Apocalypse Now Now (17 page)

The thought of a tumour, on the other hand, makes me feel slightly sick. It swirls around in my head along with images of elementals, sprites and a barn full of other beasties. My mind does its little two-sided mambo.

BizBax:
It makes a lot of sense.

MetroBax:
You think this has all been some kind of delusion?

BizBax:
I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to diagnose when we’re one of the symptoms.

MetroBax:
True. How are we going to know if this is all real or not?

I rub my forehead experimentally. There’s nothing there. ‘No kidding, genius,’ I whisper to myself. ‘You can’t feel a tumour with your fingers.’ The old guy next to me gives me a scared look and then turns so that his body is angled away from mine. I don’t fucking blame him.

I stare out through the window at the mountain as the train jolts to a stop. If a tumour is squeezing my brain and causing me to see elementals and bok-boys then what else is it making me do?

It does make a lot of sense. My sudden discovery of a heart, my delusions. Maybe a tumour is making me believe I love Esmé. Making me dig her little ski-slope nose that I sometimes imagine tiny snowboarders doing backflips off of. Her haughty green eyes (with yellow flecks) that conceal something a little crazy and scared. Making me remember running my fingers along the long scar on her left hand from where she caught it on a barbed-wire fence while climbing into the mountain reservoir to swim.

She hated dolls as a child. She loved broccoli. She sometimes sucks her thumb when she’s asleep but I never tell her. The way
she dances is a bit dorky, with straight arms and weird pelvic tilts and thrusts, but I think it’s kinda sexy too. She has four piercings in her left ear and three in her right. She’s designed and redesigned a tattoo about a thousand times but never had it done because she can’t stand the thought of that kind of commitment. She looks at me like I actually mean something. I have a mental catalogue like this that stretches into the distance and doesn’t seem to end. Maybe it just means I’m creepy and obsessive but I don’t care. I don’t care if I have a tumour or if I’m insane. I’m going to find Esmé. I
have
to find Esmé.

There’s nobody under the bridge but a pack of feral cats with green, flashing eyes. They dart across the litter-strewn pavement and disappear into the windy night. Ronin parks the car in a deep shadow and puts his feet up on the dashboard. I count out his money on my lap and hand it to him. He counts it again and then shoves it into his coat with a grin.

‘And now?’ I say.

‘And now we wait.’

‘For?’

‘Tone,’ he says.

‘Tone? Sounds like an R&B singer.’

‘Code name, smart-ass. He’s head of operations for MK6.’

‘Somebody has yet to tell me what that is. I mean, besides a shadowy government organisation.’

Ronin interlaces his hands behind his head. ‘They’re mostly sangomas, witch doctors, mages, witches, that sort of thing. They keep an eye on the Hidden and make sure that nothing untoward happens.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the wrong people seeing them for one. They don’t care if the Hidden stay in the shadows. But if anybody tries to tell their story to the media then they step in.’

‘They can’t be doing a very good job,’ I say with a laugh. ‘I saw stories about tokoloshes in the tabloids long before I knew they were real.’

‘Yeah exactly, genius,’ he says. ‘And what did you think when you saw those stories?’

‘I thought they were tabloid bullshit,’ I say.

‘Bingo,’ he says. ‘They seed a lot of those stories. Who’s going to believe a story about a tokoloshe or unicorn if they read it in a tabloid?’

‘Clever,’ I say.

‘Goes way deeper than that,’ he says. ‘The South Africa Sceptics Alliance is an MK6 front. They spend a lot of time and money debunking the stuff that does get leaked.’

It sounds so damn plausible to my pop-culture-attuned mind. Shadowy government organisations, secret agents, mass cover-ups. If I’m not completely insane, that is.

‘Do you ever think you’re crazy?’ I say. ‘I mean, crazier than you are normally. That you’re ill and you’re making all this supernatural stuff up?’

‘Every single goddamn day,’ he responds with a laugh.

A black van appears under the bridge and moves slowly toward us. Its chromed wheels glint in the dim light. The van has tinted windows and plates that say MK 962. It stops in front of the Cortina and kills its headlights.

The doors open and two guys get out. One is absolutely huge, a professional wrestler with a blond crew cut and a badly fitting suit, his hairy forearms jutting from the cuffs. He has an assault rifle hanging on his shoulder and he leans against the front of the van and points it lazily at our windscreen.

The other one is much smaller, a black guy with grey hair that’s
pulled back into cornrows. He’s dressed in an expensive suit that has grey and white beads crossed over it like bandoliers. He isn’t armed except for a walking stick which clacks against the concrete as he approaches.

‘Blackblood,’ he says in a slow drawl.

‘Don’t know who you mean, Tone,’ Ronin growls.

Tone shrugs. ‘You know what they say about leopards and their spots.’

Ronin hawks and spits on the tarmac. ‘That they’ll fucking bury anybody who brings it up?’

Tone smiles. ‘Your belligerence is misplaced, old friend.’

‘Well, unfortunately your boss isn’t here, so you’ll have to do.’

Tone rolls his shoulders in a non-committal shrug. ‘Mirth is what he is. Not everybody likes it but he’s the boss now.’

‘Everybody loves a Rottweiler until he turns around and rips out your throat.’

‘I assume you didn’t invite me here to reminisce about old times, Ronin?’ He looks at me and then back to Ronin. ‘Rent boy?’ he says.

‘Screw you,’ I say.

He purses his lips and emits a sharp squealing whistle. It hits me like a sonic hammer in the solar plexus and my knees buckle involuntarily. Ronin grabs my shoulder to stop me from falling.

‘OK,’ Ronin says. ‘I think he gets what a supremely powerful warlock you are. The very earth trembles at your name and all that shit.’

I steady myself on Ronin’s arm. ‘Tacky,’ I say. ‘You must be bummed you only got the cocktail party powers.’

Tone bursts out laughing. ‘Where the hell do you find these clients, Ronin?’

‘I have no idea,’ Ronin says with a sigh.

Tone waves to the big guy back at the van. He peels himself off
the hood and stumps toward us, the assault rifle swinging from its strap.

‘Half-breed giant,’ Tone says, leaning in to whisper to me. ‘His great-grandmother got lonely on the
plaas
and banged one of the mountain giants in the area.’

‘Great,’ I say, rubbing my solar plexus. The pain subsided quickly but has left a dull ache. ‘What’s his code name?’ I ask.

‘Savage,’ Tone says. ‘We let him choose his own.’

Up close I see just how big Savage is, like a granite slab with legs. He pulls a rolled-up brown folder from the inside jacket pocket of his suit and hands it to Tone. ‘I was kidding with the rent-boy comment. I know all about your problems, Baxter Zevcenko,’ he says. ‘Fortunately for you, your girlfriend’s disappearance intersects with the case we’re working on.’

A bright spark of hope ignites in my chest. He hands us photographs of a group of street people being herded into a van by a guy in a lab coat. A close-up of the clipboard he’s holding shows an invoice with a red octopus on the letterhead.

‘Human trafficking operation,’ Tone says. ‘Our intel says it’s not for sex, which makes it quite unusual. Our agent inside said he’s seen an Obambo, which makes it downright odd, given the fact that they’re supposed to be extinct.’

‘What’s that logo?’ Ronin says, pointing to the red octopus.

‘Corporate called Octogram. They’re into a lot of things; mining, pharmaceuticals, weapons. We’ve been keeping an eye on them for a while but this is the first time we’ve actually found anything tying them to illicit activities.’

‘Doesn’t sound like your usual beat,’ Ronin says.

Tone smiles. ‘I’ll tell you why we’re interested, and you’re going to love this; it turns out their base for operations is the Flesh Palace.’

‘Goddamn,’ Ronin hisses through his teeth.

‘The place where the creature porn stuff is shot?’ I say.

‘The very same,’ Tone replies. ‘Which makes it even weirder that the trafficking is not part of the sex trade. We’re particularly interested in what part the Queen of the Anansi is playing in this.’

Ronin’s face has gone pale and he starts to flex his fingers convulsively. ‘I’d like to send that bitch back to hell.’

‘I thought that’s what you’d say. Our problem is that the Flesh Palace is on the social radar of many of our esteemed politicians and we’re reluctant to carry out a raid in case we catch somebody too high up on the food chain. But if an independent operator were to go in there …’

‘So what you’re saying is that we should go in, do your job for you, and then maybe you’ll create some paperwork about it?’ Ronin says.

‘Isn’t that the way it always works?’ Tone says with a bright smile.

‘We’ll do it,’ I say.

‘Now hang on, sparky,’ Ronin says. ‘We need to talk about this.’

‘What’s there to talk about?’ I say. ‘The Obambo is in the Flesh Palace. We go in, we find him, we make him tell us where Esmé is. That’s why I hired you.’

‘He’s got a point,’ Tone says.

‘Fuck off,’ Ronin says.

Tone lifts his hands in mock defence. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger, Ronin. Anyway, I’ll let you boys discuss it. Savage and I have to rattle someone.’ He looks around. ‘And this is as good a place as any.’

Tone gestures to Savage and the half-giant opens the back door of the van and pulls out a small bald guy wearing a white T-shirt, grey jeans and fashionable glasses.

‘You’re still doing that medieval bullshit?’ Ronin says with disgust.

‘C’mon, Ronin,’ Tone says. ‘You used to enjoy this stuff.’

Savage drags the guy across to Tone and pushes him onto his knees. ‘Please,’ the guy gasps. ‘A free, independent media is vital for a democracy. You can’t have government agencies that are not accountable –’

‘Actually you can,’ Tone says. ‘And it’s worked for us pretty well so far.’ He undoes his jacket and pulls a thin black syringe from a scabbard at this waist.

‘What are they doing?’ I whisper.

‘Rattlebone,’ Ronin says softly to me. ‘Made with black mamba poison. Ugly stuff. It attacks the brain and takes out the memory. It would be better if they just killed him.’

‘What …’ the reporter says, struggling against Savage’s iron grip. ‘You can’t kill me! There’d be an investigation.’

‘We’re not going to kill you,’ Tone says. ‘We’re just going to press control-alt-delete and restart you.’

‘Wha—’ the guy starts but Tone slides the needle deftly into his neck. The reporter’s eyes widen and his body locks into a grotesque spasm before he collapses onto the floor and begins to shake uncontrollably.

‘Urgh,’ he says, staring through us with vacant eyes. ‘Uhhhhaasppphhft.’

‘The stress of reporting,’ Tone says, spinning the syringe between his fingers and replacing it in the scabbard like a gunslinger. ‘It gets to everybody eventually.’

‘You put on that little show to impress us?’ Ronin says. ‘I’m not impressed.’

‘Just showing your friend here what happens to people who run around telling people crazy stories about elementals,’ Tone says with a dangerous smile.

The sun is setting behind the mountain as we drive through Epping Industria. We pass over an abandoned train track and through a dingy street filled with tyre merchants and industrial cleaning equipment distributors.

‘Charming,’ I say.

‘It only gets better,’ Ronin says. He’s been in a bad mood ever since we left the bridge and I’m pretty sure it’s because we’re headed toward the Flesh Palace. I, on the other hand, am excited. Not only is the Obambo there, but it’s also the place where a large percentage of the porn I’ve been selling is made. I feel like I’m going on some kind of pornographer’s pilgrimage.