Deadlands (11 page)

‘Has anyone got any matches?’

‘Here,’ Paul thrust a box into my hand. I shook it. There weren’t many left, but they would have to do. ‘You going to start a fire?’

I considered it. It wasn’t such a bad idea. But then I decided against it. It was too risky. We might only have one shot at this, and I didn’t want to risk burning us all to death. I lit one of the matches and held it above my head. The rip was about the size of a man’s hand.

‘You haven’t got a knife by any chance have you, Paul?’ I asked.

‘I wish,’ he said.

I’d lost one of my shoes, but I was sure I could use the metal heel of the other one to punch holes in the fabric and maybe make enough of a gap to squeeze through. It was worth a shot. The match burned down, singeing my fingers. Swearing under my breath, I lit another.

The first hurdle was going to be getting up there. The roof was more than a metre above my head. I needed to stand on something, but apart from my fellow Lottery winners, the wagon was empty. I assessed everyone. The sobbing boy was clearly the tallest.

‘Hey! You!’ I said to him. ‘What’s your name?’

‘J-J-Jamale,’ he stuttered.

‘Okay, Jamale,’ I said. ‘I need you to stand up.’

‘Why?’

‘I need you to help me. Please. Just do it. I’m going to get us out of here.’

‘Huh? Really?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

He struggled to his feet and I lit another match so that I could get a better look at him. I felt a pang of pity for him – the front of his trousers was stained a darker colour, where he’d obviously lost control of his bladder, and waves of nervous sweat blasted off his body – but I could see from his height that if I sat on his shoulders I could easily reach the roof.

‘Listen, Jamale, I’m going to try to break open the tarpaulin so that we can sneak out. But I’ll need to balance on your shoulders. You cool with that?’

He nodded.

‘Okay. Shuffle over here.’

I positioned him underneath the spot in the roof, and handed my shoe to Paul.

‘Pass this to me when I ask for it, okay?’ I said to him.

‘You want me to go?’ he asked.

‘I’m lighter.’

‘No!’ Lucille screamed. ‘You can’t!’

‘Lucille,’ I snapped. ‘If you want to stay here and let the Guardians do . . . whatever to you, then fine. But if you interfere with me, then they won’t get a chance. Got it?’

‘But –’

‘I said,
have you got it
?’ I knew I sounded like I was turning into some kind of hard-core bitch, but someone had to do something. ‘Keep an eye on her,’ I said to Paul.

I was glad it was dark, as I had to shuck the dress up to my hips to climb onto Jamale’s shoulders. He staggered slightly as the wagon rocked beneath us, and for a second I was sure I was going to lose my balance, but then he steadied himself.

‘Okay, Paul,’ I said. ‘Pass me the shoe.’

My arms were killing me by the time I’d widened the gap. It was slow work, and I fought for every inch.

‘Hold still, Jamale,’ I said.

He grunted something. Using the edges of the tear in the tarpaulin to steady myself, I stood on his shoulders. My head poked through the top, and I dragged in a lungful of clean night air. Wriggling as best I could, I forced my shoulders through and used my arms to leverage the rest of my body up and out onto the roof.

But I hadn’t thought it through properly.

One minute I was catching my breath, enjoying the chill of the night air on my skin, the next I was flying through the air, swept off the roof by a tree branch that had sprung out of nowhere. I felt myself falling, and then the air whooshed out of me as I landed on my back, my head smacking the ground, my arm a bright burst of pain as it slammed against a rock with a sickening crack.

And for the second time that night, everything went black.

This time when I came to it was daylight, and judging by the haze in the air it was some time early in the morning. I had no clue how long I’d been out, but I couldn’t see any sign of the wagon; the pathway it had taken snaked out of sight behind a copse of Port Jacksons.

I stretched my limbs one by one to make sure none of them were broken, then wiggled the fingers of the arm that had hit the rock. Apart from a couple of bruises, everything seemed fine.

One thing was for sure: I’d been incredibly lucky, and I was filled with a surge of triumph.

I’d escaped! I’d made it!

I was outside!

Then it really hit me.

I was outside, all right.

I was outside
in the Deadlands
.

I hadn’t even considered this when I’d climbed on to the roof, and clearly this hadn’t occurred to Paul, either. I hadn’t thought that by escaping from the wagon I’d actually be exchanging one unknown horror for something possibly far, far worse.

Scrambling to my feet, I realised that I could hear moaning in the distance. I had no idea how far away the Rotters were, or what the hell I’d do if there were any in the area, but I was about to find out.

My only option was to climb a tree and scope out where to go.

I chose a large pine, and got moving.

The branches ripped into Lungi’s dress as I climbed higher and higher, my hands sticky with tree sap, but I pushed on, ignoring the rough feel of the bark as it grazed my skin. Then something caught my eye, something white, which was totally unexpected. As far as I knew there weren’t any white buildings in the enclave; everything was either grey brick or mud-spattered brown.

I edged along a branch, really taking a chance now, the bough lurching dangerously. There was no doubt about it, the flash of white looked as if it was part of a wall of some description. And there was something peeking over the top of it, something metallic that glinted in the sun. The sight of it nudged at my memory.

Then I had it.

I was looking at the distant shape of a roller coaster.

I began to wonder if I’d hit my head harder than I thought, and I was actually in the middle of some hyper-realistic dream.

After the roller-coaster sighting, I’d scrambled down from the tree as fast as I could, and ditched the path for what was clearly a grassed-over highway, stumbling past the shells of cars hidden under shrouds of foliage and fynbos. I didn’t care that I was headed away from the enclave, Table Mountain behind me in the far distance. I didn’t care that I could hear the plaintive moan of what had to be a huge group of Rotters. All I could think was: This can’t be! This is
impossible
!

I was right outside a shopping mall, the multilayered parking lot around it still housing the remains of several cars. Nature was making its mark on the exterior – the Port Jacksons extended right up to the mall’s walls, and ropey creeper strands had long ago forced their fingers into the brickwork – but I could still make out the Ster Kinekor and Woolworths signs, and a faded billboard with the words
Ratanga Junction: Under twelves ride free!
emblazoned across it. I’d recognised the looping skeleton of the Cobra thrill ride that formed part of the massive mall complex instantly, a long-forgotten memory sparking into life at the sight of it. Years earlier Jobe and I had spent hours begging Dad to take us there, but we’d never made it. The closest we’d ever come was driving past it on the way to visit Gran.

And here it was. Intact.

I walked past more car-shaped humps and overturned shopping trolleys, entranced by the remains of the dried-up canals that snaked past the buildings. I skirted past a long-dead café, the chairs overturned and riddled with rust, the tiled floor now home to thigh-high grass. A family of cats mewled and scampered out of a dilapidated kombi, and above my head, a cloud of Egyptian geese dipped and whirled.

Obviously, my brain was bursting with questions: Why hadn’t I known about this before? Was this why the Guardians only let us travel at night? And why, out of all the buildings in Cape Town, had they left these standing?

And most importantly: What the hell was I going to do next?

But the choice was taken away from me.

The parking lot may have looked abandoned, but it wasn’t.

The Rotters’ moans were getting louder and louder, and I caught a glimpse of movement in the dark depths. They were shambling around the cars, and I suspected that if I didn’t get it together, they’d be on me in a matter of minutes. I had no way of knowing if the others’ disinterest had been a fluke. I only had one option. I had to head inside the mall and figure out what to do next.

I sprinted up a ramp, leaping over the mangled corpse of a shopping trolley, and headed towards the glass doors in front of me.

I pushed against them, but they didn’t give.

Then I noticed the metal door handle. What an idiot! I grabbed it with both hands, turned it, and headed straight into heaven.

Or hell, depending on your point of view.

The first thing that hit me was the piped music. It took me right back to before the War, although I didn’t recognise the tune. It was some woman singing breathily about another chick called Amy, over a beat like a juddering pulse.

There was another sound I couldn’t place at first – a low humming. Then I figured out what it was: electricity. It had been so many years since I’d heard it, I’d forgotten how loud it actually was.

I moved forwards, staring at the marble pillars, the giant pots spewing fronds of plastic greenery and the huge, gleaming picture windows, behind which rows of beautiful, immobile people glared back at me.

The outside may have been taken over by nature but the interior was untouched.

I don’t know how long I stood there, taking in the shining floors, the double row of whirring escalators, the painted eyes of the mannequins. Everything was pristine. As if the War and the Great Fire had never happened. As if my biggest problem right then was what flavour of ice cream to buy, or which book to choose with my birthday money. It was only the lack of customers that spoiled the illusion, though the doors to the clothing stores nearest to me were all open, as if they were waiting for shoppers to start milling through them.

I was alone in an immaculate, fully stocked shopping mall.

So I did the only thing I could have done right then.

I went shopping.

I know what you’re thinking: I must have lost my mind, right? That maybe the smack on the head really
had
scrambled my brains. But be honest, would you have done any different? It had been ten years since I’d seen anything like this and I couldn’t resist.

I chose the first shop at random, some sort of clothing store, and walked numbly over to a rack of clothes. I grabbed a pair of jeans and pulled them on under Lungi’s dress. They were a size too big, but I picked out a black silk tie decorated with dinosaur skulls and used it as a belt. Then I ripped off the dress completely and exchanged it for a tight black T-shirt with the words
Team Jacob
on it, and flicked through a rack of leather jackets until I found one that looked to be my size. The clothes felt soft and comfortable and unbelievably delicious next to my skin. Next: shoes. I dug through boxes of fur-lined boots, trying on several pairs until I found ones that fitted snugly. I bounced up and down on their springy soles. I felt like I could walk forever in them.

Finally, I gazed at my reflection in the mirrors that lined the store walls. A stranger stared back at me – a stylish stranger in a kick-arse leather jacket and boots to die for. I’d forgotten all about the enclave, the Lottery and the Rotters outside in the Deadlands. Bizarrely, at that second all I could think was: If only Thabo could see me now.

And this was only
one
of the shops in the mall.

Grabbing a backpack from a shelf, I slung it over my shoulder and left the clothing store. Outside, I walked past shops frozen in time: a store selling intricate carpets and ridiculous bendy chairs; another one that seemed to sell nothing but twisted silver forks and decorative cutlery. It was totally bewildering, and I didn’t know where to start. I slipped into a Body Shop and grabbed the first things I saw – scented shampoos and bars of colourful soap – greedily shoving them into my bag, before pausing for several seconds to take in the clean perfumey smell of the shop.

Heading for the escalators, I cruised up to the next level and chose an aisle at random. The place was huge: it was on two levels, with double-barrelled corridors that looped around, running parallel to each other, the rows of shops stretching off as far as the eye could see.

I darted in and out of every shop I passed, and within ten minutes the backpack was stuffed full. I’d picked out another pair of jeans, a short dress made of glittery material, and three pairs of Converse sneakers in different colours. Then something struck me. There had to be a bookshop! I quickened my pace, passing a shop bulging with ball gowns, and another furniture store – the televisions in the window showing nothing but static – but at the end of the aisle, I caught a whiff of delicious perfume. Unable to resist, I followed the scent through a set of gleaming glass doors and found myself in a sprawling store that seemed to sell everything: shampoo, make-up, wheelchairs and bottles of herbal medicine. But it wasn’t long before the heady scent of perfume started to make me feel a bit nauseous, and I wandered out into the main walkway again.

By now I had forgotten all about my decision to search for a bookstore and when I spied the open doors of a huge department store I wandered inside and began flicking automatically through a rack of silky T-shirts. But I was beginning to flag. There was just too
much
. Too much to think about. Too much to see, to smell, to digest. The mannequins seemed to be staring at me with their dead painted eyes – and the hair on the back of my neck started to prickle. I suddenly had the feeling that I was being watched, and I didn’t think it was just because the mannequins were giving me the creeps.

I think it was at that moment that I started coming to my senses.

What the hell did I think I was doing?

Who was running this place? Why hadn’t it been destroyed along with the rest of the city?