The Disappeared (16 page)

Hurried
footsteps. Shouting. Pounding on the locked swing door.

‘Kingsley!
Open this door now. And I mean fucking now!’ It was Willems. There was a
scarlet rage in his voice Josh had never heard before. ‘Kingsley!’

The doctor
was naked, standing in a pair of worn Jockeys. He clasped his hands in front of
his privates in awkward modesty. Even with this Josh could see there wasn’t
much too hide. ‘Are the ambulance keys in there?’ The ‘ambulance’ was an
extremely polite euphemism for an old Volvo station wagon that had been painted
white. Doctor Marais nodded. ‘Good. Kick those clothes over here.’ The doctor
complied. Without removing his hands from his crotch the doctor used his right
foot to shove the clothes across the white cracked tiles. To do this he needed
to rise up on the toes of his left foot. It looked like a comical version of
Swan Lake. Once again – despite the extreme precariousness of his position –
Josh almost giggled. ‘Okay.’ Josh indicated the floor at his feet. ‘Now lie
down on the floor, on your stomach. And put your hands behind your head.’

There was
screaming and shouting from behind the swing door. And loud crashes as the
guards behind the locked door pummelled it with their bodies. Josh could see
the door start to buckle.

The doctor
lay down on the floor, resentment fierce in his eyes. He inhaled sharply as his
naked skin touched the cold tiles. ‘Hands behind your head. Do it!’ The doctor
interlaced his hands behind his flabby neck. His face pressed into the fissured
white tiles. Joshua placed a foot on top of the doctor’s intertwined hands, forcing
him lower. The doc emitted something between a sigh and a low moan. ‘If you
move, I slice you.’

Carefully
Josh placed the knife on the long counter next to the hospital bed. To his left
was a deep sink with a swan-neck tap. He opened it all the way and inserted his
head into the swishing jet of water. With quick jerky movements he washed the
blood from his hair and face. For good measure he increased the pressure on the
doctor’s neck. Through the roar of water in his ears he could hear Werner
Marais complain loudly. Josh stole a glance at the swing door. The top half of
the heavy wooden barrier was starting to shatter. Remarkably, the lock held.
Though it was only a matter of seconds. Dammit! Everything was taking too long.
Josh considered hosing down his blood-stained arms but thought better of it. He
reached for the doctor’s tunic.

There was a
loud crash. The swing doors were no more.

Shouting
voices. Footsteps and scuffling. The barred gate was being shaken and rattled.

‘Kingsley!”

‘You piece
of shit!’

‘Kingsley!’

‘Open this
fucking gate right now!’

Joshua didn’t
look. There just wasn’t time. Fighting through ragged pain he slipped the white
polyester tunic over his head. Just the pants. Just the pants. Then he could
get-

‘He’s going
to take the Volvo!’ Willems’s voice was a high-pitched scream of fury. ‘He’s
going to escape.’

With
gritted teeth Joshua slipped the white polyester pants over his bloody
sneakers.

‘Van der
Merwe, go round the back. Quickly! Cut him off.’ And then: ‘And activate the
outside siren.’

Dammit!
Josh
had to hurry. Time was running out.

‘Kingsley,
give yourself up.’

‘You’ll
never make it.’

‘Gruyvenstein,
shut the hell up and alert the gatehouse. Tell them it’s a shutdown. Run, fuck.
Run!’

Joshua
glanced at the heaving gate. He could see Jannie Gruyvenstein’s back as he ran
through the shattered swing doors and down the corridor. Through the bars,
Willems leered at him with undisguised hate. Three other guards flanked Willems,
pushing madly at the gate. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Willems glared at his
guards. ‘Go round the back. Head him off. Quickly!’ The guards looked sheepish
for a split second then disappeared through the lurching swing door. ‘You
listen to me carefully, Kingsley.’

Joshua didn’t
stop or hesitate for a single second. He had to reach the gatehouse. Before the
guards pushed the heavy three-metre-high iron gate into place.

‘If you are
lucky enough to make it today.’ Willems was hissing poison. ‘If you are lucky
enough. I’m going to hunt you down until the last days of your useless trailer
trash existence.’

Joshua felt
in the trouser pocket. His hand gripped the keys he was looking for.

‘Do you
fucking hear me, Kingsley? I will never stop looking for you.’

Joshua
grabbed the duffel bag and painfully heaved it over his shoulder.

‘I know
where your mother lives.’ Willems paused, gulping through the heaving breaths
that racked his chest. ‘And that sissy-shit brother of yours.’

A bolt of
black anger slammed into Joshua’s heart. He stopped what he was doing and
turned to the red-faced warden clinging to the heavy bars. There was no time.
There was no time. Still ... Josh stared in hateful silence at Willems.

The wail of
the outside klaxon pierced the teeming silence between them.

‘That’s
right, you piece of shit. I’ll track you down to the ends of the earth.’

In a smooth
fluid motion Joshua picked up his crude knife by its tip and flung it at the
warden. In shock Willems jumped back. The knife smashed into one of the bars
and clattered loudly to the floor. Seeing his chance Doctor Marais tried to
rise to his feet. Joshua violently swung his heel into the fat man’s midriff.
Marais collapsed on the floor struggling for breath.

There was
no time.

Josh stared
pure black hate at Willems then turned towards the back door.

‘I will
personally make sure they dump your carcass in the darkest foulest hole ever
invented for filth like you, Kingsley. Do you hear?

Josh opened
the white-washed door and stepped into the bright painful sunlight.

‘Kingsley!
Kingsley! I’m coming to fucking get you.’

Joshua Paul
Kingsley slammed the door shut and hobbled towards the white Volvo standing
nearby in a diagonal parking bay. The exterior siren was wailing loudly. The
sound was urgent and panicky. Carefully – with great pain – Josh clambered into
the driver seat of the Volvo. He turned the ignition. Slammed the old vehicle
into first gear. And gunned the accelerator. The Volvo screeched into action
and jumped forward. Blue smoke howled from burning tyres. He pushed the rev
counter into the red as the car hurtled forward. Josh made a sharp left turn.
He barely missed the edge of Block C as he hugged the tight corner. The car was
now charging straight at the gatehouse.

500 metres.

Inside the
little wooden hut of the gatehouse Josh saw one of guards with a telephone to
his ear.

400 metres.

He was
shouting commands at two exterior guards. They came sprinting.

300 metres.

They
reached the heavy gate. They stared pushing it along the deep groove that cut
across the road.

200 metres.

The mammoth
gate moved. At first slowly. Then with increasing speed. Shit! Joshua realised
he wasn’t going to make it. Oh my God no!

100 metres.

The gate
slid smoothly on its iron groove. Not gonna make it. Not gonna make. Oh my God not
–

CRASSSSSSH!

The right
side of the Volvo shrivelled up like crumpled paper. For a split second Joshua
was airborne. Then. In a bone shuddering impact that made his marrow jiggle,
Joshua’s head smashed into the Volvo’s steering wheel. There was white-hot
light in his head. Black pain shrouded his vision. Something large and silvery
flew past his head. There was the crack of fractured bone. Joshua howled with
holy pain.

And then he
was free. And the dirt road flanked by two high fences was before him.

He howled
again in pure blistering agony. Howled and howled.

But it wasn’t
him.
Wasn’t him? What?

No. The
howl came from behind him. Through the white daze of concussion and the red
scream of pain he saw one of the guards lying on the dirt. Further behind him
lay the twisted bumper of the Volvo. The other guard was standing nearby both
hands in the air. Frozen in shock.

The car
bounced madly over the potholed dirt road. Through a hot daze that rang in his
ears Josh barely maintained control of the car. Barely clung to consciousness.
If the Volvo had been a newer model the exploding airbag would have made him
lose control. But it wasn’t. And he didn’t.

As he
exited the fenced corridor that led to the Westville gatehouse Josh cast a last
look in the rear-view mirror. In the distance – behind the massive gate –
extended three-quarters across the road he saw several cars. But they were
stationary. As he sped away on the R311 that swung past the entrance of
Westville Reformatory for Boys Josh realised what had happened. The impact had
bounced the heavy barred gate out of its groove. Which meant it was stuck.
Which meant no cars could get through. Which meant he was free.

He was
free.

Despite a
sluice-gate of pain inside his head. Despite screaming ribs. Despite gnarled
joints. Josh laughed. And laughed. And laughed. He was free.

In the
rear-view mirror he saw his own face. And a river of blood pouring from his
nose. It didn’t matter.

He was
free.

Three days
later, the authorities would find the mangled blood-stained Volvo. Its bumper
was missing. The right mud-guard was torn free. Its chassis was cracked and the
front axle slightly warped.

There was
no sign of Joshua Paul Kingsley. They would never find him again.

Minki was
alone in the kitchen. She was sitting on one of the pine chairs at the round
kitchen table. She was staring at the vacant seat – until a few minutes ago
occupied by her father. There was an ominous silence in the house; a silence
that wasn’t so much a
thing
as a lack of a thing. A silence that could
only exist in the total absence of life. Minki felt a cold shiver ripple down
her spine. She stared at the empty chair in front of her. The hysteria, pain
and confusion of earlier that morning had settled into something like cauterised
numbness.

Like heavy
sediment that drifted to the bottom of a dark dam.

It was better
this way. To feel nothing. Wanting to feel – to re-experience those feelings
was like digging your hand into the dirty dark mud of that sediment. Like
digging around and feeling the snotty sliminess of unknown things. Or feeling
the sudden prick of sharp objects. No. Right now she didn’t want to feel
anything.

Minki stood
up. She wanted to get out. Get out of this house. Do whatever. Anything. Just
get out. That’s when the cold hit her.

She fell back
into the chair. A small yelp escaped her. Sharp ice sank into her skin. All
over her face. Arms. Legs. She felt cold fingers digging deeper. The feeling in
her digits, hands, feet and legs retreated. Until there was only numbness. Like
somebody had shoved cotton wool into all her fingertips – her toes – all her
extremities. Suddenly her hands felt huge – impossibly huge. Like she could
squash entire planets between forefinger and thumb. Her hands grew and grew and
they became as big as a solar system. A galaxy. A universe! She tried to move
them but felt only a density as deep and frightening as a black hole sucking
the life out of the space around it. Darkness fell over her eyes. She screamed.

She is
outside. It is dark.

And around her
everybody is dying.

She can see
everyone in Bishop. All at once she can stare into dozens of houses and
hundreds of rooms. It’s as if the whole of Bishop is a tiny twirling speck of
dust that has spun past her eye. Here and there whole families die. Here and
there a mother ... a father ... a child. She sees them all. She knows them all.

She sees Constable
Jali. He is driving in his white police van. The streets are quiet and
deserted. It is late. He is racing through the streets of Bishop. And then ... spasms
rack his body. And the vomiting begins. The car veers of the road and hits the
kerb. It bounces hard and comes to a standstill in front of the Laundromat. The
impact of the collision drapes Constable Jali over his steering wheel. Although
he is unconscious the spasms still make his body twitch. He vomits yellow stuff
mixed with blood. He dies.

Mrs Jones.
Beautiful Mrs Jones. She is busy dying in her newly tiled bathroom. She has
crawled all the way from her cosy bedroom to the white starkness of the
en
suite
bathroom. Just to die.

Then there’s a
stranger. A man. Maybe just a boy. He is outside with Minki. And he is dying.
Horribly. She tries to peer into his face. But she doesn’t know him.

Minki sees
them all. And they are all dying. Then she sees something that sends a black
hand reaching for her heart. She sees someone she loves. Someone she loves
almost as much as her father. No. It cannot be. But it is.

She sees
Lindiwe. And she is dying.

Darkness
clung to the cold Free State morning air. In the east, the sun had only just
begun warming up the horizon. Even now it was obvious. It was going to be a
gloomy, cloudy day.

A slight
breeze stirred the air around the main runway of the Bloemspruit Air Force base,
just outside Bloemfontein. It was quiet and strangely deserted for this time of
day. It was no fluke however. It was something that had been arranged at the
highest levels of the South African government. Passes had been hurriedly
arranged. Training exercise suddenly scheduled. Military personnel – commissioned
and otherwise – had been diverted to other duties. All to ensure the highest
levels of secrecy.

No-one
could know. The continued existence of two democratically elected governments
depended upon it.

Two
thousand kilometres to the north-east, the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan – a
Nimitz-class nuclear-powered super-carrier (the first US ship to be named after
a living president) – ploughed a steady twenty-five knots through the warm
waters of the Indian Ocean. Hours before, several Grumman C-2 Greyhound transport
aircraft had been launched from her deck. The flight log indicated that a
contingent of medical personnel was on board – headed for Mozambique. This was
not true. The Greyhounds were instead transporting a highly specialised unit of
US Special Forces. And they were headed for the Bloemspruit Air Force base.

Now – as a
sudden gust whipped the deserted tarmac of the main runway – a small group of
officers from Military Intelligence headed towards the landing strip. Under the
utmost secrecy, the group of carefully selected soldiers were to assist and
oversee the landing of the American aircraft. Several unmarked transport
vehicles had been positioned along the runway. Upon landing, the unit of US
Special Forces were to be whisked away to a secret destination by yet another
contingent of military drivers.

As the
group of officers from Military Intelligence stood to attention next to the
runway, the low roar of the C-2 Greyhounds could be heard in the distance.

They were
transporting the unit known as Alpha Team 9. And they were heading for Bishop.
Soon they would be here.

God help
them all.