Noel was waiting for me in the parking lot when I exited the quarantine station, blinking against the natural light I’d missed for two weeks. He still drove the same beat-up old Electro I recalled from when I left the far south ages go. Except the car was far more rusted, the patch-jobs done up in mismatched hues or sealed over with strips of silver tape.
‘Hey,’ he said by way of greeting as he took my suitcase from me and stowed it on the backseat.
‘Hey.’ I hesitated by the passenger side and glanced at the seat with its ripped upholstery. My misgivings tabulated a concise list of any number of awful things that might be lurking there, including bedbugs and roaches. The footwell swarmed with discarded bio-containers. Ugh.
Would it be rude for me to spritz this with sanitiser before I sat? My fingers hesitated over the zip of my shoulder bag. I was still masked up, so that should do.
‘Sorry ’bout the car.’ He swung into the driver side.
Wincing, I climbed in and shifted my feet in a sea of containers. The interior smelt faintly of mushrooms. ‘Can’t believe she’s still going.’
‘We’re a bit at the arse-end of the continent. In case you hadn’t noticed.’ He gave a wry laugh that shook his grey-blond dreads. Older, more sun-bronzed, he was still the same Noel I recalled. Perhaps more ropey, the ink of the snake tattoo on his left arm had turned muddy and indistinct. How much had I changed to his eyes?
While the exterior of the Electro left much to be desired, she started up at the flick of a switch, and Noel nosed her out of the lot and into the streets.
I squinted against the glare as we left town centre. Most of the buildings were shuttered, some even gaping emptily. Then we whirred out onto the coastal road. My heart leapt at the first sight of the cobalt ocean with its whitecaps, and the blue-grey mountains in the distance across the bay.
Noel’s shoulders loosened, he pulled a roll-up from behind an ear, and he grinned at me. ‘Things not looking so good here, hey?’
‘Things not looking good all over, actually.’
‘Wouldn’t say so looking at you.’ He gave a low whistle then stuck the roll-up in his mouth and lit up with the deft flick of an antique lighter. ‘You look like you could murder someone with your bare hands.’
‘You would too, if you’d done basic training,’ I said.
‘Nuh-uh, not for me. You know that.’
The acrid stench of weed filled the car, I tried to roll down the window, but it only moved about a quarter of the way. The small inrush of salt-sweet air helped somewhat. Noel puffed at his roll-up heedless that his smoke discomforted me.
‘How was quarantine?’
‘Boring as all hell. Signal kept dropping. Spent most of the time watching a gecko hunt mosquitoes near the light fitting.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Far more riveting than watching paint peel.’
I bit back the acerbic comment about to slip off my tongue. It was doubtful Noel ever left the far south.
These days few civilians went anywhere.
Which brought me back to my reason for returning home.
‘Did the memorial go all right? I’m sorry I missed it.’ The familiar, dull grief turned in my belly.
He gave a half-shouldered shrug but kept his eyes on the curving road. ‘Okay as things go. My ma was there for her, did what was needed.’ There were no recriminations, no “you could’ve come sooner,” or “your ma needed you,” or anything like that. The Noel next to me was as chilled as the Noel I recalled from my younger years. So long as he could smoke spliff, listen to whatever ambient drone he could download, and go surfing, he was cool. The world could come crashing down, and he’d be there, humming while rolling himself another smoke.
He was satisfied with so little.
‘I’m glad.’ What else could I say? Ma and I hadn’t spoken since I left. ‘How’s your kid?’
This brought up a smile. ‘She’s twelve in a week’s time. Looks just like her ma.’ The smile grew wan.
Noel and I had stayed in touch over the years, despite the gulf that yawned between us, sporadic text messages where our conversations were bland and basic. As an operative, I had my hands full with GrenTech business, and Noel… Well, he surfed… and tended his hydroponics.
The Glen was mostly the same as I’d recalled. A recent fire had blackened the mountains, but good winter rainfall had furred the slopes with a dull green pelt of heath. The old hotel that doubled as the town hall had been painted an ugly orange, and the black-and-white sign announced it as Els Bay otel. It’d lost its “H” since I’d last been here, and no one had bothered to put it back.
As much as I wanted to check my tablet to see if there were any communications from head office up in Jozi, I resisted the urge. There’d be time for that later. My superiors had been adamant that I sort out my mother’s estate. One individual’s efforts to stave off the apocalypse would hardly be missed for a few weeks – at least that was the running joke at HQ whenever someone took personal time.
More houses along the main road headed up the valley were boarded up, and the tarmac was so riddled with potholes Noel had to drive extra slow. My childhood home was a few hundred metres further along, on the mountain side of the road, and lost behind an unkempt hedge of plumbago. A rampant ficus that had no doubt already disturbed the foundations with its invasive root system presided over the structure, threatening to completely envelope the roof.
‘Well, here we are.’ Noel pulled up in front of the garage, which gaped at us with a half-shut door.
I suppressed a small shudder and couldn’t quite bring myself to get out.
‘I’ve tried to keep the place from falling apart completely, but it’s…’
‘It’s old, I know.’ With a sigh I popped open the door and climbed out. And it’s not your house.
Noel got my suitcase from the back. ‘You gonna be all right? Me and Charni’ll come over with dinner later, if that’s okay? We can go shopping for supplies tomorrow.’
My eyes prickled, and I swiped at them with the back of my wrist. ‘That will be great. Thank you.’
‘Key’s under the doormat. Ma’s left some boxes stacked in the kitchen, so you can start packing stuff. There’s a marker pen in the top drawer in the study you can use to label, okay?’
‘Okay.’ I still couldn’t move.
‘Want me to carry your suitcase up the stairs?’ He made a show of hefting it. ‘You gotta corpse in here or something?’ His smile was tight at the edges.
‘It’s no trouble,’ I said, keeping my expression neutral as I took my suitcase from him. He was right. It did feel as if it weighed more than it had when I left the quarantine station. My hands prickled. I’d have to wash them, and soon.
We ran out of words and ended up regarding each other for the few heartbeats of an awkward silence until Noel tossed out a ‘See you later’ and got back into his Electro.
I watched him dodge potholes the rest of the way up the road, after which a stillness descended on me in the absence of the humming electric engine.
Doves offered up their soft doo-doo, du-du-du call, and the hint of a southeaster shivered the majestic ficus’s dark green foliage. Dried grasses pushed out between the stone steps leading up to the house, and the white picket gate hung skew on its hinges, its paint peeling off in strips to reveal bleached wood beneath.
I’d been eighteen when I left my mother’s house. At the time, getting the bursary from GrenTech had felt like my salvation, an escape. No more Bible study, no more hours-long prayers, no more exhortations about sin, evil. How the plagues were our punishment for straying from the Light. I’d make her proud, I’d believed. We would have money, a future.
She’d come around eventually, I’d believed at the time.
Mother never spoke to me again, and she had reversed all of the EFTs I’d sent her. I’d become Satan’s foot soldier, so far as she was concerned.
Ten years later, here I was.
If I’d refused to come, had paid locals to pack up my mother’s house, I would forever lack closure.
With a sigh, I lugged my baggage up the stairs, passing dead vegetation in the terraced beds, the fallen leaves forming thick piles on the patio. The aloe that still stood next to the top step was completely filmed in white scale, its leaves curled.
As promised, the key was under the doormat, and I sighed in relief as I stepped across the threshold into the dim interior. The smell – just as I recalled from childhood – a mixture of wax floor polish and camphor. But the stillness, that was new. Not even the tick of the grandfather clock in the living room. Each step brought a creak from the Oregon pine floors.
First, I went to the bathroom, where I scrubbed my hands well with the small cake of soap there. Then I dug out my hand sanitiser and the disinfectant wipes.
I went to my old room, startled to find it almost exactly as I’d left it, with the drawings of horses still adorning the walls. In a different time, a different place, I may even have been a great artist. Had I had the opportunity. Before the world changed, and I bloodied my hands.
Next to my bed, on the bedside table, was a Bible bound in white leather. That hadn’t been there before I left. My lip twitched in distaste, and I slipped the book into the drawer.
My things stowed in the cupboard, I made my way through the rest of the house, opening windows and shutters. I had to get the air moving, bring in light so that I could dispel this… stasis… This house was a time capsule.
Only once I’d rinsed out the kettle and set it to boil did I sit down at the breakfast nook did I check my messages.
Except I was greeted by the “no signal” symbol. Nothing. Nada.
I moved from room to room, eventually unlocking the back door and climbing the steps to the top of the property, my tablet held up like I was some madwoman offering the infernal device to imaginary sky fairies.
No signal.
I’d have to wait for Noel to come around for dinner, to ask whether anyone else had a working connection. Or, worse, whether he’d drive me to town centre where there was hopefully a better chance to pick up a signal.
Then again, what was I really missing? The crisis-related chatter on our GrenTech intranet feeds I could do nothing about? Compulsively checking to see if Richard had been arsed to drop me a message. Hint: he was too busy shagging his girlfriend to worry about his soon-to-be ex-wife. My father had been dead since I was twelve. I had no siblings. Aunts and uncles, all dead in one or the other pandemic, terrorist attack, or armed conflict. Distant cousins on a vague, first-name basis only, and scattered all over the world.
Bottom line: I had no one, save perhaps Noel, his mum, and the few remaining community members here, who had been friends with my late mother. No doubt they’d be kind to me only thanks to her.
So, I had my tea and started packing up my mother’s bedroom.
According to the message from Noel’s mum, my mother had been found lying on her bedroom floor. She’d had a stroke, apparently, and had lain there for goodness knew long before she eventually passed. The room stank of urine, and I could only assume that the dark patch in the threadbare carpeting was where she’d lost control of her bladder. I couldn’t abide the stench, so I spent a good half an hour scrubbing at the stain with hot water and detergent, until the smell only lingered in my memory.
I started sorting her things – much-patched clothing I recalled from my early years. Nothing new or in particularly good nick. If she’d at least unbent and accepted my gifts, she could have bought herself nice things. My anger was a livid thing, and it was with great difficulty that I tamped it down.
Three Bibles here, ugh. I shoved the accursed books into a pile for items I’d donate to the local church. Maybe I could get Noel to sell off the furniture that had some value, and he could keep the money. He needed it more than I did.
Maybe invest in more hydroponics equipment. Or a new surfboard.
This thought elicited a snort of laughter. Mother would have had a fit if she knew what her life’s possessions were about to fund. I fetched more boxes from the kitchen.
Load shedding was from 4pm to 8pm, according to the chart stuck onto the fridge, but there were some candles and matches, so I was ready. As promised, Noel came around near sunset with his daughter Charni. And yes, he was right, she did resemble her mother more with her tawny skin and the dark hair that fell in thin locks onto her shoulders.
But she wasn’t as shy as Khanyiswa was, though even now I struggled to picture the girl who’d stolen Noel’s heart all those years ago.
‘Hi, I’m Charni,’ she said. ‘My gogo says you must eat immediately.’
She bustled right past me, carrying a woven hotbox as if it were the holiest of relics.
Noel shrugged apologetically, but his pride gleamed in his eyes. ‘As you can see, she’s pretty much taken over.’
‘Someone has to look after you, I guess.’ The slight smile that tugged at my lips felt unfamiliar.
‘After you.’ He gestured dramatically, as if this were some grand affair, and we were standing on a red carpet.
Neither wore masks, and it felt rude to ask them to mask up when I had already taken mine off ages ago. I’d had umpteen jabs before I left Jozi, so I should be fine.
By the time we reached the kitchen, Charni was already laying out plates at the breakfast nook. She wrinkled her nose at her dad. ‘I told you we needed to bring juice.’
‘Water will have to do,’ I said, and went to fill three glasses from the filter.
With the candles dancing, the kitchen felt homey, and we huddled around the table. Mrs Searle had made a bean curry served with mashed potatoes, and the portions were generous – more than I’d been used to eating at quarantine, where everything was pre-packaged and stale.
Charni chattered about how her school had started growing their own vegetables, how their joint project with the seniors included a small hydropower initiative at the old mill. She was like the Els River herself, small but rushing over ridges and spilling into surprisingly deep pools.
‘Don’t you want to go study at GrenTech one day?’ I asked her. Her enthusiasm was electrifying, which wouldn’t hurt when the older generation’s was in such short supply these days.
‘No offence, auntie,’ she said to me, looking me dead in the eye. ‘Why would I want to leave? Maybe get sick if I go out. Or get killed in a bombing or something. No thank you. Besides, who’s going to look after my pa?’ She nudged Noel hard, and he grinned sheepishly.
Charni produced a Scrabble set from out of the depths of one of the cupboards in the lounge and went on to beat both me and Noel soundly. I’d never much been one for children, but for a few short hours I could imagine what this life would have been like, had I never gone, and a dull ache bloomed in my belly.
And yet.
Before they left, I asked Noel about the signal, and he confirmed that it had been down in the valley half a week already. We could try town centre the following day when we fetched supplies from the co-op.
I stood on the stoep and watched them leave– the faint bobbing light of Charni’s solar flashlight the sole indication that they made it back to where the car was parked.
After the car had whirred up the road, I stood awhile, drinking in the night.
So many stars, with none of the ruddy haze of Jozi skies. A nightjar called down in the poplars by the river. Ma always told me the bird said “good lord, deliver us” but I couldn’t ever hear what she did. A chill clung to the air, warning me that autumn was biting and chasing summer’s tail.
The interior of the house was a tomb once I shut the door behind me. No power, still. From what I gathered, the load shedding schedule was a suggestion rather than a hard-and-fast way to prepare for the lack of power. I heated water for a bucket bath on the gas burner and then went to bed.
Save that I lay staring owl-eyed at the ceiling in my old room, the scent of mothballs so strong that my nose became blocked. Or it could have been the dust. No matter how I turned or resettled, I remained uncomfortable, slipping always into the trough of the mattress that had seen better days. The power kicked back on with the rattle of the refrigerator, with such a suddenness that I bolted upright.
Only the frigging refrigerator. Not an intruder. My training tallied a dozen ways a determined enemy could break and enter. Without my company-issue sidearm, I was without teeth.
After that, any thought of sleep proved elusive. I would pay for this later but took advantage of the power and made myself a cup of tea. Puttering around in my mother’s kitchen without her in it, too, felt passing strange. As if I expected her to join me for a cup. Not that we’d ever have decent conversation, because invariably she’d find a way to turn our dialogue to her spiritual matters. I missed her nonetheless, she was my last anchor to a past that had slipped through my fingers, mercury quick.
I thumbed through the old recipe book that had been her great-grandmother’s, filled with annotations in an illegible cursive. Slips of recipes snipped from magazines or handwritten on yellowed notepaper spilled out. This I’d keep. Even though the cloth binding had frayed, and the book itself was held together with twists of ribbon. If I pressed the pages to my nose, I could detect hints of the sugar of long-ago rusk-baking. Or so I told myself.
Again, I checked for a signal – still nothing. A slight burn of annoyance flushed through me, followed by a sense of helplessness. Nothing to be done about this until later – it was already past 3am – when Noel took me in to town centre.
Noel arrived shortly before lunch, although I’d been ready for him since 10am. I bit back my anger at his slap-dash attitude. How was he to know about my anxiety at the lack of communication with the outside world? Life flowed at a different pace here; I saw painful reminders of this all around in the lack of traffic, in the old man who’d cheerfully waved to me as he’d strolled down shortly after sunrise with his fishing rods slung over his shoulder.
‘Hey!’ Noel said as he opened the car door for me. ‘You’re looking a bit rough.’
I grimaced at him in lieu of smiling. ‘Had trouble sleeping.’
‘Damn, I should have given you a bit of my herb. You’d have slept like a baby.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ I tried not to wrinkle my nose in distaste. The last time I’d smoked that shit was when I was still in the GrenTech academy – and it had been both the first and last time I’d done so. ‘No news yet regarding when the signal will be up again?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ He didn’t seem all that concerned.
I shrugged and clicked in the safety belt. At least that still worked. And Noel had removed all the rubbish out of the car since yesterday, which brought a ghost of a smile to my lips. The interior still smelled faintly of mushrooms, but I felt my usual horror for other people’s spaces slipping.
‘Do you think you could take me to see her grave later?’ I asked.
‘Sure, though I must warn you, they’re doing field burials these days. Green and all that shite because the environment.’
‘More hippie shit?’ I allowed myself a ragged laugh because I hadn’t stipulated what they must do with Mother’s body.
‘Yeah, more hippie shit, as you put it.’ He didn’t sound amused.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘I get it. We must seem like a bunch of unwashed rednecks to you.’
‘Things are… rustic. I admit.’
‘We don’t have the benefit of living close to a slick city centre like you do.’
I sighed. ‘It’s not that glamorous. We have load shedding, too.’ Though I didn’t add that it was for as long as we’d had it last night. Nor did I mention we had other things to worry about, like IEDs, knives in the dark…
‘Whatever.’
I’d pissed him off with my attempt at weak humour, and I wanted to kick myself for having done so. We drove in silence the rest of the way, so I concentrated on looking past Noel’s profile to the choppy ocean and the mountains in the distance.
The hoped-for signal didn’t materialise as we rounded the curve of the mountain and entered town centre.
‘Fuck.’ I flicked my tablet to aeroplane mode and back, and still nothing.
‘We can stop by the police station. They’ll most likely be able to say what’s what,’ Noel said. ‘They’ll have a satellite phone. I’m sure you’ll be able to call out to your people.’
‘Thank you.’ My stomach turned over and over, as if I’d eaten a live snake, and a horrible sense of foreboding crept over me. Not having connection to the outside world, not knowing what was happening back at HQ or even in the wider world, was an absence like a missing tooth, that I kept probing at. Always with the same dismay at the rediscovery.
We pulled up outside the fortified red-brick building, and surprise-surprise, Noel handed me a mask even as I reached for the one in my bag – a fresh one out of a dispenser box in the glove compartment. So he wasn’t completely lackadaisical. He waited by the car while I went in. Half a dozen heavily armoured vehicles stood nose to tail outside, soot-smeared and dented. I donned my mask and joined the queue so that the police officer at the gate could take a reading of my body temperature and scan my ID chip.
Even through my mask the sour-onion stench of too many bodies not quite practising social distancing hit me, and I stood hugging myself while eyeing my fellow citizens. A woman at the front desk was complaining loudly about the laundry stolen from her line. She enjoyed having an audience, showing everyone exactly how outraged she was, and I cringed inwardly. Karen be thy name.
Suddenly, I felt horrid about my initial response to entering this space. Compared to most, I lived a sheltered existence, my work seeing me function more within a virtual than physical space when I was not sent out on missions.
I checked my tablet for the nth time, and still no signal.
The grandmother behind me cackled. ‘Oh, you’re not going to check your messages anytime soon, sisi.’
I turned to her. ‘What?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
I estimated her to be somewhere in her late-sixties, sun-browned and wrinkled, and dressed in a hodgepodge of tie-dyes and homespun. The scent of stale tobacco wafting off her was strong, and I tried not to let my distaste for her body odour show.
I shook my head, not liking where this conversation was headed.
She smacked her lips. ‘They say there was a bombing. At the larneys up in Jozi. Knocked out everrrrrything.’
‘Which larneys, and if that’s the case, how do you know?’ Oh dear god. My world grew fuzzy at the edges. This woman was clearly deluded if she thought this was a reason to gossip with such glee.
She jerked a clawed hand at the communications unit across the way from us. While the screen displayed drone footage of an empty dam, the crawler going at the bottom was spitting out details about a bomb blast. Whatever the grandmother still said got lost in the white noise hissing in my head as I took in the details.
Yesterday afternoon, a drone strike. News agencies doing the best with the local intranets and satellite connections while technicians scrambled to fix this colossal clusterfuck. The screen segued to another scene, this one of a recycling plant somewhere up north. Couldn’t they show actual footage of the disaster? I needed to know! I hopped up and down, gritting my teeth at the waves of blank nausea that crept up my belly. Who could I speak to? I needed a phone line, but they were all dependent on the primary ISP, so I’d need that satellite phone after all. Fuck!
The crawler kept spewing the same information about GrenTech – nine hundred dead, severe damage to infrastructure. No organisations currently claiming responsibility for such a blatant act of terrorism. Yet.
By the time I reached the front desk, I already had my GrenTech ID card in my hand and flashed it at the bored-looking officer on duty.
Gingerly he took the card from me and peered at it, then slid it back to the desk.
‘I need to use your satellite phone. Urgently,’ I said.
‘Sorry, ma’am, this cannot be allowed for civilians.’
‘I am a GrenTech operative. Surely you can see that?’ The urge to reach across the desk and shake the man nearly overwhelmed me.
He continued to stare at me with his dull, uninterested gaze and shook his head.
‘Then let me speak to your superior. It’s a matter of urgency.’ I was going peak Karen, and I hated it. Hated the way I was conscious on the periphery of my vision that faces were turned in my direction, accompanied by a small flurry of tutting.
Someone even not-quite-whispered, ‘Ai, wena.’
But I couldn’t bring myself to care about the stern disapproval of anyone right now.
‘Please.’
He sighed, as if I were asking him to cut off his right hand and turned to call into the open door of an office, something in isiXhosa but I caught the derogatory ‘mlungu’, as well as the snickers that term elicited behind me.
Whoever was in the office, replied rapid-fire, and the man behind the desk turned his gaze back to me. ‘She says you may use the phone in her office.’
‘Thank you!’ I hurried around to the gate in the counter, where a constable unlatched it to let me through.
With trepidation, I crossed the threshold into Captain Nxumalo’s office. She was a woman of middle years, her forehead pulled into what appeared to be a permanent frown.
‘Thank you so much, Captain,’ I said.
‘There.’ She pushed the phone, amid a scattering of stationery and paperwork, across her desk towards me.
Her frown deepened as I first took out a disinfectant wipe and gave the receiver a once-over with it. I did not feel comfortable taking a seat, and aware that she was glaring at me as though she could make me spontaneously combust, I dialled out.
The first number was my office’s, but it went straight through to an automated message telling me that no one was currently available to take my call right now, could I please leave a message, blah, blah, blah.
The second number was my soon-to-be ex’s. The call went straight through to voicemail.
Captain Nxumalo glared at me over her mask, but I tried to keep my expression neutral as I dialled the only other number that might offer some sort of hope: my boss, Shuaib. It was almost a sick joke that his number went through to voicemail, too.
I put down the phone and asked the captain, ‘Do your people know anything about what has happened upcountry?’
She gave a shrug, as if the happenings in Joburg were of no great import.
My inner voice was saying fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… a snippet of an audio-file running on repeat.
‘Could you contact your higher-ups on my behalf? It’s a matter of extreme urgency that I reach my office.’
Captain Nxumalo started laughing then. ‘I think it is time for you to go, lady. You and everyone else must stand in line.’
‘Please!’ I hated how my plea came out as a squeal. ‘GrenTech’s services provide a backbone for all our telecom. This affects you and the community you serve as much as it does me.’
The woman sighed and rubbed at her forehead before she made eye contact with me again. ‘You can leave your details by the front desk. I will have one of my warrant officers try make contact with your people, and you can check in tomorrow. That is the best we can do. And there are no guarantees.’
I could tell from her stony expression that I’d pushed my luck as far as I dared. A wave of inevitability swarmed over me. If I waited for the police to move on this emergency, I may as well wait for the figurative buffalo to fly. But what to do?
After thanking the captain, I did as she’d suggested, and left my details with the warrant officer at the desk. He’d spelled my name wrong, but I didn’t have the energy to correct him. Since telecoms were down, there was no point in leaving a number, but I said I’d come back the following day.
Not that I would. Even as I stepped out into the parking area, the barest skeleton of a plan was forming. I didn’t have much to go on, but a flimsy skein was better than none at all. Noel was smoking one of his noxious roll-ups when I reached the car, and hastily stubbed the thing out and tucked it into a small tin that he slipped into his jeans pocket.
‘You done?’ he asked.
‘About as done as I can be,’ I told him as I got in then reached for my sanitiser out of habit. Ugh, I needed to wash my hands with soap. My skin was tacky.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s been a bombing, at my headquarters.’
‘That sucks.’ His brow creased.
He meant well, but it was clear that the heaviness of my situation meant precious little to him – the location, the people.
‘I need to go back to quarantine. Now. I don’t have time.’ I’d have to see if I could put in a request for my slot to be fast tracked, due to the urgency of my need to return to HQ. It was a long shot, but it was better than waiting here for the signal to be repaired, for word to reach me from my superiors.
Noel’s expression transformed from mild concern to pure puzzlement. ‘Why? What could you possibly do? Won’t it be better for you to just wait?’
‘You see, that’s the difference between you and me, Noel,’ I spat, suddenly angry. ‘You’re content to let the world change under your feet. I’m not. I’m the one who does the changing.’
‘Sheesh, no need to get all harsh on me.’ He shrugged and started the car, and he didn’t so much as glance at me once he’d pulled us back into Main Road. It was a short drive to the quarantine station – so short I could have walked. I should have walked.
There was so much left undone with Mother’s house. I hadn’t even got a proper start on it. And I couldn’t let things between us slide apart without an apology. Without some direction as to where we went from here.
‘I have to do this,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry.’
Another shrug. A noncommittal grunt.
I wet my lips, dragging after options. ‘Um, tell Charni I’ll pay her to box the things from my mom’s house. Tell her… Tell her I trust her judgment about what she wants to do with the stuff, if she wants to keep it, sell it, pass it on to charity… Whatever she thinks best. Oh, and if you can bring my stuff later today, that will help. They’ll release it when I’m out on the other side.’
He glanced at me sharply then focused on the road as he took the tight corner going up into the quarantine station drive. ‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure. I don’t—’ know when or if I’ll be back.
He pulled the car into a parking space. ‘Okay. Um.’ Noel scrubbed at his nape and opened his mouth as if he had lots to say but wasn’t quite sure which words would work.
‘Thank you,’ I told him. ‘I know I haven’t been the best friend, and it’s been years.’
This time he managed to maintain eye contact, and his eyes were perhaps a little too bright. ‘It was good seeing you again. I’m… I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time… I’d hoped…’
‘When this whole mess blows over, you can take me surfing there by Misty Cliffs. How does that sound? I’ll come out and spend two weeks.’
This time his smile reached his eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, that sounds rad.’
Our awkward hug ended with him giving me a hesitant peck on the cheek, and squeezing my hand before I entered the quarantine station.
The interior was hushed but for the aircon’s hum, and the overhead strip lighting flickered in a way that made me feel instantly nauseous. I scanned my left wrist where my ID chip was lodged, inputted my details at the check-in console, and the sliding doors shushed open for me. The sickeningly familiar blank corridor yawned, with its identical shut doors running down either side. Two weeks of this. So soon. But the urgency to return to Joburg lent me all the wherewithal I needed to endure this.
‘Cubicle twelve-A, Agent De Villiers,’ announced the stilted female AI voice over the intercom.
A door sliced open in the distance, and I hurried towards it.
Who else was here? Anyone? Very few locals had the social credits to move freely between the Zones. In all likelihood, I was the only one in a fully automated station. This was going to be hell without a signal, but hopefully the intranet would have content I could access out of its caches. Even if it was stuff I’d watched before.
My home for the next fourteen days had space only for a narrow cot and a closet that doubled as a shower and a toilet. There was enough room for me to do push-ups. The beige walls closed in immediately. I didn’t even have a window. The wall-mounted screen that was supposed to be linked to the web showed only the station’s home screen – blue with the GrenTech logo flashing in the top right-hand corner. I turned off the screen then set my tablet to charge.
I went through the familiar routine of placing my clothing and boots into the chute so that they could go for further decontamination. In the drawer beneath my bed was the glorified paper nightgown that would be my uniform for the next two weeks. Each day a new one would arrive, delivered by the automated system, and my old one would end up in the composter.
I’d know it was the last day when my clothing was delivered, reeking of disinfectant.
And if I got sick…
I glanced up at the blinking sensors that monitored my vital signs. This cubicle could double as a makeshift coffin until such time as GrenTech sent agents fully kitted up in HazMat suits.
*
Five changes of clothing I counted. I slept. I meditated. I did what body weight exercises I could do in such limited space.
And then my tablet’s incoming signal bleeped.
I gave a small, inarticulate shriek and dived across the space so that I could grab at the tablet, and promptly nearly dropped it before I could get the facial recognition to work.
The incoming message was from an unknown number:
Unknown: Get out of while youcan. They coming for y
Jen: Who’s this?
I tried calling the number, and all I got was a “The number you are looking for no longer exists.”
And nothing else of any worth. No notification from HQ or anyone else in my department, let alone my company. I scanned the message queue for what felt like forever, seeing only messages from my assorted subscriptions. And nothing else from my mysterious unknown sender. All banter on the internal comms ceased five days ago.
After that, I scanned the news feeds, but it was all foreign correspondents from Europe and English-language Middle Eastern stations. Nothing local. No local news whatsoever, in fact. My Mandarin was so sketchy, I had no hope of understanding anything from those sources.
I tried calling out and got the same voice mails I’d received when I’d used the police captain’s phone.
Then I trawled the search engines and tracked down the news reports I’d seen half a week ago in the police station. And then even the local news stations had gone dark. Creeping horror clawed up my spine. What was going on? My entire career depended on being able to access information, and now even that was lost to me. Like a spider that had its web cut out from under it. Little lights winking out one after the other.
A high-pitched whine built up at the back of my throat, and I paced the small space. Those walls got even smaller and tighter. I jiggled the door, but it remained sealed. Even if I tried to slip my fingers into the gap, there wasn’t even enough space for me to gain purchase.
Get out of while youcan. They coming for y
GrenTech had its enemies. Which multi-national tech conglomerate didn’t? Except GrenTech’s products and services provided the backbone to the entire region’s economy. Without the connective tissue we provided, especially in terms of communications, the whole of the southern part of the continent was essentially cut into a bunch of loosely flailing city states.
Someone had targeted GrenTech’s very nerve centre, and whoever had survived – and there were survivors, I had proof of that – were in grave danger.
I was in grave danger.
I gave a small shriek and shoved at the door with my shoulder. It was constructed from a reinforced plastic. Durable, but not impossible to breach with the right amount of effort.
Get out of while youcan. They coming for y
Who was coming for me? When?
There was no point in cursing myself for an idiot. Not now. If I got out of here alive, I’d have plenty leisure time to beat myself up over making myself the perfect target. I’d logged in, for crying out loud. Whoever monitored the quarantine stations could come and pick me off at their leisure once the outbound communication was logged. Now that the quarantine station was linked to a signal again, whoever held the reins could simply run a search and track me down.
Muttering every expletive I knew under my breath, I took stock of my resources. I wasn’t a techie or a programmer. There was no hacking into a mainframe like that fancy cyberpunk series that played when I was little. But I wasn’t going to wait like a sheep in the slaughterhouse.
How would they do it? Would they send an agent to make sure the deed was done? Send a drone? Would they starve me? I paused. No, they’d send an operative. Drones were expensive. Starving me wasn’t a guarantee that I’d allow myself to die. How long did I have? An hour, a day? It depended on where the nearest enemy operative was based. Could be a Zone over, or even in another province.
It amazed me how desperation lent strength to my efforts. The covering for the supply hatch was thin and metal, and though I cut my hand badly, I was able to jiggle the thing loose and use it to lever enough of a crack in my unit’s door in order for me to wedge in an elbow. While the door could handle a fair battering from within, I could shove it off its runners if I pushed hard enough and had enough traction.
I’d barely crowed my triumph at getting this far when the station sirens blared into life – a wailing that nearly deafened me after my days of quiet.
‘Bastard!’ I’d managed to get the door mostly open, but the gap was not wide enough for me to push my entire body through. The thin gown I wore tore, and my skin scraped against the edges, but I’d come this far, and I wasn’t about to give up.
What if I was overreacting? This was a serious breach of protocol for a GrenTech agent. The repercussions could cost me my career, my future. Then again, what career? What future? I’d seen the damage to HQ, and the black hole of any further news after the event was as damning as my inability to reach out to any one of my colleagues.
And if whoever it was who’d orchestrated this event had come after the big fish, they’d surely come for the small fish, too. And their families.
What about Charni? Noel? The people from the valley where I grew up?
Cold dread had me in its fist, squeezing, and I fought harder, thrashing like an antelope trapped in a snare until the resistance gave, and I floundered into the narrow passage. Now there was still the door leading to the foyer that was locked tight, and that damnable siren’s wail made it impossible to think. I was still stuck, naked. Vulnerable.
Except there was a fire extinguisher at the other end of the passage. I went back and fetched it, the cylinder heavy and comforting as I brought it down where the locking mechanism would kiss into the wall. The first thud bounced the fire extinguisher back at me, but I paused, got a better grip on it, and tried again.
Thin cracks spidered from the point of impact in the plastic, and I struck at it again and again, yelling in time with each attempt. I laughed at the absurdity of my situation once the door started caving in, and when it was quite loose in its rail, I doubled my efforts.
I don’t know who was more surprised, me or the man who stood on the other side in the foyer.
Maybe he expected me to be cowed by his firearm, but by then, all bloody and angry, I kept my momentum going and hauled at him with the fire extinguisher.
The man might be bigger than me, but he had to choose: drop his firearm and try stop me from braining him, or try to shoot. All was a confusion of limbs, and the gun went flying with a metallic clatter, and we went down, grappling and grunting. My would-be assassin was a touch bigger, stronger, but he was not fast and desperate, like I was.
He got in a lucky punch, that I didn’t quite dodge. His fist skimmed my left temple, and I knocked the back of my skull against the floor. Starbursts blossomed in my vision, and my world greyed out for a few seconds. Then my training kicked in, and I twisted part of the way out of his grip, even though he was able to get a hold of my legs.
We rolled among the debris, neither of us quite getting the upper hand, until somehow, he was able to close both hands around my neck. He squeezed, and the blank animal fear gobbled the edges of my being. Don’t panic, don’t panic, the rational voice of my trainer tried to remind me. But oh, the terror! the inescapable realisation of “this is it, the end” and another part of me going no-no-no, not yet.
Years of drills kicked in. Most victims, in being strangled, might flail ineffectually at their attacker, but the real power lay in outsmarting. While there was time. And while my life was measured out in seconds, I slid my elbows down between the man’s knees and his arms, so that he might not trap my arms with his legs.
His eyes were wide and wild in a sunburnt face. Just a young man then, with the barest fluff on top of his lip. But still stronger than me, a mere slip of a woman. Fight smart, not strong.
I slid one hand over to grab his wrist without using my thumb and got the other hand behind his elbow. All the while I pinned him with my gaze. Funny how on the verge of death and dying, I noticed details like the hazel flecks in his grey eyes.
And then I yanked his arm, making the limb flow with the way the joints were the weakest. He slipped and unbalanced, and I was ready for him, sliding my legs out and twisting so that I was above him.
He was bigger, yes, but I had more experience.
I had noted where the gun had landed, and by the time he’d roared to his feet, I put three rounds into his chest. The impact was enough to drive him back so that he fell against the wall, but he was wearing a vest, so I put the fourth round right in his face.
So fast. My ears ringing. The gun slick in my bleeding hands.
More would come for me when he didn’t check in. That much was certain.
And if they didn’t find me, they’d come for the only people I had. Those who endured despite the Machiavellian struggles churning in the greater world.
Some things were worth fighting for: Charni and her hydropower project, Noel and his stupid surfing, his crooked smile. An empty house full of memories. All those ties that bound us, the fragile dreams so easily scattered by a storm that I’d lived without these years past. All I was could be wiped away in an instant, and whoever these faceless corporate assholes were who’d so casually brought down a “business rival” – because in my heart of hearts, I knew that’s what it was – they’d have another thing coming if they wanted to mess with people.
My people.