The Disappeared (26 page)

Seeing that
some kind of reaction was expected from her Lindiwe uttered a single ‘Wow.’

‘I’ve been
running this shop for how long ...’ Duggan continued satisfied, ‘...what?
Almost five years. And yeah, sure, I only installed the wireless system about a
couple of months ago. But I mean, I have never seen anything like this. Never!’
Duggan shook his head in annoyance. He looked over at the server stack behind
his counter. ‘And that’s not all. When I came over this morning, the network
had been reset. It’s as if someone came here sometime in the middle of the
night and rebooted my system. You know what I’m saying?’ Lindiwe nodded
compliantly although she could only guess vaguely at what Duggan was saying. ‘It
doesn’t make sense.’ He sighed again, deeply staring into the cracked tiles of
the floor. ‘You feel like a cooldrink?’

Lindiwe
nodded. ‘Thanks.’

Duggan
strolled to the area behind the counter and opened a little mini fridge packed
with a variety of carbonated soft-drink brands. ‘Coke Light, right?’

‘That’ll be
great, Dugg. Thanks.’

Duggan walked
over to Lindi with an outstretched hand, gripping a can of Coke Light. He had
taken a Sprite for himself. For a few moments the two of them stood around,
quietly sipping. Duggan stirred restlessly. ‘You know, if
only
the
landlines were out. That’s one thing. I mean, with Telkom you kinda expect that
every now and then. Right? If it’s not some idiot stealing the copper wires
then it’s something else. It happens.’ He paused staring frustration into the
floor tiles. ‘But this. This is the weirdest shit ever, Lindi.’

Lindiwe nodded
slowly. Although she didn’t understand much of Duggan’s incessant techno babble
it was nonetheless a welcome relief from her own thoughts.

Duggan looked
over at her for confirmation. Lindi nodded into her can of Coke Light. ‘I mean,’
Duggan continued, ‘I’ve never heard of a communications fail – across the
spectrum! Cellular. Wireless. Everything.’ He slammed his can down on the
workstation desk to emphasise his point. Droplets of liquid went flying
everywhere. Lindiwe smiled behind the protection offered by her can. ‘I mean we’re
talking para-statals. Right? Multi-national corporations. How does something
like this happen?’ Duggan looked at Lindiwe meaningfully. ‘Well, it doesn’t.’
Duggan paused for dramatic effect. ‘This is no accident, Lindi.’

Lindiwe put her
can down on the workstation desk. She walked towards the window and stared out
into the street. ‘You’re scaring me, Duggan.’

Duggan
followed and stood next to her. Outside, the street was empty and desolate. ‘Look
here, I don’t mean to. But we’ve got to face the facts.’ He stared into her
face. ‘There’s some bad shit going down here.’

Lindiwe looked
at Duggan, staring at him intently. ‘Are you saying someone planned this,
Duggan? Are you saying someone did this ... intentionally?’

‘I’m not sure
what I’m saying. All I know is ... shit like this doesn’t just happen by
accident.’

Lindiwe slowly
massaged her forehead with her right hand. Her eyelids felt heavy as they
closed over her eyes. She felt like she was floating in a terrible dream from
which she just couldn’t awake. ‘But how could they get away with this,’ she
heard herself asking. ‘I mean, if
someone
actually did this, how could
the government allow this to happen?’ She felt like sinking into the merciful
darkness behind her eyes and never rising into the light again. Somewhere in
distant darkness, the outline of a bottle loomed.

‘That’s
exactly what I’m thinking.’

Lindiwe opened
her eyes and stared at Duggan. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nobody can
phone out, right?

‘Yeah.’

‘That means
nobody can phone in.’ Duggan pointed at the sky outside. ‘It’s already
mid-morning. On any normal day I take about a dozen calls from, you know, Bethlehem,
Harrismith,
Fucksberg
... wherever. But today ... nothing. And I mean,
shit, it’s not like I’m the only one who gets outside business, right?’

Lindiwe stared
in perplexed frustration at Duggan. This morning there were too many obstacles
to rational thought. ‘What are you saying, Duggan?’

‘Simply this.
Somebody knows what’s happened here. By now, somebody
must
know that something
is wrong. Right? Hell, even if it is the cops over in Bethlehem. Or a family
member in another town. And yet,’ he pointed to the empty street,’ nothing.
No-one. No cavalry, baby.’ Lindiwe stared at Duggan in horror as the
realisation sank in. ‘That’s right, baby. No-one’s coming ... because we’re not
meant to be, well ... rescued I guess.’ For a brief moment it felt as if the
air inside the shop was expanding. As if it were pushing Lindiwe against the
glass pane. Inside her lungs too the oxygen was hot and rancid. As if the very
air was suffocating her. ‘You see, that’s not the plan. For some reason or
other, we’ve been cut off and deliberately isolated. Somebody doesn’t want us
to contact the outside world. And somebody doesn’t
want
us to be rescued.’
Duggan stared at Lindiwe with an intense spark in his eyes. ‘We’re alone, Lindi.’

Jansen knocked
loudly. And waited.

He was
standing outside Eugene Collie’s front door. The white police van was parked in
his driveway. Like most of the houses south of Main Street, Collie’s was a
modest home. It was however surprisingly well maintained for a man with only
one arm. The garden was simple with neat little flowerbeds flanking a manicured
lawn just turning green with the verdant kiss of Spring.

Jansen sighed
deeply. The restless darkness that had greeted his awakening that morning had
now taken a permanent position in his mood. It was both unshakeable and
unavoidable. The consequent events of the day had done little to dispel it. Now
standing there, his mood seemed to grow little claws that scratched at his
insides. He shifted restlessly on his feet. On top of everything else he was
nervous. He couldn’t deny that he felt a certain amount of trepidation as he
considered the odds of Collie being alive. But it wasn’t concern that fuelled
his existing nervousness. Oh no. That would be ascribing a tenderness to his
soul that it certainly did not possess. No. Right now standing outside Collie’s
front door Jansen was taken with a morbid curiosity at the random hand of fate
that selected some and passed over others. He couldn’t deny that he would be
pleased if Collie had survived. He could certainly use an ally right now. Yes.
An ally. Friend wasn’t really the right word. Jansen didn’t really think of anybody
as a friend. Collie was more of an associate. A close associate. But an
associate nonetheless. A drinking associate. A bitch-and-moan associate. A
fuck-whores-in-Joburg associate. Jansen didn’t have place in his heart for
anything like a friend. But for associates? Well. There was plenty of space for
associates.

He thought of
Collie. Strange little guy. And
little
was definitely the right word.
Collie was easily the shortest man Jansen knew. And if that wasn’t bad enough,
he had this little nagging, whining voice that made him sound like an old hag
on crack. Strange was just as appropriate a description. Since Collie had lost
his left arm in that Tempe accident, he had become obsessive about his little
stump. After digging out almost half a kilogramme of shrapnel, the army
surgeons had managed to save most of the arm, amputating everything below the
elbow. In the subsequent years Collie had become fixated on the stump. He was
always caressing it. And he spoke about it endlessly. In the checkout queues of
supermarkets he would start discussing his stump with complete strangers. He
would show it to any children he encountered, delighting in their horror. Even
when they were bumping whores in Hillbrow, Collie would bore the hookers to
tears with long and laborious accounts of how he lost his arm. Collie however
wasn’t without humour. Since the accident he had tattooed WHAT YOU LOOKING AT?
on the base of the stump. Sometimes Jansen wondered where his military career
would have gone if he hadn’t lost his arm. Maybe it was the best thing that
could have happened to him. Who knows? With Collie you could never tell. Jansen
had to admit one thing though. He
was
impressed with how Collie managed
to build those intricate models with only one hand. He had to cede grudging
respect to the little man that looked more like a racing horse jockey than an
ex-soldier.

Jansen knocked
again. Nothing. Oh well. It was worth a try.

The door
opened. Eugene Collie stood in a vest and a pair of
Batman
boxer shorts.
‘Hey brotha!’ He greeted Jansen with a big enthusiastic grin on his pimply
face. ‘How’s that
babbelas
,’ he said referring to Jansen’s hangover and
the previous evening’s booze up. ‘Hey? Hey? Hey?’ Despite being moderately glad
to see him, Collie’s loud and whining perkiness was a little too much for
Jansen this morning. Irritation pulsed in his heart.

‘Get dressed.
Half the town’s missing and we need to do a roll call.’

For a moment
Collie’s grin perched uncertainly on his face. Then he burst out laughing. ‘What?
Are you still zonked,
bru
?’ He laughed in what sounded to Jansen like an
old crone choking on her own spit while having a mammoth orgasm. ‘Too much
cheap
dooswyn
, brotha. That stuff will fry your mind.’ Collie laughed at
his own joke. Then he stopped. Frowning. Collie looked Jansen up and down. ‘Hey,
I thought it was your off day. What you doing in –’

Jansen pushed
past Collie and entered his house. ‘Get dressed. Coetzee needs you.’ He turned
to face Collie. ‘Something crazy happened last night. Don’t ask me what? All I
know is everybody’s gone missing and it’s one
moer
of a fuck-up.’

Collie stared
uncertainly at Jansen. The grin on his face faded, surfaced then faded again. ‘Bru,
what the hell are you talking about?’

‘Have you got
beer?’

Collie stared
in the direction of his kitchen perplexed. ‘Uh, yeah.’

‘Good,’ Jansen
said heading for the kitchen. ‘I think we’re both gonna need one.’ He returned
a few seconds later with a Black Label in each hand. ‘I think you’re gonna have
to sit for this one,’ he said handing Collie a beer. The two men entered Collie’s
living room and sat down on adjacent couches. Although modest and non-descript,
Collie’s living space was considerably neater and more ordered than Jansen’s.
They cracked the cans and swallowed big mouthfuls of the frothing bitter
liquid. Jansen fixed Collie with a dramatic stare. ‘Remember that
kak
you
were speaking a few weeks ago? When you were talking about the end of the
world? And what it would look like?’ Collie nodded absently. ‘Well, guess what?
You’ve got a front row seat.’ Jansen drained the last of the beer, enjoying the
look of utter confusion on the little man’s face. Slowly and with an
exaggerated sense of drama he began telling Eugene Collie about the events of
the morning. As he spoke, Collie’s face became progressively paler. His eyes
grew with each new piece of information until they were impossibly huge. The
irritating perkiness of a few moments ago had all but disappeared. Halfway
through Jansen’s narrative, Collie got up and fetched two more beers. Jansen
noticed that his hands were shaking.

Following the
end of Jansen’s narrative the two men sat in silence sipping at their cans. ‘Hey
man, I’m like flabbergasted,
bru.
This is like evil shit. Evil shit,
man.’ Collie’s voice faded as he threw a mouthful of beer into his mouth. ‘Evil.’

Jansen nodded
mutely draining the last of the beer. He crumpled the beer can and had to stop
himself from throwing it into a corner. ‘Get dressed,
bra
. Let’s do this
thing.’ Collie stood up and finished the last of his own beer. He sighed
sorrowfully as he stared into emptiness. ‘Collie,’ Jansen said trying to break
through his reverie. ‘Come
bru
.’

Collie nodded.
‘Yes.’ He lingered for a moment then turned and walked towards the doorway that
led to the hall. He halted and spoke without turning. ‘Willie?’ There was a
moment of silence. ‘Who do you think’s behind this?’

‘I don’t know.’

Collie turned
and stared at some imaginary point in the distance. ‘It’s that place up there
on the mountain. I’m telling you.’ Jansen turned and stared at the same
imaginary point behind which lay the sprawling compound of Obsidian
Technologies. He nodded. And said nothing.

Lindiwe and
Duggan walked without speaking. Their footsteps were dull scratches on the
surface of an awesome silence. The streets of Bishop were unsurprisingly deserted.
No movement stirred the air. Grey clouds stuck to the dome of the sky like
dirty cotton. Unmoving and lifeless. A sickly pallor infused the world around
them. The buildings of Bishop’s CBD looked pasty while the trees and vegetation
assumed a clammy and anaemic appearance.

Since leaving
Duggan’s shop, Lindiwe’s thoughts had hovered like buzzards over his words. She
had been trying to wrap her thoughts around the reality of their situation but
found her mental processes unable – or unwilling – to grasp its terrifying
truth. It was as if the terrible centrifugal force of its ugliness kept
flinging her thoughts into a faraway orbit whenever she came close to probing
its meaning.
People missing. No way to contact the outside world. What did
it mean? Why? Who? Who would do something like this. And why?
Why? Why?
Why?!? Caught in the cloudy haze of her troubled thoughts, Lindiwe scarcely
noticed the commercial buildings of Bishop receding into the distance and being
replaced by the greener leafier surroundings of its more affluent residential
area. Inside the Cyber Pope Internet Café Lindiwe had reminded Duggan of
something he had said. ‘Remember when Ryneke grabbed you outside the Abbot?’