Deadlands (12 page)

What if it was a trap?

I knew I had to get out of the store, out of the mall, and as far away from it as possible. And I had to do it right that second.

But by then it was too late.

The muzak suddenly cut out and was replaced with a tremendous roaring noise that seemed to make the air around me throb. The sound was ear-shattering, and I clamped my hands over my head and threw myself down on to the carpet, almost sending a mannequin toppling as I banged heavily against its legs. Then, as quickly as it had started, the sound cut out.

My ears buzzed, and I realised I’d been holding my breath. I stayed where I was for a few seconds before finally shuffling forwards. Nothing. Whatever it was had gone. I started to get to my feet, but before I was even, halfway up, I felt a hand clamp down over my mouth. I didn’t have a chance to struggle – the next thing I knew I was being dragged into a curtained-off changing room.

I twisted to get away, but whoever was holding me was incredibly strong. In desperation, I bit into the hand clamped over my mouth, and, suddenly, I was free. But even as I turned to run my legs were swept out from underneath me, and I landed with a thump on my back, staring up at a dark-haired guy who was looking at me with a combination of fury and exasperation.

Moving faster than I thought possible, he dropped to a crouch and clamped his hand over my mouth again.

For a couple of seconds I just stared up at him. Using his free hand, he brushed his floppy black hair out of his eyes and leaned closer to me. ‘Shhhh!’ he hissed into my ear. ‘Keep still.’

I tried to speak, but my words were muffled against his palm.

‘Just be quiet!’ he whispered. ‘You have to trust me.’

He had to be joking. Why would I trust someone who’d just knocked me to the floor and had his hand over my mouth? I struggled again, trying to lash out at him with my legs.

‘Do you want to die?’ he hissed in my ear. I stared straight into his eyes. They were different colours: one was dark brown, one greenish grey.

I shook my head.

‘Good. Keep very quiet. Don’t even breathe. Okay?’

For the first time it really hit home that I was out of the enclave and none of the normal rules applied. Anything could happen to me. Anything at all.

Several seconds later I heard the same roar I’d heard earlier, but this time it faded in seconds. The dark-haired guy didn’t move a muscle until the sound had totally disappeared. Then he removed his hand from my mouth and shook it. I could make out teeth marks in his palm where I’d bitten him, but I hadn’t broken the skin.

I sat up and glared at him, not sure whether to be furious or terrified. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said.

‘We have to get out of here,’ he replied. ‘And we have to get out of here fast.’

‘Why?’

‘Questions later,’ he snapped.

He held out his hand to help me up, but I ignored it. He was dressed in scuffed black jeans, a leather jacket and a plain grey T-shirt – and under normal circumstances I would have said he was cute. Or he would have been if he wasn’t staring at me as if I was a piece of crap he’d found on his shoe. It was then that I noticed that he had something strapped to his back. When I realised that it was a large curved panga, I wasn’t sure whether to scream or laugh out loud.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ I said, struggling to my feet under my own steam.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ he snorted, shouldering a huge rucksack. ‘I just saved your life. Now, let’s go!’

He grabbed my arm and almost effortlessly propelled me towards the exit. I shrugged myself out of his grip. ‘I can walk by myself.’

Then I remembered something. I scooted away from him and raced back to retrieve my backpack. He shook his head again and rolled his eyes at me. ‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘And keep close.’

He paused at the shop’s exit and looked in both directions before setting off. Taking a left, he bounded down corridor and onto the escalators, taking the stairs two at a time, the heavy leather boots he was wearing somehow barely making a sound. He didn’t run, but he was way taller than me – Thabo’s height at least – and I had to take two strides to every one of his.

At the bottom of the escalator he put his fingers to his lips and gestured towards the end of the hallway. I stopped dead, heart leaping into my mouth. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A bunch of Rotters were industriously slopping water over the shop windows, pausing every now and again to dunk their sponges into the buckets at their feet.

‘We’re going to have to go past them,’ he whispered. ‘You going to be cool with that?’

I shrugged, not willing to let my fear show. What if they
could
actually see me this time? But the guy didn’t seem that concerned about their presence, which helped.

I kept close to his side as we made our way past them, but they didn’t even turn in our direction; they just carried on sloshing water across a shopfront as if we didn’t exist. Clearly the guy was as invisible to them as I was.

I followed him down a side aisle and down towards a revolving glass door. I could see the blue glimmer of the sky beyond it, and I quickened my pace.

We pushed through and out into the fresh air.

Grumpy Panga Guy strode down a weed- and bramble-infested ramp that had once ferried cars into the multi-storey lot, and we crossed what was clearly a grassed-over highway as we made our way towards the theme park’s walls, the concrete at our feet lumpy with fig tree roots. There was someone leaning against the wall directly in front of us. At first, with the afternoon sun blinding me, I only saw whoever it was in silhouette – a tall chunky figure with spikes sticking up from its head. But as we got closer I could tell it was a girl; the crazy spikes were backcombed hanks of hair. She was dressed in a similar fashion to the guy: black jeans, heavy lace-up boots, cropped leather jacket and a bag as large and bulky as his lay at her feet. Thin chains were laced around her hands and forearms and she was wearing mirrored shades, so I couldn’t read her expression. Like Grumpy Panga Guy, she seemed to be about my age, maybe a few years older.

‘Took your time,’ she said to him. She didn’t seem to show any surprise at the sight of me.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said. ‘You won’t believe what this chick has just done.’

‘Hey!’ I snapped. ‘My name’s Lele, not “this chick” and will someone please tell me what the
hell
is going on?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, Zombie Bait,’ the girl said, her voice slightly accented – Malawian, Batswana, maybe. ‘Ash here just saved your arse.’

‘Ash?’ I said to him. ‘Is that really your name?’

He nodded curtly.

‘And you are?’ I said to the girl.

‘Saint,’ she said with a curl of her lip.

‘What?’

‘Lost your hearing as well as your sense of self-preservation?’

‘No need to be such a bitch,’ I said. ‘I was only asking.’ I thought of adding that at least my name wasn’t as lame and clearly made-up as theirs, but something made me keep quiet. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked her.

‘Later,’ the girl said. ‘We have to get out of here. It’s going to get dark fairly soon.’

‘Where to?’ I said.

Again the girl stared at me as if I was mad. ‘Back to the enclave of course. Where else? The nail salon?’

‘Hey!’ I snapped, ‘I didn’t ask to be –’

‘Shut up!’ the girl hissed as a low moaning sound drifted towards us. Ash and Saint flattened themselves against the wall, and motioned for me to do the same. The moaning grew louder, and several seconds later a crowd of Rotters came casually wandering out of the entrace to the theme park as if they’d spent the day riding the roller coaster.

Saint crept forward and checked them out. ‘’S’cool,’ she said, relaxing. ‘They’re way past their sell-by date.’

This was getting weirder by the second. ‘So they can’t sense you either?’ I asked.

‘Course not. We wouldn’t last five minutes, otherwise.’

‘But why can’t they?’

‘Don’t you ever stop asking questions?’ she said.

‘I need to know!’

She sighed. ‘Look, we don’t know for sure. Some of us just have that . . . ability.’

That was when the full horror of it struck me. ‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘The others – the others in the wagon! We have to help them!’

‘There’s nothing you can do about that now,’ the guy – Ash – said. ‘Get over it.’

I glared at him, then turned back to Saint. ‘What will happen to them?’

‘Sweetheart,’ Saint said. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

Without checking to see if I was going to follow them, they started walking off along the grassed-over highway, heading in the direction of the mountain. I hesitated for a second and then jogged after them. My mind was racing, question after question forming on my lips, and I wasn’t going to let the only people who could answer them get too far away.

As we skirted around the remains of a bus that was lying on its side, I paused and looked back towards the mall. It rose above the jungle of overgrown weeds like a ginormous white ship.

I turned back to Ash and Saint, but they’d gone. Where they’d been a moment earlier, there was only fynbos and high grass. ‘Hey!’ I shouted.

Racing around a sprawling myrtle thicket, I caught sight of them. They were deep in conversation and I increased my pace so that I could eavesdrop.

‘You get them?’ Saint asked Ash.

‘Yeah. Weighs a ton, though.’ He shrugged his shoulder under the backpack.

‘Tough! You should have done the underwear run. Nice and light!’

‘Lucky you. Want to swap?’

‘As if! You should have left the books to Ginger. He loves that sparkly vampire crap. It’s your tough luck that Hester needed him back early.’

‘Yeah. But he did it last time. Besides, it gives me a chance to beef up my muscles.’

Saint snorted. ‘Like you need it.’

It didn’t take me long to figure out what they were talking about. Their rucksacks were obviously stuffed full of goods from the mall.

‘You’re Mall Rats!’ I said, remembering Lungi’s stash back at the shack in New Arrivals. I’d never considered when Thabo had told me about them that there would be a
real
mall involved.

‘Give the girl a prize,’ Saint said, without turning around.

‘How far is the mall from the enclave?’ I asked.

‘Not too far. Maybe ten kilometres.’

‘How are we going to get back in?’

‘Relax, Zombie Bait,’ Saint said. ‘It’s under control.’

Ash said something under his breath to her and she laughed. The irritation I was feeling was beginning to turn into something like hate for him. I hung back as they walked on, chatting. They were obviously close, and they joshed each other like Jobe and I used to do in the old days. At one stage Saint nudged his shoulder hard enough to make him stumble, and he retaliated by pretending to try and trip her up.

It hadn’t taken nature long to take over Cape Town. Ten years. Impossible to imagine that what we were walking down was once a six-lane highway. In places the Port Jacksons, pines and keurboom trees were so high that I couldn’t see anything but bush and sky in front of me, and sometimes duikers and other small buck darted and skipped around us, more curious than afraid. Every so often we’d come across a group of feral cats, but they also fled as we stomped through their territory. Ash and Saint took a right into the bushes, weaving around the trees and junked cars effortlessly as if they knew exactly where they were going, and I realised that they were following a path. It wasn’t easy to see at first, but after a while my eyes became accustomed to searching out the shortened grass and flattened patches. We skirted the crumpled remains of a squatter camp, stepping over rusted corrugated iron, and entered a grassy clearing.

‘Smoke break,’ Ash said, dumping his rucksack on the ground. ‘My shoulders are killing me.’ He sat down on the ground and leaned back against a rock.

Saint shook her head. ‘As if smoking will help,’ she grumbled, but she shrugged off her own rucksack all the same and sat down next to him.

Ash pulled a box of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit up, inhaling deeply. He grimaced. ‘Stale,’ he said.

‘Those coffin nails will kill you, Ash. And if Hester finds out you’ve started again, then lung cancer will be the least of your worries.’

He grinned for the first time. ‘She won’t find out, though, will she?’ He glanced at me. ‘What you staring at?’ he asked.

‘Nothing much,’ I fired back, and Saint laughed.

‘Sit,’ she said to me, and I did so gratefully. My leg muscles, which were already aching from the trudge through the mall, were now on fire. I followed their example and leaned against my own bag. I watched as Saint rummaged in her rucksack, pulling out a small plastic packet. ‘Catch!’ she said to me, chucking the packet my way.

I reached out and caught it just in time.

‘Nice reflexes,’ she said. ‘You see that, Ash?’

He just grunted.

I shook the packet. ‘What’s this?’

‘Sour worms,’ she said.

For a second I thought I must have misheard her. ‘What?’

‘Sweets.’

‘Oh, wow! Thanks!’ I ripped into the bag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had any real sugar. She wasn’t kidding about the sour part, but I relished the burst of sweetness on my tongue.

‘No problem,’ she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. The bushes behind us started to rustle and I glanced around, expecting to see another duiker.

‘Ash!’ Saint hissed.

She stood up and for a second I thought she was staring straight at me, a look of pure hatred in her eyes. Ash followed her example, whipping the panga out from behind his back, the metal hissing as it slid out of its holder.

‘What’s going on –’ I started to say, not sure if I should start running or not.

‘Shhh!’ Saint hissed, holding up her hand.

A low moan filled the air, and Ash and Saint stood back to back, faces grim, eyes searching the bush around us. Saint pulled two spiked metal balls out of her bag and attached them to the ends of the chains around her wrists.

‘You ready?’ Saint asked under her breath, so softly that I had to strain to hear her.