The Disappeared (17 page)

Wayne Duggan
opened his eyes.

The world was
a spinning cloud. Pinned to a dark sun. The eye of the abyss stared at him. And
blinked. The universe fell away.

Duggan sat up
and vomited next to his bed. The puke was turgid and heavy and stung his throat.
It lay in a steaming puddle on the worn carpet. He wiped his mouth as his
stomach heaved with the aftershock. He stared at the dishevelled room. His
room. Across from him was the long desk that contained three 19” flat screen PC
monitors. Various screen savers looped on the monitors. At least three bottles
of Miller Lite dotted the table. Another two had fallen over; one had disgorged
its yellow liquid onto the ash-strewn table surface.
Darth Vader
and a
miniature model of the
Death Star
were swimming in the stale beer.
Princess
Leia
was fighting cigarette stubs in the heaped ashtray. The other
Star
Wars
figurines were perched on the windowsill above his desk ... all in
disarray.

For a moment Duggan
stared without comprehension at the mess. The chaotic desk. The dirty socks
that lay in various heaps. The t-shirt deposited on the cheap swivel chair. The
Matrix Reloaded
poster that dangled precariously from the wall.

His mom would
not be pleased. Had she been alive. Somehow whenever Duggan surveyed the
remains of a night’s revelry in his room he couldn’t help think of her. And the
stern words that would inevitably follow. He sighed.

What
happened last night?

Duggan sat
motionless as the morning fog drifted from his mind. Slowly, images from the
previous night sifted through. Downloading the Windows 7 updates. Playing
Tour of Duty 3
. Having a couple of Miller Lites. Duggan stared with disgust
at the pool of puke.
Five Beers? No way.

His head
snapped back. The downloads! He had never checked to see if they were complete.
Or had he? Duggan simply couldn’t remember. Either way they were shit crucial. He
jumped from the bed and stumbled towards his desk.
Shit!
His legs felt
weak. Wobbly. Uncertain.

He flopped
down at the desk and flicked his mouse to de-activate the screen savers. Wayne
Julian Duggan stared at the screen in horror.

DOWNLOAD INCOMPLETE!

ERROR CONNECTING TO HOST.

‘You piece of
shit!’ Duggan banged the desk with his fist. He jumped up and without thinking
grabbed one of the empty beer bottles. With all his might he aimed for the
empty wall beneath the peeling
Matrix Reloaded
poster. Then stopped
himself. What would his mom say? No. Not a good idea. Duggan placed the beer
bottle on the desk. For good measure he banged it three times –
softly
–
to express his anger.

‘Fuckit!’

Duggan had
been trying for more than a week to download the server updates. The previous
evening had been the first successful attempt. Or so he had thought.

‘Three gigs in
its
moer
in,’ he whispered to himself as he resumed his seat. ‘Dammit,
man!’ Sometimes Duggan regretted switching to 3G wireless technology. A cable
seemed so much more ... certain at times. Through deep mournful sighs Duggan
opened the dialogue box that would re-commence the hefty download. He
had
to get those updates. Right now he had no choice. Duggan needed the update for
the new terminals in the Cyber Pope Internet Café – Bishop’s one and only Internet
shop – or he would be unable to link them to the main server. And his small but
demanding clientele would piss their panties.
Sure as hell.

Duggan ticked
the appropriate component boxes and clicked the CONNECT button. The progress
bar began pulsing. He sat back in his chair and sighed again deeply and
painfully. Sometimes he wondered about Bishop. About his decision to remain in
the town of his birth ... the place of his youth. Absently Duggan picked up an
old slice of garlic-laced pizza and started munching on the dry crust.
Sometimes he thought it was time to move on. Except – at the same time – he
knew that he’d probably just end up in a town not much bigger – or God forbid –
smaller than Bishop. Still ... on a day like this he regretted that he hadn’t
pursued his dream to become a software engineer at a company like Dimension
Data or one of the mobile networks. Damn! He had been the brightest kid in the
district. An academic star. And now the whole world – everybody he had grown up
with – had relocated. To Johannesburg. To Cape Town. To London, England. Some
even to the USA. And here he was – boy genius –stuck in
goddamn
Bishop. Damn
... on a day like this –

What? Duggan
leaned forward. The bold error message jumped out at him.

HOST COULD NOT BE DETECTED

‘THAT’S
IMPOSSIBLE.’ Duggan stared at
Darth Vader
in rage.
Darth
was
non-committal. He peered in irritation at the screen. ‘That’s impossible. That
is fucking impossible.’ Not establishing a good connection ... or having
downloads interrupted was one thing. But
this!
This was something else
entirely. Duggan ran a quick diagnostic. Nothing. ‘Dammit! This just isn’t
possible.’ Next Duggan ran a more thorough scan. He waited impatiently as the
time consuming software did its job, all the time tapping furiously on the
stained surface of his desk. In a flurry of impatience he jumped up and decided
to get dressed while he waited. Anything was better than staring at the idiotic
progress bar. He slipped on a pair of faded jeans and the wrinkled
Metallica
t-shirt that hung over the swivel chair. He then strutted to the bathroom and
quickly brushed his teeth. When he returned and looked at the scan results his
worse fears were confirmed.

His computer
wasn’t just struggling to connect to the 3G host. It was as if the host didn’t
exist at all anymore.

That’s
impossible. Completely impossible.

What in God’s
name was wrong?

Inspector Jan
Coetzee jumped into the white Toyota Hilux police van. Fixed to its back was a
sturdy steel canopy with bars at the windows. It was – in essence – a mobile
jail cell and was typical of most police vehicles in South Africa.

While it was
true that writing the morning report had calmed his nerves ... the conversation
with Lindiwe had only served to inflame his sense of dread. It had also
galvanised him into a pressing sense of duty and necessity. He
had
to
find out what the hell was happening to his town.

He turned the
key. Nothing happened. He turned the key again. This time the engine burst
soundlessly into life. Coetzee threw the gears into reverse and gunned the
accelerator. The powerful 3-Litre engine responded and the pick-up shot
backwards. At the entrance to the police parking lot, he stomped on the brakes
and slammed the van into first gear. With a screech of rubber, the van jumped
into Orchid road – one of the streets that intersected Bishop’s main roadway. Coetzee
whirled the steering wheel to the right and headed for Bishop’s main street. At
the stop sign he slammed on the brakes. For the first time Coetzee registered
his surroundings. His heart was beating quick thunder. His knuckles were white
hot around the steering wheel. His breathing was rasping coal. ‘What in God’s
name is going on here?’ His voice was a fierce whisper in the dead silence of
the cabin. For a minute – for that was all he would permit himself – Coetzee
allowed his breathing and his nerves to calm down. With slow measured breaths
he brought his raging heartbeat down. Calmness returned to his fractured mind
once again. It was time to sort out this mess. To help those he had sworn
solemnly to protect. It was time to become the station commander of Bishop police
station.

Slowly Coetzee
released the clutch and the police van inched forward into Bishop’s main
street. What he saw there immediately produced another spike in his heartbeat.

The van slowly
rolled forwards. Underneath its weight tarred pebbles crunched. A silence hung
over everything. Coetzee looked to his right. He studied the sidewalk to his
left. He scanned the distance. The town was pristine ... manicured.

And completely
deserted.

Bishop was
never – by any reasonable standards – a busy town. But in all the years that he
had been serving in this part of the world Coetzee had never seen the town like
this before. So utterly empty barren and ... desolate. There was not a single
person on the main street. Not one shop had been opened yet. And in all this
time he had yet to see a car. This was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
Surely
this couldn’t mean ...

Coetzee
glanced at the Toyota’s electronic clock. It was flashing 12:00. As if the
battery had died overnight. The van rolled inexorably on. Almost as if by its
own accord. It was the only sign of life.

Coetzee
brought the car to a standstill. He looked at the emptiness around him. And
then – for a reason he couldn’t explain – he slammed the Hilux’s horn. The
sound was like the wail of a dying animal. It bounced off the emptiness and was
reflected back onto itself. Coetzee pulled back his hand, frightened by the effect
it produced.

‘Pull yourself
together, man.’ He took a deep breath and tried to focus. He remembered the
conversation he had with Lindiwe. And the promise he had made. With new resolve
he sped down the dead-quiet main street of Bishop – towards the house of Mrs
Estelle van Deventer. At the eastern edge of town he turned right at McIntyre’s
filling station and headed towards the more modest section of Bishop. He pulled
up in front of Estelle’s house.

In the years
that he had come to Bishop, Coetzee and Estelle van Deventer had become close
friends. He enjoyed and admired her uncompromising earthiness. He respected her
inner strength and her unshakeable resolve to be her own person ... on her own
terms. She had been one of Bishop’s oldest residents and had lived here long
before it had become a fashionable enclave in the Free State bush veldt. Coetzee
had often joked with her ... saying that she was the kind of person they named
a swimming pool after.

Now he was
parked in front of her house. Dreading that he may never see her again.

Slowly Coetzee
climbed out of the Hilux and ascended the steps of her
stoep
. The front
door was unlocked. Clichéd as it may sound ... no-one in Bishop locked doors.

If it hadn’t
been for his own experiences of that morning he would have approached this
whole business as the product of hysterical paranoia. But now ... as he stood
before the open front door he felt a tangible unease. His heart thudded
painfully in his chest as he slowly entered the dark interior of the late
Victorian house. The floorboards of the hallway creaked under his weight. Everything
else was silent. He took another step. Nothing. ‘Estelle.’ His voice sounded
ridiculously small in the ominous space. Coetzee cleared his throat and tried
again. ‘Estelle!’ His voice sank into the endless silence. There was no reply.
He glanced into the living room. It was empty. He called her name again,
directing his voice towards the kitchen whose entrance was on the other end of
the big room. Nothing. Coetzee glanced ominously up at the stairs. Slowly he
made his way up the groaning steps. When he reached the landing at the top he
paused. He tried again but Estelle van Deventer did not answer to her name. Feeling
the deep oppression of the empty house Coetzee took a brisk few steps towards
Estelle’s bedroom. At the entrance to her room he paused. Afraid to look inside.
But there was nothing there. Nothing to indicate what could have become of its
occupant. Coetzee scanned the room with the perfunctory thoroughness of a
trained policeman.

The first
thing he noticed was the unmade bed. It wasn’t like Estelle. Not even slightly.
The second thing Coetzee noticed was something that had eluded Lindiwe’s awareness.
A pair of prescription glasses on the bedside chest of drawers. He entered the
room, picked up the glasses and studied them. Just as he had thought. They
belonged to the ex-nurse. All his reservations disappeared. And his heart beat
faster. Estelle was almost totally blind. Her bottle-thick glasses were testament
to that. Without them she was lost.

Coetzee sighed
deeply.
What in God’s name happened here?

In a gesture
of tenderness he replaced the glasses on the bedside chest. Normally he would
have taken them in as evidence. But not today. With a heavy heart Coetzee left
the room and descended the stairs.

Once in the
van, he tried the CB radio again. But just as in the station his, efforts were
met with static. Coetzee knew he needed to ensure the safety and well-being of
the town’s residents as soon as possible. But first he needed to find out what
had happened to his men. From the log at the station he remembered that Jali
had driven to the mayor’s house to answer a distress call. That was where he
needed to go right now. He ignited the van’s engine and made a quick U-turn in
the narrow street. Coetzee passed McIntyre’s garage and this time headed in a
northerly direction towards River Street and the upmarket houses that sat on
the banks of the Elandsriver. Despite his pressing need, he drove slowly. A
thousand images and dark thoughts swam in his mind. What had happened the
previous night? Where were his men – when he needed them the most? Where was
Estelle van Deventer. And ... and ...

No, he daren’t
say it.

Coetzee was a
block from the luscious leafy street that housed most of Bishop’s wealthy when
he saw it. Jali’s van. The white police
bakkie
with its phosphorescent
yellow and blue lines was parked haphazardly halfway up the kerb. The driver
door was hanging open.