By Lily Herne
Extract
Tommy
Tommy hangs back while Mooki, Jess and the other newbies swarm out of the kombi and whoop their way towards the townhouse complex across the street. He waits until they’ve chucked their crowbars and shopping bags over the spiked metal gate, then heads in the opposite direction.
It’s his fourth day out in the suburbs, and he’s determined that this time he’s going to come back with something. He rambles along the cracked pavement, pausing every so often to peer through the long-defunct electric fencing. The chances of spotting an unlocked security gate are slim – he’s learnt from bitter experience that most of the houses will be locked up tighter than bank vaults – and the crowbar and skeleton keys in his bag are useless against tungsten burglar bars and reinforced glass.
He finally decides on a small single-storey cottage with crumbling stucco walls that’s set back from the street. It’s flanked by sprawling Tuscan wannabe-mansions, and Tommy reckons that it was probably the shabbiest residence in the
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area even before the dead took over Jozi. But that doesn’t mean that breaking in is going to be a piece of cake. Even from here he can tell that its burglar bars are made of good-quality metal, and the porch’s overhang has protected the front door from water and sun damage.
Relieved that Mooki and the others aren’t around to see him, Tommy struggles over the fence, the baggy sweatshirt he always wears to mask his gut riding up. He lands clumsily in an overgrown garden buzzing with insects, the path smothered in moss and creepers. A garden gnome grins cheekily at him from its perch on the top step, and, remembering one of the tips he heard at runner camp, Tommy pushes it over with his foot, disturbing a nest of baby scorpions. There’s a glint of metal in the circle of dust where the gnome sat – a key. Score! Barely able to believe his luck, he picks it up and wipes it on his jeans. The lock is stiff but after Tommy’s fiddled for a couple of minutes the door creaks open. Taking a deep breath, Tommy slips inside. ‘Hello?’ he finds himself saying, as if he expects an answer. He stills his breathing, listening for any sign that one of the dead might be trapped inside. There’s the scratch and scrabble of mice or rats in the ceiling, but that’s it. He’s heard horror stories from experienced runners about opening bathroom or closet doors only to find a walking corpse rushing out like a rotting jack-in-the-box. He doesn’t know how he’d react if he saw one right up close. He’d almost puked when the kombi pulled out of the parking lot on their first day of training. Even Mooki had been stunned into silence at the hideous sight of the surging sea of decaying bodies lurching around Sandtown’s high walls, everyone fighting not to gag as the overpowering musty stench of the dead invaded the vehicle. It is one thing to hear their constant moaning – it’s provided the soundtrack to eleven years of his life, after all –
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but quite another to come face to face with the reality of empty eyeholes and decomposing flesh.
Using the gnome to prop the door open – it’s gloomy inside; the ivy growing over the windows blocks out most of the natural light – he creeps further into the hallway, his feet clunking over the dusty wooden floor. The house stinks of rot and rodent pee, but the ceilings are high, so the odour isn’t overwhelming. He peers into the first room that leads off the corridor, a lounge dominated by a huge flatscreen television and heavy wooden furniture. A flash of movement in a shadowy corner next to a cabinet catches his eye, and his heart leaps into his throat. Steeling himself to run, he inches forward. Oh, gross. One of the armchairs is alive with baby rats. He backs out, deciding to try the kitchen across the hall instead.
His old supervisor was always going on about how kitchens are usually the best bet for sourcing high-quality merchandise, but this one doesn’t look too promising. There are two plates still smeared with the calcified remains of old food on the table in the centre of the room, along with a bottle of tomato sauce that’s crawling with black mould. The chairs lie on their backs, as if they were pushed back in a hurry, and the sink is piled with dishes. His foot knocks against something – a dog’s bowl, the name Teddy painted on the side. Goosebumps crawl up his arms. Tommy reckons that every house, every room, every shop probably tells its own story about the panicky minutes after the dead swarmed through the city, stories that he would prefer not to think about. He fights a powerful urge to flee out into the sunlight; he’s come this far, he can’t allow himself to get spooked.
Trying not to look too closely at the faded photographs still stuck to the kitchen cupboards (most seem to be of a dark- haired girl wearing thick black make-up and cradling a white
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terrier in her arms) he roots through the cupboard under the sink, ignoring the cockroaches that gush out onto the kitchen floor. He pulls out a bottle of bleach, a tub of caustic soda and a can of WD-40, one of the items on the list of most prized items. Score again!
Deciding to leave the lounge and its rat infestation till last, he wanders into the smaller of the two bedrooms. Its walls are painted dark purple, so it’s even gloomier in here. The bed is covered in a moth-eaten duvet, spiderwebs loop from the light fixtures and the chest of drawers is littered with dried make- up tubes. There’s a creepy poster of a skinny cavorting fellow on the wall above the bed, a wildly grinning pumpkin where its head should be, and Tommy wonders what sort of person would want to wake up with that staring back at her.
Simo, Tommy’s handler, has ordered more plastic Transformers for his collection, but there are no toys in sight. There’s a craze for iPods at the moment – the handlers like to fashion them into necklaces and tie them onto their clothing – so he rummages through the drawers just in case, feeling weird as he roots through bras and underwear. He grabs several pairs of stripy socks, then scans the small bookcase next to the bed, even though the last thing Simo wants is reading matter. Most of the paperbacks fall apart in his hands, their pages fragile lace – the moths and silverfish have done their worst – but on the bottom shelf he pulls out a comic book protected by a thick plastic cover. The Ballad of Halo Jones. Awesome. He takes it out into the hallway where the light is better, carefully removes it from its covering and flicks through it. If he gets the rest of his shopping done quick sticks he’ll have time to read it before he’s due back at the kombi.
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