by JT Lawrence
Keke’s eyes flare. “Zack?”
“Yes. As clear as day. Zack, Zack, and then she said ‘Get Zack’.”
“I don’t understand the connection.”
“Nor do I! But remember that day at The Gordhan when he said he needed to tell me something important? But then he was arrested before he had the chance to say anything else and then—I’m sure I told you—it kept bothering me, not knowing. So I tried to track him down. I wanted to visit him in prison and talk to him. But when I started asking questions …the police closed ranks.”
“I know,” says Keke.
“You know? You know what?”
“They wouldn’t tell me where he was, either. They said it was a special case because he was so dangerous. Didn’t want the press sniffing around. Didn’t want anything to be reported above the Blanket. I tried to get details about his trial but no one I spoke to could tell me anything.”
“Exactly. It was like the system just swallowed him whole.”
“It happens,” says Keke. “Remember that politician who challenged Shini Wam in parly? She also disappeared with no trace. And that journo—Mpumi—remember him? You always said that he looked like a Drum magazine cover model.”
Mpumi had a balling retrosexual Sophiatown afro-vintage chic look going on when they met. Now Kate imagines him as a little older: just as immaculate as before, but perhaps with a little grey salting his hair.
“Oh shit! He helped me on the Betty/Barbara story.”
“Gone. One day he was promoted to chief editor at Echo.news. The next day his boyfriend reported him missing. Like they’ve just been plucked from reality. Like some kind of cosmic chess game.”
“That’s terrible. Why would they snatch him? Was he reporting on corruption?”
“Nah. Nothing as innocent as that. According to the rumours on the ground, he was some kind of double agent. He was pretty ruthless. He’d do anything for a story. He made a lot of deals with a lot of dangerous people.”
Kate sighs, taps the table. “Oh, well then. Never mind about the favour.”
“You wanted me to find Zack?”
“Yes. I realise this is a serious leap of logic, but … something is telling me that he might be our only chance to break Silver out of her state.”
“Well, I have reasonably good news for you then.”
“Hey? But you’ve just said—”
“I said the police wouldn’t tell me where he was. I didn’t say I stopped looking.”
Chapter 49
Blooms of your Beloved
TWELVE YEARS PREVIOUSLY
SkyRest
Johannesburg, 2024
“I’m sorry about last night,” says Zack to Lewis over breakfast. Lewis raises his white eyebrows at him and motions for him to sit.
“No worries. I expected it. It’s always difficult for initiates to process the work they do here. But,” he says, pushing his plate away, “after what you told me, I think you’ll have no problem fitting in.”
Zack sits and looks at the abandoned food. No-egg omelette? Dutch baby pancake? He can’t stand the idea of eating food he can’t identify.
“What I said … isn’t really the truth,” says Zack. “Not the whole truth, anyway.”
“I don’t need to know, man. I’m not your priest. I’m not your lawyer.”
“But I want you to know that it’s not what it sounded like. It’s not what I made it sound like.”
“All right.”
“I’m not a serial killer,” says Zack.
Lewis looks at him over his coffee mug. “Really.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Okay,” says Lewis.
“Okay?”
“No one’s perfect, right? We’ve all done wrong. Inside of here and out.”
Has Lewis accepted his apology?
“But there is one thing.” Lewis traces a scar on the table. “And I don’t mean to offend.”
Zack looks at him.
“Have you looked in the mirror, lately?”
“What?”
“You look like shit, man.”
Zack finger-combs his hair, rubs his eyes. “I haven’t been sleeping.”
“I can see that. Your eyes have more baggage than a supermodel.”
“I actually think I feel worse than I look.”
“Not fucking possible,” says Lewis, and throws his head back, laughing. A few residents stop eating their omelette/pancake to look at him, and Zack laughs too.
“Any advice?” he asks.
“Advice? Sure. Get a fucking mirror.”
Zack laughs.
“No, seriously,” says Lewis. “You’d better start sleeping. And start eating! The way you’re looking … well …” He gestures at the building above them. “If you’re not careful, they’ll be using you in their next video.”
The now-familiar siren sounds, letting them know that their work shift is beginning. The men sigh, bin what’s left on their plates, and lope out of the cafeteria. This time they’re led to a hall Zack has not yet seen. A warden shows them how to re-pot plants that have grown out of their containers. Roses, hydrangeas, maples, trailing Boston ivy, Virginia creeper. Considering yesterday’s video, he reckons taking a thriving Boston ivy plant home instead of ashes is a good thing. You could have this urn of ashes in your house that you don’t know what do do with, or you could have this plant that can cover a whole wall—a whole building—and flicker from season to season between green and red. An everyday reminder that the person you’ve lost is not really lost at all. Or a rose bush: you can forever have the blooms of your beloved.
They tap the plants’ containers to release the roots, then ease them into the soft new soil. It’s therapeutic work, and Zack starts relaxing for the first time since being here. They play classical music over the sound system. His shoulders unknot; his brain untangles. After the re-potting, they have to shift some soil in wheelbarrows, then they’re instructed to sweep up and bag the sawdust and kindling in the wood-chipping room. The exercise feels good. The work is easy and monotonous and becomes like meditation. He keeps checking his cuff for his next Reward, and wonders how long it will be till he gets the first stage on his lapel.
This place isn’t so bad. Then he corrects himself: It could be worse.
When their shift is over and they’ve showered, and they’re waiting for dinner, they hang out in Lewis’s room. Lewis is still in good spirits, doing arm-lifts and eating protein pretzels. His bare chest ripples with muscles a man half his age would be proud to have, and his tattoo seems darker than usual, the colours richer. The illustration seems to pulse on his skin, as if the dragon is alive.
“Getting ready for that swim?” Zack asks.
“I can taste that water, you know. I can feel it streaming through my hair in that first dive. Cooling my scalp.”
“Going to be a good feeling,” says Zack. “After all this time.”
“Oh, yes.” He drops from the bar then downs half a bottle of water. “Oh, yes.”
Lewis offers him the SkyRest-branded packet of pretzels. Zack hesitates.
“Go on,” says Lewis. “They’re not going to bite you.”
Zack reaches his hand inside the bag, grabs a few then sprinkles them on his other palm. Tentatively puts one in his mouth. It’s not too bad.
“Will you tell me the rest of it?” asks Zack.
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of the video. Tell me how they do it?”
“All right,” he says, sitting down. “Sure. Why the fuck not?”
Zack eats another pretzel. They’re quite good, actually.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Chapter 50
Nitrogen-Rich Material
“Ever heard of Ouroboros?” asks Lewis.
“Your tattoo,” says Zack. “The serpent that devours its own tail.”
Zack knows the ancient Egyptian circular symbol of eternal return that has been
re-used and recycled by philosophical trains from Greek magic to alchemy to Kundalini health goths.
“Right. So they have this system going here. It’s completely self-sustaining. Everything you eat, wear, or touch in this place comes from this place. It is its own immortality.”
“Recomposition.”
“Recomp’s the main technology, yes. There are others on the menu, and even more that they’re experimenting with.”
“How does the recomp work?”
“Recomp is when they take the … nitrogen-rich material—”
“The what?”
“The nitrogen-rich material. That’s what they call it.”
“Do you mean, the bodies? The dead bodies?”
“Yes, that’s what it means.”
“So they take the nitrogen-rich—the bodies—and place it inside a mound of carbon-rich material … so that’s the sawdust, and the wood chips. They add a bit of moisture, some extra nitro on top to get it going. Maybe some alfalfa.”
Zack remembers the pretty purple alfalfa blooms they had worked on during a previous shift. What had Lewis said about them? That they’re a feminine herb, element of the earth, and especially good on sandwiches.
“Then the microbes do their thing. The microbial activity gets the pile cooking. Their heat kills the bad shit. The pathogens. That’s what you can feel.”
“What do you mean?”
“We call it our underfloor heating. The warmth, from the middle of the building? That’s the core. That’s where it all happens. Bodies in the top. Compost out the bottom.”
Human compost.
Saliva rushes into Zack’s mouth. He tries to swallow his revulsion.
“Then they cure the compost. Sometimes the clients want to take the compost home. They plant a fucking tree or whatever. Or they let someone here do it for them. They plant one of those saplings in the forest at the back. Put a tag on the tree, or a bench with a silver plaque underneath it. But most of the compost goes unclaimed. That’s the stuff we use for the aeroponics. It’s what we use to grow everything in here.”
Zack spits out the pretzel he had in his mouth.
Lewis laughs. “Ja, that’s pretty much the standard reaction.”
Zack looks around the room. His uniform, the linen, Lewis’s snax, the soap, the toothpaste, all emblazoned with the SkyRest logo.
“Yes,” says Lewis. “Even the toiletries. Hemp oil and Miswak and Homosapien. So best get used to it.”
Zack reaches for his water and rinses his mouth out, spits the water into Lewis’s basin.
“Once you’ve had time to process it, you’ll see that it makes complete sense. It’s the full circle, you know? None of that embalming shit. No poisoning the well. None of that hanging onto dead bodies. If you think about it, being attached to a dead body is way weirder than letting it go back to the earth, you know? No waste, no harm, just energy doing its thing. Going round and round like it should. The process is actually a fucking beautiful thing.”
“Does everyone in here … Do the rest of the residents know?”
“Most of them. Some have been red-flagged. Admin decided it’s best to not tell them. The truth doesn’t serve everybody.”
Zack feels ill.
The bell rings for dinner time.
Chapter 51
No One Likes To Keep A Secret
TWELVE YEARS LATER
The Lipworth Institute
Johannesburg, 2036
“You know where Zack is?” Kate asks Keke.
“Of course I know where he is.”
“You found him?”
“It wasn’t easy, but when I couldn’t find any kind of record for him, or anything about his trial or sentencing, I tracked down that cop.”
“The cop that—”
“Yes. Ramphele. The guy who cuffed me while I was with Marko in hospital. Aiding and abetting a serial killer, he said. Bullshit.”
“I can’t believe you’ve known all this time. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had enough to deal with. Lumin. The Resurrectors. Mally’s surgery and recuperation. I’d already unwillingly unleashed his crazy on you that day at The Gordhan. I thought you’d sooner forget.”
“I still dream about him,” says Kate. “It’s crackers, because, really, I don’t know him. I mean I met him for a few seconds but when I dream about him, his face is as clear as day. It was like we had this weird, intense connection.”
“I know. I think about him every day,” says Keke, “but for a different reason.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Because I’m the reason he’s in there.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. I’m the one who made the deal with Ramphele. Zack trusted me, and I set him up.”
“You’re not the one who killed people. He’s in there because he killed people.”
Keke shakes her head. “Zack’s not a killer.”
“Twelve years,” Kate says, shaking her head in disbelief. “Feels like yesterday we were in that hospital. Can you imagine being in prison for that long? Especially when you’re innocent. Can you imagine what that does to you?”
“I tried to tell the detective that, but he wasn’t interested. He’d been chasing Zack for years.”
“You must have made him so happy by agreeing to help him.”
“It was weird because he was so desperate to arrest Zack, right? It was like his life depended on it. But then when I saw him afterwards he was … upset.”
“Upset?”
“Like … properly depressed. We met at a hole in Randburg. The place was disgusting. Faux-flagstones that smelt like week-old beer. Broken glass on the floor. The autoloos were broken. They were literally serving cockroaches at the bar.” Keke shudders. “I could tell he was a regular there. The beer was cheap; I know because I kept buying him round after round. It’s like he had an uncontrollable thirst, like no amount of booze would ever slake it.”
“You’ve always been so good at your grind.”
“Yes, well. It’s easy, actually. No one likes to keep a secret. That’s what I’ve learnt. A secret has too much power. It builds up … it makes people feel uncomfortable. Most people are just waiting for an excuse to spill.”
“It’s a relief,” says Kate, “it diffuses the power.”
“Exactly.”
“So what did the depressed detective have to confess?”
“Ramphele wouldn’t confess. He wouldn’t tell me anything about the case—but there was definitely something dodgy going on—I could feel it … I could see that it was eating him up on the inside. And then after our meeting? Guess what?”
“What?”
“He went missing. The station I called said he’d retired, but there were no documents to prove it. His file just blipped out of existence. Someone else I spoke to said that he just stopped coming to work one day.”
“What the fuck?”
“So I figure, either he did something that he couldn’t live with—like putting an innocent man away—and pretty much erased himself … or someone didn’t like what he told me. Considered him too much of a liability.”
“The cosmic chess game.”
“The fucking cosmic chess game. But I did manage to find out where they were keeping Zack.”
“Where is he?”
“SkyRest.”
Kate’s quiet for a moment. She feels her cheeks warm. “SkyRest. Seriously? That’s in Fourways. That’s, like, twenty minutes away in a tuk-tuk. Zack’s been living less than half an hour away from us for twelve years and you’ve never fucking said anything?”
“What would be the point?”
“To ask him what he was going to tell me!”
“Just because it’s close, it doesn’t mean that you can just pop in for tea and scones. SkyRest has the highest security out of all the PLCs. It where they send only the dangerous crims. There is a strict no-visitor, no-contact policy. And there are, like, three layers of biometric security
. Besides, knowing he’s so close … it would’ve just made you more frustrated.”
“How do we know he’s still alive?”
“Because if he was dead they’d have to report it. That’s true for any crim colony. Remember the vertical mine shaft colony in Phokeng? The crims lived in the shaft?”
“They were shut down. Not profitable enough.”
“Yes, they were shut down, but not because of the business. That was the Nancies spinning their usual bullshit our way. The business was going well—well enough, anyway—they were shut down because their crim death rate was above the acceptable threshold.”
“But can’t they just jook the numbers?”
“They would if they could. No doubt. But the UN Human Rights Council audit them, so they have to add up or they’re in for a world of pain. If there’s even a hint of creative accounting with bodycount the HRC will shut them down before you can say penal labour camp.”
“And that would bite our economy.”
“In a big way. Last numbers I saw said that the colonies made up thirty-eight percent of our GDP.”
“Holy shit.”
“Imagine closing them down and going back to the prison system that costs the country money instead of making it money. Now you see the motivation to keep their operations clean. Or at least clean enough to stay out of trouble.”
They spend a moment just looking at each other.
“So Zack is alive. At SkyRest,” says Kate.
“All facts point to that conclusion, yes.”
“We need to break him out,” says Kate, cool as TranX.
Keke chokes. “Have you not heard what I’ve been saying? It’s impossible.”
“It’s the only way to save Silver.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It’s my best guess. Why else would she be asking for him? She’s never even met him. Never heard his name.”