I think it is because they bled blue blood and not red like ours that they were the objects of such heinous actions. Or perhaps it is because they had wings for scapulars, and tails for buttocks. Or maybe it was those marble eyes that reflected the stars beneath the sky at night or their humility and strength that made them easy targets. Is it because they didn’t look like us? Perhaps that was enough for them to be beaten senselessly and mercilessly into pulps. I watched their blood drip onto the ground. It mixed with the soil and transformed into a blue-black hue that all together formed a newer, unfamiliar material of sand. It was then that I became aware of the power of these humanoids that had sprouted out of mushrooms, wandering around every yard, confused and limber, before subtly marking and making their place into our township.

                           #

Pretoria Department of Defence: July 30^th

“So young man I believe you were there when it all happened,” Lieutenant Roland Motau says in his deep commanding voice, sitting on the station’s metallic table and crossing his muscular arms over his broad chest.

“Yes sir,” the young man on the chair in front of the Lieutenant nods.

“And you say it was like some Terminator stuff?” the Lieutenant asks, staring into the young man’s rounded double lens spectacles.

“Well, I didn’t put it like that,” the young man says, speaking from the pinnacle of his nostrils as if the words are bridged there. “It was surreal,” he adds.

Lieutenant Motau examines him quietly; his full head of afro, his bespectacled eyes, his tiny body and his nauseating accent in which every word is well articulated and poise, reminiscent of an ancient British play, and not at all what the Lieutenant expects a young man from the township to sound like. Then he turns to his partner, Lieutenant Lucia Visagie, who stands in the corner of the room huffing and puffing on a cigarette, listening in on the conversation.

“It’s all in the pictures,” the young man replies nervously at the Lieutenant before eyeing the collage of photographs scattered on the metallic table.

“Rudzani, right?” Lieutenant Visagie finally speaks, throws her cigarette bud on the ground, crushes it with her boot and walks toward the table. Rudzani nods.

“You took all these pictures?” she asks.

“Yes ma’am, I’m a photographer, a freelance photojournalist for a local publication,” Rudzani explains, suddenly no longer proud to call out his profession.

“So, since you’re a journalist of some sort, you can give us a full report on the events of July 12^th?” Lieutenant Visagie says. The two lieutenants are people of the law after all, and Rudzani fears people of the law more than criminals themselves. Their singular arms are bigger than his scrawny body, their faces are cold and show no emotion, the bass in their voices make Rudzani’s heart tremble and when their big boots touch the ground they form potholes in his soul. Their presence alone, the simple act of breathing, is intimidating to Rudzani, hence he follows any order given to him.

He adjusts his glasses steadily on his eyes and nose; wipes sweat from his forehead and prepares to take his mind back to the days he never thought he’d relive so soon, the days that lead to July 12^th.

#

It had been raining for a week. One week turned into two, then three. It rained like the sun would no longer be; sometimes it rained softly but most times heavily. I tried to remember if the people had angered the water deities again like they had done a year before in the Vaal area when those five men went scavenging for snakes in the dam to sell in the black market. They searched on the ground for the cold-blooded reptiles, poked sticks into the sand and made funny hissing sounds with their tongues, to lure them into their direction, but their search was futile.

So they moved their scavenge to the water, threw stones into the lake, made funny noises with their tongues again and when the water began to move aggressively, almost dragging them into its deep end they wrestled with the current until they pulled a python, larger and heavier than the five of them, out onto dry ground.

They wrestled and ran, returned and poked at it with pangas and bricks and axes till at last, after an hour of fighting back, it lay lifeless on the ground. The men were seen parading in the Vaal township of Sebokeng with the creature on their shoulders. Boastful and proud of what they’d done, they sold its skin to the black market and supposedly blew the money on alcohol and meat during the weekend.

The Vaal dam went dry that year, it ceased to rain, and whenever it did, it was never enough to fill the taps and quench the residents’ thirsts. The deities were steadily washing us away, but people did so much bad in the presence of nature that I couldn’t pinpoint which bad was responsible for the heavy rains. I was terrified. The thought of drowning made my mind uneasy. When newsrooms reported that other parts of the country like Kwazulu Natal were ravaged by the heavy rains and flooding, I waited for my town to be next. But it wasn’t rain or floods that ravaged Kwa-Thema, but a peculiar species of mushroom that began to blossom after the rain.

In every home, on open ground, this particular species of mushroom grew varying in colour from the darkest brown to a deep charcoal black. It was much like a family of fairy rings and death caps; one could tell only by their colours that they were not, in fact, fairy rings and death caps but a newly formed species. These mushrooms were too grotesque for people’s liking and as with any other thing that was too grotesque or too unique to the people of Kwa-Thema, the mushrooms were ignored, dug out, chopped off or burned into odious ashes. Little did we know that these mushrooms had lives of their own; they lived and breathed the air we breathed. They did not take kindly to being removed, so they grew back and when they grew back, they multiplied, becoming an uncontrollable infestation in the township.

“These are the signs of the end of days” the devoted Christians in our community would preach.

“We have to pray harder”

The harder they prayed, the bigger the mushrooms grew as if they fed on the words of prayer, their undeterred faith, their hymns and loud Amen’s’. They grew taller than the tallest cannabis tree, taller than our brick fences and faster than the speed of light.

 “These can’t be normal mushrooms,” I said to my mama one night while we washed the dishes and peeped out the window, staring at the species growing in the yard outside our kitchen window.

“Mmm, this is completely abnormal. They just don’t die,” Mama said, wiping an already dry plate.

“Is that one moving?” she pointed outside, grabbing my attention.

For a moment, we watched in silence as the mushrooms moved again.

“Just a moment,” I said and by then I had hurried to grab my camera, which always lay fully charged on my bed, ready for action. By the time mama called me out again, I had slid out of the bedroom.

“Rudzani!” she yelled as I poured into the kitchen, capturing the bursting mushrooms through my lens, splitting open like cocoons, revealing what looked like human feet.

“Oh my,” Mama exclaimed when what looked like spines curved like C’s followed. Spines that stretched themselves until they stood upright, exposing the naked flesh of a human being.

The flesh was the same colours as the mushrooms, dark brown like cocoa nibs and a deep black like charcoal. When these humanoids moved, their bodies were limber-like elastic bands, with joints loose as if lacking bone.

They had eyes like marbles, black and glass-like, and when they moved it was as if they were dancing a sacred dance. Mama and I concluded that although they looked like us in some ways, in many ways, they were not human. But when we saw their full head of dreadlocks, the woollen antennae facing the sky; we had a change of mind and concluded that indeed they were human, a special kind of human.

“My god, Rudzani, they have tails,” Mama spoke in astonishment.

“And wings,” I added, puzzled by the unusual appearance and no longer knowing what to call them.

I captured several pictures of the humanoids; pictures that I had no intention of publishing from the moment they slid out of the mushrooms to the moment they wandered in our yard. Every moment lived in my lens. Mama and I were in awe, rather than scared. Somehow we knew that the people of Kwa-Thema would not react like us, and we did not have to wait long because soon, we heard them scream. They cursed at the humanoids, threw stones which hit their neighbours’ windows, hid in their houses and locked all doors, and from their locked houses they screamed, shouted, and yelled profanities.

“In Jesus’s name! I rebuke!” the older women yelled “Rebuke!” they cried.

It was then that our lives changed, for Jesus didn’t come to save us as they often preached that he would, neither did he warn even the most devoted and prophetically gifted of them all, of the coming of these peculiar humanoid species.

#

“What’s this?” Lieutenant Visagie points at a picture of Rudzani standing shoulder to shoulder with the humanoids.

“You’re friends with them?” She asks. Rudzani nods.

“Elizu,” he smiles and points. “She’s a special friend I made”

”She’s very kind and knowledgeable, especially on plants. She loves gardening and yellow lilies. She taught me that when I plant seeds into the ground, I have to speak to them and ask them to grow abundantly,” he adds, then chuckles.

“I taught her how to say my name”

His eyes light up when he expresses his experience with the humanoids, but the light illuminates brighter when he mentions Elizu’s name. There is passion in his voice. Though softly spoken, it is filled with warmth.

“They’re worth getting to know,” he continues. “They’re good companions, nurturing and… powerful,” he says.

“Powerful? How?” Lieutenant Visagie asks.

“They can pick up just about anything, even a baobab tree. They can do things too, magical things like heal and read minds and speak to the people on the other side of life,” Rudzani adds. The Lieutenants look at each other and consider his former statement some sort of mind play or sick joke. They would have laughed at him if they could, but they cannot, because they’ve been taught to suppress joy.

“What did you talk about?” Lieutenant Visagie asks.

“They can’t really talk, they groan and mumble mostly, but their actions usually speak louder than words,” Rudzani continues.

“Sometimes,” he pauses. “Sometimes I think that they are the future of this earth”

“Bullshit, then what will become of us?” Visagie asks. “Are they going to eat us alive or at least kill us first?”

“No,” Rudzani replies. “In a space close to two years some of our people have gone on to reproduce with them so I highly doubt that they’ll kill us” he points to a picture of a baby girl with skin like cocoa and eyes like marble and a head full of curly black hair.

“They’ve gone on to create a species of ugly mutants,” Lieutenant Motau snarls at the picture.

“Ugly is subjective, sir,” Rudzani interjects. “Maybe your definitions of it will make the world a better place.” He avoids the lieutenant’s eyes for fear of getting smacked across the face.

Instead, Lieutenant Motau throws a picture of a group of men and women dressed in bright yellow t-shirts in Rudzani’s face and gestures with his finger for him to speak.

“The people,” Rudzani responds. “They’re the reason why July 12^th happened”

#

When the humanoids blossomed into the township, we thought their invasion would be temporary and something odd that we’d record into history books. But the year flew by, then came the festive season. It passed too and before we knew it, we had ventured into the New Year, halfway through it, and still they remained. It became clear; if hadn’t been before, that they hadn’t blossomed onto to earth to be mere visitors, they were occupants, and just like us had marked their place on earth and would only be separated from it through death.

The men and women of Kwa-Thema, both young and old, lived in fear of the humanoids. The children didn’t make fun of them, as they often did with other unfamiliar things, and the adults didn’t gossip loudly about them in public spaces, as they often did about other odd things. Neither of us knew what their purpose was on earth or why they had chosen to land in our community because nothing astounding ever happens in Kwa-Thema. We did not know what they were – people or extraterrestrial beings – although, we often considered them Extraterrestrial, so people chose to call them Hooms, a derivative of humans and mushrooms. The Hooms lived among us, but unlike us, they cultivated a life of sustainable living as well as good morals and deeds, and they had hearts like water, pure and free. They were well versed in herbal medicine and plant life and could heal just about any sickness known to humankind. They spoke with rocks and stones and stars and the rocks and stones and stars spoke back to them. I grew fond of them, spent a large portion of my time with Elizu and her family, eating their food, drinking their drinks and teaching them my language.

It was clear, at least to me, that they had no ill intentions toward the people, and that they came to earth on a greater mission, one that I was prepared to uncover and indeed one worth uncovering still. But because they were hard to look at, with those elastic bodies and marble eyes, and because they came into our town mysteriously, people chose to turn a blind eye and instead confused their hatred as fear.

Such hateful individuals were our community leaders, made up of Pfarofero my father, Teenage our neighbour and my father’s drinking partner, and Aus’ Angie, a local tavern owner. They took it upon themselves to take the community’s grievances about Hooms to our ward councillor, Cynthia Ndlophe, but when they discovered that she had moved to the suburbs, far from Kwa-Thema, they were agitated and unsettled that she had run away from the people she vowed to serve. My father, Teenage and Aus’ Angie knocked on the doors of the most prestige people in government, but they were too afraid to visit our township. So the disgruntled community leaders took matters into their own hands and formed the association known as The People.

It was no shocker to me or Mama that The People grew rapidly in numbers and reputation. My father was a force in the community; one who protested like he came out of the womb with his fists and legs kicking in the air. He lived for strikes and shutdowns and loved the smell of burning tyres more than he did mama’s cooking. Teenage and Aus’ Angie were great alike. Self-proclaimed comrades, they loved the idea of unrest just as much as my father. These three had protested themselves into pillars of the community, therefore anything and everything they said, whether just or unjust, people heard and followed no questions asked.

The People held their meetings in community and school halls; they spoke at the top of their lungs calling for the removal of Hooms. They announced that their lives and the reputation of the township were in danger, that human reproduction was in danger and that these marble-eyed mutants were going to destroy humanity if we were not careful enough. They all agreed that they were going to do what the government always failed to do, and that was to act for the betterment of the people. So as a demonstration of taking action, the People began to harass the Hooms in public spaces, by spitting where they walked or passed by, they banned them from mingling with human beings and spat at any human being who refused to separate themselves from them. They yelled out profanities at their marble-eyed children. But the more they harassed, the faster the Hooms multiplied, causing an untouchable rage within the people.

“Sadly, these Hooms only seem to multiply the more we speak,” my father said to mama one night at our dinner table.

“We are left with no other choice as concerned citizens but to attack,” he said. Mama looked at me, worried, and I looked away, pitiful that I shared the same blood with that man.

“Rudzani, you’re so quiet. I need you by my side,” my father commanded.

“You need to put that toy down for once and be a man,” he added.

“Did you not play enough with toys as a child?” he continued, shoving a medium rare steak into his mouth before waiting for me to speak. I looked at Mama, worried. It showed through my eyelids, wincing at fast irregular intervals, one immediately after the other.

“I’m going to wash the dishes,” I said instead, got up from the table and moved away.

“Weak boy,” my father said. He proceeded to yell at mama and I, promising to get rid of the Hooms even if it killed him.

#

“And then what?” Lieutenant Visagie asks seeming now more immersed in the story.

“Then July 12^th happened,” Rudzani replies.

He looks at a picture of the night of July 12 and he shakes his head with pity and sorrow. He then looks at the Lieutenants, Motau’s eyes are dead cold, while Visagie’s remain glued on the pictures, for a moment it seems as if she’s taking in the pain depicted in them, but then she throws the photo onto the table, glances at her partner, then at Rudzani.

“You guys just shoot first and ask later, huh?” he asks. Visagie and Motau do not flinch, panic or shake in their big boots as if they’ve heard this question too many times before.

“July 12^th boy,” Lieutenant Motau commands in his deep muscular voice. Rudzani hesitates, but then again, he wants to get out of this stuffy room.

#

I woke up at 3 AM on July 12^th to the sounds of angry protesters singing struggle songs of their great grandparent’s struggles. There were many voices cascading over each other, each trying to out-sing the next, so I knew that a majority of the township was up and joined forces with The People. They knocked violently on doors, as you soldiers do. They banged on hard wood with their bare knuckles and pulled us out of our houses and then proceeded to tell us to go join ‘the war’. The people searched every house in pursuit of Hooms, and a few to loot our houses. When they found them lying in their wooden beds with their spouses and children by their sides, they pulled them out and threw them outside like bags of rubbish.      

Kwa-Thema was painted yellow, like a picture of riots in the sun. The Hooms were harassed and asked to leave the township and go back to space, where they came from. They tried, with fury in their marble eyes, to pull away from the tight grips of The People’s hands and hard fingernails. I squeezed and pushed my way through the angry crowd, hoping to spot Elizu and keep her closer to me, away from danger.

“Elizu!” I yelled, my voice drowning in the chanting and stomping of feet.

 I heard a woman grunt for help and realized that it was Elizu, caught in the rough hands of self-proclaimed comrade, Pfarofero, my father, with a revolver in his hand.

“Elizu!” I ran, pushing and squeezing through the crowd, dodging swinging arms and stones, jumping over Hoom children crawling on the ground in search of their parents.

“Baba let her go,” I said softly, not loud enough for my father to hear me.

Elizu’s eyes met mine as I was squeezing my way toward her. She found courage when she saw me approaching and slid out of my father’s rough hands and ran.

“Shoot her!” people demanded, and a loud bang made us drop to our knees. A bullet pierced into Elizu’s hard chest, settling in her thumping heart, and banging her body onto the ground. The crowd was silent, and so was my father, his finger still held on to the trigger, waiting for Elizu to get up.

Blue blood oozed from her chest, poured like a fountain and dripped into the soil, turning it blue-black. At first, her chest was still, then it began moving up and down, breathing heavily, she opened her eyes, got up and dusted herself off. My father’s hands shook. He was still pointing the gun towards her, his finger still tightly curled around the trigger.

It was then that the dark sky transformed, becoming darker than it was, transforming into blue-black and then into violet, illuminated by the blinding stars. It began to turn like a slow wheel shaking the ground until hard concrete, grass and sandy areas began to split open exposing a hollow hole in the middle of the town, a hungry hole that waited to be fed. The limber bodies of the Hooms glowed under the violet sky, their marble eyes rolled in their sockets like actual marbles on the ground and the strength they had kept within broke out. My father did say that the more they tried to get rid of the Hooms, they only seemed to multiply and multiply they did.

Wings spread out from the scapulars of the Hooms; they flew across the township like Eagles in search of the ones in the yellow. Men and women ran, but when they ran the Hooms flew and when they hid in corners they stumbled on marble eyes. They screamed and shouted and were dragged like dolls, their legs dangling in the air, into the gigantic hole.

For the first time since the inception of The People, there was a scarcity of yellow t-shirts. The Hooms invaded Kwa-Thema and they were not hard to see for they glowed under the sky. I found shelter behind a pine tree. My hands shook, but I learned in photography class, that no matter how close to death’s door you are, you should never let go of the camera. So I aimed it at the town and documented what I was seeing.

I captured the comical image of Teenage, running until he tripped on a stone smaller than his hands. He rolled onto the ground trying to escape approaching Hooms, crawling on his elbows and screaming like a baby as his body dangled in the air and was tossed into the hole.

“Oh! Forgive us please,” an elderly woman pleaded, kneeling on the ground on her crooked knees. “Oh! Forgive us for our ungodly actions” she begged and placed her hands in front of her chest like in prayer. The Hooms moaned and groaned, and surrounded the elderly woman.

Those who had survived joined her. They raised their hands in the air to surrender, pleading that they were too young to die and too afraid of the unknown, but many were afraid of what would remain of Kwa-Thema once all of its people were wiped out. The Hooms moaned and groaned and the fury in their spinning eyes died down.

#

“And that is when you guys arrived and started shooting with your big guns, dropping Hooms everywhere,” Rudzani says fuming, yet trying at the same time to contain his anger.

“What did you expect us to do?” Lieutenant Motau says. “Do you think those things are capable of forgiveness?” he adds. Rudzani nods subtly.

“If that is what you think then you’re just as delusional and as dumb as you look,” he continues.

“You shot at unarmed Hooms. They were the victims,” Rudzani says, sitting on the edge of his seat.

“They were never here with ill intentions, but you shot them anyway, meanwhile my father still roams the streets a free man. He had deserted his comrades and returned three days after the incident, storming into the house, clothed in an old black Uzzi t-shirt, blood dripping on his arms, with red sores on the soles of his feet. Mama and I were startled to see him alive; he tossed himself onto the sofa and avoided my eyes. ‘Petronella,’ he said, ‘Make me some coffee, would you?”

 “We were only following the orders of our superiors,” Lieutenant Motau says casually.

“Orders?” Rudzani asks.

“These Hooms are a threat to society, our resources and especially to the government,” Lieutenant Motau says. “We have no choice but to remove each and every one of them, starting at the roots from which they arose,” he continues.

“Is that a threat?” Rudzani asks with tears in his eyes.

“Oh no, that is a promise, boy,” Lieutenant Motau replies.

Rudzani pauses. He shakes his head. And then he pauses again.

“You can’t do that,” he mumbles, touching his pounding head, closing his eyes and listening to the ache. Suddenly, the veins on his arms, hands and legs protrude out of his umber skin. From his scapulars emerge two large brown wings that tear through his t-shirt.

“Oh shit, he’s one of them!” Lieutenant Visagie curses and runs to the door. It shuts in her face, hitting the tip of her nose.

Rudzani gets up from his chair growling like a wild animal, he drops to his knees, each growl louder, deafening. A long black tail pierces through his jeans, and the bones on his arms, fingers and legs crackle and pop until limber like elastic. His brown eyes become marble black. He looks directly into the cold, now frightened eyes of the Lieutenants who now have their guns aimed at him.

“Shoot!” Lieutenant Visagie commands and at Rudzani they shoot, every bullet piercing into his skin and settling in his body.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, his voice becoming deeper, huskier, reverberating across the room. The nauseating accent is no more. The black sky outside turns into violet, illuminated by stars, the ground begins to rumble.

“Rudzani, calm down,” Lieutenant Visagie says. “We are only following orders,” she continues, gripping onto her weapon.

 Rudzani looks at the Lieutenants, their fingers steadily reaching for the trigger. He looks at the door; he can make a run for it. But Motau is quick and a pro with the gun. He shoots at Rudzani, and misses, punching a hole into the wall.

Rudzani spreads his wings like those of an Eagle takes one last sad look at the Lieutenants and flies out the window into the dark violet sky illuminated with stars.

Outside, in the skies, a large flock of Hooms were waiting for his arrival. Together they will take flight, disappearing further and further into the infinite sky. When the storms ravage the earth again, and they surely will, the Hooms will emerge in another town, stronger and eager to continue their mission. They will transform another group of humans into their own, transporting them through the hollow hole, into its infinite bottom, until at last a species of Hooms emerges, greater than Kwa-Thema, greater than the continent. They are, in Rudzani’s words, the future after all.

The End.

“Dear South African Public” The words skittered across the huge screen, chasing each other in a stream of pixels. The next line jumped and flickered, almost unreadable. The government blimps needed servicing.

“Please do not alarm yourselves”

Below, the populace- decidedly un-alarmed- continued their homeward migration out of the city proper, trading the grimy skyscrapers and leafless Northern suburbs for the quiet civilization of the South.

Surresh breathed smoke rings out of the window of the jeep, watching them.

In a few hours the city centre would be dead, save for the prostitutes and the night-watchmen and the occasional adventurous Taxi-Lord.

He wiped his brow and stretched out a long fingered hand to snap on the aircon. It was scorching today. Far too hot for this time of year. Almost four in the afternoon, middle of July and he was still sweating. The 2050’s would be remembered as a hot decade.

Suddenly he was bathed in shadow as a Propaganda blimp passed overhead. Surresh glanced up briefly.

On the screen was a greyscale photograph – archive footage- familiar to anyone who spent much time in Central Joburg these days. Below the poster “To Hell with Afrikaans” resting on a pair of school shoes, ran the usual red text: “Understanding that, in your country,”

The image changed now to something else subtly reminiscent of the past.

“you have a hatred of violence”

The toes of a police boot and the shadow of a gun faded in. The text crawled on:

“and heavy handed policing,”

Surresh snorted, sending the smoke in crazy spirals. It was almost too ironic. He wondered how this ‘Government’ could hope to understand anything at all.

The blimp and its flashing screen passed and sunlight returned. Baking sunlight. Surresh groaned and turned the aircon up.

The retreating airship now flashed the message: “But please do remember that THINGS HAVE CHANGED. ‘Well, at least they’d got one thing right. Since they’d pushed the Americans into nuclear war, showered Europe with fallout in a bigger fuckup then Chernobyl and chosen South Africa as a home away from home things had changed. Now that the Chinese ‘Government’ had arrived and taken over, everything was different.

Then he looked out at the abandoned high-rises across the way, and down at his watch. He ground the remains of his cigarette between his teeth in annoyance. The girl was late again. He hated pick up duty.

The glass shattered, catching the sunset in a spectacular show of light. Callie flung up an arm to protect her eyes, stumbling for a moment. Then the soldier was through the window and she was running.

The soldier hit the ground heavily, landing on his knees, allowing his armour to absorb the impact. After a moment he rose, glass falling from him like rain. He paused; banging his mask a couple of times until the filter stopped rasping and then, with deliberate slowness continued the hunt.

Behind an abandoned bath tub, fallen on its side, Callie crouched. There was blood in her mouth and her ankle throbbed. She cursed her luck.

Towering over the pitted floor, her pursuer began scanning the room, skirting its perimeter, Glass crunched under each heavy stride. Callie willed her spent muscles quiet; she couldn’t afford to shake now. The footfalls of the searching soldier echoed harshly from the concrete walls, closing in.

She froze, holding her breath and listening.

He stepped nearer, so close that she could hear the hum from his kit. Steady.

Her fingers brushed the signal pack at her hip. The twin buttons were cool and smooth under her fingers. Waiting.

The soldier tramped closer, his gaze intent on the tub in front of him. For the first time in the mission, Callie hesitated. This timing had to be perfect.

Another piece of glass snapped under his boot.

Closing her eyes and risking one tiny breath, she hit the first button.

The soldier deliberated. He’d definitely heard something up ahead, like a small gasp, but the sudden beeping from the doorway demanded his attention too. He was just turning to investigate the door when the final warning sounded. Callie braced her body and slammed down on the second button detonating the contact bomb she’d stuck to the doorway when she ran in.

Suddenly it was like there were two suns blazing at the soldier, one sinking beyond the barred windows and the other exploding into being in front of him. The first seconds of flame seemed to consume everything. The shockwave shattered the door and ripped chunks from the ceiling. Shards of rubble rained down on Callie, cracking the tub with savage force. For a time there was just sound and blackness. Then just blackness.

After a while she let the tension flow from her muscles. Slowly she pulled herself from the remains of the bath tub, bleeding from a dozen places but somehow, improbably, alive.

Gingerly she found her feet, deciding that today’s strategy had definitely worked better on paper.

She shook the dust from her ears and listened. The room was still. She smiled bleakly, lucky this time.

It wasn’t enough though, not in the long run. The rebellion wouldn’t survive on poor strategies and luck. She’d have to crap out her Tactics department when she got back to base. Sighing suddenly she rubbed her aching shoulders. Her Tactics department was two people and a dartboard. The two best monopoly players in the team, and a dartboard for when they got stuck for ideas. This country hadn’t been ready for a war. Not even close. Callie shrugged, and headed back to the centre of the room to strip the body.

The bloody helmet slid off easily, letting the softly deepening sunset wash gold the remains of Asian features. He was so still and so mangled that it was only when Callie bent close, checking his breast pockets for ammo, that she realised that the soldier was alive.

Beneath the heavy uniform she felt his chest shudder, rising and falling spasmodically. Startled she jerked away, looking for the first time at his face. His one eye was a mess, blood and tissue tumbling from a lid sunken in its socket. The other was a deep brown.

It blinked at her. Thin lips began to move slowly in soundless speech. Callie stood, transfixed by something in his tired gaze. The sudden horror of the thing she had done swelled within her. Her eyes prickled involuntarily. She shook her head, dropping his gaze and answering her shame with anger. It wasn’t like he was an innocent. You lost that when you signed up for the Government army. The Chinese Government Army. Since South Africa signed that damn treaty, the Chinese was the only government that mattered here anymore. They didn’t let you hold onto anything. Especially not innocence.

She could almost understand it, the treaty and everything. They’d all been so scared when war broke out. Oil war between America and China, two of the world’s leaders shooting each other to shit over the last dregs of fuel. They’d been scared badly in the beginning and worse when with the first nuclear strike. The President had been scared enough to sign away his power for the promise of security.

Now the only people not scared were the rebels and the Army. The soldier coughed, racking and wet. She balled up her fists. She hadn’t invited the fucking Chinese.

There was more blood on his face now, leaking from between his gently moving lips. No tears for invaders. No shame in defence. The blood was thick and dark. No one was forced to join. There were always choices, some were just harder. There were always choices, no matter how young you were. He coughed up again. Something inside his body must be very, very broken.

Her stomach churned and she quelled it with rage. Narrowing her eyes she glared down at him and spat, in the banned language, the forbidden, rebel tongue of the struggle “Moenie met my praat nie, jou fokken jakkals.”¹

His good eye swivelled back to her. He rasped a hollow breath and, “Ek praat nie met u.”²    

Callie stopped, stunned.

The brown eye turned away as he continued to whisper. On his lips the blood began to dry, splitting into sharp black flakes. Gradually, his words slowed. She could hear how his lungs bubbled now. After a while he stopped speaking entirely.

Numbly she sank to her knees, staring at the body. It was a long time before she could move again.

Eventually the last of the sun slipped out of the little room, sinking below the empty Parktown High-rises and leaving the smog cloud glowing.

The chip-reader’s screen winked once, bright as a fallen star, as Callie slid the soldier’s Identity implant in. He’d earned a name now. And maybe more than that. She thought for a while and got out her paint.

She’d nearly finished her spray can when her ‘corn buzzed. Slipping it into her ear and slapping on the throat patch she winced at Surresh’s hysterical yelling.

“Callie! Where the hell are you?! You’re 45 overdue!”

“I’m coming Surresh. Just finishing up the usual.”

“Are you alive?”

She almost managed a smile. “No shit.”

In the jeep outside, Surresh exhaled. She was fine. He could hear from her voice that she was rattled, but you could survive being rattled. He put his hand on his own pounding heart, and lit another smoke.

She slipped into the car minutes later, badly roughed up. Calmly he checked her over for major damage.

“I’m all right Surresh” she muttered, her eyes telling another story.

Understanding, he pulled off – first thing you learned on pick up duty was when not to ask.

Callie watched the city through the window, lifeless and shut up for the night (night that should have been buzzing with Jozi vibe). But she didn’t want to think about how things used to be. It brought up other memories.

In the distance she could see a propaganda blimp, running news footage of the March. People died in the street, gunned down by soldiers every time they ran this video. It was part of the Government’s desensitisation plan: hit us with those images enough so we get used to them, until they’re not real. Until we don’t care.

All of a sudden Callie missed her dad.

It had been simple after the March, the lines drawn clean and absolute. Us and Them, Justice and Tyranny.

Now she was wary of capital letters. If the Government was recruiting South Africans… Tricking us, into fighting our own…

She shook her head. There’d been no betrayal in the soldier’s brown gaze, no surprise. Just sadness. She sighed. How did she justify that? She’d been shocked when she’d realised she was fighting a South African„ He’d known from the start. She didn’t believe that anyone could be forced to join the army. He’d joined.

Maybe he’d just picked the wrong side. Maybe she couldn’t make it that simple anymore.

He didn’t look like he even realised he’d chosen badly, but Callie was bad at reading Chinese faces. She wondered if she could use that excuse here, with him.

What does a South African face look like anyway?

Maybe she’d lost his expression in the blood and missing eye. “Stupid fucking blimp,” She muttered to herself. Surresh looked up but she shook her head at him, pointing at the blimp.

“Yes, that one’s the worst. ‘We can build a stronger loving nation’  Makes me sick, that line.”

She looked at him curiously.

“You don’t ‘build’ a nation. You grow it, with and backward steps and compromises and small acts of grace.”

Callie thought a bit. Small acts of grace.

She wished it could have been better, but she’d never spoken Afrikaans before the revolution.

When the government cleanup crew finally arrived at the Parktown High-rise, they sighed and shrugged. It was a standard scene: light damage, walls covered in the usual terrorist propaganda, (Nkosi Sikele and such). It was only one worker who found the other message, sprayed small and neat beside the body.

“Mag die Here jou seen, en nog baie jare spaar, Kuan Lee Gouws.”

“May God bless you and spare you many more years, Kuan Lee Gouws.”

Taal first appeared in PROBE, the magazine of SFFSA (South African Science Fiction and Fantasy club) after winning first place in the Nova contest, 2011.