Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

There is a flick knife and an empty martini glass on the table next to her.

"Kittens and mittens and teeth and teeth and teeth," she sing-songs.

She sees us, sits up on her elbows and says brightly, "Oh. Are you here about the collection?" She takes off her sunglasses. If eyes are the windows to the soul, these are looking onto Chernobyl. "Because it's all about fur this season."

The glass doors leading into the house open and the Maltese emerges carrying two martini glasses, his little Dog at his heels. The Dog snarls and the Maltese pulls a face. "Ah," he says. "I'm afraid I didn't know you were here. Otherwise I would have made extra."

"What happened to the no-interference policy?" I ask. Benoît is tense beside me, muscles bunched for action. I put a hand on his arm.

"That's only for the victims," says the Maltese, as he sets down the glasses and sits down beside Carmen, stroking her leg. "It's like bottled water: best from a pure source."

"What is wrong with her?" Benoît says, barely restraining himself. He is holding the baton so tight that the strain is making his arm shake.

"She did it to herself, mkwerekwere. She's on a very potent dissociative drug."

"Midazolam?"

"Mixed with a bit of ketamine and the house special – to keep her awake. We've been playing. Show them, Carmen."

"Again?" she whines.

"Again, baby." He caresses the side of her belly through the robe. "I think you missed a spot over here."

She sighs sulkily, picks up the flick knife from the table and simply jabs it into her side. She pulls it out again and looks down at the bloodied tip of the knife with interest, but no indication of feeling. The blood starts to well up.

"Not so terrible, hey?" the Maltese says.

"Good evening Pasadena," she agrees.

"What about here?" he circles the skin above her kneecap.

"Enough," Benoît says.

"We're only getting started. Have you met Carmen's Bunny?" He reaches underneath the lounger and hauls up the trembling Rabbit by its ears. It closes its eyes in terror, nose twitching frantically. "We all thought Carmen was going to be the next Slinger, our animalled breakthrough artist. Better than erotic dancing. Although it turns out Slinger wasn't really Slinger himself, if you know what I mean. This is your fault, you know. Odi and Carmen were so happy together until you got her all riled up with your crazy accusations. As if he would have risked tainting little Song. It was bad enough that idiot Jabulani was fucking her."

"Where are Song and Sbu?" I say.

"Sailing away, sailing away, sailing away," Carmen

sings.

He ignores the question. "Did you like the present I left you? It's a very distinctive knife, you know. Leaves very distinctive wounds."

"Were you going to implicate me in the fire at Mayfields too?"

"You should be ashamed." He grins. "Three teenagers died in that fire. After you stabbed them to death, you sick psycho."

"I only counted two," I keep my voice carefully level.

"Don't worry, they'll find the other one when they eventually get inside. Burned to a crisp. Unidentifiable."

"But they're not Song and S'bu, are they?"

"Don't they wish! Couple of unlucky street kids who match the general physical description. Collateral damage, can't be helped. We picked them up this afternoon. Made them feel special for a couple of hours. Let them play Xbox, fed them McDonald's, doused them in petrol. Same kind as in the half-empty container under your sink. Did you find that already? Or just the knife?"

"No one's going to believe this."

"Won't they? A psychotic junkie zoo bitch who killed her brother? Who was so celebrity-obsessed she pretended to be from a bigshot music magazine so she could get close to the twins? Whose fingerprints were all over poor Mrs Luditsky's apartment, who took her little china cat home with her as some kind of trophy? Are you kidding me? Better start working on your soundbites. The media are going to love you."

My head is spinning. I lean on the table, trying to fight back the wave of nausea.

"In fact, what are you even doing here?" Mark swirls his martini. Takes a sip. "Shouldn't you be on the run?"

"Where are they?" Benoît says.

"The real twins? Oh they're downstairs, sweetie, getting ready. They might have started already."

At the prompt "start", Carmen replaces her sunglasses and punches the knife into the flesh above her knee with cool reserve. It sticks there, trembling slightly as the muscle moves to accommodate her leaning back to take a sip of her martini.

Benoît can't stand it any more. He moves to pluck the knife out, but the Maltese is faster. He yanks it away and this time Carmen does flinch.

"You want to play too?" he says, tapping the flat of the blade against his cheek. "I have to tell you, this is my favourite game."

"Where downstairs? In the house?" I say, because there are more important things to worry about right now than Carmen, than being set up for quadruple homicide.

"I should really be getting down there. They need me."

"To cut someone up?"

"Oh sweetie, I'm just the magic battery to make the ritual even more potent. Or didn't you notice that your shavi is brighter whenever I'm around?"

"The invisible demon."

"Team effort," he agrees. "Amira's obfuscation is painfully obvious without me. Although we like to do the carving together. But we're wasting time. There are children to be sacrificed, getaways to make. Come on, kwerekwere," the Maltese says, brandishing the knife. "You look like you've seen a dogfight or two."

Mark lunges for Benoît at the same time as the snarling Mutt goes for the Mongoose. Yipping hysterically, the Dog rolls the Mongoose onto his back, biting at his belly, his face. Blood smears across its muzzle. The Mongoose writhes and kicks, teeth bared in pain, but he doesn't make a sound.

Another knife appears in Mark's left hand from a hidden sheath and, as Benoît smashes him across the ribcage with his baton, Mark manages to slice at his face, the blade glancing off his jaw and up his cheek.

"Carmen," I shake her. "Is there a gun in the house?"

But she shakes her head violently from side to side like she's having a seizure. "No-no-no-no-no-no."

I let go, and she pulls up her knees, clutching her Rabbit to her chest like a kid with a stuffed animal, and takes a sip from her drink, glaring at me as if I'm intending to take it away.

Sloth is making agitated little squeaks.

"I'm working on it!" I snap.

The Mongoose pulls up his back legs and kicks the Dog, contorting like a koeksister to scramble on top of it. They tumble over each other, but the Mongoose has the advantage. He's used to killing snakes and this is just a ratty little Dog. He has the Mutt pinned by the throat and squealing.

The humans are more evenly matched. Benoît and Mark are circling each other warily. Benoît jabs the baton into Mark's sternum with all his weight, keeping him out of reach. Mark staggers back, as if winded, but it's a ploy. As Benoît moves towards him, he ducks under the baton, stabs him in the side, and darts out of reach again. And then I smash one of the lacy ironwork chairs over the back of his skull.

It does less damage than I'd hoped. I was hoping for out cold, but instead he stumbles, drops one of his knives to clutch at the back of his head and turns on me, furious.

"You little cunt. I'll come back to you." But when he turns back, it's straight into the baton that slams into the side of his head hard enough to knock him off his feet.

Carmen gives a little shriek of delight. "I can feel it coming in the air. Tonight," she says, matter-of-factly.

Mark starts to get up and Benoît hits him across the back of his knees. He collapses across the end of the lounger. I spring forward, push my knee into his back and yell at Benoît. He breaks out cable ties, standard issue with Sentinel rather than handcuffs, and we work together to bind the Maltese's wrists and ankles and then cable-tie both to the heavy ironwork table. The Dog snarls and snaps at my fingers, but Benoît pins it down with the baton on its neck and I close a cable tie over its muzzle and chain it by the collar to one of the chairs.

"The water," Carmen sings, pointing at the pool. "Water, water. And not enough to drink."

A shadow swells up from the bottom of the pool, eclipsing the wan rays of the pool light. Something sickly white and huge with scales explodes from beneath the surface, snaps its jaws shut on Benoît and slides back into the water before he can draw breath to yell. Like a fucking dinosaur. I'm still blinking from the icy shock of water that burst up with it – and Benoît is gone, like he never was, the choppy waves the only sign that something happened.

"Pop goes the weasel!" Carmen says, clapping her hands in delight.

34.

I don't think about it. I jump in after him. The water is cold enough to knock the breath out of me. I hear the Mongoose scream and splash in after me. But Mongooses can't dive. I fight my way through a dense skin of slimy rotting leaves, Sloth clutching my neck in terror. I hope he knows how to hold his breath. I dive into the pallid gloom lit up by the underwater light. There's a hole at the bottom of the deep end, a tunnel wide enough to steer a truck through. I swim into it, following the curve down into pitch darkness, like swimming into the heart of the Undertow. The pressure in my ear gear-shifts from a dull ache to a screaming drill bit in my head, but then the tunnel curves up again, like the U-bend of a sink, into water that's brutally cold and black. I can hear distorted music through the water and a slapping sound. Lungs burning, I kick up to the surface and break through into the cool air of an underwater cavern.

There is music pumping. An innocuously sweet pop ballad. One of iJusi's.

Baby it's a drive-by, drive-by…

The slapping is the sound of the blast as the monster breaches, twists in the air and flops back into the water, Benoît hanging limply in its jaws. Not a dinosaur. An albino crocodile, six metres long. It's rolling to drown its prey.

I start to swim for the thing, but Sloth tugs at my arms, to hold me back. He's right. There's nothing I can do until it stops its death roll. I tread water in the darkness and try to slow my heart and take in what's going on, try not to focus on the monster's thrashing.

The cavern is maybe twenty metres across. Natural rock with man-made features: the speakers pumping out iJusi, the bare neon bulb mounted on a set of stairs so steep it's basically a ladder, rising from a cement outcropping that juts into the water like a pier. The smell of damp and rot is overwhelming. Old vase-water.

Drive-by love

Huron, bare-chested, his belly hanging over his shorts, with a gun holster strapped under his arm, is standing on the landing with the twins who are naked, handcuffed together and swaying slightly. Their faces are empty. The Marabou is spreading a plastic sheet over an old-fashioned wooden butcher's block.

There is a cage at her feet big enough to hold a medium-sized dog. There's something else – not a dog – inside the cage. A hunch of mammal with brown fur. A flutter of feathers.

It's not even love at first sight, it's love at a glance

Huron shouts over the water at the Crocodile, "That better not be Carmen!" He laughs, but adds to the Marabou, "Go see what's going on."

"I'm sure Mark has everything under control," she says.

"Then where the hell is he? And who is that?" he says, pointing to the water. For an awful moment, I think he's pointing at me, but he's indicating Benoît in the monster's mouth.

"Whoever it is, he's not a problem anymore," the Marabou shrugs.

"Hurry up, you overgrown fucking gecko!" Huron shouts. "We need to get this show on the road."

Saw you in the back of a taxi, passing me by

Sloth makes little panicky gasps in my ear. "It's okay, buddy, they can't see us." I hope. Sloth gives a little sob.

Tried to raise my hand, tried to catch your eye

I retreat into the darkness, to the wall, find a low rock to cling to. Sloth clambers onto it, shivering.

"We should start on the animals," the Marabou says. "There might be other intruders."

"Don't we need booster boy?"

"The twins will be enough. The doubling effect-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the expert here, baby. I'll do whatever you say," Huron says. "Let's get this party started."

"Indeed," she says and opens the cage to pull out a rabbit-eared creature with a long piggy snout. Patrick Serfontein's Aardvark. Still alive. She picks up a machete from the butcher's block.

But you looked straight past, didn't see me

The Crocodile slows its thrashing. It rises from the water and shakes its head violently as if testing the resistance of the body in its mouth. Benoît's right arm flops grotesquely from his body. He's not moving. The Crocodile smacks its jaw against the water and then sinks under, dragging Benoît with it.

Baby it's a drive-by, drive-by, drive-by love

I take a deep breath and dive down, reaching for my own lost thing. The tea-coloured blackness swallows me whole. The faint distortion of the lyrics, mixed with a terrible high-pitched squealing, accompanies me down.

Drive-by, drive-by

I clamp down on the panic, the claustrophobia and the vertigo of blindness, following that slender thread.

There is a rush of current. And something massive sweeps towards me in the darkness. I can't see but I can sense its mouth gaping and I fight back the terror, the urge to thrash for the surface. Its hoary tail sideswipes me as it brushes past, hard enough to crack a rib.

I have to be close. I have to be. I swim another couple of metres or maybe a mile, and bang my wrist against a rock. I grab it and feel the shape of it with my hands, like a blind woman reading a face. The rock face curves under. I follow it down and grasp a revoltingly soft hand. The flesh gives way under my grip. I can't help it. I scream into the water, expelling valuable air.

Get a fucking hold of yourself. I reach out for the hand again. It's pliable and doughy like wet bread, but I can feel a hard edge. Bone? No. It's a splint. Two of the fingers are bandaged together. Ronaldo. His face looms into view, bloated, unrecognisable. But this time I'm ready for it.

I drag myself past him, deeper, grasping for Benoît, terrified of what else might be down here in the black. I run my hand along a fracture in the rock, over a body jammed into it. I grope my way up, trying to find a way to identify it, to pull it loose. Tiny bubbles escape from a fold in the shirt, like little fish nibbling at my fingers. I touch plastic. Benoît's burns.