by Sue Rabie
❄
Inga sagged in relief as David stumbled out the door. ‘Where have you been?’ he rasped.
David didn’t answer at first. The fresh air had hit him like a fist.
‘I was … held up,’ he said to Inga as he leaned against his horse, sucking air into his lungs.
‘What now?’ Inga asked. ‘What’s the plan?’
David didn’t answer, he didn’t want to tempt fate. ‘Best we just get the hell out of here,’ was all he told Inga as he hauled himself up into the saddle and turned the horse away from the clinic.
Mowgli didn’t need much prompting. Both horses wanted to get away from the ghostly buildings, and they cantered easily back towards the club along their own trail. David let Mowgli have his head; the sooner he got this thing done the better.
They made their way up the small hill and over the ridge, then David pulled Mowgli back to a walk as they made for the relative safety of the sheds.
As soon as they were under cover, David helped Inga dismount, then went about unsaddling and unbridling the horses. ‘We won’t need them anymore,’ David told Inga as he gave the horses one last pat.
‘I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing,’ Inga muttered.
‘You ready?’ David asked.
‘Ready for what?’
David grinned. ‘You’ll see.’
He made his way cautiously down to the driveway where the grader was parked, Inga following apprehensively behind.
He didn’t like the way David had smiled, didn’t like the reckless expression on David’s face as he searched for something at the side of the driveway.
David straightened up, a heavy looking rock in his hand.
‘What are you …?’ Inga began in a whisper, but David motioned him to keep quiet as they started out once more for the grader.
David looked up at its bulk.
The grader was the pivotal part of his plan.
But the keys had to be in the ignition.
If they weren’t it was already over. If he couldn’t start the grader he might as well give up right now.
David climbed up into the cab. He held his breath as he groped for the keys.
There they were.
David breathed a silent prayer of thanks then looked down at Inga. ‘Right,’ he said softly. ‘This is what I want you to do.’
Twenty-Eight
❄
Anri Werner closed her eyes and prayed. Her husband was dying, and very soon she would be dead too.
And the others. Miriam, the boy, Thembi, Mr Mollard. They were all going to die too.
She opened her eyes and looked at their faces. They were afraid. They had all seen what Kyle and Jake had done to Phiwe.
No one had tried to defy Kyle and Jake after that.
‘We don’t want to hurt anybody. Just do as we say and we’ll let you go,’ Kyle had said, smiling. ‘All we want is to leave here quietly … without any trouble.’
Anri didn’t believe that Kyle and Jake would release them when this was over. She knew they were lying.
She wiped the sweat off her husband’s brow. He was unconscious now, the pain too great for him to bear. There was a blueness around his mouth, and every now and then Mark would cough and blood would appear in small beads on his lips. She bent over him and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
‘Stop that,’ Jake growled at her.
He was standing at the entrance to the bar making sure none of them tried anything.
Anri reluctantly sat up. They all knew the consequences of refusal.
She looked across at Miriam. She had Siyabonga on her lap, the boy awake but lying with his eyes closed. The fever was taking its toll, the sweat dripping off him as he shivered underneath the blankets.
Please, God, Anri asked. Please, help us.
She knew Malan and Du Plessis were dead and that David was missing. May and Potgieter were gone too. The girl, Thembi, had whispered the news to her just before Jake had made her go and sit with the others.
She listened for the helicopter Thembi had told her Kyle and Jake were waiting for. The helicopter that was supposed to take Mark away.
She knew now that Mark would never get help. Kyle and Jake would use the opportunity to escape with their cash.
She couldn’t believe all this was for money.
And a woman …
Her thoughts were interrupted.
She lifted her head to listen. She could hear something … a noise from outside.
It sounded like a distant whirring at first, then became a deeper throbbing that seemed to penetrate through the roof.
The helicopter?
The noise suddenly increased to a bellow, the floorboards rattling with the sound, the planking throwing up small clouds of dust.
The sound wasn’t coming from above them, Anri realised, it was coming from the ground.
And then the sound exploded into a screaming cacophony of tearing metal and shattering wood.
The ground jerked beneath her, and then the wall at the far end of the room erupted into a mass of collapsing brick and cascading dust as something burst through it.
The grader.
The noise was phenomenal, drowing out the cries of alarm from the others in the hall. Part of the roof collapsed as the grader tore towards her, bits of wall and serving counter being dragged along in its wake as it broke through the hall.
She held onto her husband as she sat frozen in the path of the beast.
Mark! She had to save Mark!
She started to pull him back, adrenaline spearing through her as the grader shrieked closer, the huge wheels grinding over chairs and cots and fallen ceiling boards. She was going to die! It was going to crush them!
❄
The grader barrelled past them and thudded into the bar just a metre to the right of the main door. It stopped then, but the shuddering and trembling continued. The engine was tearing itself apart as it tried to drive the grader through the inner wall of the bar, bellowing and smoking as it strained in vain against the barrier. Anri watched as dust billowed as another part of the ceiling collapsed, the swirling dryness clogging her throat. She blinked and coughed. Furniture lay strewn everywhere, piles of cots and chairs scattered to either side of the blade that had cut though the hall. There were heaps of brick and steel and shredded blanket, and amongst the rubble to the right, something that flickered softly in the darkness.
Fire.
The flames were low and weak, barely visible, a glow that seemed to fade and almost go out. And then Anri jumped back as the flames flared. She gasped as a clump of blankets caught alight and burst into flame. Smoke billowed immediately. She tried to draw a breath, but she choked on the smoke and dust and fumes.
Fumes.
Diesel!
She saw a trickle of liquid from beneath the grader and another rush of flame. Heat flooded her face, and then someone was dragging her up and away.
She saw a shadow bend over Mark.
She heard a shout over the still roaring engine, heard someone yell urgent orders: ‘Take his legs! You! Help the others!’
She didn’t recognise the voice.
‘Who …?’ she began, but was cut off abruptly as the man grabbed her and lifted her over the jumbled pile of bricks and twisted cots that had been swept along in the grader’s wake.
‘Keep going,’ she heard the man rasp over the screaming engine.
❄
Cold air enveloped her, and suddenly they were outside, staggering and slipping in the snow.
Anri tried to get her bearings. They were at the side door, making their way down towards the sheds at the back of the club. She called out for Mark.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Werner.’ The urgent assurance came from the person who was helping her through the rubble. ‘He’s already out, he’s safe …’
But Anri wasn’t happy. The cold air had revived her, and she wanted to know what was going on, wanted to know where Mark was, where Thembi and Miriam
and the boy were.
‘Phiwe … what about Phiwe?’
‘David’s gone in to fetch him,’ the man at her side answered her.
She looked up, for the first time recognising the voice.
M’Kathle’s son. Inga.
She stared in bewilderment at the man who was now helping her to the car park. ‘What’s happening?’ she kept asking. ‘Where’s David?’
But Inga just kept telling her to keep going, that they had to keep going.
They caught up with the rest of the villagers and passengers a good fifty metres away from the club. Anri tore away from Inga’s support and staggered to her husband’s side. They had laid Mark in the snow, and covered him with an assortment of jerseys and jackets. She sank down and took his head in her lap. ‘Mark,’ she whispered. ‘Mark, can you hear me?’
She looked up for someone to help her and it was then that she saw the ghosts.
❄
The small group pressed in on each other as the figures approached. They had no defence against these spectres. They had been through too much already to try and make sense of what they saw.
Except for Inga. He saw a familiar shape amongst the figures.
His father.
And behind him was a woman.
The shadows lightened, the glow from the club behind them revealing the ghosts for who they really were – May Jordaan, M’Kathle and ten or so other men from Elandskrans.
Inga sagged in relief.
They had come to help.
They had come to fight.
And then Inga turned as the incessant shriek of the grader’s straining engine suddenly cut out. In its place a momentary hush descended, as if the building was taking a deep breath.
And then a rush of noise rumbled across the field from the club house.
There were sudden flames on the north wall of the building, and a harsh crackle could be heard as a curtain of flame swept around the front of the building. It was the diesel igniting on the walls that Jake had doused with the spare fuel for the generator. It engulfed the building in a solid wall of fire, the entire outside of the club bright with orange flames within seconds.
The fire leapt high, the flames reaching well beyond the window frames.
Inga felt his heart sink.
There was no movement, no sign of anyone else fleeing the club.
Inga watched in dread as he waited for David to emerge.
‘Oh, God,’ came a whisper from beside him. It was May, breathing hard from running the last few metres through the snow. ‘He’s still in there, isn’t he?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘He’s still in there!’
She started forward as if to run towards the building, but Inga gripped her quickly by the arm.
‘Let me go!’ she cried.
‘Wait!’ he hissed. ‘Give him a chance.’
Inga didn’t let go, nor did he take his eyes off the fire.
He waited for what seemed an eternity, the flames getting bigger, the heat getting worse.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he eventually said, releasing May’s arm. ‘He should be out by now. He should have found …’
And then the grader’s petrol tank blew.
The roof of the club house seemed to bulge at first, a dome of yellow and orange and red lifting the tiles from the beams, and then the north side of the building exploded. Inga staggered back from the force of the blast, some of the others crying out as the shock of the explosion tore over them. The flames licked high and hot, oily smoke billowed, shrieks from tormented wood and collapsing walls echoed out across the cool sheet of snow.
Inga stared at the inferno, horrified by the dark oily smoke, the deep red flames.
He hardly heard the strangled whisper from beside him. ‘We’ve killed him …’ May moaned. ‘We let him die …’
Twenty-Nine
❄
The grader started first time, and David slipped it into gear and jammed the heavy rock over the accelerator.
He angled his entry so that he would crash through the side door and strike towards the bar. It would cut Kyle and Jake off from the others, would separate the others in the hall from the two men.
But he still had to be careful. Phiwe would be in there, as would Michelle, and David had to get the angle of the plough just right to avoid killing them or the people held captive against the stage.
The grader struck the side door with a stunning impact. It crashed through the brick wall of the enclosed veranda, then through the hall and towards the bar. David ducked low as the cab frame buckled and the Perspex was torn away. The noise around him was tremendous, but he stayed in the seat, steering the grader deeper into the club.
The wall the grader barged through had been load-bearing, and along with bricks and ceiling board came roof beams and sheets of corrugated steel that crashed down like guillotine blades behind the runaway plough.
David ducked reflexively as several beams and pieces of corrugated steel slammed across the grader’s chassis. Dust was billowing around him, and as the grader’s momentum slowed he scrambled from the seat, almost falling from the torn sides of the grader as it slammed with finality into the inner wall of the bar.
David landed awkwardly amongst the debris. He struggled upright and lurched away from the grader.
The vehicle had come to a stop half in and half out of the bar, its engine still roaring bravely. He had managed to cut Anri and Mark off from Jake and Kyle.
Inga would be able to get them out.
It was just Phiwe and Michelle now … and that was his job.
He knew Phiwe would still be lying just inside the entrance to the bar, and he made quickly for that side of the hall, tripping over the rubble in his haste to get there. He had to get to them quickly, had to find both Phiwe and Michelle before Kyle and Jake recovered from the attack. The stench of diesel was heavy in the room; the dust thick and cloying. David coughed and covered his mouth with his sleeve as he stumbled towards the bar. And then he realised it wasn’t just dust, that it was smoke as well, and that the soft glow under the grader was fire. The steel of the blade must have thrown up sparks as it cut through the building. David swore. Where were they? He wanted to call out to Michelle through the smoke and darkness, but he knew she wouldn’t hear him over the grader’s straining engine, knew that Phiwe was closer and that he had to find him first.
He stepped under the arch and into the barroom.
The room was in darkness, the flickering light from the slowly growing flames behind him barely revealing the destruction on this side of the plough. He made his way closer to the bar, hoping to find Phiwe. The bar counter itself was half gone, destroyed by beams from the partially collapsed roof. David could see the night sky between the sheets of corrugated steel that hung like giant blades waiting to fall. He ducked lower beneath their threat and the thickening cloud of smoke to tug at pieces of the bar and planking that might be covering Phiwe.
He found someone, but it wasn’t Phiwe.
The piece of steel roofing stuck up at an odd angle, the razor-sharp edge having buried itself in the wooden floor. The body lay right beside it, covered in debris and planking.
David thought it was Phiwe at first, saw an arm and a shoulder and then part of the chest.
He tore at the rubble covering the body …
A blue blanket jacket.
David continued to haul at the debris to uncover the man lying beneath.
Jake.
He was dead.
The falling beams must have struck him down first and then the sharp edge of the sheet had cut into him as he lay there. It had sliced into him just above the hips. Almost from one side to the other. Almost in half.
David stared in horror.
Jake’s face was terrible, the eyes still staring widely at the partly collapsed ceiling above him and the mouth still overflowing with blood. There was a lot of blood, and David thought he could see something glisten on the debris-littered floor beside the man, thought he could see
coils of something.
Intestines.
David drew back in revulsion.
It was a terrible death … even for Jake.
David felt like running, but he had to find Phiwe, had to get him and Michelle out of the club and away from Kyle. He started pulling furiously at the debris, searching frantically for Phiwe. The smoke was worse, the shrieking of the grader sharper, the flames in the hall brighter than before.
It was difficult to breathe, difficult to see, but he kept going, praying that Phiwe was all right.
David found him eventually.
‘Phiwe …’ David gasped as he ripped at the debris covering his body.
Part of the sliding door that had led onto the veranda had collapsed on him as the grader had torn past. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the door had fallen across Phiwe’s legs, as the shield had prevented any more harm befalling him as the roof buckled overhead.
David nearly sobbed in relief. Phiwe was still breathing.
Behind him the grader’s engine finally gave out, and David heard Phiwe groan.
‘Phiwe,’ he whispered. ‘Phiwe are you awake?’
Phiwe blinked and opened his eyes. His voice was weak, the words barely a whisper. ‘David … is that you?’ he asked.
‘It’s me,’ David said as he grinned down at him. ‘I’ve come to get you out.’
Phiwe lifted his head, groaned and then let it thump back down. He held his right hand to his chest, the one he had broken hitting Jake on the forehead. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked.
If it hadn’t been for the seriousness of their situation David would have laughed. As it was he grunted as he pulled the big man up into a sitting position. Phiwe protested, cradling his arm, but David hauled him up anyway. He had to get him to the nearest exit.
David made for the door with Phiwe’s arm across his shoulder, carrying most of the Zulu’s weight. They kept against the remains of the bar, David leaning on it for support as Phiwe sagged against him.
They staggered through the door and into the cold and darkness and safety of the night.
They went for about twenty metres, then he set Phiwe down and told him to stay where he was until help came.