Apocalypse Now Now (14 page)

Ronin shoves the TV antenna trident into my hands. It’s not very heavy but it’s unwieldy and I struggle to get a good grip on it, accidentally slamming it into the Cortina.

‘You’re paying for that scratch,’ Ronin growls as he hefts an old car battery onto his shoulder and slams the trunk closed.

I sigh and follow Ronin as he walks through the shacks, holding the beeping remote in front of him with one hand and balancing the car battery on his shoulder with the other. The houses here look deserted and I start to feel more than a little paranoid.

What if Ronin really is a psycho? Only Kyle knows that I went to his offices, but he has no idea where I am now, and he’s still back at home, babysitting Rafe. Ronin could kill me and bury me in the townships and nobody would worry until later tonight.

I hold the TV antenna in front of me like a weapon. If he
tries anything I’ll fucking stick him with it. We turn a corner and slam into the back of someone crouching against a shack. The TV antenna jams into Ronin’s back and he turns around and gives me a scathing glare.

‘Jesus,’ Ronin says.

‘No,’ the man we walked into replies, ‘just one of his humble disciples.’

The guy is probably in his late forties and has well-coiffed dark hair that is liberally peppered with grey. He’s wearing a purple shirt and stands with a stoop, his small eyes flicking back and forth between us. A large silver cross hangs from a chain around his neck.

‘You are the one I called?’ he asks.

Ronin’s mouth curls into a wolfish smile. ‘The one and only.’

‘Praises,’ the man says, holding his hands out to us with his palms up. ‘I fear the Lord is testing us with this foul demon in our midst.’

Ronin snorts and rubs the back of his hand across his nose. ‘If we’re dealing with an elemental, which I suspect we are, your Lord is probably sitting back with some popcorn to watch the light show.’

The priest frowns. ‘Our community is being terrorised by a demon sent by Lucifer himself.’

Ronin gives a quick shake of his head, which causes his red beard braid to wobble back and forth like a fishing line that’s snagged a big one. ‘Not a demon, padre. If it was, all your cross-waving might actually have some kind of effect. From your description I’ll bet my last pair of underpants that it’s an elemental, and if that’s the case, well, the quicker we deal with it the better for all of us.’

‘A knight of Jesus sent to save us,’ the priest says, leaning in and kissing Ronin on the cheek.

‘Yeah, something like that,’ Ronin replies, wiping his cheek with the sleeve of his trench coat.

The priest guides us through a narrow alleyway at the side of the church toward a large open plot of land. I can see sweat stains forming on the back of his shirt.

‘Thanks, padre,’ Ronin says as we reach the plot. ‘Why don’t you go and count out my money for me?’

The priest doesn’t leave.

‘What is it?’ Ronin says. ‘Spit it out.’

‘I’m afraid some of the community have committed a sin and hired a sangoma to rid them of this devil.’

Ronin swears. ‘You could have told me about this and saved me a drive. Do you know what this sangoma’s name is?’

The priest shakes his head.

Ronin pulls out his phone. ‘Still got signal. The elemental can’t be that close.’ He dials a number and then waits as it rings. ‘Protocol 4,’ he whispers into the phone and then waits again. ‘Tone,’ he says. ‘I know … Yes, I goddamn know. Are you going to lecture me or answer my question? Do you have any of your people tracking an elemental? … OK … Yes, thank you so much, your goddamn highness. Fuck you too.’ He hangs up.

‘Your little bone-throwing buddy is a charlatan. Which leads to the unfortunate conclusion that she’s going to become a sangoma smoothie unless someone steps in.’ The bounty hunter claps the priest on the shoulder and pushes past him. ‘But have no fear, my Bible-thumping friend. Ronin’s here.’

Ronin waves the priest back to the dubious safety of the alleyway. The keening sound from the remote has begun to increase in frequency – yipping and squeaking like a little digital dachshund. My hands begin to tremble slightly and I watch as the hairs on my arms spring to attention.

‘Definitely an elemental,’ Ronin says. ‘And it’s getting closer. We should get a visual soon.’ He drops the car battery and holds his hand out for the antenna.

‘What exactly are we looking for?’ I say as I hand it to him.

‘That,’ he says. I follow his gaze to where something is moving slowly from behind a shack on the other side of the plot of land.

‘Holy shit,’ I say. I feel like I’ve been hit by one of the tasers we used on Yuri. My mind jumps the diving board of reality and does a bellyflop in the messy waters of consciousness below.

BizBax:
Not to be Captain Fucking Obvious, but there’s a giant electricity beast meandering toward us.

MetroBax:
Let’s just get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to see that thing.

BizBax:
We could be suffering a stress-induced psychosis.

MetroBax:
It looks pretty real to me. Oh my God, is that its tongue?

If my mind is creating the creature that shuffles toward us, then it’s being pretty damn creative. The hulking mass of blue flame that stumbles closer is an electricity troll with a massive crackling energy furnace body. Its face is distorted, eyes yellow swirling vortices, framed by a beard of spitting sparks. Its long simian arms are topped with lightning-bolt talons that drag on the ground creating a scorched trail behind it. It is the most terrifying fucking thing I have ever seen in my life.

It looks at us and grins, a tongue like an electric eel whipping back and forth in its gaping maw.

‘Pure electricity mixed with equal parts bloodlust and hatred. Nasty bastards, and this one’s a biggie,’ Ronin says calmly.

The thing lumbers slowly forward, tasting the surrounds with its tongue, sending whip-crack bolts of energy into the air. I’m mesmerised by the shifting patterns of current that writhe and twist in its body.

Ronin unwinds the cord he has looped around his shoulder and attaches one end to the bottom of the trident and the other to the car battery. ‘Blood,’ he says. ‘It’s the only thing that keeps
them on the material plane. That’s why they’re called township ticks. They’re made of pure energy so people make deals with them. Communities feed them goats, sheep, the occasional thief or rapist convicted in a kangaroo court, and the elementals let whole neighbourhoods hook power lines into them.’

He makes an adjustment to the pole and then lifts it up to examine it. ‘Sounds like a good deal when you’ve got no electricity.’ He hefts the antenna in his arm like a javelin to test the weight. ‘All hunky-dory until some of their kids go to fetch a ball in its sewer and get devoured. And if there’s one thing elementals find finger-licking good, it’s young life-force. Now they can’t stop the thing.’

The thing hunches forward onto its arms like a baboon and contemplates us. Its tongue darts in our direction and I feel a shiver of static pass through me. It looks at me with its swirling eyes and grins. With a lurching movement it begins to move in my direction, faster this time.

‘Young life force,’ Ronin says. ‘It can taste you.’

‘I’m getting the fuck out of here,’ I say.

‘Run and it’ll hunt you,’ Ronin says, ‘and unfortunately we can’t kill it. Energy can’t be created or destroyed and all that jazz.’

‘What?’ I say. ‘So what the fuck are we going to do?’

‘We capture it and starve it until it has to leave the physical plane,’ Ronin says. ‘Oh look, and here comes tonight’s light entertainment.’

An old sangoma approaches the elemental with her arms spread wide like she’s going to give it a hug. She’s dressed in faux-Chinese animal skins and has a flimsy-looking whip which she’s trying unsuccessfully to crack above her head. She chants in a quavering voice.

‘That’s a love spell, you daft old bat,’ Ronin shouts. He breaks into a sprint toward her. The sangoma shrieks as the elemental shrugs its fiery body toward her. Ronin reaches and grabs her
around the waist but she struggles furiously against him. She scratches at his face, breaks his grasp and runs at the elemental. Ronin tries to grab at her but it’s too late. She stops, frozen in her tracks.

Ronin jogs back to me. ‘She’s in its field,’ he says. ‘Don’t look if you don’t want nightmares.’ The sangoma tries to back away from the creature but she looks like she’s swimming underwater. Ronin quickly connects the trident to the battery.

I watch as the elemental approaches the sangoma, slowly, almost tenderly. Sparks ripple across the ground and for a moment it illuminates her nervous system like a biological Christmas tree, the patterns of her nerves clearly visible through the skin.

It lifts its claws and grabs her by the shoulders, burning her like blowtorches. She screams, a horrible primal sound like an animal caught in a trap. With delicate precision its tongue darts from its mouth and into one of her eyes, slicing through her eyeball as if it were soft white cheese.

She whimpers and sags, but the thing’s claws hold her up. With a horrible fizzing sound it drags the life from her body, digging its tongue deep into her to make sure it gets every last drop, and then discards her corpse like an empty bottle.

It wipes its mouth with its arm and then turns to us. Second course is bounty-hunter tartare with a side order of love-struck teenager. It lopes toward us, clearly invigorated by the sangoma hors d’oeuvre.

Ronin stretches his neck and loosens his shoulders like a runner preparing for a race. ‘Ronin,’ I say. ‘It’s coming for us.’ He ignores me and hangs forward and touches his toes. The elemental picks up speed, letting out a hissing cackle of glee at the thought of devouring us.

Ronin casually lifts the trident and spins it like a Shaolin monk with a staff, the cord to the battery whirling around him. He drops into a low stance with a palm out in front of him and the trident
tucked under his arm. I begin to retreat, scuttling backwards to where the priest is cowering in the alleyway.

‘Get ready to run,’ I whisper to him.

He gives me a terse nod and begins to mumble a prayer.

The creature reaches Ronin and stops, contemplating him like an epicure in front of a bucket of fast food. The elemental is clearly not impressed with Ronin’s gastronomic potential, but is not above a quick greasy snack.

It lurches forward and Ronin spins, fighting the effects of being in the thing’s field but still blindingly fast, jabbing the end of the antenna into its large body. There’s a fizzle, hiss, crackle and pop as the antenna makes contact and leeches energy from the elemental.

The thing howls as energy whips down the cord and into the battery.

‘Olé,’ Ronin says.

With a snarl the elemental turns and jumps at Ronin. The bounty hunter coils like a snake and sends the antenna spinning through the air like a javelin. It hits the creature in the centre of its body.

Energy erupts from the creature, sending a blastwave rolling out in all directions. I can feel it coming, my hair whipping around me manically before a concussive blast throws me from my feet like a rag doll, slamming me into the side of the shack.

Black spots drip down my vision like blobs of ink. My forehead feels as if it’s imploding and I collapse forward. Spectral images flicker in my vision. I see a panorama view of Cape Town burning as a nuclear blast engulfs it. I see huge creatures, things that make the elemental look like a baby, engaged in a death struggle. I see a flag with a red eye painted on it flapping in the wind. The eye locks onto me and burns into my forehead like a cattle brand. High-pitched manic laughter rings in my ears, an original soundtrack to insanity.

When my vision clears I have my hands around the throat of the priest. He is struggling against me, but I have an insane amount of strength. I could crush his windpipe effortlessly, like crushing a takeaway coffee cup. ‘Please,’ he hisses.

I drag my hands from his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

I look around and see Ronin desperately holding onto the cord like a deep-sea fisherman that won’t let go of a prize catch. Slowly, the creature shrinks, mercilessly sucked down the cord and into the battery. Then, with a sharp crack, it disappears completely.

Ronin gets up and brushes dirt from his trench coat. He looks over to where I’ve collapsed, gives me a smug grin and bows with a flourish. ‘And the crowd goes wild,’ he says, holding his arms above him like a gymnast who has nailed a landing.

‘Brilliant,’ I say, pushing myself to my feet. ‘One of the best near-death experiences I’ve ever had.’

‘Oh please,’ Ronin says. ‘That’s a far-death experience, trust me – I’m something of a connoisseur.’

‘Right,’ I say.

‘Don’t stress,’ he says. ‘You get over it after the first few times.’

‘I don’t intend to do that again,’ I say.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he says. ‘You get addicted to it.’

The priest emerges slowly from the alleyway, looking at me with almost as much fear as he had the elemental.

‘What was your little disagreement about?’ Ronin says, with a curious look. ‘He trying to preach to you?’

‘No,’ I say, giving the priest a guilty look. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘Adrenalin, turns all of us into fucking maniacs. Now, padre,’ Ronin says, putting his arm around the priest’s shoulders, ‘where’s my money?’

‘Yes, of course,’ the priest says and tries diplomatically to
extricate himself from under Ronin’s arm. He pulls a tattered envelope from his pocket and hands it to the bounty hunter.

‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ Ronin says, flicking through the blue bills. ‘Fancy a drink, sparky? I’m buying. Daddy just got paid.’

He turns to walk back to the car but something in his peripheral vision catches his eye.

‘What the hell?’ he grunts and strolls over to a shack which was torn open by the blast from the elemental. I follow him, not eager to be left alone with the priest I almost strangled.