Ntshona (7 page)

“Fuck!” exclaimed Lon.

Realisation had hit him like a brick wall.

“We have to leave here now,” he said alarmedly, and again grasped Eve by the wrist to quickly pull her across the field in the direction contrary to the parliament complex and its masses of surveillance.

“What the hell?!” said Eve suddenly perceiving danger.

Lon’s heart was racing and he felt sensation recede from his face and limbs. “Remember that man on the news last night who killed himself?” he was breathing hard and fast.

“Yes, why?” sad Eve in utter confusion. Why was he bringing this up now?

“I know why we recognised him,” continued Lon in a panicked voice. “The reason we recognised his face isn’t because he was the son of a famous banker,” he paused his speech to inhale deeply, “the reason we recognised him is because we saw him last night at the shopping centre!”

This hit Eve hard as she instantly remembered who the man was. He had been standing with the man who punched Marcus. She and Lon had presumed that every other person in the shopping centre had disappeared or had been taken away, but this man, it would seem, was a survivor, just like her and Lon. However, the fact that he had been found dead after the event instantly implied to them that he did not commit suicide, but in fact was murdered, presumably as a silencing measure.

“Then who killed him?!” asked a frightened Eve.

“I really don’t know,” said Lon, still holding onto Eve’s wrist and pulling her across the field, “we don’t have time to think now, we need to get away from here first”.

“Where are we gonna go?” asked Eve.

“I don’t know, but we just need to get away from here,” said Lon.

“Do you think whoever did it will be after us?”

“Probably”.

“Do you really think the government has something to do with it?”

“I really don’t know, but it’s possible, and it’s better to be careful,” said Lon.

They had almost reached the road on the opposite side of the green when two patrol cars slowly rolled past their immediate field of view in the traffic.

Lon pulled Eve away from the car so their faces could not be seen. Analysing their periphery, they noticed that there were in fact several police patrol cars around them on each of the four roads which enclosed the small field.

“This is hard!” said Eve, beginning to panic more, “Maybe you were right, maybe there are more police around today”.

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” said Lon. “Why are there more police around today?”

Unfortunately for the pair, the crowds surrounding the two greens, as well as those passing by the parliament complex, were thinning and probably not large enough to blend in with completely, therefore a different form of camouflage was necessary. In another stroke of bad luck, the two were not wearing any clothing with hoods or other items that could have been used for masking their heads or faces.

“What should we do?” asked Eve.

“First of all we should try to stay calm so that we don’t stand out,” explained Lon before taking a deep breath, “this sounds stupid, but cover your face with your hair”.

“What?”

“Just cover your face with your hair so it can’t be seen, then keep your head down and walk”.

“But that will make us stand out too! It will look suspicious if we’re trying to hide our faces,” said Eve.

“Put it this way, would you rather look suspicious and have a chance of getting away from here, or would you rather look like someone they might be searching for and get arrested?”

“Okay,” said Eve as she compliantly moved her hair across her face, leaving a gap wide enough to see through with one eye.

Lon did the same.

They both dropped their heads and again began to walk in the direction opposite the parliament buildings, to where there was less surveillance. Due to their hair disguising their faces they lost all their peripheral vision, something quite worrying for the two as they were no longer totally aware of their surroundings.

Eve’s hair was very thick in comparison to Lon’s, which made it more difficult for her to see, so Lon continued to guide her, not by grasping her wrist this time, but rather with his hand on her upper back, something he considered to be more natural and which would attract less attention. They managed to make their way to a group of pedestrians thick enough to blend in with for a short while, however, they were walking in the wrong direction. There was nothing Lon and Eve could do but follow them completely off the course they were on.

“Are we going the right way?” asked Eve.

“No,” replied Lon, “the quickest way is to go around the parliament buildings the opposite way. At this rate we’re gonna lose a lot of time”.

But this was all they could do in light of the revelation that they too might be caught and killed by an unknown entity, one that may well be linked to the police and the government.

Eventually, after several minutes of accidental bumping and nudging of their fellow walkers, the two found themselves not in the line of sight of anybody or anything in the area of the parliament complex, but again in among the shadows of tall office buildings in a very long street where the pedestrian traffic was greater.

“I think we’re safer now,” said Lon. “It’s times like this that I’m glad I have long hair”.

“But there are security cameras everywhere,” said Eve, still worried, in a shaky voice.

Lon too was still worried; feeling was only starting to return to his limbs, and despite his forehead being damp with sweat, his body felt cold. He was still frightened, yet was trying hard not to appear so. “Somehow we’ve managed not to get caught so far,” he said in a trembling voice, not unlike that of Eve. “If the cameras are on the lookout for our faces, then we’ve been extremely lucky”.

“So, what? Do we continue sticking to the crowds?” Asked Eve.

“We have to, even back alleys have security cameras, and seeing as there aren’t usually many people there, we’d be easy to spot,” said Lon. “But keep your face covered”.

Because a substantial part of the city was built in a grid system, it was not exceedingly difficult to find a path back to where Lon and Eve needed to go, however,
the length of each street affected the length of the journey. They were running rather late.

Lon kept an eye on his palm screen map while they walked. He was trying to calculate how long it would take them to reach their destination based on slightly different routes. He eventually chose one, and decided the two need
ed to cross the road in order to turn a corner. “We should cross at the next crossing,” he said.

There was no response.

He looked away from his palm screen to see where Eve was, presuming she was a foot or two behind him. He saw that she had detached from the crowd and stopped for some reason a few metres ago. She was looking up at somebody much taller than her.

It was a policeman.

Lon’s blood turned to ice. He did not understand what was happening. What was Eve doing?

The policeman reached his right hand over to the left side of his belt where he had sheathed a baton. He quickly grasped the handle, immediately drew it, and whipped Eve across the face.

Eve took the hit without falling over, yet the velocity at which it struck her forced her to stumble.

There was confusion in the half-encircled crowd. Many quickly walked away, yet many had stopped to stand as audience.

The policeman raised the baton into the air, ready for another strike.

Lon was gobsmacked. He could not believe what was happening. Somehow the two had rapidly fallen into a very dangerous situation, one which could only get worse. He did not know the best course of action he could take, nor did he have the time to consider each possible consequence. All he knew at that specific moment was that his friend was vulnerable, in pain and in trouble; Lon had to do something soon.

With barely a thought his legs began to move quickly in the direction of the policeman. This gave him less than two seconds to think: all he needed to do was something that would give him and Eve time to escape, however, he also wanted to inflict some form of punishment on the policeman for beating Eve. He decided. The policeman’s raised arm gave exposure to the side of his torso, where, from behind, Lon planted a roundhouse kick, right in the ribs.

The crowd gasped in shock.

The policeman instantly dropped his weapon and fell to the ground clutching his injured chest.

Eve, dazed, tried to stand straight and make sense of what was going on. Her face hurt a lot.

The crowd were silent, they had just witnessed somebody assault a police officer, yet they also knew that the police officer had seemingly unprovokedly attacked a young girl. Each was either at a loss about what to do, or simply did not want to get involved in fear of being arrested out of disrespect for authority.

This worked well in Lon and Eve’s favour, as the crowds would eventually be used to hide them again.

Lon snatched up the baton from the ground in case he would need it for any further encounters or the impending pursual, grabbed Eve, this time by the hand, and yanked her away in the direction the two were originally heading, gaining some ground before reintegrating with the pedestrian masses. He then slipped the baton up his sleeve in order to appear a little less conspicuous.

Despite the lack of available space between the multitude of people, Lon drove through shoving, pressing and pushing, uttering “sorry” every few metres, all the while pulling Eve through his wake.

She was still stuporous from the attack, and was in effect an anchor for Lon, yet she tried her best to stay on her feet and follow him closely.

A siren sounded down the road behind them. The day was becoming difficult.

“Fuck!” yelled Lon, “We can’t stay in the crowds, we need to get away quickly!”

Eve tried hard, but could not reply on account of the searing pain in her cheek.

“We need to cross the road over there!” shouted Lon, pointing in the direction through the crowds, even though Eve could not see. He dragged Eve and himself from the traffic of pedestrians in order to speed up, and ran down the pavement towards the next crossing.

The siren was getting louder.

“Dammit! We have to cross now!”

They were close to the intersection, yet not near enough to have any claim to right of way.

Lon, knowing he was about to do something stupid, jumped out into oncoming vehicle traffic. He dodged the first car easily, but had to pull Eve from its path and almost threw her into the car in the next lane. He quickly pulled them both through between a gap in the flow, and then the next lane, but then had to contend with traffic flowing the opposite way. Lon was surprised at how no vehicle had
not
tried to run them down, instead preferring to maintain their journeys with no setbacks. It was as if they were the ill-fated characters of some sick video game.

Three lanes left. So far they had been lucky.

Although the two were poised for the next leap across traffic in the two or three foot gap between the bidirectional fluxes of vehicles, it was not necessarily a safe zone; people in this part of the world were not very well known for their driving skills. This added more edge to Lon and Eve’s condition.

The movement of traffic in this direction was faster, leaving hardly an opportunity to pass through. Furthermore, the police car whose sirens the two could hear was quickly approaching from the same direction.

Eve, who was still very much in pain, but was forced to be alert by this point, quickly decided that waiting was a stupid idea and took the initiative to pull Lon down the road through the gap between the opposite traffic flows in which they were already risking their lives.

The police car was getting closer, therefore the two had to be gone, she thought.

They were close to the intersection, and its crossing seemed to be the safest place to be on the road, even among traffic. They ran as fast as they possibly could while dodging cars and motorcycles almost straying from their lane boundaries. They were almost at the intersection, and the volume of the police car’s siren gave the impression that it was too.

Despite the pair arriving at the crossing, they were unfortunate enough to not yet have right of way, thus they remained trapped in the road.

“Should we wait for the cars to stop, or she we just run?!” yelled a frantic Lon.

The police siren was by now painfully loud, and could be seen just several metres down the road from where they were.

Both Lon and Eve knew that if they were to remain, they would surely suffer some excessive form of corporal punishment.

“When I say go, go!” Eve shouted. She squeezed Lon’s hand hard and waited for an opportunity.

After a few short moments she spotted a gap of approximately two metres between two cars.

“Go!” she screamed.

The two leapt through the opening.

Bits of glass skittered across the tarmac.

The traffic in two lanes was forced to a halt.

One car had swerved into another in the adjacent lane and crushed the driver’s cockpit.