enough and if they were lucky in the hunt. It was the “moving quickly” that Max was struggling with. Bushmen can chase down a wounded buck for a whole day before they finish the kill, but Max was struggling to breathe the lung-searing air after a couple of hours, and they were only walking.
    He had been keen to travel later in the day, but !Koga warned him that this was when the predators would be hunting and, even though Max was a good runner, he did not have the speed or strength of a lion or a leopard.
    The Valley of Bones had been formed millions of years ago. Some force of the universe had flung a meteor into this wasteland, and the impact had thrown up jagged mountains and shattered the earth’s crust into fractured veins of gullies and crevasses. The dry scrub and acacia survived only because of the seasonal rains, but if they failed, then the vegetation withered even more. Mud holes and surface roots provided moisture for the grass-eating animals, while they in turn fell victim to the carnivores. It was a hellhole of heat, dust and death.
    Max was in danger of dehydration. What helped save him from heatstroke was an ex-army floppy hat his dad had brought back from Iraq, though he never told his son what exactly he had been doing there—another secret. The hat helped keep at bay the brain-frying sun, but it was thirst that would shut him down—and probably drive him crazy—if he did not get some fluids soon. Max felt queasy, his blood seemed to be boiling, a surging wave of nausea gripped him and he was losing control. His mind began to wander.
    Everything in front of him was a blur. All he was doing was putting one foot in front of the other, but now even that was proving difficult. He had put a smooth pebble in his mouth to try to keep saliva going, but that had not helped and, despite promising himself to be frugal, the last of the water had already trickled down his throat a couple of hours earlier. The frightening reality of the wilderness was worming its way into him like a tick burrowing under his skin. He had to shake off the fear. He had to be strong. But what he had to have was a drink.
    !Koga