CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - ALEC
I feel like fokken Bruce Willis in that Christmas movie he made a long time ago. The one where he’s trapped in that building and ain’t got no shoes on. I should have thought through what was going to happen next. I should have considered my plan of escape. I should have at least put on shoes. But, oh, well, I suppose I’m in it now.
I laugh to myself a tiny bit as I peer around a corner to make sure that there’s no one standing in the hallway. Because this is exactly the kind of thing Christine would do. Go off on some undercooked plan of action. Just plunge headlong into a dire circumstance with no particularly strategic course of remedy.
I blame myself. I taught her to be that way, I think. Although she always had it in her. That trip to the Tower of London. Her obsession with charging in and stealing the Crown Jewels. It’s proper insane. Nobody muses over that kind of thing. Or, if they do, they don’t ever intend to act on it. Christine did. I really believe that if neither Danny nor I were there to put the kibosh on it, she might have ended up enjoying the rest of her life trapped behind the walls of Bronzefield Prison. So I chuckle, thinking about how I’m being moved by the spirit of Christine Keene.
Still and all… I wish I had on shoes. Or at least clothes. I’m like that oke Holden Caulfield in the book Catcher in the Rye. The little mental fokker who gets beaten on in his night clothes while trying to have sex with a prostitute. The difference, of course, being that I ain’t mental and I don’t have the pleasure of being with a gentoo. I’m quite sane and am escaping an unknowable situation with the intention of discovering if the only two people in the world that I feel true love for are alive and together and at all willing to allow me back into their lives.
No. I ain’t mental at all.
Ach, man. Ek gee nie ‘n fok nie. Ek loop.
I don’t see anyone lurking about, so I begin working my way down the corridor. It’s actually probably quite all right that I have no shoes now that I think on it. Quiet. The pitter patter of my steps is well muted. Which is useful in this moment, as it allows me to hear the sound of heavily booted feet coming from around the next corner in the direction I’m headed. Shit.
I turn and head back the way from which I just came. Which seems like a goddamn waste of a lot of energy, but I really do want to have to use this weapon only as a last resort. Because very few things in the world call chaos upon you like the sound of automatic rifle fire. If conflict is unavoidable, then one must do what one must. But in my current state, I’d say the odds are not in my favor.
I dart around the corner leading back to my bedroom-cum-holding cell. And just as I do, I hear, “Oi! Liam. Whatsit, bru?”
Shit.
I make it back into the room before the approaching oke spies me, I think, because the pace of his steps doesn’t accelerate and the ease in his voice remains the same when he says, “Liam? That you, man? What’s happening, bru? Everything hundreds? You need something?”
I have to assume that they (whoever “they” are) all have their own posts. In the small bit of meandering I’ve been able to do, I’ve tended to see the same faces in the same places over and over. Very much exactly like sentries on prescribed posts, guarding a fortress. And for the flashiest of flashes, I again wonder… why the fok am I here and how?
But I’ve got no time to indulge the notions, because as I dart back inside my sleeping quarters, I see the laaitie Liam, still on the floor where I left him. Snoring. Actually snoring. Like a goddamn cartoon character. I knocked him out and now he’s making more noise than he was when he was conscious.
Jesus Christ, man. This has got to be the most cocked-up escape attempt in history.
I close the door behind me and run to where young Liam is sawing logs, as they say, on the ground. Just as I reach him, a knock on the door…
“Liam? You in there, man?”
I don’t respond. Just stare at the closed door, as if by willing the oke to go away, he will.
“Liam?”
He doesn’t.
“Mr. van den Berg?”
I start to respond, when suddenly I have what is quite possibly the stupidest idea of my life. I don’t fancy myself a particularly stupid oke, so it’s not as if I have a vast barrel of stupid ideas from which to choose. But even if I were a right ninny and had a bottomless pit of dumb from which to pull, this might be way, way down there below all the other dumb ones as the inanest.
“Mr. van den Berg, sir? May I come in?”
It’s an odd feeling to be held prisoner but still very clearly be regarded as the boss.
I kneel down, sliding the rifle under the bed, and grab Liam up under the arms. I hoist him to his feet, discovering that he is sturdier than he looks. My ribs virtually moan in protest. But I manage to drag him to the side of the bed where I drop him and force his crumpled body underneath as well.
And then life starts happening in slow motion.
I can see the door handle starting to turn. I return my gaze back down toward the snoring Liam. His arm and booted foot protruding out from the side of the bed frame.
The door handle spins all the way round and the door begins to crack open.
I kneel down and force Liam’s appendages underneath and out of sight.
My ribs strain and I moan.
The door is ajar. “Mr. van den Berg? Sir?”
A head is visible in shadow as I spring onto the mattress and pull the covers over me.
Liam continues snoring.
I slide the sheets to the side of my face just enough to see the head of the laaitie make its way into the room. Arno, I believe he’s called.
“Mr. van den Berg?”
Liam snores, loudly. And as he does, I move about under the sheets and make noises suggesting that I’m not going to be easily awakened.
“Mmmm,” I moan. Liam snores. It times surprisingly well.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir.” Arno, half-whispers. “I was looking for—”
Liam snores very loudly and I toss in the sheets in concert.
Arno stops talking and begins backing out of the room.
Fok me, man. I cannot believe this might have gone over.
And just as I’m about to throw the sheets from me and count my blessings that the absurdity of this recent turn of events seems to have worked out in my favor…
Arno opens the door and reenters the room.
Fok die kak, man. Are you kidding me right now?
I continue peering from under the sheets as he steps into the space.
Liam snores. I rustle.
Arno makes his way toward the bed.
I had really, really hoped to make it through today without killing anyone. I truly had. But if Arno takes two more steps in this direction, he’ll be leaving me with limited options.
And then, at the very last moment before he lands at my bedside, he curves away from the foot, takes up the empty bowl of pap and wors, and makes his way back to the door. He pulls it open, steps into the hall, looks back into the room once last time, and closes it behind him.
Jesus. Christ.
If I read that sequence of events in a book... I would cry bull kak.
I cast the sheets off, make my way to the door, open it a crack to make sure he’s gone, and then close it again. Liam continues his symphony of sleep.
Goddamn it, man. This may well wind up being harder than I thought. And my next thought is… is it even worth it? Even if I do get free from here, what do I think I’ll do? I’ll still have to escape into London, find clothes, charter a plane, and then set about figuring out where Christine and Danny are. If they are.
And it occurs to me that that’s entirely the wrong order. The wrong sequence. The first thing I should be attempting to do is to determine if Danny and Christine are. Out there. At all. If they aren’t, then…
I should just determine if they are.
I dart back over to the bed, reach underneath, and start rummaging through the pockets of Rip van Liam. I find his mobile and retrieve it.
Several years ago, Christine, Danny, and I set up root numbers. Numbers that the three of us could memorize and that I would see to it were forwarded to whatever mobile devices we happened to be using. In perpetuity. That’s how I was able to reach Danny back on the plane from Cape Town. However many… weeks? Months?… ago that was. I took a gamble that it would still be active. And it was. And now, I have to take that gamble again.
I could reach out to Christine, I suppose. But when last I left them, Danny and I were on far better and less being-shot-at terms. I start to dial, but then think better of it.
I don’t know what kind of service Liam and the assembled crew here are using. Commercial, private, secure, unsecure, monitored… I have no idea. Calling is far too risky a proposition.
I choose to text.
Danny. Bru. It’s Alec. Really. I’m sure it’s hard to believe, but it’s me. Here’s how you can tell: It may be time to improvise. If you’re alive and able to receive this, do let me know.
I hit ‘send,’ and then I wait. And wait. And wait. Liam’s snoring feels as though it’s getting louder. I have no idea how long he’ll be out, but if the snoring thing doesn’t abate soon, I may have to suffocate him.
Just as I’m considering planting a pillow on Liam’s face, he is miraculously spared by the ding of a text.
Alec?
Yeah, bru. It’s me.
Jesus
Indeed
You’re really alive
It would seem. I’m going to try to work myself free and come to you, yeah? Tell me where you are.
A few moments go by. Tiny bubbles appear on the screen. I have no idea what’s going to come my way. He could be anywhere. Honestly, if he told me he was on holiday on the surface of the sun, I wouldn’t be shocked. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
Well… almost nothing.
Finally, after almost half a minute, his response pings through.
We’re here