In the Midst of Wolves

by Kurt Ellis

  Reshmee sat more upright. ‘And me? What about me?’

  ‘Why did you join the IPU?’

  She took a sip. ‘Because I want to help people.’

  Creed stared at her and saw the flicker of humour in her eyes. They both laughed.

  ‘Okay, okay. Truth is, I couldn’t get another job. Companies want people with experience. But how can you get that experience if they won’t give you a chance? It doesn’t make sense, does it? So I saw the advert for this position, decided to take a chance, and I got it. I plan to stay for a year or two, get that experience, then move on into the private sector. Maybe even go overseas. Who knows, maybe even America? And try to eat those big burgers and drive those big cars.’

  Creed nodded. ‘That’s a plan.’

  82

  Monday, 24 June

  The tarred surface of the road glistened with moisture. The heavens had been open for most of the day and a cold rain had washed the earth. It eased up that evening but the damage had already been done. Creed battled to control the car on the slick roads. The siren on the roof no doubt screamed at those he drove past to get out of his way, but in his ears the sound was dull. Distant, as if his head was submerged in water. His shirt stuck to his wet back and to the leather of the car seat. He pulled the steering wheel hard to the right, then fought to prevent the car from going into a fishtail. His forearms began to cramp. So did his stomach, and he barely recognised what he was feeling. It was fear.

  There, on the right. That was the road he was looking for. His home street. Again he battled with the black metallic bull for it to obey his instructions, and although it fought back, he finally made it relent. His home, or rather what used to be his home, came into view, and he brought the car to a screeching halt in front of the driveway. Before the vehicle had come to a full stop, he had leapt from it. He heard it roll further down the road, then climb the pavement before hitting the neighbour’s mail box with a thump … but it wasn’t the usual thump. It was much louder than it should have been. It was far too loud …

  A flash of lightning outside his window, and Creed was suddenly awake. The entire room had been lit up, as if by stadium floodlights that had been switched on for only a second. The rain drummed on his windows, rattling the panes.

  Creed sat up from the floor and rubbed his eyes. Barefoot and wearing only a pair of jeans, he didn’t even bother to check the time. It was probably in the early hours of the morning, he guessed. He sat in the middle of his second bedroom; the room that had once been covered with pictures of Megan now seemed even more dreadful with its walls bare, somehow more gruesome. He tried to get his memories in order. Why was he lying on the floor, and not in his bed? That was when he remembered. Reshmee.

  He staggered to his feet and stumbled into the hallway.

  The wooden boards creaked under his weight. He pushed opened his bedroom door to see Reshmee beneath his covers, on his bed, her chest slowly rising with breath. Creed remembered. The poor girl couldn’t handle her liquor and passed out shortly after nine last night. Creed had put her to bed, before he went back to finish the bottle. Sadistically he smiled, thinking of the hangover she would experience in a few hours’ time.

  That would teach her for calling him an asshole, he thought with a mischievous grin. And not to mix good whisky with Sprite. Heathen!

  There was another flash of lightning, another rumble of thunder. His dogs responded from the lounge with a disharmony of barking.

  ‘Shit.’

  He had forgotten to draw his curtains. Johannesburg’s legendary Highveld electrical storms were terrifying his animals. He pulled the door shut behind him and trudged to the lounge, rubbing an itch from his right eye.

  ‘I’m here. I’m here,’ he repeated to the hounds. ‘Calm down.’

  As he had expected, the curtains had been left wide open. He had also expected to see the dogs cowering in the far corner of the room, away from the storm. But they were not. The eight of them were at the window, more than half of them standing on their hind legs. Their teeth were bared at the glass, the hackles on their backs raised. Another flash of lightning, followed by frantic barking. The dogs were leaping against the walls and nipping at the pane.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘What are you guys doing?’

  Creed walked over to the window and looked out. He studied the trees and bushes waving at him through the wind and the rain. A blanket of black clouds blocked the moon, shedding little light onto the yard. The street lamps cast large shadows of trees across the lawn, making it even blacker. He squinted into the shadows yet saw nothing.

  ‘It’s only lightning,’ he said to them.

  He grabbed a curtain and yanked it closed. Pushing the dogs down from the window, he reached across for the other curtain when a second bolt of lightning fractured the sky. It was as if the clouds were made of black glass and had been cracked to let in scars of sunlight, blindingly bright. And at the corner of the fence that surrounded his property – in the shadow of the large cottonwood tree that was rooted on the street intersection but stretched over into his yard – was a naked boy. He saw him for just a second, standing in the corner of the yard, before he was engulfed in shadow again.

  Creed squinted and leaned closer to the glass. So close that he could feel the cold night on his lips and the tip of his nose. His breath fogged up the window. Another lightning bolt spider-webbed across the sky, turning night into day for a few moments. Enough time for him to see the eyes, the shiny tar-coloured skin, the grotesque smile and disfigured limbs. No, that wasn’t a boy.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Creed leapt back from the window, just as the thunder crashed. Reshmee stood behind him, dressed in a slept-in, wrinkled version of yesterday’s clothes.

  He turned back to look outside. The … thing was gone, but the dogs were still barking wildly.

  ‘Nick?’ she repeated, looking alarmed. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘There’s someth—’ He didn’t know how to explain what he’d seen. ‘There’s someone out there.’ He rushed past her and into his bedroom.

  ‘Is it Mthembu?’ she called.

  Creed didn’t answer. He grabbed his gun from his bedside table and ejected the clip – a habit – to confirm that it was fully loaded before ramming it back into the weapon. He returned to the lounge.

  ‘Nick?’ Reshmee’s eyes were large with worry. ‘Is it Mthembu?’

  He looked out the window, the rain droplets distorting his vision.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Stay here. I’ll be right back.’

  He unlocked the door, and, taking two deep breaths, pulled it open. It hit him like a sledgehammer in the chest and face, stunning him for a second and knocking him off balance: the violent, freezing wind. The brief pause was all Tripod and Paisley needed to squeeze through the gap in the door. They ran into the rain and disappeared around the corner.

  ‘Shit!’ he cursed, pushing the other dogs back with his bare foot. ‘Tripod!’ he called into the wet darkness. ‘Paisley! Come here!’

  But the animals were gone, swallowed by night. He slipped out and closed the door behind him. His naked feet felt hard with numbness as he took his first steps. His torso flesh goose pimpled from the cold downpour. ‘Fuck,’ he swore. Why hadn’t he put on a bloody shirt?

  He held his weapon out in front of him, pointed into the abyss. One cold foot in front of the other, he crept forward. The air around him was a soup of electricity, wet grass and drenched soil. He cringed as his left foot was sucked in by cold mud, but he didn’t lower his weapon or his eyes. They stayed fixed, peering into the shadows. Creed reached the corner of his house.

  He peeped around the edge and he saw his green refuse bin, a pile of wood and the nose of his truck. But nothing else. No movement. He snaked around the bend, holding his weapon in front of him. Another crash of lightning. This was quickly followed by a pained yelp from a dog behind him. He spun around, dropping to one knee in a firing stance, just in time
to see it coming at him. Straight at his face. He tightened his finger on the trigger and was about to shoot when he realised what it was. He managed to lower his gun a fraction and raise his left hand. The impact knocked him back. He fell over and onto the cold, wet ground, slightly winded. But he had managed to catch Tripod in mid-air. The dog whimpered softly.

  Creed rolled onto his side to get his naked back and head off the freezing, waterlogged earth, and watched as the darkness came alive. A tiny, human-like silhouette was scurrying from behind the tree line towards him. Creed swiftly got back up on one knee, aimed his weapon, and fired at it. The gunshots echoed; the bullets tore through the leaves of the trees.

  The lead thudded into his cement wall as the shadow disappeared behind the foliage. Creed pushed himself to his feet and assumed his trusted weaver stance to take better aim at the next clearing in the tree line. But nothing came past. No shadow. No … Tokoloshe.

  Where the hell was it? He heard nothing and saw even less. He wondered whether perhaps he had hit it. As Creed took a step closer to the shrubs, a shadow leapt from the bush into the air – nimble, like a cat jumping onto a window sill. It landed lithely on top of the wall, then dropped over to the other side. Creed rushed forward and crashed through the vegetation after it. He vaulted over the wall and landed harder than he would have liked on the pavement, but managed to maintain his balance. With his gun ready to fire, he aimed up the street, then whipped it around, facing downhill. Nothing. The streets were empty. It was gone.

  Reluctantly, he lowered his arms and tried to catch his breath. His lungs were tight from the exertion and the cold. He could hear Tripod whimpering in pain from the yard. Creed leapt back over the wall and crashed into the shrubs. He pushed his way through, ignoring the branches that slashed at his naked torso like razor blades. Tripod was exactly where he had left him. Creed lifted the limp canine in his arms and carried him towards the front door. The rain trickled down his forearm, but Creed realised that it was far too warm to be the same rain running down his back. It wasn’t water, but blood. Tripod’s blood.

  He hurried to get the dog back inside, but as he reached for the door handle, he saw movement in his peripheral vision. A blur that was soon followed by a rustling in a nearby shrub. Creed stopped and sighted down on the bush with his gun in one hand.

  Shit. It had come back. That … thing had returned. Creed stood completely still, his brow furrowed and water droplets running down his face. Seconds passed. Just as he was beginning to doubt if he had really seen anything, it exploded from the bush.

  His finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Damn it, Paisley,’ Creed cursed as he lowered his gun.

  83

  By the time Grey and Zwane arrived, Nick had had a blisteringly hot shower to banish the cold from his extremities and to warm his bones. The three men and Reshmee stood in the kitchen, Creed and Grey with steaming cups of coffee, Reshmee and Zwane with tea. Tension and awkwardness loitered in the room. It had been there ever since the Major and Detective had arrived to find their spokesperson there, dishevelled and alone in Creed’s house. Nothing had been said or asked.

  Creed took a sip of his coffee as Grey turned to Reshmee. ‘Did you see anything?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. There … might have been something there. And something clearly attacked the dog. But I didn’t see anything.’

  All eyes fell onto the corner of the lounge, where Tripod rested on a blanket. The other dogs were licking at his wounds. He had a vicious bite on one of his hind legs, but it wasn’t as bad as Creed had first thought. He would take him to a twenty-four-hour veterinarian after this impromptu briefing though, just to make sure.

  ‘I saw it,’ he said. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  ‘So what was it?’ Grey asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you saw it?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know what I saw.’

  ‘Can … you describe it?’ Zwane asked.

  ‘It was short. Small, like a ten-year-old boy. But …’ Creed searched for the correct words, ‘it had … it had large eyes and pitch-black skin. A massive head. I mean, an abnormally shaped, large head and large hands. And a big, swollen stomach.’

  The tea in Zwane’s cup began to slosh back and forth. He carefully placed it on the kitchen counter. ‘Are you … saying … you saw a tokoloshe?’

  ‘I’m not saying that,’ Creed responded curtly.

  ‘Then what did you see?’ Grey asked

  ‘I don’t know.’ He turned to Zwane. ‘But I’m not saying it was a tokoloshe. There’s no such bullshit as a tokoloshe.’

  ‘Well, you were shooting at something, weren’t you?’ Grey said.

  ‘I know …’ Creed sighed. ‘I just don’t know what it was.’

  84

  ‘Did you hear?’ Steenkamp asked.

  ‘About Creed?’ Meyer responded.

  ‘Yeah. Fucking hell.’ Steenkamp laughed. ‘That guy just attracts kak like a magnet. Now he’s shooting at some tokoloshe.’

  Meyer shrugged. ‘No such thing.’

  ‘I know that; you know that. But when you’re fucked in the head like him, then I guess you see a whole bunch of strange kak. Like Professor Buthelezi said: if you believe, anything is real.’

  It was just before noon. The thug who had attempted to hijack Creed had had surgery to remove the bullets from his body that morning and was now resting in recovery.

  ‘So how did Grey respond to what you told him?’ Steenkamp asked.

  ‘About?’

  ‘About Creed. About the bullet trajectory. About it coming from straight down, man?’

  ‘Oh.’ Meyer looked down at the doorway of the waiting room. ‘I didn’t tell him.’

  ‘What?’ Steenkamp leaned forward, the chair groaning beneath him. ‘Why the fuck not?’

  ‘Because Grey won’t act.’

  Steenkamp’s eyes narrowed with anger. ‘So, then what are we gonna do?’

  ‘We aren’t going to do anything.’ Meyer stood up. ‘I’m not going to conspire with you. You do what you feel is necessary, and I’ll do the same. That’s all you need to know.’ With that, he walked off to the bathroom.

  85

  The call came through while Meyer was on his way to Wang Thai restaurant in Sandton City that evening. The afternoon had been a waste. The witness hadn’t recovered enough to be interviewed, so they had spent the day in the waiting room for nothing. But at least he had the evening to look forward to. He had been on his way to meet Tracey for dinner, to finally see if the Angry Duck dish she had been raving about was as good as she said it was. She would also, no doubt, want a side dish of information from him. He had been seeing a lot of Tracey over the last few days, mostly in the bedroom where her sexual appetite was almost insatiable.

  He couldn’t help but wonder: were they in a real relationship or was she simply using him for a story? A part of him needed to know, but another part of him didn’t care, as long as he could be with her. But that was foolish. He knew it. He needed answers from her. He could no longer wallow in the bliss of his ignorance. That night, he had intended to see how the dinner date went and if the topic came up organically. Then he would demand some clarity. And if it didn’t come up naturally, then he would bring it up.

  His phone had rung just as he turned into Sandton Drive. The BMW involved in the Creed attack had been spotted in Jabulani, a smaller township that made up a part of Soweto. Meyer flicked on the blue light affixed to his dashboard and did a sharp, bone-jarring U-turn. Without looking, he stabbed at the buttons on his phone to dial Tracey’s number. The digits were now engraved in his memory.

  ‘Hey you,’ she answered in a sing-song voice.

  ‘Hi. I’m not going to make it.’

  The melody left her. ‘What happened? Did you get a call?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Is it Creed?’

  Meyer hesitated, then answered. ‘It’s the car that tried to take him out. I don’t k
now much else. I’ll let you know when I have more information.’

  ‘You better.’ The charm had returned.

  He hung up the phone just as he got onto the N1 highway and headed south. He slipped the car into the fast lane and pushed the accelerator as far down as possible. It was a thirty-minute sprint to the township within a township. The plan was to meet and co-ordinate at a small community centre in the area, but as Meyer pulled in, uniformed police in full combat gear were already starting to disperse. They were kitted out with grey helmets, heavy bullet-proof vests, knee pads and assault rifles. Grey clearly had already assigned their duties.

  Meyer parked his car beside to the Major’s and climbed out.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said.

  ‘That’s fine.’ Grey popped open his car boot, slipped off his expensive-looking suit jacket, and stowed it, neatly folded, inside.

  Behind him, Steenkamp and Zwane were checking that their R5 assault rifles were correctly loaded. Steenkamp looked as if he had brought his own XXL bullet-proof vest, while Zwane looked even more uncomfortable with the heavier artillery than he had with his handgun a few days earlier during the shoot-out.

  Grey strapped on his own Kevlar vest over a silk shirt and tie before tossing one over to Meyer. ‘The call came in from a neighbour. He reported that a car full of bullet holes was parked in front of a property and that he saw a man who looked very injured going inside. The house is two blocks from here.’

  Meyer strapped on the body armour as Grey continued. ‘You will join me and two from Takies in the breach team from the front.’

  Meyer nodded.

  ‘Two other Takies will breach from the rear while the remaining members provide cover. Got it?’

  Meyer nodded again. He pulled his side arm from the hip holster and made sure it was loaded correctly. With that, he slid into the passenger seat of Grey’s car while two members of the Special Task Force got into the back. Four cars exited the parking lot, with Grey leading the convoy. The drive to the house took mere minutes. The BMW in question was parked outside for all to see, sticking out like a beacon in the glow of a street light. Grey stopped his car in front of the BMW, blocking any potential escape route.