Deadlands (2 page)

Thanks to the Mantis’s high-powered job at the embassy, she and Dad owned a squat brick-and-mortar box squeezed in between its neighbours. It was supposed to be privileged housing, but you could have fooled me. The place stank of the paraffin that fuelled the lamps at night and the windows were tiny and hardly let in any light, even on the sunniest of days.

Around dinner time, Jobe appeared at the door, Chinwag clutched in his arms. He toddled over to me and placed a cool hand on my forehead. ‘Eina,’ he said.

‘Yeah, Jobe,’ I said. ‘You’ve got that right.’

He climbed onto the bed and curled up next to me, Chinwag squirming out of his grasp and snuggling herself into the crook of my legs.

There was a knock on the door and the Mantis entered. She was carrying a long-sleeved woollen tunic over her arm and I could tell by the look in her eye that she was about to give me one of her ‘important talks’. She stalked over to the wooden chair in the corner of the room and sat down, primly crossing her ankles. ‘So, Leletia,’ she said, all fake cheeriness, as if we hadn’t all been at a funeral the day before. ‘First day at your new school tomorrow. You must be so excited.’

I wasn’t in the slightest bit excited. If it hadn’t been for the sorrow that was eating out my insides, I’d have been feeling a low, throbbing dread.

She held out the grey tunic. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’

‘I’m not wearing that,’ I said.

Her eyes flickered with irritation. ‘You
will
wear it, Leletia.’

‘My name’s
Lele
.’

She sighed and pinched her nose with her thumb and forefinger as if I was literally giving her a headache. ‘We’ve all got to adjust,’ she said. ‘I know how hard it is for you to deal with your grandmother’s passing over . . .’

‘You don’t know anything about me.’

She carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘We all lost people during the War and we all have to learn to move on and try to make a better life for ourselves. That is why your father and I decided it was best for you to go to school tomorrow. There’s no point wallowing in grief.’

‘I don’t want to go to your stupid Rotter-lover school!’ I didn’t like how my voice sounded – whingeing and weak – but I couldn’t help it.

The Mantis looked me straight in the eye, but she didn’t raise her voice when she spoke. ‘You listen to me very carefully, Leletia. That kind of talk could land all of us into very serious trouble – you especially.’

I glared at her. ‘Okay, Cleo. I don’t want to go to your stupid
zombie
-lover school. Better?’

‘I know you think you’re being very clever, Leletia. But ignorance is no excuse –’

‘Who’s being ignorant? I’m not the one who treats the Guardians like they’re gods!’

‘The Resurrectionists are making a better life for all of us, Leletia,’ the Mantis said with that same irritating calmness. ‘If it wasn’t for them, we’d still all be living in tents like refugees.’

‘It’s sick, though, making deals with them. You’re sick!’

She gave me a small, icy smile and toyed with the amulet around her neck. ‘You’re extremely lucky to be going to school at all. Not everyone gets the chance. You know that.’

‘So you’ve said, like, a hundred times.’

‘Do you know how lucky you are? A chance at a career?’

‘Whatever.’

‘Not
whatever
, Leletia. You’ve come of age. You know the alternative.’

I hated to admit it, but she was right. And the alternative wasn’t pretty. Marriage. Breeding. Two of the girls at my old school had left to get married when they were fifteen; even in the Agriculturals there were loads of young mothers and fathers, many of them not much older than me, carrying babies and pulling toddlers around by the hand.

The Mantis was really getting into her stride now. ‘Besides, it’s the best school in the enclave. Have you any idea how many favours I had to call in to get you in there?’

But I had one card up my sleeve. ‘What about the Lottery?’ I said.

She jerked back slightly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What if I win the Lottery? Then it’s all a waste of time, isn’t it?’

‘Now you’re just being obtuse! You know you’re not eligible. Not after . . . your brother . . .’ Her eyes strayed to where Jobe was snuggled up close to me and I felt a small thrill of triumph. I’d suspected that mentioning the Lottery would rattle her. I’d heard that even hard-core Resurrectionists didn’t like talking about it. But her discomfort didn’t last long. ‘You’re going tomorrow, Leletia, whether you like it or not.’

I thought about telling her to stick it. But what was my alternative? Running away? Even if I did somehow make it through the Deadlands and back to the Agriculturals unscathed, I didn’t want to imagine what would happen to Jobe if I wasn’t around. I’d heard rumours that kids like him weren’t tolerated in some parts of the city enclave.

Taking my silence as agreement, the Mantis got to her feet, pausing only to pick up Mom’s old army boots from where I’d dropped them at the base of the bed. They were at least a size too big, but I’d padded them out with old socks, and they were comfortable enough. ‘You can borrow a pair of my shoes tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We’ll get you some more at the leather market at the weekend.’

‘No thanks. I’m wearing those.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be the laughing stock. It’s bad enough that your hair . . . well, at least that will grow. It’s about time you learned that we do things differently in the city.’

‘You mean so that I don’t embarrass you?’ I sat up, and Chinwag zooted to the end of the bed where she began licking a paw.

The Mantis didn’t answer.

‘I’ll go to your stupid school,’ I said, reaching over and grabbing the boots out of her grasp. ‘But on my terms.’

She opened her mouth to fire back at me, but then Jobe tapped her knee and murmured, ‘Shhhhh.’

So you see, right then I wasn’t the happiest person in the world. I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of self-pitying freak, but let’s face it – things were bad. What I didn’t know, and couldn’t have guessed, was that they were about to get a whole lot worse.

It’s weird, but I hardly remember anything about life before the War, even when I really try. I mean, I was only seven when it all kicked off, but I should still remember stuff, shouldn’t I? I have only a vague recollection of the flat we lived in before the Rotters came; it was small and smelled of Mom’s cigarettes, and we had to climb up several flights of steps to reach the front door. In fact, my only clear memories are of the years Jobe and I lived with Gran in the Agriculturals. We were happy there. She loved us.

But that was then. Ancient history. And, like the Mantis said, I didn’t have a choice.

So that morning I put on the scratchy grey tunic and pulled the thick woollen stockings over my legs. The unfamiliar clothes were at least a size too big. I’m always getting teased about how skinny I am, but it’s not my fault. I eat as much as anyone; it just doesn’t stick to my ribs.

As if he’d picked up on my mood, Jobe clung to my legs as I grabbed Gran’s ancient Billabong rucksack – the one she’d kept safe through the years after the War. I gently pried him loose and knelt down to face him. ‘Listen, Jobe. You have to stay here. You have to behave for Dad. ’Kay?’

I gave him a hug that was really more for my benefit than his, but as I pulled away I was almost sure that I saw a flicker of understanding in his eyes. Sometimes this happened, and it made all the other times, the times he stared off into space, sing-songing to himself, bearable.

The Mantis was already ensconced in the rickshaw by the time I made my way outside. ‘Leletia,’ she snapped. ‘Hurry up.’

I hated going by rickshaw. The men and women who pulled them along the streets all ran barefoot and that day our driver was a hefty woman with long blonde hair and ginormous shoulders. I smiled at her apologetically as I heaved myself in next to the Mantis, but she barely acknowledged me.

The Mantis’s bulbous eyes skated over my body and she nodded in approval at the leather sandals I was wearing. I smiled to myself. There was no way I was going to let on that I’d hidden my boots in the bottom of the backpack.

The rickshaw driver started pulling us away from the house, hucking and jumping to get the momentum going. It was still early, but already the streets were crammed with bodies scurrying to and fro. The rain fell in steady sheets, pitter-pattering on the rickshaw’s tarpaulin roof, but the wet weather didn’t stop the hawkers trying to tempt us with pancakes of boiled spinach, or the sheep’s heads and pigs’ trotters that bubbled and frothed in drums at every corner. The smoke melded with the stench of molten tar as workers slaved away to pave the muddy roadways. I hated it. The endless greyness and people-made fakeness of it made my eyes hurt. Everywhere you looked there was concrete or mud, not a sign of a tree or even a blade of grass.

‘You look really pretty in your uniform,’ the Mantis said in her ‘look, I’m your friend’ voice. A total lie of course. I looked like a freak, and I longed for my hoody and jeans. Pretending not to hear her, I stared out at the passing rickshaws and the half-completed buildings that lined the street.

‘Look, Leletia,’ the Mantis said, after a lengthy silence. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

I honestly couldn’t see what the hell she was talking about. As far as I was concerned not only was the city enclave as ugly as sin, but it also stank. The Mantis and Dad were always going on about the fancy-smancy sewerage system the Resurrectionists were constructing, but now we were edging into the centre of the sector and the place reeked of open drains and other foul stuff I didn’t want to think about.

The rain was falling more heavily now, and the rickshaw driver paused to wipe the rivulets out of her eyes before flexing the muscles in her shoulders and moving onwards again.

We topped a rise and I got another tantalising glimpse of Table Mountain in between the spilling clouds.

The rickshaw driver slid to an abrupt stop.

‘What now!’ the Mantis said, looking at me in irritation as if it was my fault.

‘Resurrectionist parade, ma’am,’ the rickshaw driver said, pointing towards the road ahead where a solid wall of bodies was marching in formation, droning some tuneless phrase over and over again. I couldn’t make out the words, but it had to be the same kind of crap the Resurrectionists at Gran’s funeral had spouted.

‘Guardians!’ I said, unthinkingly grabbing the Mantis’s arm.

‘They’re not Guardians, Leletia,’ she said. ‘They wear the robes as a tribute.’ And looking closer I could see she was right. Two robed figures were cutting their way through the crowd, thrusting pamphlets into the hands of passers-by, and as I watched one of them pushed back his hood to scratch his thatch of brown hair.

A woman with wide staring eyes and a lumpy rash across one cheek ran up to the side of the rickshaw and shoved a piece of paper into my hand. ‘Take this, sisi!’ she said, and before I could react, she melted back into the throng of bodies.

The Mantis sighed. ‘Why on earth do they have to do this at this time of the day?’

I looked at her in surprise. ‘Huh? But you . . . you’re a believer.’

The Mantis shot me a shrewd look. ‘Take the market road,’ she snapped to the rickshaw driver, who nodded, jumped up on the balls of her feet and pulled us through a series of darkened alleyways, strung with sodden washing and full of the reek of unwashed bodies.

While the Mantis carried on barking instructions to the driver, I opened up the pamphlet. The ink was smeared where stray droplets of rain had dampened it, but it was still readable. Beneath a crap ink drawing of a large-headed child gazing up at an oval sun were the words:

Do you remember the terrible days of hijackings? Murder? Domestic violence? Robbery? Et cetera? Yes? Then join us in celebrating our Saviours Who Have Set Us Free. Become ReBorn with a view to a Glorious ReAnimation. New Green-market Square, Saturday, 12 July, Year 10.

I scrunched it up and shoved it into the bottom of my backpack. Then, all too soon, we turned a corner and I caught a glimpse of my new school for the first time.

My first thought was:
Oh crap
. It looked like the photos I’d seen of the prisons they’d had before the War. It was ringed by a low spiked fence, and the bland brick buildings behind it couldn’t have been more different from my old school, which was basically just a rondavel with a cosy thatched roof. Even from outside the gate I could smell the telltale reek of newly laid concrete. The sign on the gate read
Malema High: ‘A breath of fresh air’
.

‘Here we are,’ the Mantis said. ‘Remember, try to fit in, Leletia.’

But, as I was about to find out, that was
way
easier said than done.

‘What did you say your name was?’ The woman in the reception office looked me up and down disapprovingly, taking in my shorn hair and of course the boots, which I’d quickly put on when the Mantis was out of sight.

‘Lele . . . Leletia,’ I said again.

It was gloomy inside the brick office, the windows too small to let in adequate light. She flicked irritably through the papers on her desk. ‘And you’re really Cleo Mbane’s stepdaughter?’

‘I told you that already.’

I could tell by the way her nose wrinkled up slightly, as if she’d smelled something putrid, that she was finding it hard to believe me. I’d taken an instant dislike to her – when she’d bent down to collect a form from behind the desk, I’d caught sight of a large bony Resurrectionist amulet under her blouse – and it was obviously more than mutual. She was all angles and hard edges, as if she’d been welded together, and she reeked of the grease she’d used to slick back her hair.

‘I’m Comrade Pelosi. If you have any problems, you can come and see me.’

Not bloody likely.

‘Let’s get you to class,’ she said. ‘You’ll be just in time for morning thanks.’

‘For morning what?’

She pretended not to hear me and led me outside.

‘You must feel very privileged coming to a school such as this after your time in the Agriculturals,’ she said in her superior tone. ‘We’re very proud of our beautiful school.’