Apocalypse Now Now Page 20

  Ronin dresses and slides Warchild home into her scabbard. ‘How’s the hand?’

  ‘Hurts.’

  ‘Well, suck it up,’ he says. ‘Being a rodent was the easy part of this little adventure.’

  I pull the rest of my clothes on and jam my finger in my mouth to try and stop the bleeding. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. ‘Here,’ Ronin says, handing me a dirty cloth from one of the shelves. I wrap the cloth around my hand. The bounty hunter walks over to the door and looks through the glass panel into the corridor. ‘OK, we’re not here to fight,’ he says. ‘We find Pat, free her and get the hell out of here, got it?’

  ‘What about Tomas?’

  He shrugs. ‘If the disco-ball isn’t dead he can come too.’

  ‘And if we meet any of the Murder?’ I say.

  Ronin takes off his backpack and hauls out a canister of petrol. ‘Then we torch them.’

  We slide out into the empty corridor and walk quickly toward a door at the bottom of it. He peers through the glass panel. ‘Gog,’ he mouths. I shake my head and point back to the way we came. He smiles, draws a finger across his throat, and opens the door. Great, so much for not being here to fight.

  Ronin is a blur of movement as buries his blade in the Gog’s thick, bulbous neck. With a bellow it lashes out and grabs him by the coat. Ronin smashes his elbow into its head and a fountain of blood sprays from its face. It screams and spins him around, slamming him into a wall. With a wicked precision it rakes syphilitic claws across his face.

  I try to land a kick on the creature’s muscular black-haired back but my foot glances harmlessly off it. Way to go, Bruce Lee. It nonchalantly flings a simian arm backwards and knocks me to the ground.

  The Gog returns to Ronin, trying to rip off his face with its jaws. He frantically jams an elbow under its throat and holds its gaping mandibles away from his face. I start to push myself to my feet and my hands come into contact with a metal stand for an IV drip which has been left in the corridor. I haul myself to my feet and wrap my fingers around the stand, wrenching it back and forth until the metal pole comes loose.

  Without any kind of fighting skills to rely on, I revert to the age-old tactic of jamming a sharp object as hard as I can into an opponent’s head. The metal pole enters the Gog’s head at an odd angle beneath the left ear and skewers its brain like a kebab. It slumps spasmodically and I grab the pole as the thing tries to regain its feet. I pull the pole free from its head and then stab it furiously into its body like I’m skiing on a slick red slope. Gog blood sprays onto my clothes and face. I keep stabbing until the thing stops writhing and then I sink to my knees breathing hard. Baxter Zevcenko, monster killer!

  ‘No time to rest,’ Ronin says, pulling me to my feet.

  ‘You OK?’ I gasp.

  ‘I’ll live,’ he says, touching his lacerated face gingerly.

  ‘Suck it up,’ I say with a grin.

  We peek through a door that opens up to a large laboratory which houses huge vats of dark liquid that gurgle and spit smoke into the air like fat, diseased smokers. I recoil and cover my face with my arm. The place reeks of fat and flesh and oil like a huge cannibal takeout grill room.

  Guys in lab coats are attending to Gogs that are in various stages of existence. Several of the creatures’ heads are floating in a vat, tendrils trailing beneath them like jellyfish. There are Siamese Gogs, joined at the spine, which are having needles and probes stuck into them. Another, similar to the one we just killed, is being cut and probed – its agonised reactions being recorded by the dispassionate men of science that scuttle around the lab.

  As we turn back into the corridor I’m flung off my feet. I hit the ground hard. My glasses are thrown from my face and I try to get up but the world spins around me. I scrabble for my glasses and put them back on. I see a Crow lifting Ronin into the air. I see a Gog lumbering toward me.

  ‘Go,’ Ronin says as he struggles.

  I scramble to my knees and pull the revolver out from my waistband.

  Ronin hangs from the Crow’s claw, his feet swinging like a dead man hanging from the gallows. He still manages to wrench Warchild from beneath his coat and turns, sights and then fires. Warchild roars and the Gog’s head disappears in a magenta shower.

  The Crow responds by carelessly knocking Warchild from Ronin’s hand and slamming him onto the ground. I fumble with the revolver and squeeze off a shot. ‘Urgh,’ Ronin shouts as the round clips him on the shoulder. ‘Jesus, sparky,’ he shouts. ‘Try shooting at the bad guys.’

  I aim the barrel of the gun more carefully this time, making sure it is dead centre with the dark shape before squeezing. The kick jerks my hand back but the blast hits the Crow in the chest. Bullseye. The bird shrugs it off as if it were a paintball. I don’t see or hear the other Gog until it’s right on top of me, its arm slashing down. My head bounces off the concrete floor and there’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Darkness pools over my eyes like an oil slick.

  I want to scrub my skin with the brushes that the scullery maid uses. I suspect even then I couldn’t get rid of the smell of him from my body. His kindness has given way to corruption. I’ve stopped thinking of him lurching on top of me like an animal in heat laughing, that terrible, childlike giggling.

  I can feel the growth in my belly. No, not the growth. The daughter. I know it is a girl. Klara, I decide to name her. A daughter to be born of the union of a Siener and whoever the magistrate, and the monster he worships, really is.

  I think of killing him. That’s what my father would want me to do, to kill the enemy, to creep into his study with a knife from the kitchen and stab him until he stops moving. But even now I can’t.

  I’m in the kitchen wringing the dirty water from the cloths. A movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. I look out of the window and see Luamita crouched in the road. She beckons to me. I shake my head desperately. To go outside without permission would mean punishment. Punishment that I’m not sure I could stand.

  She beckons again and touches her hand to her neck and mimics drinking. I clutch at the small bottle of luminescent blood around my neck. Luamita beckons again, insistently. I know I shouldn’t but I go anyway, slipping through the kitchen door and out into the road.

  Luamita takes my hands in hers. I can feel the sunlight from her skin. ‘It is time to leave this place,’ she says in an excited whisper.

  ‘How?’ I say. ‘They’d know immediately. They’d alert the soldiers and I’d be found before I could even find a way to leave Cape Town.’

  She smiles and removes something from around her neck and presses it into my hand. It is a small pendant made of brass which has been forged in the shape of a praying mantis. ‘This connects you to the Creator’s vehicle,’ she whispers. ‘With it you can draw on some of that power and change your shape. You can be anybody or anything, but only for a short time.’

  I hold the mantis in my fingers. It’s warm to the touch. ‘But where must I go?’ I whisper. ‘I could try to get passage on a ship, but once I change back I’d be named a stowaway.’

  ‘You’ll come with me to the mountain,’ she says. ‘My family is there. We’ll hide you.’ Her eyes shine with purpose and I can’t look away. In them I see my father and his father and his father before that, stretching back into history. I see myself and Klara. I see the boy with the spectacles and then his son and his son’s son and daughter. We are connected. We are a family.

  ‘Seee, see, seeee.’

  I open my eyes and see a dull concrete ceiling. I try to sit up and then stop as pain lances through my skull. I touch my temple and feel a huge lump.

  ‘See, see, see,’ the voice screeches again.

  I force myself to sit up. I’m on a steel bed and a guy is crouching on the end of it like a bird. He’s thin and pale, is dressed in a dirty medical gown, and has the look of pure crazy in his eyes. He scratches at the few strands of grey hair sprouting from his head, grabs one and yanks it. Blood dribbles from
his scalp as he hands me the strand.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I croak. ‘I’m trying to cut down.’

  He looks at me, looks at the strand of hair and then shoves it into his mouth, chewing happily and then swallowing.

  I hold my head and get up groggily. Clearly I’m in a cell of some kind. There’s a basin in the corner and there’s another steel bed directly across from me. A large door, presumably locked, is the only exit.

  The man hops off the bed and looks at me quizzically. ‘Monkey?’ he says, turning his head from side to side. ‘Monkey, monkey, see, monkey, monkey do.’ Then he wets himself. The urine pools on the floor. ‘Monkey, monkey see, see, see,’ he says again. From my vantage point I can see scars from incisions that have been made in his head.

  There is the sound of keys in a lock and the steel door swings open. A stout orderly with a chubby, kindly face opens the door.

  ‘Nigel,’ he says to the monkey man. ‘Time for your meds.’

  ‘Monkey, see, see, see,’ the monkey man says excitedly as he downs the pills that the orderly hands to him.

  ‘And now you, Baxter,’ the orderly says.

  ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I’d rather get away from you and the giant Crows.’

  ‘Now, now,’ the orderly says. ‘What did Dr Basson say about those delusions?’

  He comes to stand in front of me with his hands on his hips. ‘Are you going to take your meds or are we going to have to do this the hard way?’ he says like a testy parent talking to his uncooperative four-year-old.

  ‘How about we do it the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here way?’ I say.

  ‘OK, tough guy,’ he says. His hand snakes out and grabs my arm. He’s surprisingly strong and I can’t resist as he slides a needle into my flesh. The walls begin to melt pleasantly away.

  ‘Monkey, seee,’ Nigel says.

  Case File: Baxter Ivan Zevcenko

  Dr Kobus Basson

  My attempts to facilitate a smooth transition into a psychiatric facility have proven somewhat naive. Police brought him to Stikland after finding him trespassing in an old military installation. He was covered in blood and police investigation found the body of a caretaker with multiple stab wounds nearby. Baxter admitted killing him.

  The resident psychiatrist contacted me and I was present at Stikland when Baxter was brought in. Upon admission Baxter was in a state of severe confusion. His glasses were damaged and he had a minor wound on the index finger of his left hand. He seemed to be talking to somebody who wasn’t there.

  He became agitated and violent, mimicking using a gun to shoot one of the orderlies. His agitation became so severe that I was forced to sedate him.

  Mental-State Evaluation

  Baxter experiences extremely vivid auditory, visual and kinesthetic hallucinations which he is unable to distinguish from reality.

  He describes talking to people and fantastical creatures which form part of a supernatural world that he has created. He is an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy novels, which may have informed some of the content of his hallucinations.

  ‘Jackie Ronin’, Baxter’s primary hallucination, is an amalgam of several influences. This laconic detective is part father figure, part animalistic totem, fulfilling the role of guide and protector in Baxter’s hostile universe.

  In addition to these hallucinations, Baxter suffers from grandiose delusions of being a kind of mystical prophet with the power of ‘seeing’. His embarrassment about his eye condition seems to be connected to his delusions about this mystical act of ‘seeing’. The eye carved into the foreheads of the victims of the Mountain Killer seems to have a particular resonance with him.

  His obsession with the San Mantis God may be part of a much broader social syndrome affecting white suburban youths. These youths tend to view themselves as being part of a rootless culture and harbour a deep-seated guilt for the atrocities of apartheid. Much like young white Americans becoming superficially interested in Native American cultures, these young white South Africans resort to a heavily romanticised obsession with the mythology of the indigenous cultures of South Africa.

  Baxter has developed a rich mythology in order to cope with the world. He is the wise-cracking antihero, the Machiavellian kingpin and the mystical saviour of a cruel and unforgiving world; exactly the sort of delusions that would appeal to a lonely isolated boy.

  Medical History

  On physical examination Baxter had a BMI of 16. His pulse was 58bpm. His BP was 110/60 and his temperature was 36.5oC. His records show treatment for a minor eye condition which forces him to wear prescription spectacles. His records also show a brief childhood episode of asthma.

  During our sessions he reported severe headaches and a throbbing in his forehead. An MRI scan has been scheduled to occlude an organic defect from the diagnosis.

  Social History

  Baxter immediately displays features of a paranoid personality. He describes his world as one where survival of the fittest reigns and where people are judged according to his harsh and exacting standards. He shows no guilt or remorse for the way he treats people, believing that they are deserving of nothing but scorn and condemnation.

  He describes his autistic brother as a ‘retard’, and most of the people around him are ‘NPCs’, non-playing characters, a term borrowed from gaming culture for the incidental characters in a game-world played by the computer.

  Baxter’s school life is viewed through the lens of this gaming metaphor. In his world people are merely game-pieces. This is consistent with reports from Baxter’s parents that he has no real friends, and lives an isolated existence.

  During our consultations he revealed that he had been having repetitive dreams about an Afrikaans girl during the Boer War. He expressed a belief that Afrikaner culture has a deeper sense of heritage than his own globalised sense of self, which is largely drawn from pop culture, including television and computer games.

  Recommendations

  During admission to the Stikland Medical Facility, Baxter confessed to being the ‘Mountain Killer’, the notorious serial killer. The investigating officer, Detective Schoeman, has been notified and has asked for a full report of my work with him. Further investigation is necessary; we cannot be sure whether Baxter committed these crimes or whether he is merely a copycat. His delusional beliefs and hallucinations represent a profound break with reality. It is my evaluation that his discomfort with feelings of guilt and remorse make him a prime candidate for violent, and possibly homicidal, behaviour.

  12

  INSANITY PLEA

  ‘YOU’RE ILL, BAXTER,’ Dr Basson says, his smile splitting his bearded face like a gaping wound in the body of a quivering rabbit. My hands are shackled together uncomfortably and I’m wearing a hospital gown that exposes my bare ass cheeks to the cold steel chair I’m sitting on. My body feels loose and rubbery; my lips are stuck together. I lick them tentatively.

  ‘Have some water,’ Basson says, passing me a plastic cup. I awkwardly reach out both handcuffed hands and take it.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asks as I sip.

  ‘Like I’ve been captured by a fucking lunatic,’ I shout. ‘Let me out of here. Where the hell is Mirth? Are you working for him?’

  ‘Baxter,’ Basson says, ‘these delusions are hindering your chances of coming to terms with what you’ve done.’

  ‘What delusions?’ I ask croakily. ‘That I’ve been captured by an alchemist who’s creating an army of mutants. That you’re working with him?’

  He crosses and uncrosses his legs. ‘Hmm. Yes, exactly. Those delusions,’ he says. ‘How much of the past few days do you remember?’

  ‘Oh, cut the crap,’ I say. ‘You seriously think I’m going to fall for this whole “Baxter, you’re insane” spiel?’

  ‘How much?’ he says.

  ‘Everything, you head-shrinking asshole,’ I say. ‘I remember everything. Elementals, zombies, Gogs. Everything.’

  ‘And …’ he consults his notepad, �
�Jackie Ronin?’

  ‘Yes, Ronin,’ I say. ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ Basson says.

  ‘He’ll fucking shoot you in the face,’ I shout. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘So you would consider him something of a hero, a protector?’ he asks.

  I laugh. ‘An insane one, sure.’

  Basson nods meaningfully. ‘So Ronin is the one that’s insane, not you?’

  ‘Oh fuck off,’ I say. ‘Is this your idea of bad-guy torture? You’re going to question me to death?’

  ‘You think we’re torturing you?’ Basson asks. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Mirth is insane.’

  ‘So Ronin is insane and this Mirth is insane, but you’re acting rationally? Tell me, why did you go to that military installation?’

  ‘To rescue Pat,’ I say. ‘And Tomas.’

  ‘And did anybody get in the way of this rescue mission?’

  ‘A Gog,’ I say.

  ‘And what happened to this “Gog”?’

  ‘Ronin and I killed him.’

  ‘You killed him, Baxter,’ Basson says. ‘It’s an important distinction to make.’

  He reaches down to pick up an envelope. From it he pulls a photograph and slides it across the table. I look at it and then look away quickly.

  ‘Look at it, Baxter,’ Basson says.

  I try to stop myself but I can’t. I look at the picture. It shows a man’s body, in bloody overalls. His face is mutilated beyond recognition except for the eye that is carved into his forehead.

  ‘Henry Mqulo,’ Basson says. ‘Henry was a caretaker at an old military facility on Table Mountain. Did Ronin do this?’

  ‘No. No, that’s not right. That was one of the mutants,’ I croak.

  He slides another photograph across the table. The body in this one is wearing a Victorian bodice and the head is dark-haired and pretty, with an eye carved into the forehead. ‘Casey Icon, owner of the Flesh Palace,’ Basson says. ‘You went into the club, into her office, and killed her. Why her Baxter?’