Deadlands (28 page)

‘My hero,’ he said in my ear.

‘We’re not out of this yet,’ I replied, pulling back and checking him over. ‘Are you badly hurt?’ He was definitely going to have a couple of black eyes and it looked as if his nose might be broken.

‘I’ve been worse,’ he said, giving me his lopsided grin. Then he looked around at the mall. ‘Is that really what I think it is?’

‘Thabo,’ I said, ‘you haven’t seen anything yet.’

‘Guys!’ Ash called to us. ‘I think you should see this.’

The Guardian still lay where it had fallen, Ash staring at it with a mixture of shock and disbelief. Using the tip of his panga, he had lifted one of the robe’s sleeves, and as Thabo and I joined him I caught a glimpse of human skin where a hand – a human hand – peeked out.

Then, with absolutely no warning, the body shifted and sat up, moving with a horrible sinuous speed. Ash moved as if to slice it with his panga, but then it was still again.

‘Hello, Lele,’ a human voice – a guy’s voice – said from beneath the hood. Bizarrely, the voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

Ash and I stared at each other.

‘We knew you would be back,’ the Guardian said.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, still struggling to remember where I’d heard the voice before.

Shifting the panga to the Guardian’s throat, Ash reached down and pulled the robe’s hood completely from the its face. It took me less than a second to download who was in front of me, but far longer to actually believe it.

‘You!’ I said, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

‘Me,’ he replied.

It was Zit Face – Paul – although the cruel nickname I’d given him didn’t fit anymore. His skin was smooth and clear, and his once permanently greasy hair shimmered in the sunlight where it curled over his forehead.

‘If you run now, you might just get away,’ Paul said, and I knew then why I didn’t immediately recognise his voice. There was something dead about it. Emotionless.

‘Look at his eyes,’ Thabo said, his voice flat with shock.

At first I couldn’t see what Thabo was talking about. The sun was now so bright, and I had to lean in closer to see properly.

I couldn’t hold in the scream.

Paul’s irises were no longer the faded blue I remembered. They were just dense black spheres that didn’t seem to reflect the light.

‘But . . . you’re a Guardian?
You
?’ I said.

The Paul thing smiled a cold, fake smile. ‘Me,’ he said.

‘This is what the Guardians – you – do with the teenagers?’

‘Yes.’

I glanced at Thabo and Ash. They were both staring down at Paul, their expressions a mix of fascination and horror. I knew that it was neither the time nor the place to ask questions, but I couldn’t help myself.

‘You were going to do that to Thabo?’ I asked. ‘Change him?’

‘Yes.’

‘But . . . why teenagers?’

‘Teenagers are the only humans that can survive the change without it destroying their system, disrupting their minds. Without the need for death. This kind of human system is receptive: it is grown, but not fully grown. A body in transition.’

I thought then of Jobe, and shrugged away the thought of what Dad had told me – that I’d also been taken away by the Guardians.

‘So you’re kind of like a Rotter?’ I said. ‘Like a mix of Rotter and human?’

‘In a sense. Yet, unlike the dead ones I will never grow older and decrepit. This body will never rot if I take care of it.’

‘How do you control the Rotters?’ Ash asked.

‘We are all connected, the walking dead ones and us. We share a common thread. What I know, they know.’

‘But you’re nothing like the Rotters!’

Paul stared at me with his blank eyes. ‘In the enclave, you have workers – people who pull you along the streets like horses, others who pick up the rubbish. That is what the dead are to us.’

‘You use them to keep us under control,’ Ash spat.

‘Yes,’ Paul said, again without changing his expression. It was almost like talking to a robot in one of Ginger’s movies.

‘The Resurrectionists are going to
freak
when they find out about this,’ Thabo said.

‘So, you’re aliens?’ I said.

‘No, Lele.’ Paul smiled again. ‘
You
are the aliens.’

‘What should we do with him?’ Ash said. He glanced at Thabo, who shrugged.

‘Well, you can’t kill him,’ I replied. ‘It’s Paul!’

‘It’s not Paul, Lele,’ Thabo said. ‘Not anymore. It’s just a shell.’ And I knew he was right. It looked like Paul; it presumably had his memories (he’d recognised me, after all), but there was something sinisterly alien about the eyes, about the way he didn’t seem to blink or show even a glimmer of emotion.

Then Ash asked the question we’d all been wondering. ‘Why did you – the Guardians, I mean – leave the mall intact?’

‘Because it is your god.’

‘
What
?’ I said.

‘We couldn’t destroy the thing you love most. Before we came, we watched you carefully. Places like this are where you spent most of your time and energy.’

‘But . . . the shopping mall isn’t our god!’ I said.

‘What is then?’

Good question. ‘I suppose, for the Resurrectionists, you are.’

The Paul thing let out a low cold chuckle again.

‘Shall we lock him in the wagon?’ Ash asked.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ Thabo said. ‘There were two of them, remember? The other one could be back at any time.’

But that observation was too little too late.

The shot rang out, sounding impossibly loud in the quiet of the morning, the bullet splintering the wagon’s wooden side, missing Thabo’s head by inches.

‘Into the mall!’ Ash yelled. We didn’t have another option; we needed to get under cover fast. A tall figure was walking unhurriedly towards us from the direction of the highway. It had removed its robe, and its tall shape looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t about to waste any time trying to figure out who it was.

Another shot rang out, and the three of us hunched over to make ourselves as small as possible as we sprinted towards the mall’s entrance. The glass doors had never looked so welcoming.

‘You won’t get far!’ the Paul thing called after us in that same lifeless voice.

We all ducked again, as a puff of plaster smoked off the mall’s wall next to my head.

‘Come on!’ Ash grabbed my hand, and the three of us pushed through the entrance doors, tumbling on to the hard marble tiles, just as another shot shattered the glass next to us.

The three of us hared along the corridor.

‘Where to?’ I asked Ash.

‘We’re going to have to get hold of some weapons,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking we head to Game – get our hands on some of Ginger’s fireworks.’

‘At least we know the Guardians aren’t unstoppable,’ I said.

I realised that Thabo was falling behind, and slowed my pace. My stomach twisted when I noticed the bright spots of blood glistening on the white tiles behind him. He was holding his side, and his eyes were bright with pain.

‘Ash! It’s Thabo! He’s badly hurt. He’s bleeding!’

‘I’ll be okay, Lele,’ Thabo said, trying to grin. ‘I think they just nicked me.’

Without a word, Ash slung one of Thabo’s arms around his shoulders and I did the same with the other. I was a good head smaller than both of them, but it didn’t look like Thabo would make it much further without help from both of us.

‘You going to make it?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘So you came after me, huh?’ He glanced at Ash. ‘You too? I didn’t expect that.’

‘That’s your way of saying thank you?’ Ash asked.

‘Yeah,’ Thabo said, trying to smile again, although the pain he was feeling turned it into a grimace. ‘Seriously, guys, it’s just a scratch.’

Ash pulled out his walkie-talkie. ‘Ginger! Saint! Come in, over!’

But in reply there was nothing but the empty buzz of static.

‘You think they’ll know to come here?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ash said. ‘Where else would they go? I’m betting that they’ll head this way when they don’t find you at the west gate.’

‘I just hope they don’t run into the Guardians outside. Why didn’t Paul and the other one follow us in here?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ash said.

We hobbled along, Ash glancing back every now and then to check that we weren’t being followed.

‘So this is where you get all the stuff from?’ Thabo said, struggling to speak between laboured breaths.

‘Yeah,’ I replied.

‘So that’s why you’re called Mall Rats . . .’ he said. Then, his legs seemed to lose all of their strength and he slumped forward.

‘We can’t stop now!’ Ash said as we both staggered under Thabo’s weight. ‘Come on, guys, it’ll be plain sailing when we get to the escalators.’

But Ash couldn’t have been more wrong.

We’d just turned the corner into the main aisle and were a tantalising five metres or so from the escalators when we saw the first bunch. The Rotters were congregated in front of a lingerie emporium, two of them doing their best to sweep the floor while the others milled around as if they were doing nothing more than cheering them on.

‘Oh, shit,’ Ash said.

I’d been so used to them not seeing us that I’d completely forgotten that they could sense Thabo.

A broom-wielding Rotter was the first to react. Its head jerked up, and it opened its skinless jaw wide, letting out a desolate moan. The others immediately stopped what they were doing and twitched their heads around. Then they started shuffling towards us, slowly at first, but then one of them – a hunched figure missing one of its arms – suddenly lunged forward, moving with that same jerky surreal speed I remembered from Gran’s funeral.

‘Come on!’ Ash yelled. ‘Back the way we came!’

We backtracked, but another knot was approaching from that direction, as if drawn by the moans of the others. Both routes were blocked, and from the sounds of the clumping feet behind us it seemed that their ghastly moaning was summoning more and more of them. Ash and I were now practically carrying Thabo between us and I knew that we wouldn’t be able to continue much further. Ash stopped dead and unsheathed the panga. ‘No choice but to fight!’ he said.

The roar cut through the moans, followed by the most welcome sound I’d ever heard: ‘Yippee-kai-yay, zombie suckers!’ Ginger yelled.

Heads bounced towards us, spewing that strange spaghetti stuff, as Ginger cut a path through the dead.

‘Get inside!’ Saint shouted at us, appearing from behind Ginger and pointing us towards the bookstore, its entrance just metres away.

‘We’ll be trapped!’ Ash yelled back.

‘No choice! There’s too many!’

Saint, Ash and Ginger sliced and hacked at the tide of bodies, while I manoeuvred Thabo inside. I helped him stumble towards the back of the store, but his strength was failing fast, and we only just made it to the children’s section.

I raced back to the front of the store and started edging the heavy glass door shut, its hinges screaming from disuse. At the last moment, Ash, Ginger and Saint slipped inside.

Ginger shut off the chainsaw, and we were left listening to the sound of the Rotters moaning outside, several of them bumping against the glass in a vain attempt to get to us.

‘Now, that’s what I call cutting it fine,’ Ginger said.

I jogged back to Thabo, Saint and Ginger close behind.

Saint slumped down in exhaustion. ‘What the hell have you got us into now, Zombie Bait?’

‘It’s my fault,’ Thabo said, trying again to grin. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and, more worryingly, his skin was taking on a greyish tone. ‘Blame me.’

Saint took in his injuries for the first time. ‘What happened?’

‘The Guardians shot him,’ I said.

‘Wait . . .
What
? Why would the Guardians need guns?’

‘We’ve seen them, Saint,’ I said. ‘We know what they are.’

‘And what are they?’

Thabo and I shared a glance. ‘Teenagers,’ I said.

‘Teenagers? What have you been smoking?’

‘It’s true.’ Ash said, returning from the kitchen with a pot of water and several clean tea towels.

‘And the first ones that came? You think they were also teenagers?’

Ash shrugged. ‘Who knows, but I’m pretty sure it’s why they did all those experiments on the kids. Trying to find hosts that would take whatever that spaghetti stuff is without it destroying their bodies.’

I shuddered again.

‘How many are there do you think? Guardians, I mean?’ Saint asked.

‘There are the ones from the Lottery, I guess,’ Ash said. ‘Lele, you knew that Guardian outside. Was he one of the Lottery winners?’

I nodded.

‘There must be shedloads if you think about it,’ Ginger said. ‘All the ones that bring building materials and food into the city. Weird to think they’re, like, our age, innit?’

Thabo groaned, and his eyelids fluttered.

‘Guys!’ I said. ‘Thabo needs help.’

‘We’re going to have to stop the bleeding and clean that wound,’ Ash said to Thabo.

Thabo looked up at him and nodded, but his eyes were turning glassy.

Slowly, I helped Thabo out of his jacket. I bit back the gasp of shock – his black T-shirt was sodden with blood.

‘Ooooh,
mate
,’ Ginger said as I rolled Thabo’s T-shirt up as gently as I could. The wound looked surprisingly small, nothing but a dark hole just beneath his ribs, but the blood that oozed out of it was black.

Ash tried to hide the dismay on his face – but he didn’t do a good enough job of it. He must have seen countless wounds during the war, and the fact that he was horrified didn’t bode well for Thabo.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ Thabo said.

‘Just try to relax,’ Ash replied.

Ash crouched next to me and started to clean the wound, the water running bloody instantly.

Thabo took my hand. ‘Lele,’ he said. ‘You must get out of here. Just leave me.’

‘No ways! Don’t even say that.’

He looked up at Ash. ‘Tell her. Get her out of here.’

‘We’re not leaving you, Thabo,’ Ash said, taking off his jacket and making a pillow for his head. ‘That’s non-negotiable.’