Apocalypse Now Now (3 page)

‘If you have seen anything suspicious, please report it to your local police station immediately.’

‘I heard that it was Jody Fuller,’ Kyle whispers.

‘Yeah, Esmé told me,’ I reply under my breath.

‘Good thing you never actually got together with her.’

‘Guess so.’ The thought of Jody dead makes me feel cold all over again. My forehead begins to throb and I have to force myself not to think about the goddamn dreams again. I swear I’m going find that fucker who decided to put my name on his little piece of wall art and make him pay.

‘She was stuck-up,’ I whisper.

Kyle gives me a strange look. ‘Yeah, but she didn’t deserve to die.’

I shrug. Life is unfair.

The assembly ends and we push our way out of the school hall
and into the granite quad that is the heart of the school’s 150 years of colonial history. Westridge has been expanded with multiple layers of concrete and fibreglass, but it’s this granite centre which contains its ancestral DNA. Rah, rah and tally-ho, boys.

‘Hey, Baxter,’ Courtney Adams says with a coquettish smile.

I ignore her. She’s an NPC, a non-playing character, a pawn who is preoccupied with mindless social programming and is distant from the power centres of the Sprawl. People like her can be used to run interference, used and manipulated, but should never be trusted or considered seriously when planning strategically.

I pass Ricket Hendries and slip a flash drive filled with Asian girl-on-girl action into his hand. He grins and gives me the thumbs up. I grin back and breathe in the sweet smell of sweat, whiteboard marker and fear. The smells of high school.

It’s like chess. Jocks, Ricket and his gang of cheap deodorant-scented Cro-Magnons, are knights. You can’t directly manipulate them because they believe that their superior muscle density means they’re in control. But they can always be moved sideways, obtusely angled so that they believe they are the ones doing the moving.

Rooks are the big violent loner kids like Josh Southfield. His dad is in jail for a white-collar crime, he has gruesome acne and he does badly at school and, as such, has very little to lose. Moving him is as easy as telekinesis.

And me? Well, I don’t aspire to be king. That’s just like being a highly paid pawn. I’m a bishop, a vizier. I’m always behind the scenes pulling the strings. If I use my full potential I’m the most powerful piece on the board.

We shoulder our way past the NPCs into metalwork class. Mr Olly, our moustachioed metalwork teacher, looks like a former member of the security police who has been granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for apartheid atrocities. Most of the classherd comply with the instructions Olly puts
on the board, their tongues lolling out of their mouths like they have just been shot through the head with a bolt gun in an abattoir and haven’t yet begun to realise that something is wrong. I wait until Olly is distracted and then saunter over to a bench at the back of the class.

‘General,’ I say to the youth whose oversized head is the result of a childhood case of elephantiasis. He looks up to reveal cool, grey eyes. Toby September; taunted ceaselessly since birth, he channelled his rage into climbing the social hierarchy and is now general of the Nice Time Kids, second only to Anwar himself.

‘Zevcenko,’ he says, taking his time over my name.

‘I need an audience with the Warlord,’ I say. The oversized head nods thoughtfully but when he speaks his voice is acidic.

‘Lunchtime at Central,’ he says. ‘But I would advise against doing anything that will upset him.’

I smile. It is a veiled threat, of course, but I was born for this kind of manoeuvring. I bow my head in thanks and return to my desk. First objective achieved.

Baxter Zevcenko is a sixteen-year-old white male residing in Cape Town, South Africa. At our first consultation Baxter arrived looking slightly unkempt, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

He was confrontational at first but our subsequent sessions have allowed him to relax somewhat, giving him the opportunity to speak about his life.

I am able to discern two distinct parts of his personality, although it doesn’t seem as if Baxter himself is aware of them yet. One part shows strong correlations with the Dark Triad group of personality traits, showing elements of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

He delights in describing his own manipulative behaviour, taking pride in his ability to lie, failing to respond to normal emotional stimulis and aggrandising his own social roles.

Some of his stories revolve around being the leader of a special group, ‘the Spider’. An interesting choice of name considering the implications of a ‘web’ that Baxter himself is creating. His descriptions of his friends seem to cast them as mere walk-on parts in the grand story of his life, further showing his need for grandiosity
and dominance. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these ‘friends’ either don’t exist, or play very different roles to those that Baxter has described.

The other, weaker part, shows the potential for caring. The descriptions of his grandfather, for instance, show a love and respect that seem absent in his other relations.

These two parts often seem to be at odds with one another, battling for control of his psyche, and the result is disturbed dreams, a pattern of maladaptive thinking and manipulative behavior, which I believe is impacting on Baxter’s health and relationships.

He has an undercurrent of rage that he has described as a ‘dark wave’, and his hostility toward his brother is incredibly troubling. Besides fights with his brother he has shown no signs of violence but his ability to deceive and mask his true personality cannot be underestimated.

‘
JUMP, JUMP, JUMP
.’ The low chant from the class grows louder. Miss Hunter, our maths teacher, stands at the window quivering, her dishevelled blonde hair whipping in the breeze.

Encouraging a sweet and fragile teacher – distraught at the thought that we don’t care about her class, and driven to hysteria by consistent and vicious undermining of her authority – to throw herself from the second storey is wrong. But it’s also fun. Miss Hunter is the kind of teacher who will never last. She believes in our inherent goodness. That’s her first mistake.

Control. Teachers know that they now have less of it. They know things have become more complicated and more dangerous, that the student populace is now a networked entity, a hive mind, a multi-cellular organism intent on destroying them. Teachers seek individuals within the crowd to blame for bad behaviour, but we are a faceless mass, absorbing punishment and spreading it among us.

Two teachers have already had nervous breakdowns this year. Mr Henri ran from the classroom screaming, finally cracking after seeing messages about his wife scratched onto his desk. Miss Franks had just never returned after
that
picture of her
landed on the Internet. Gross, even by the Spider’s standards. If she had given me better marks perhaps she could have avoided that.

Miss Hunter turns to the class. ‘I’m doing this for you,’ she says and it seems like she’s looking straight at me. Sure, Miss Hunter. You’re doing this for us and not because you’ve watched
Dead Poets’ Society
and
Dangerous Minds
a few too many times. Give me broadband and YouTube and I’ll have the maths curriculum down in a week. The truth is, Miss Hunter, that you’re obsolete and your inability to see that is pathetic.

Still, maths is the first class of the day where the whole of the Spider are together and it’s time to get some real work done. Miss Hunter gives me a meaningful look and then flees the class tearfully.

‘She’s definitely got a thing for you, Bax,’ Kyle says in his mumbling murmur.

I ignore him. ‘Let’s get some feedback before we discuss strategy,’ I say.

‘Stats say there is a trend toward creature porn,’ Kyle says, putting his phone in the middle of the desk. We lean over the screen displaying graphs of the previous month’s sales. ‘We’re going to have to make more copies of
Tokoloshe Money Shot
.’

Creature porn is a strange new addition to the porn canon. Guys and girls dressed in supernatural fancy dress and going at it have captured the warped imaginations of the student body, and we’re planning to exploit the trend to its full potential. Sales are fuelled by conspiracy theories circulated on Internet forums that the werewolves, zombies and other humanoid beasts getting it on with humans are real. Proof that people will believe anything if it helps them get their rocks off.

‘Make more copies but keep an eye on it. It may just be a fad like the Swedish sauna orgies,’ I say.

Kyle nods to Zikhona. She’s our security liaison officer, our
enforcer, a mountain of Xhosa sturdiness in the gold bomber jacket that she wears over her school uniform.

Strictly speaking, we didn’t choose Zikhona, she chose us. I remember the day a convoy of black BMW SUVs had pulled up outside the school. Two men who looked like they fought in cages stepped out of the front car and put their hands inside their jacket pockets. A huge black girl squeezed herself out of the door of the centre BMW and stood at the gate, trying to extract a wedgie from her tights.

A teacher walked over to welcome her and perhaps gently remind her that school had started twenty minutes earlier and that the gold bomber jacket she was wearing had to come off. One of the bodyguards stepped forward and shook his head sternly. The teacher backed off. The girl gave up on the wedgie and sauntered through the gates, surveying the groups of assembled students before walking over to where we were and shoving a kid in front of us out of the way.

‘What’s up, fuckers?’ she said by way of introduction. That’s how we became friends.

‘Increased low-level attacks on the Form by the NTK,’ she says in her purring baritone, her large hoop earrings jangling as she speaks. ‘Word is that Denton is organising a big retaliation.’

‘Shit, we need to get in there before a full-blown war starts,’ Kyle says.

‘I have a meeting with Anwar at lunch break,’ I reply. ‘If I can get him to commit to a temporary truce maybe I can bring the Form around.’

‘I don’t know, Bax,’ Zikhona says, raising a carefully manicured eyebrow. ‘Denton is acting pretty tough and Anwar isn’t taking it well.’

‘Idiots,’ I hiss and my forehead begins to throb again. ‘Can’t they see that starting a war is going to take us all down?’ I feel light-headed and sweat prickles on my skin. ‘They’re all in it
for themselves, they can’t see the bigger picture.’ My forehead is pulsing now and I can’t think of anything else but the forces encroaching on us.

Suddenly it’s as if there’s a visual overlay on reality. Spectral shapes move across my vision, women and children being marched into camps. ‘They take our land, they rape our women, they kill our children.
Fokken Engelse duiwels! Ek is
’
n Siener
. I slam my palm down on the desk. After a moment the pulsing in my forehead subsides and I see the Spider peering strangely at me.

‘Um, are you OK, Bax?’ Kyle says. ‘You’re not having a stroke, are you? Can you smell burning rubber? Is one side of your face numb?’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘C’mon, it was a joke. I was joking. They’re always banging on about South African history, I’m just sick of it, that’s all.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Zikhona says and waves her hand in front of my face. ‘Just promise me you’ll never give up porn for stand-up comedy.’

‘OK, I promise,’ I say with a half-hearted laugh. Jesus, Zevcenko, try to keep your shit together. Whatever the hell is going on in your head it’s going to have to wait until this thing with the gangs is over.

‘IK, how are new markets looking?’ I say, quickly changing the subject.

The Inhalant Kid cups his hands and huffs from a bottle of Tipp-Ex. It doesn’t take much to make him nervous and it’s clear my little freak-out has jangled his nerves. The Kid is our sales and PR person. He’s short for his age, which is unsurprising considering his hobby, with a mop of curly brown hair and large elven ears that make him look like he’s always listening to something in the distance.

He’s what you might call a connoisseur of chemical contaminants, or perhaps a sommelier of spray cans. Despite the gaps in his memory and a solvent-induced stammer, he is an amazing, sales
person. He has the ability to simultaneously make people feel sorry for and scornful of him. It’s the perfect sales stimulant. ‘The partnership with Dirkie Venter is on,’ he says softly. ‘If everything goes to plan we’ll double our sales by August.’

I nod approvingly. Dirkie Venter is a possible new distribution partner at Mulderberg Technical High School in the Northern Suburbs. So far we’d kept our operation within the boundaries of Westridge, but we’re big fish in a small pond and we need to diversify. Dirkie is our link to the predominantly Afrikaans Northern Suburbs. His hatred of English speakers has destroyed any previous attempts to pursue this avenue but he is slowly coming round. He has the greed hook in his mouth and all I need to do is reel him in.

Everyone looks at me. They’re awaiting some inspirational words from their leader and now, more than ever, I need to show them that I’ve got my shit covered.

‘This is not going to be an easy week,’ I start. ‘I don’t need to tell you the threat we face. If war happens and we’re caught in the fall-out, expulsion is almost certain.’

The Inhalant Kid switches to wood glue and sniffs viciously to calm his nerves.

‘I’m not forcing anybody to continue on our current course of action. If anybody wants out, say so.’ My voice becomes more resonant. ‘We have the opportunity to do something great here.’ I look at the faces of my team. Not one of them flinches from my bespectacled gaze. I’ve never been prouder.

When lunch break rolls around I walk with the Spider down to our corner on the Sprawl.

‘I should come with you,’ Zikhona says with a snarl. ‘I don’t trust those wankers.’

I shake my head. ‘I’m not going to let them think I’m scared of them.’