Deadlands (21 page)

‘Ash!’ I called, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. I didn’t want him to think I was a wuss.

‘Yeah?’ he replied.

‘Where are you?’

‘Over here!’

I followed the voice, dragging my bag behind me. He was standing behind a counter in a small coffee shop attached to the bookstore. I’d been so absorbed by the books that I hadn’t noticed it before. The aromatic scent of fresh coffee filled the air.

I sat on a stool in front of the counter and he pushed a cardboard cup of fresh black coffee towards me.

‘You made this?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Perks of the job. No milk I’m afraid, though.’ He passed me several packets of sugar; they were hard and crystallised but I dunked them into the coffee anyway.

‘How do the Guardians keep all this running?’ I asked.

Ash shrugged. ‘It used to drive me mad, thinking about it, but now I think, well, it is what it is.’ He paused. ‘Ginger says the Guardians must have kept one of the power stations running, maybe the one in Blouberg. Hester says it’s way too dangerous to head out there and check it out, especially with all the new relocations, but we’ll go one day. Besides, we’re about due a trip to the beach.’ He grinned at me.

I smiled back and took a sip of the coffee. It scalded my tongue, but I couldn’t have cared less. It was delicious.

‘Ash, what’s wrong with Hester? I mean, I know she’s really sick, but what’s wrong with her exactly?’

‘She’s dying,’ he said in a flat, emotionless voice. He looked up and stared straight at me. Again I was struck by his extraordinary eyes.

‘Dying of what?’

‘Cancer. Well, we think it’s that, anyway.’

‘But can’t we get her something that will help?’ I hadn’t forgotten what she’d said about the Guardians and medicine, but this was a matter of life and death. ‘Ash, I think we should try and get her some painkillers or something.’

‘No!’ he said. ‘The last time we tried that . . .’ His voice trailed away. ‘We can’t. The Guardians won’t allow it.’

‘But they aren’t here.’

‘You don’t know for sure, Lele. Remember when you first came to the mall?’

I nodded.

‘They were here then.’

‘You saw them?’

‘Yeah. Well, I heard them. We’re pretty sure they must be watching us when we’re in here.’ He pointed up to a camera stuck on the ceiling. ‘It’s the only explanation. They leave us alone as long as we stick to the rules.’

I was beginning to put two and two together. ‘Ash . . . is that what happened to the girl? Is that how you know they’d react if you tried to get medicine?’

His eyes flashed. ‘The girl?’

‘Ripley. The other Mall Rat. Is that what happened to her? Did you try and get medicine for Hester and they . . .’

He nodded and dropped his eyes to his cup. ‘We don’t know exactly what happened to her. All we know is that she’s gone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We were all in the mall, and she decided to see if she could find something to help Hester – see if there was any morphine, or whatever. Saint and Ginger were doing the book run, and I was getting soaps and stuff, just one level up from where I knew Ripley was. She called for help on the walkie-talkie, but . . . I was too late. I should have been with her. I shouldn’t have let her go alone.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ I reached over and put my hand over his. ‘Did they kill her?’

‘I don’t know. We found her stuff – her rucksack, her walkietalkie – but she was gone.’

I took a deep breath. I knew I was prying, but there was something inside me that made me ask it. ‘Were you in love with her? I mean, is that why you and Saint don’t like talking about her?’

He looked up at me in surprise. ‘I wasn’t in love with her, Lele,’ he said. ‘I mean, we were friends, but love . . . no.’

For some reason I felt a bright jab of relief.

He looked as if he was about to speak again, but then his walkie-talkie crackled into life: ‘Ash, come in, Ash.’ It was Saint.

‘Ash here, over.’

‘Better get down to basement level, over.’

‘What’s up? Over.’

‘Ginger’s up to his old tricks again, over.’

‘Shit,’ Ash hissed. ‘Better get going.’

I tried to lift the rucksack over my shoulder, but I stumbled under its weight. Smiling slightly, Ash passed me his.

‘No! I can manage,’ I said.

‘Trust me,’ Ash said. ‘It’s a long walk home, and, knowing Ginger, there might be some running in our future, so be prepared.’

He had a point. With a rueful shrug I swallowed my pride and handed the rucksack over.

Saint was waiting for us at the bottom of the escalators.

‘Well?’ Ash said. ‘He hasn’t blown something up again, has he?’

‘Not yet. Check it out,’ she said with a half-smile on her face.

‘Can someone tell me how to stop this thing?’ Ginger yelled as he came barrelling towards us, wobbling on a skateboard, his arms outstretched. I couldn’t help but laugh – he looked ridiculous – and I laughed even harder when he wiped out against one of the huge pot plants.

Leaping to his feet, Ginger brushed off his jeans and grinned at us. ‘You want a go?’ he asked, handing the skateboard to Ash.

I could see the conflicting emotions flicker over Ash’s face. Part of him wanted to gripe at Ginger for messing around when he should have been working, but I could tell that he was also tempted to have a go on the skateboard.

‘Okay,’ Ash said. ‘Just for a few minutes. But then we have to get out of here.’

‘Awesome!’ Ginger said before Ash had a chance to change his mind. ‘I’ll get all of us one. Wait here.’

‘Typical Ginger,’ Saint said, watching him jog into a nearby sports shop.

Seconds later Ginger was racing back towards us, three skateboards clutched in his arms. He handed them out, a look of childish excitement on his face. ‘This is going to be
so
cool!’ he said.

We spent over an hour on the skateboards, one of us keeping a lookout while the others practised, and by the end of it I was feeling pretty smug. It turned out that I was much better at it than Ginger – probably because I was smaller and lighter – and Ash and Saint were hopeless (they kept trying to go too fast before they had learned to balance properly).

The light was fading by the time we decided to leave the mall. A jostling group of Rotters was milling about outside the doors as if they were queuing up to get inside before the sales started.

Ash scanned them swiftly. ‘All cool. They’re totally rotted.’

‘Yummy,’ Ginger said. ‘My favourite kind.’

‘Gross, Ginger,’ Saint said.

The light was taking on a bluish cast, the heat of the day settling, the mountain looking dreamy and unreal in the distance. The four of us strode through the fynbos that coated the highway, Ash carrying the bag of books as if it weighed nothing at all. Ginger’s stomach rumbled.

‘Hungry, Ginger?’ I asked.

‘Starving, mate.’

‘Shall we stop for some chow?’ Saint asked Ash.

‘Yeah!’ Ginger said. ‘Let’s have a barbecue!’

‘A
braai
, Ginger,’ Ash said. ‘The word is
braai
. I can’t believe you still say things like that. I’m going to confiscate all your British movies if you don’t wise up.’

‘Oh, yeah? You’re not the boss of me.’

‘Am so,’ Ash said, pretending to punch Ginger in the stomach.

‘Are not!’

Saint glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

We walked on for a while, until we reached a fairly large clearing, where Saint and Ash dropped their rucksacks from their shoulders with sighs of relief.

‘I thought you were doing the underwear run?’ Saint said to Ginger as his bag clinked to the ground.

He looked slightly shifty. ‘Yeah . . . So?’

She dived for his bag before he could whip it out of her reach. ‘So, what sort of underwear clinks like that?’ She searched through it. ‘I knew it!’ She pulled out several glass bottles of Coke.

‘What?’ Ginger said, trying to look innocent and failing.

‘This stuff will kill you.’

He shrugged. ‘Nice way to die, though, innit?’

‘What are we going to braai?’ I asked.

‘Ash and I will sort that,’ Ginger said.

‘You want to help me get some wood?’ Saint asked me.

‘Sure.’

Ash and Ginger bustled off in one direction while Saint and I headed into a nearby copse.

‘They’re not going to kill a buck, are they?’ I asked.

‘Nah, there’s a bunch of wild chickens around here,’ she said. ‘That’s more Ginger’s style.’

She knocked over a piece of dead wood and a baboon spider crawled out and scurried towards us.

‘Ugh!’ she said, jumping back.

I nudged the spider towards a clump of dried twigs, and within seconds it was gone.

‘I can’t believe the great Saint is scared of spiders,’ I said.

‘Believe it, Zombie Bait.’

‘Do you mind not calling me that?’

For a second she looked as if she was about to snap at me, but then she relaxed and grinned instead. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess I’ve been a bit hard on you.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s okay.’

‘It is not okay. I’ve been a bitch.’

‘Total bitch is more like it.’

She laughed. ‘But you handled it well, Zombie Ba – Lele.’

‘Didn’t have much choice,’ I said. ‘You’re stronger than I am.’

‘True,’ she said.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t.’

‘How did you become a Mall Rat?’

She looked down at the ground, and kicked her boots through a tangle of weeds. ‘You really want to know? It’s not a pretty story.’

I nodded.

She was right; it wasn’t a pretty story. Saint had been living in New Arrivals when the Rotters had broken through the fence. She had watched as those closest to her had been mercilessly slaughtered before Hester had found her wandering, shell-shocked, through the streets, the only person in the area who hadn’t been cut down or turned into a mindless Hatchling.

‘So Hester knew that the Rotters couldn’t sense you?’

Saint nodded. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without her. I’d lost everyone . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Saint.’

She looked up at me and smiled. ‘Thanks.’

‘And Ginger?’

She grinned. ‘Can you believe it? Ash and Hester found him hanging around outside Ratanga Junction. He’d left the enclave, just wandered out after the Rotter break-in, and was planning on seeing if he could get the roller coasters to work.’

‘Typical Ginger,’ I said.

‘But . . . Look, thanks for being so good with him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think sometimes people lose patience with him. Find him annoying.’

‘I love Ginger. I mean, I love him like a brother.’ I could feel myself blushing.

‘And what do you think of Ash?’

Now my cheeks felt white hot. ‘Nothing. He’s okay.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She looked at me sideways.

‘What about you, Saint? Why haven’t you and Ash ever hooked up?’

She smiled. ‘Because, Lele, I’m not into boys.’

‘Ah.’ It made sense: I hadn’t forgotten what I’d overheard all those weeks earlier when I’d been hiding out in the kombi.

We wandered back, arms full of firewood.

The fire was already cracking and spitting when Ash and Ginger returned, each carrying a limp plump chicken.

Ginger immediately sat down next to the fire and started plucking them, feathers flying around his head, several getting stuck in his bushy hair and eyebrows.

I’m not lying when I say that I’d never tasted anything so delicious. Gran had kept her own chickens, which we’d been allowed to eat on special occasions, but I don’t remember them ever tasting as glorious as the ones we ate that night. Finally we all sat back, wiping our greasy fingers on our jeans. It was now fully dark, the flames adding a glow to everyone’s faces. Ginger handed round a bottle of Coke and Ash lit a cigarette.

‘Go on, Saint!’ Ginger said, with his usual look of adoration. ‘Do your special trick.’

‘What special trick?’ I asked.

‘You got to see this, Lele. Go on, Saint. Please?’

Saint rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘I’m so stuffed I can hardly move, Ginger.’

‘Go on, mate,’ he said. ‘Pretty please?’

Rolling her eyes again, she got to her feet and began to rummage in her bag. Pulling out a bottle of paraffin, she undid one of the bandannas tied around the strap of her rucksack and ripped it into strips.

I watched, fascinated, while she unwrapped the chains around her wrists and attached the spiked balls to the ends of each of them. Dipping the bandanna material in the paraffin she then tied it tightly around the metal balls.

‘Ash? Chuck me your lighter,’ she said as she made her way further away from the fire.

Moments later she lit the material, which flared instantly alight, and began to swing the chains around her head. She spun them faster and faster, the flames making impossibly bright, blurred lines against the dark canvas of the night. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I glanced over at the others, to check out their reaction. Ginger was completely enthralled, his eyes not leaving Saint for a second, but Ash caught my eye, and for several seconds we stared at each other. I didn’t know what to think, so I dropped my eyes and concentrated on the whisper of the chains as they swept through the air.

I know what you’re thinking: But what about Thabo?

Truth was, I didn’t know.

‘Hi, guys,’ Ginger said, looking expectantly around the breakfast table.

‘Oh, hi, Ginger,’ Saint said.

‘It’s a lovely day today, isn’t it?’ Ginger said hopefully.

‘Is it?’ Ash said with a yawn.

Saint looked at me and winked. It was Ginger’s birthday and the plan was to pretend we’d all forgotten, send him off to the market for some honey, and then surprise him when he got back.

I’d stayed up the previous night creating a sketch for him in the pad I’d slicked from the bookstore, hiding it from Saint as best I could. I’d drawn it movie poster-style, sketching a likeness of Ginger as I knew he saw himself in his mind: part action hero, part clown. Around him lay a pile of decapitated Hollywood-style zombies, and a woman clutched at his arm, gazing into his face adoringly. She was based on Angelina Jolie, but she had more than a passing resemblance to Saint.