The Seventh Glitch

by Ronel van Tonder

  “I just can’t wrap my head around this kak. No electricity? No money? I mean,” Bosman’s voice lowered. He glanced over at Eric with hooded eyes. “I mean, how the hell are they going to pay us?”

  “With food. At least, that’s what Sarge said.”

  “They’d better.” Bosman turned off the highway, decelerating as the barricaded gate of the intake field came into view. “I’m bladdie hell not doing this for free.”

  Barbed wire spanned the perimeter of the eighteen hectare field. A guard dressed in a bright yellow hazmat suit glanced inside the car before shooing them through with one hand, the other clutching a Vektor R4 assault rifle. Bosman parked next to a handful of other cars and jumped out.

  “You book them, I’m going for a piss,” Bosman said over his shoulder before disappearing behind one of the tents.

  Eric opened the back of the Land Rover for the kids. He was ready when the boy rushed out dragging his sister, intent on running away into the bushveld.

  “Nee. Kom,” Eric said, using as stern a voice as he could muster.

  Eric had to kneel to pull them apart. Both kids in tow, Eric stormed over to the closest intake tent. His eyes skimmed the lines of people he passed. Some glanced in his direction. Most turned away as soon as they saw his hazmat suit.

  He shouldered a man and a young boy out of the way and hauled the two kids to the table. A rotund soldier sat behind it. The mask of his hazmat suit fogged up with every exhalation.

  “These are the last from sector fourteen, Corporal.”

  Corporal Mokoena glanced at the two children and grunted, turning over a new page in his file. He began scribbling on the form, glancing up at the children every few seconds. Eric waited. He suppressed the urge to tap his boot as sweat began trickling down his back.

  The girl tugged on Eric’s hand. “Waar’s mamma?”

  Corporal Mokoena peered over the table at her, lifting his chin as his eyes slid up to Eric. “Where are the parents?”

  “Dead.”

  Mokoena shook his head and returned to his form.

  “Waar’s mamma?” A tremor had entered her high-pitched voice.

  “Bly stil, Lina,” the boy snapped.

  His sister burst into tears.

  “Listen to your brother and stay quiet,” Eric said, but the girl dropped to the floor and continued wailing.

  “How old?” Mokoena asked, raising his voice over the girl’s shrieking.

  “Don’t know.”

  Mokoena lifted his head and shrugged as he glanced at them. “Then ask.”

  “Hoe oud is julle?” Eric managed.

  The boy scowled at him before responding. “Ek’s ses. Lina’s vyf.”

  “Uh, the girl’s five, he’s six.”

  “Sector?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Parents?”

  Eric sighed. “Dead.”

  “They show violence?” Mokoena looked up at Eric when he didn’t respond immediately. “They become violent?”

  “No.”

  “You telling me lies, Ndlovu?” Eric paused again. Mokoena slapped down his pen, pushing himself away from the table and leaning back in his chair. “What happened?”

  “He was just protecting his sister.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He had a gun.”

  Mokoena let out a whistle through his teeth. His arms rested on his gut. “He shoot you?”

  “No. I disarmed him.”

  “Still.” Mokoena’s hand knocked over a few rubber stamps scattered haphazardly on the table beside him before finding the intended one. He pressed it into a pad of red ink and slammed it down on the boy’s form.

  “Corporal—”

  “Rules from the top.”

  “I know but—”

  “Here,” Mokoena said, ignoring Eric’s plea and rifling through a stack of papers beside him. “Before I forget.”

  He handed Eric a piece of paper. There were a few fingerprints on the corners. Eric took it gingerly, glancing at the conspicuous logo on the letterhead. It looked like a red sun.

  Eric read the memo, laughing before he was halfway through. “This some sort of joke?”

  Mokoena’s eyebrows lifted. “It looks like I have time to joke?” His arms spread to encompass rows upon rows of intake tents. Lines of people looped through the field like a lazy snake.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then it’s no joke.”

  Eric tapped the letterhead. “Who’s this ‘SUN’?”

  “Something something Network.” The corporal rested his elbows on the table as he completed the form.

  “Steller Unification Network,” Eric corrected. “But who are they? I thought our orders came from SANDF?”

  Mokoena let out a heavy sigh. He shrugged and leaned forward, gesturing toward the boy with a flick of his fingers. Eric gripped the boy’s shoulders and lifted him so that Mokoena could grasp his hand. The boy struggled, but Eric held him aloft long enough for the corporal to dunk his hand into a bucket on the table. When the boy’s hand came out it was stained red. He shook it, spraying Mokoena with droplets of dye.

  “Sorry, sir,” Eric mumbled.

  He hastily lowered the boy, who was swiping his hand against his pants. Mokoena retrieved a large, stained handkerchief and used it wipe the mask of his hazmat suit.

  The corporal’s sigh fogged up the mask. “They the ones setting up the domes.”

  “What domes?”

  “You been out too long, Ndlovu. A lot’s happened. All new intakes now go to these temporary domes they’re setting up. They planning to build bigger ones in the next month or so. The guard will tell you where they are on the way out.”

  “We have to go there?”

  “This is the last. After this, whoever’s out there stays out there. There’s only so much space.”

  “But they’ll die of radiation poisoning.”

  “Not my problem. Give the girl.”

  Eric lifted the girl. The corporal dunked her pale hand in a different bucket. The girl took one look at her purple fingers and began crying.

  “Get them away,” Mokoena snapped, flicking his hand to call forward the next intake.

  “What about the boy?”

  “You saw the memo. Take him to the red tent.”

  “I can’t just…”

  Mokoena wasn’t listening anymore.

  Eric headed for the Land Rover. Bosman hadn’t returned. Eric opened the back of the car and the boy helped his sister inside. He grabbed the boy’s hand and slammed the door closed.

  “Haai! Wat maak jy?” the boy exclaimed.

  Eric dragged him away from the Land Rover, ignoring the girl’s faint howls. The boy fought him like a wild thing. Eric lifted him and gripped him to his chest. He tried to disregard the obscenities the boy screamed at him.

  “Shut up,” he hissed.

  The boy went limp. Eric put him back on the ground and took his hand. He made sure every bit of the red dye was obscured by his hazmat suit’s bulky glove.

  When the guard saw them approach he hoisted his Vektor. “Where you going?”

  “He needs to take a dump,” Eric said.

  “He must go inside.”

  “The line’s around the block,” Eric said, his voice low.

  The guard hesitated. He cocked his head. “Hurry, Ndlovu. I’m closing in five minutes.”

  Eric hurried out with the boy, glancing back to make sure the guard had lost interest. His hazmat suit made an unpleasant whisking sound as he took the boy to a patch of scree a few meters away.

  Crouching, Eric took a deep breath. He spun the boy around to face him.

  “Listen to me, okay? You have to get out of here or they’ll kill you. And you need to stay out of the sun. It’s going to kill you. Find a cave. Dig a hole, I don’t know. Just stay out of the sun.”

  The boy’s face remained impassive and Eric let out a hiss. He paused, translating the sentence in his mind.

  “Jy moet ha
rdloop,” Eric said, awkwardly mimicking a run while trying to remain out of sight of the distant guard. He pointed toward the distant tents.

  “Hulle gaan jou dood maak. Jy moet grou. In die grond. Die son,” Eric stabbed up at the sun, “gaan jou dood maak. Grou, en jy sal okay wees.” He made a digging motion in the sand in front of him until the boy began to nod. “Grou, en jy sal leef.” Dig, and you’ll live. Again the boy nodded, tears forming in his eyes.

  “My suster?” he asked.

  “Sy’s okay.” Eric gave the boy a thumbs up. “Sy sal leef.”

  He left the wide-eyed boy in the thicket and returned to the barricade.

  “Where’s the kid?” the guard snapped.

  “I let him go,” Eric replied. The guard tensed and Eric shrugged. “It’s better than what they’ll do to him.”

  “Who?” The guard’s fingers tightened around his Vektor. “What you talking about?”

  Eric stopped and frowned at him. “You haven’t heard?”

  “What? Heard what?”

  “They’re killing them all.”

  “Who?” The guard spun around as if trying to locate the source of this spontaneous genocide.

  Eric whipped out Mokoena’s letter and waved it at the guard until he took it. He didn’t wait for the man to finish reading.

  “These SUN people. They’re building this—” Eric waggled his fingers over the page “—dome and letting the peaceful people go inside. Say’s it’ll keep them from getting radiation poisoning.”

  “What about the rest?” the guard asked.

  “They’re gassing them.”

  “All of them?” The guard whispered, his eyes skittering over the page.

  “All of them,” Eric repeated. “Even the kids.”

  “But from the ashes of our society, a Phoenix rose.

  In the midst of this chaos, our salvation arrived.

  A group of individuals formulated a plan to unite mankind once more.

  SUN.

  A new day has dawned.”

  - Excerpt from the Black Sunday

  memorial video narrative

  SECTOR 1.1

  PROTOCOL

  MAY 12 — 2311AD

  Somewhere above the Rooivalk Digger Colony,

  African Continent

  Jinx eased her finger from the trigger of her Glock. She exhaled, ears straining for any sound other than the rhythmic chirruping of crickets. The midday sun broiled her skin. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down the small of her back. Her long, dark braid had partially unravelled, the escaped strands slicked against her damp neck.

  She crouched in a thicket. Its desiccated foliage was barely dense enough to provide enough cover. Squinting through the bush, she wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. She kept her pistol trained on the last place she’d seen her attacker.

  Silence was key.

  Her breathing was deep but silent — it didn’t even stir the leaves by her mouth. She heard a crunch of grass underfoot and shifted, altering her vantage point. Shells of derelict buildings littered the surrounding savanna, their collapsed walls eaten away by decades of sand storms and gales. The ground undulated over a wide area. A small depression darkened the terrain a few meters away. A good hiding place. Perhaps she should use the acacia tree to her left as cover and make a break for—

  Another crunch, closer, to her right. Too late. He already knew where she was.

  Her heart thudded in her chest as her finger slid over the trigger again, left hand gently cupping her right for support. She dipped her elbow just enough to enable flexibility without encouraging additional recoil.

  Another footstep. She blinked stinging sweat from her eyes. One last crunch. He was here.

  Jinx jumped up. She let out a victorious cry as her finger squeezed the trigger. The shot fired into empty air. The hairs on the back of her neck shot up. She twisted around and ducked under the man’s swinging fist.

  Raising her weapon, she tried to get off another round. The man spun around and kicked her handgun from her fingers. The resulting shock wave ran up her arm, knocking her teeth together.

  She dropped to the ground and scrambled after her weapon, but the man was too fast. His foot caught her in the stomach, sprawling her onto her back.

  The man’s brown eyes glittered as they caught the sun. He lifted his M1911. A slow smile spread on his lips as he aimed.

  “Sergeant Pearce! Stand down!”

  The man jerked.

  Jinx winced, anticipating a bullet. Nothing happened. Pearce’s eyes narrowed at her as he lowered his weapon. She smirked up at him and scrambled to her feet. He turned on his heel, snapping off a salute as Major Vanbuuren strode toward them.

  She stood to attention beside Pearce. Her fingertips touched her forehead as the dust settled around them. She kept her expression neutral as the Major stopped. His eyebrows knotted as he glared at Pearce.

  “You suddenly lost the ability to measure distance, Sergeant Pearce?”

  “Sir, no sir!”

  “Then what the hell are you doing firing at Sergeant Jinx from less than four meters away? And if there’s anything besides rubber bullets in those guns—”

  “Sir, I was intimidating her, sir,” Pearce interrupted.

  Jinx’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. She gave Pearce a grudging inward nod of admiration. She would never dare to interrupt the Major in the middle of a shake down.

  “I never planned to fire, sir,” Pearce added, his voice an octave too high.

  Jinx felt her lips twitch, but when the Major turned, her face froze into a stoic mask.

  “Intimidating her?” the Major barked. “That’s no way to intimidate someone, Sergeant. This is how you intimidate someone.”

  The Major’s immaculately restored Vektor Z88 appeared as if by magic a centimeter from Jinx’s forehead. Her legs dropped from under her, depositing her in the sand before she could blink. The violent fall knocked the air from her lungs and she puffed up dust as she tried hauling air back into them. The Major flipped her over with his boot and leaned down. His gray eyes drew to slits under his thick eyebrows.

  “Are you fully intimidated, Sergeant Jinx?”

  “Sir… yes…” she wheezed, “sir.”

  “On your feet, Sergeant!”

  Jinx straightened, wincing.

  The Major doled out a glare between them. “What the hell are you two doing out here?”

  “Training, sir,” Pearce supplied and Jinx scowled at him.

  “This area’s off limits. Unless you two were looking to run into a Wildebeest raiding party just for the bloody fun of it.”

  “Sir, no sir,” they chimed.

  Pearce saluted, drawing Vanbuuren’s eye. “What they want out here?” Pearce asked.

  “I’ll be sure to ask the next one I see, Sergeant.” The Major faced Jinx. “Training, né? Don’t see any vests.” His fingernail flicked her shoulder. “No gloves, no visors. No protective gear whatsoever. And who authorised this training session of yours?” His sarcasm laden words told her exactly what he thought of that excuse. “You have five seconds, Sergeants, before you’re both on dish-duty for the next—”

  “We were settling a wager, sir,” Jinx snapped, forgetting herself long enough to glare at Pearce.

  “Now you’re gambling? I’m gone for two days and the entire fucking squad goes to shit?”

  “Sir, no sir,” they barked in unison.

  Jinx snapped off a salute, just in case. The Major glared up at her, and then down at Pearce.

  “You leave your casings lying around?”

  Pearce hesitated. Then, “Yes, sir.”

  “How many?”

  Pearce squirmed.

  Jinx cleared her throat. “We both shot off quite a few rounds, sir.”

  “Pearce, get the casings. Jinx, follow me.” The Major turned on his heel, marching back through the underbrush.

  Pearce grabbed her arm as she turned away.

  “Why didn’t you
tell me he’d be back today?” he hissed.

  His brown eyes flickered between hers, intent on her response.

  “I didn’t know!” She jerked her arm free. “Don’t you think if I’d known I would’ve—”

  “Jinx!” the Major barked, and she flinched.

  Pearce shook his head and hurried away, already searching through the scree for the spent rubber bullets. Jinx jogged to the Major, her gait uneven.

  “Pearce give you that limp?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s not safe.”

  “For who?” She saw his lips quirk up and allowed herself a small smile.

  “I have intel for you.”

  “Good or bad?”

  He paused, glancing over his shoulder toward where Pearce had disappeared. Then he cocked his head to the crooked shell of a building a few meters away. He slipped into its shadow and beckoned her with a flick of his hand. She limped after him and leaned against the wall, slumping to his eye level. The Major never seemed put off by her height, but it made talking easier.

  Her eyebrows lifted when he remained silent. “Good or bad?” she hissed.

  “Decide for yourself,” he said.

  He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. Jinx took the soft, grubby paper, folded countless times, exhaling sharply as she unfolded it. She tipped it toward the sun to read the faint scratches of two pencilled names.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Ne-els Za-zach—” she began.

  “Neels Zachman and Brett Steyn,” Vanbuuren said.

  Her lips parted in expectation. “Is it—”

  “It’s not him,” the Major whispered, his words mixing with a sigh. “But he might know him.”

  Her fingertips brushed the names. “How? Did they see him?”

  “It’s the same person. He was on guard that night. His new name is Brett. But you want to get his attention, call him Neels and tell him you’re from Rooivalk.”

  Her eyes snapped to his, blazing blue meeting gray. “He was there? How do you know?”

  “I have my sources.” The Major shrugged. “This is good intel, Jinx. You’re going to find him this time.”