Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

"You can break his arm, Vuyo, but I'll cave your fucking skull in before you can do anything else," I say.

Vuyo considers this. Sloth whimpers and squirms, trying to take the pressure off his arm. Our connection is one-way. I can't feel his pain, but it's bad enough to see it in his face.

"Stalemate," Vuyo says grimly. Blood drips off the end of his nose. The kettle is heavy. It would be so easy to bring it down. So complicated after.

"Or," I say through my teeth, "load saved game."

"What?"

"We reset to where we were before."

"Impossible."

"Who knows? That the money was counterfeit?"

"I do."

"Who else?"

"No one else. Yet." But he is starting to smile, a thin, appreciative smile.

"Two hundred thousand," I offer.

"Four fifty."

"That's insane."

"If you were anyone else, girl, you'd already be dead."

"But I'm an asset."

"You're an asset," he agrees, easing off Sloth's back. Sloth gives a little cry of relief and scrabbles towards me. I scoop him up with one arm, still holding the kettle half raised.

"Get out."

"My gun."

I laugh. "Add it to my fucking bill."

I'm an asset, alright. And as much a moegoe as any of the ones I've netted for him. If Vuyo had really wanted to punish me, all he had to do was shoot Sloth. Hell, chuck him out the window, save himself the bullet. He wouldn't have risked bringing the Undertow down on his head, getting animalled. Now he has me right back where he wanted, with triple the debt.

There is a commotion outside. Doors slamming. Footsteps. A kid scrambles past the door, yelling "iPoyisa! iPoyisa!" – the building's early warning system.

"You called the cops?" Vuyo says, incredulous. His eyes flick to the bed, to the gun under it. He wavers.

"Not me. Whoever left this knife in my drawer. Same people who gave me a suitcase full of fake hundreds."

"When you make enemies, you don't fuck around," Vuyo says, admiringly.

"You want to leave before they get here."

He tips his hand to his forehead. "I'll be in touch," he says, sliding into the chaos of people pouring out like cockroaches: hookers and dealers and skollies making a break for it.

I grab a dishtowel, wrap it round the knife and the china kitten and toss it in my handbag – Odi's insurance policy. But they killed Mrs Luditsky before I even got involved, which means they're setting me up to take the fall for something else. What's worse than stabbing an old lady to death in her home?

I tie Sloth around my waist, like a pregnant belly, yanking one of Benoît's old t-shirts over my dress to disguise the lumpiness. The t-shirt smells of him, man sweat and Zambuk.

I barge out into the panic. There's a lot of noise, but the voice that yells "There! There she is!" has a note of self-righteous authority that could only belong to D'Nice. I don't look round. I keep moving forward and, at the last moment, sidestep into the burned-out doorway of apartment 615.

By the time the cops hit the kitchen with its ripped-out pipes and smashed sink, I've already dropped through the hole in the floor in the second bedroom, into 526. But instead of taking the main stairwell, I cross the walkway, climb through the window of Aurum Place's 507, clamber down the broken fire-escape and drop the last half-storey to the street. Queen of the shortcut. I casually drop the dishcloth with the knife and the china kitten into the storm drain as I pass by.

Police lights strobe the building. I count four cop cars round the front, which probably means at least another two round the back. The police don't mess around in Hillbrow. They're armed to the molars with shotguns and padded up the wazoo with bullet-proof vests and riot helmets. Nice to see them taking a murder seriously, if only on the basis of a little old non-zoo lady getting brutally stabbed to death by a fratricidal Sloth girl. There's an e.tv news van already on the scene, parking in the riot vehicle.

I use it for cover, waddling round the back of it in the hippo-duck manner of the heavily pregnant. Unfortunately, the intrepid girl reporter spots me and the camera swings to catch me in its glass eye, before she spots something even better in the Human Interest vein – Mrs Khan and her kids wailing and yelling as a burly cop escorts them out of the building, holding a fistful of confiscated fake passports. I slip away, past the roadworks and up the alley to my car.

The Capri maxes out at 140, which probably isn't a bad thing given that I'm dodging between lanes like Ayrton Senna on methamphetamines, listening to my voicemail on repeat, like torture. Because Arno's phone just rings and rings and rings.

"Hello? Hello!" Arno's voice hisses. "Are you there? Oh man. Zinzi, They're here. For real. Worse than zombies. They're like motherfucking ghosts. Please answer. Please."

Arno is breathing quick and heavy like an obscene phone caller having an asthma attack. The breathing gets harder. Then there is the sound of a door crashing open. "Shitballs!" And then he screams. There is a muffled scraping sound accompanied by a dull drumming, as if of heels kicking the floor as he's being dragged away.

And then the phone cuts out.

The security checkpoint at the entrance to Mayfields is abandoned. There are sirens howling inside, black swells of smoke churning into an unnaturally pale orange sky. I duck under the boom to let myself in, and get yet another nasty surprise. There is a sign pasted up with a blurry web-cam photograph of me from the last time I was here. Someone has taken the time to highlight the important bits:

Housebreaker!

Crimewatch: All tenants!

Be on the lookout for this woman!

Zinzi December is a convicted murderer and

considered very dangerous.

She drives an orange Ford Capri and has a Sloth.

If you see this woman, call security and the

police immediately!

I tear down the notice and crumple it up, hit the button to raise the boom, and drive through, into a chaos of sirens, an ambulance parked halfway up one of the immaculate grassy verges, the road blocked by fire-engines and cop cars. I pull over behind the ambulance and tug a baggy hoodie over my shoulders and over Sloth. The pregnancy shtick is too restrictive. "Keep your head down," I tell Sloth, my own personal hunchback, and start running.

H4-303 is a lost battle. The firefighters might as well be pissing on it. It's already been reduced to the black carapace of a building. Brilliant orange flames lash in the second-storey window, S'bu's room. The heat is as dense as a wall, forcing the crowd of spectators to keep their distance on the clipped lawn. They're wearing various configurations of sleepwear.

"Media," I shout and barge my way through to the front where a body is laid out under fireproof sheets. A husky teen. There is an arm sticking out from under the sheet. The sleeve has pink robot monkeys. My heart lurches so hard I practically gag on it.

"Where are the other kids?" I yell at a shell-shocked security guard who is supposed to be keeping people back. He doesn't seem to hear me, mesmerised by the spectacle. A firefighter is dragging a blackened body out of the rubble, collapsed in his arms like a scarecrow. Scrawny. Girl-sized. Wearing purple cowboy boots. They are still smouldering.

"There's another one," someone shouts from inside the building.

"Get away from there!" one of the firefighters yells at me, snapping the security guard out of his trance. But when I raise my hands in apology, I catch a glimpse of something else in the crowd. A shadow. The crowd is a tangle of lost things, but there is something moving through the threads. Like a ghost. Or an invisible demon.

"Come, lady, you can't be doing that," the security guard says, pulling me away. "What's the matter with you? Get back over there."

"Sorry," I mutter and let him shepherd me towards the crowd, which is shifting unconsciously away from the demon, parting like a magical sea to allow it through towards the parking lot.

I chase after it, pushing past people, grabbing at impressions as I go. Except that just like outside Mrs Luditsky's on the morning of her murder, they're no longer just impressions. The images leap out at me in crisp high-resolution: a broken drum-stick scrawled with a band's name, a pair of girl's boyshorts with red lace detail, an orange plastic casio watch, a keyring attached to a Bratz doll's head. And a tattered book with a golden tree on the cover.

"I know you're there, Amira!" I yell. But she keeps fading out, like a developing photograph in reverse, not so much like she's bending the light around her as bending people's minds, making herself unobtrusive, making your eyes slide away, your attention drift. Nothing to see here. Except that ruined book. I hold on to it as hard I can, but the crowd is resisting me.

"Oh come on!"

"What is wrong with you?"

Someone grabs my arm. It's the snooty waiter from the clubhouse. "I know you!"

I step forward into the waiter's hold, twisting his arm down and, at the same time, smack him in the throat with the open palm of my hand. He lets go with a strangled noise. Hey, what's an extra assault charge on my rap sheet tonight? They're probably going to lay the fire on me anyway. I turn and break for my car, people shouting after me.

I drive away, tyres squealing. The Capri snaps the boom like a teenage heart.

33.

The tension in the car is as dense as a collapsing star. Benoît is quiet, looking out the window at the streetlights streaming past the car. I picked him up outside Central Methodist. He didn't argue, didn't ask questions, didn't try to convince me to go to the cops. He was the one who suggested using his uniform to get access, in case there was another "dangerous criminal" warning posted at the neighbourhood security boom.

Reflected light catches on the brass-plated name-badge, like an unspoken accusation. These are all the things he doesn't say in the silence: that I'm risking everything – his asylum status, his family's chance of a future here. The Mongoose says it instead, his beady little eyes glaring up at me from Benoît's lap. Those eyes say "useless backstabbing junkie slag".

I pull over a few blocks away, out of sight. It's unnaturally quiet. The birds will only start up in an hour or so. And in the meantime, dream city is dreaming.

"Give me ten minutes," Benoît says. I pass him the bag of Lagos fried chicken, and he gets out of the car and strolls down towards the security hut, chewing on a piece of chicken. It's more disguise than bribe. Who would suspect a man with chicken, particularly one in a Sentinel uniform and a name-badge?

Headlights swoop over him and then past, not even slowing – it's not unusual for people to be walking at 3 am. It's like there are two different species inhabiting Johannesburg. Cars and pedestrians.

It's forty-two minutes before the official 4 am shift change, but a man can be persuaded to go off duty early. It takes a little longer than anticipated. Not because the guard is diligent, but because he wants to shoot the breeze a little, share some greasy chicken before he heads on home. It takes all my willpower to stay in the car. Finally, he parts company with Benoît and starts walking up the road away from me, towards the main road. If he thinks there is a chance of a taxi at this time of the morning, he is a man who believes in miracles. We have twenty-eight minutes left until the actual shift change arrives and figures something is up.

The Mongoose scampers down the road towards the car. I open the door and he scrambles in, making urgent squeaking noises.

"Yes, I know, I saw him leave." I put the car in gear and drive down to the security hut to pick up Benoît, cursing under my breath when I see the cameras. Too late now.

The gate leading to Huron's house proves less of a problem. Benoît has been thoroughly trained in all the ways nasty burglars vanquish home-security measures, including, in this case, simply levering the gate right off

the rails with a tyre iron.

I stash the car a few blocks away, to throw off armed response when they click that all is not as it should be, and we slip up the side of the garden, sticking to the cover of the trees. The house is lit up for a party, all the lights blazing. Sloth squeezes my arms with his claws.

We follow the noise up towards the garage, passing the Daimler parked to one side. The double doors gape open. Light spills into the drive, illuminating James bent over the Mercedes, fussing around in the boot, which is lined with heavy plastic.

Benoît motions for me to stay back. He slides up behind James, and as he startles and begins to turn, Benoît slams the boot lid down on him. James yells. Benoît slams it down again, then once more, then swoops down to grab James's legs, heaves him into the boot and slams it shut. The banging and shouting starts up almost immediately. "Get the keys," Benoît says. I have not seen this side of him before.

I run for the front of the car and pull the keys out of the ignition. My hands are shaking as I jam the key into the lock on the boot and turn it. The noise from inside becomes more aggressive. I step back and nearly trip over an extension cord. It runs to a surgical saw, the kind you'd use for amputations, laid out beside the car, along with three different hacksaws, an axe, a pair of pliers, neatly laid out, ready for use. There is a kist freezer at the back of the garage, its lid propped open.

"Who is this Odi Huron?" Benoît says. The Mongoose is frozen, one paw raised, sniffing the air, whiskers trembling.

"I don't think I know." I feel sick. I think of Vuyo's gun lying under my bed.

"Won't he suffocate?" I glance back at the Mercedes.

"Do you care?" Benoît says, drawing his baton from its holster. "The house?"

"If they're still alive." I shake myself. "We should go round the side."

We slip round the side of the house through the shrubbery. The scent of yesterday-today-and-tomorrow is sickeningly sweet. My heart plays out a frenetic drum'n'bass beat. My hands are numb and tingling. First thing to go in fight or flight: fine motor co-ordination. Way to go, evolution.

There are voices coming from the patio, but when we clear the shrubs, only Carmen is lying on a lounger in the dark with her sunglasses on, facing the pool. The fountain is on, water spluttering through the maiden's vase. A pallid underwater light shines up through the skin of leaves on the surface, highlighting every striation, casting dancing reflections over the tiles.

Carmen is talking to the radio and half-heartedly flopping one hand around as if conducting a haphazard choir.

"It's not like they even serve ice cream at the movies," she says, her face inscrutable behind the shades.

Her sunshine-yellow satin robe is drenched in blood like bad tie-dye. There is a shivering bundle wrapped in a towel under her lounger.