Apocalypse Now Now (31 page)

‘Gog,’ she says. ‘A big one.’ She sticks the gun around the corner and rattles off another volley of gunfire. The Gog bellows again and I can hear the thump of a body hitting the ground.

‘You’re so pretty when you’re killing evil things,’ Ronin says to her with a wink.

‘Oh, stop, you,’ Katinka says, giving her hair a flick.

We step over the huge twitching Gog body – this one has gross, oversized spider fangs. Up ahead six short figures in grey hooded cloaks turn a corner, bringing handguns to bear on us and then lowering them and throwing back their hoods.

‘Gredok,’ Katinka says to the lead figure. He is squat and
massively muscular with a bushy blond moustache that curls up at the ends. His hair is shaved into a Mohawk and his fingers are covered in chunky silver rings. ‘Agent,’ he says to Katinka. ‘Battle shaman,’ he says, inclining his head to Ronin.

‘You’re going all formal on me?’ Ronin says with a grin and grabs the dwarf in a bear hug. ‘Where the hell have you been, old man?’

The dwarf shrugs. ‘Afghanistan mostly.’

As we continue down the corridor I learn that Gredok is Baresh’s little brother. He’s also a mercenary, after being dishonourably discharged from the Dwarven Legion for going AWOL after Baresh died. He has recently returned to South Africa with his small crew of soldiers of fortune.

He and the five other members of his crew are carrying handguns and thick blood-covered swords. Three of them are also carrying heavy backpacks full of equipment strapped on over their grey cloaks.

‘What’s the score?’ Ronin says, nodding to the blood on Gredok’s sword.

‘Personally? Twelve of those Frankenstein bastards.’

‘Not bad,’ Ronin says.

‘We met a Crow but it took all of us to kill him. Even with Molotov cocktails. If we meet any more of them we’re in trouble. Unless …’ He gives Ronin a meaningful look.

Ronin shakes his head vigorously. ‘I’ve never commanded a unit myself. And after Baresh …’

‘He trusted you,’ Gredok says, stopping and facing Ronin.

‘What’s he talking about?’ I whisper, but Katinka puts her fingers to her lips.

‘Baresh wanted you to succeed him,’ Gredok says.

‘I’m not a dwarf,’ Ronin says.

‘Who the fuck cares?’ Gredok replies. ‘The Dwarven Legion are corrupt. They’re propping up dictators throughout Africa,
they’re helping protect poppy fields in Afghanistan. They’ve forgotten what the Code is even about.’ He puts his fist on Ronin’s chest. ‘Baresh lived by the Code and he believed you did too. That’s why he trained you. You’re not going to dishonour him, so you’re doing this.’

‘OK,’ Ronin says.

‘Impi formation,’ Gredok calls out and his unit forms into a loose diamond pattern in the corridor.

‘Dwarven battle trance,’ Katinka whispers and gives me a wink. ‘This is going to be good.’

Ronin stands behind them and lifts his fist, beginning a slow rhythmic chant in the same thick, guttural language he uses for his charms. The dwarves begin to rock back and forth. Ronin stamps his foot on the floor and a shiver of energy runs through them. ‘Let’s go,’ Katinka says.

We proceed down the corridor, the dwarves in front moving like a single organism. We push through a set of swinging doors and straight into a pack of Gogs who are in a feeding frenzy over the body of a scientist. With Mirth away the Gogs will play, it seems. They stop feeding and look up at us, their jaws stained with blood.

Ronin stamps his foot again and the grey-hooded dwarves move like mercury. It’s like watching
Swan Lake
performed to Swedish death metal. Handgun Haiku. Necksnap Nureyev. The dwarves flow between the monsters. I see Gredok take off a Gog’s arm with his sword and then spin to fire two bullets into its brain from beneath its chin. Gog blood splatters into the air and the body drops instantly.

I’m so intent on watching them that I only manage to duck at the last second as a Crow sweeps down from the ceiling. I fall back onto my ass and scramble beneath a surgical table. The Crow’s hooked claws land on the ground next to me but it is knocked away by a blast of shrill sonic power from Tone. The
bird stumbles backwards and then arcs its tail forward and pins a dwarf to the wall.

Two of the dwarves drop their swords and reach into their backpacks for Molotov cocktails. The Crow drops the dwarf and shrieks as two cocktails explode on its back. It tries to take off but stumbles and smashes into a vat filled with a dark liquid. The liquid explodes out on the floor.

‘Acid!’ Tone shouts and we scramble out of the way of the deluge, Katinka spreading her wings and swooping to lift the injured dwarf away from the rapidly spreading pool of caustic liquid. Gredok helps Ronin pull her out of the lab and the rest of the dwarves carry their wounded companion. I grab onto Tone’s arm and he shepherds me out of the doors.

‘Mom?’ I say into the phone. We’re sitting around the table in the kitchen of the Haven. Katinka dabs Tone’s chest lightly with a cloth while Ronin sits on a chair in the corner and drinks cheap whisky from the bottle. We’d escaped the facility in a blaze of gunfire, fire and death and now I want nothing more than to tell my mom about it and have her shush me and stroke my hair.

Gredok and his unit are mourning the death of their companion. Watching Crow venom at work had been terrifying. The dwarf’s face had gone purple, the veins in his neck sticking out like thick black slugs. Then he had begun to bleed out of the nose. And the mouth. And the ears. And pretty much every other orifice. It had been a long and painful process and had left me with the unwavering determination never to be stung by one of those bastards, the fact that they’re distant family notwithstanding.

‘Baxter!’ my mother says. ‘Where the hell are you?’ Completely uninformed about my heroic escape she’s doing less gentle
shushing and more shouting. ‘Lucinda says she’s hardly seen you. Rafe is distraught. Come home. Now.’

‘I can’t, Mom,’ I say, my voice all choked up. The truth is I can think of nothing better than going home and having my mom make me hot chocolate and then sitting in the lounge and watching TV, but I know Mirth will come after me. He has to. He needs me.

‘You can’t?!’ my mother storms. ‘I’ve been on the brink of calling the police. You can’t just disappear and expect me to accept it. You really need to take some responsibility for the effect that your actions –’

‘Mom,’ I say, ‘listen to me. Over the past few days I’ve become aware that I haven’t exactly been the best person in the world. You’re right; I haven’t been a good brother to Rafe. I haven’t really been much of a good anything to anyone.’ She tries to interrupt but I talk right over her. ‘I’m not going to lie to you any more. I’m not at yoga class or at photography lessons or volunteering at an organisation that helps dyslexic rural kids. I’m not doing whatever Kyle has told you I’m doing. I can’t tell you what I am doing, except to say that it’s important. So you’re going to have to trust me. You’re going to have to realise that I’m almost an adult and that sometimes I need to make my own decisions.’

‘I do trust you, Baxter,’ my mother says. ‘I know Esmé’s disappearance has hurt you. I understand.’

‘I’ll be back soon, Mom,’ I say. ‘Oh, and I love you.’ My mother’s stuttering surprise is the last thing I hear before I hang up.

‘We can’t do anything now,’ Katinka says. ‘We all better get some sleep.’

Slowly everyone leaves the kitchen until it’s just me and Ronin left. He has put Warchild on the table and is polishing her with a soft cloth. ‘Don’t worry,’ he slurs to the gun. ‘Daddy’s got you, baby.’ He picks Warchild up and plants a large wet kiss on one of the barrels. I avert my eyes from this inappropriately intimate scene between man and shotgun.

Ronin takes another gulp of whisky and gives me a drunken smile. ‘Heishhparky,’ he says.

‘Mirth scammed me,’ I say.

‘Yeah, no sshhhit,’ he says.

‘You apologised to me so it’s my turn. I’m sorry for thinking you were a hallucination.’

He shrugs, ‘Youshh figured it out eventually.’

He hands me the bottle and I take a swig.

‘I’m part Crow,’ I say.

‘Yeshh you are,’ he confirms.

‘The Crows killed Baresh,’ I say.

‘And you’re going to help me kill the Crowsshh,’ he says. ‘You gonna help me find Pat, right, sshparky?’ he says. He smiles and tries to give me a hug. He smells of whisky and blood so I push him away. He flops forward onto the table and begins to snore as I make my way up the stairs.

THE HUGE CHICKEN
blood star is starting to turn black as the blood dries. Tone chants in Xhosa as he walks the perimeter of the star, his bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the wooden floor.

Gredok has lugged a huge rock into the Haven barn and placed it in the centre of the star.

‘You can control it,’ Tone says. ‘You just need practice.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ I say. My sight is not a superpower at all, it’s a bad acid trip. ‘It’s not like playing the guitar. I can’t just sit in my room and practise until I can play “Stairway to Heaven”.’

‘Maybe not,’ Tone replied, ‘but at least we can help you to direct it.’

Ronin taps me on the shoulder. ‘Hair of the dog?’ he says, offering me the hip flask. I shake my head. I assume this will be more unpleasant and dangerous if I’m drunk. The sangoma approaches us. His hands and feet are stained with blood but his eyes are bright and intense. ‘Magic,’ Ronin says. ‘It’s a drug and sangomas are the biggest junkies.’

I push myself to my feet and Tone leads me to the centre of the star and helps me to stand on the big rock.

‘Once it starts you have to see it through,’ Tone says. ‘There’s no pause button, you understand?’

I nod. I understand all right. It’s just that I’m not all that enamoured by the idea of going through this again. I’d experimented, I’d explored a little and I’d come back with the knowledge that I’d rather take acid and ketamine in an abattoir than go on another little trip into the ether.

Tone strips off the bright tie-dyed T-shirt he’d taken from Pat’s cupboard to replace his burnt suit. Gredok carries a squawking chicken toward him. The little brown bird struggles in his meaty hands. Tone nods once and the dwarf snaps the chicken’s neck and hands it to him. The sangoma raises the dead chicken above him and cuts its neck. Blood splashes down his arms and onto his body. I wrinkle my nose. Whatever else magic is, it sure ain’t pretty.

Tone starts to chant and I feel the throbbing in my forehead again. It’s like the sub-woofer of migraines; low, deep and rumbling. Ronin begins to chant too in the thick, guttural Dwarven tongue and the throbbing becomes more intense. I brace myself for the eye-stalk to burst through my forehead again. When it does I’m ready for it. But that doesn’t help at all.

The eye-stalk writhes and whips like a garden hose left on the floor of my head. My brain is flooded with light and I reach my hand out blindly, desperately needing something to grab on to.

Then I feel Tone. The sangoma’s power is like a leopard that stalks across the waterfall of light, grabs me by the scruff of the neck and drags me back to lucidity.

I see Cape Town burning in a towering nuclear inferno. I see them. The Mantis and the Octopus, brothers locked in an infinite fight to the death. Our death. Space and time rip apart and the Earth becomes like the depressurised cabin of an aircraft. Whole chunks of matter are torn away, splitting reality into billions of jagged parts.

Then I see a dark warship cresting black waves. A huge, swirling whirlpool next to it seems to suck matter and life into it like a black hole. On the deck is a huge iron cross and on the cross a bird, its wings stretched and impaled. It turns its head weakly toward me.

I pull away from it and my sight spins wildly. I’m heading toward the whirlpool, the blackness replacing the light. Everything is disappearing, draining from me. I scream but the leopard is with me again and pulling me away from the black pit. Its teeth dig into my neck and I begin to feel blood pour down my shoulders. I scream again and this time I don’t stop until everything disappears.

‘The conquering hero returns,’ Ronin says with a grin. He claps me on the shoulder as I sit down. ‘How you feeling?’

‘Terrible,’ I say, accepting the cup of coffee Gredok offers.

‘Dwarven coffee,’ he says. ‘Not any of this insipid human crap.’

I take a sip and the dark liquid jump-starts my brain. I feel like I’m drinking a Ritalin-and-energy-drink smoothie.

A map of South Africa is spread across the kitchen table, held down in the corners by empty bottles and weapons of various descriptions. Through the window I can see the other dwarves, Fell, Wref, Mike and Tony, going through training drills with knives in the garden. Katinka is lying on a towel on the grass, slices of cucumber delicately positioned over her eyes.

‘How long have I been out?’ I say, rubbing my eyes.

‘About three hours,’ Ronin replies.

‘Shit,’ I say.

‘Did you see anything?’ Tone asks.

I look down at the map and my eyes trace the meandering line of the east coast of South Africa.

‘There,’ I say, putting my finger down in the Indian Ocean, close to East London. ‘It’s around there.’