The Mall (12 page)

‘There’s no way they could…’ she’s muttering to herself.

‘Come on, Rhoda. You need to talk to me. If you know the song give me the fucking title.’

‘“Nonhlanhla”,’ she says.

‘Huh? I didn’t—’

‘“Non-hlan-hla”,’ she reiterates like I’m a moron. ‘It’s a common name, jerkoff, not some weird alien shit. There’s probably more Nonhlanhlas in
South Africa than there are Dans.’

‘Okay. Whatever. Just give me the spelling. We can do the PC bullshit later, okay. Have you forgotten where we are?’

‘Christ, you’re a dick—’

‘How. The fuck. Do you spell it.
Rhoda
.’

‘N–O–N–H—’

13–20–13. ‘Hang on, hang on. I can’t think where the keys are. You need to go slower. I can’t…’

‘H. H, man! Write it down or something.’

12–12–

And we’re falling so fast I’m thrown against the side of the lift. I try to get into my brace position and Rhoda’s screaming at me: ‘Try again!’

‘There’s no way to clear this thing. I don’t know. How am I…’ This is too much for me. My fucking angel has left the building and all the knowledge I have left is
how this game has worked up to now. That’s all I can trust. I have to believe that we’re going to stop and get another chance. I’ve been acting so macho and like I know what
I’m doing. But I’m going to kill us both. I don’t want that as my last action. I don’t want that as my last thought. I want to go home. I want to wake up. I think about
screaming, but then the lift judders to a stop.

‘Okay, let’s try that again,’ Rhoda says, her voice softer. ‘I’ll go slowly.’

I nod. ‘Any idea how long this song is?’

All she says is ‘N’. I press 13.

‘O’ 20

‘N’ 13

‘H’ 12

‘L’ 21

‘A’ Door open? Fuck, I’ve got it wrong. This can’t be right. But we’re halfway and I can’t reset. There’s no fucking undo in this game. I press the
button, Rhoda’s eyes widen, doubting me as much as I doubt myself. The doors don’t open. I can’t tell if that was good or bad. We just have to finish this entry.

‘N’ 13

‘H’ 12

‘L’ 21

‘A’ Door open. A shudder and I think oh God this is it, we’re dead, but then the lift is hoisting us up gently.

‘How did you know that?’ I ask as we ascend.

‘My dad used to play it when we were first in… in the UK. It was his favourite song. “Nonhlanhla” by Chubby Khoabane. It’s goddamn sacrilege to change
Chubby’s trumpet into fucking panpipes. Dad would be…’ She stops.

‘Well done,’ I say when I realise she’s not going to tell me any more. ‘Good for your dad.’

‘He named me after this song.’

‘What? Rhoda?’

‘Nonhlanhla’s my real name. Rhoda’s my slave name, if you like.’

‘Better than Lastchance or Nomore, I suppose.’

She gives me a fuck-off look. ‘What I don’t know is how these fuckers knew. Nobody knows my name. Nobody.’

If that’s her name, I have an idea what’s coming next. Sure enough, soon as the lift stops again, another perfect muzak tune follows. Barely into the first bar I start pressing the
buttons: 3 – door open – 13 – 17 – 2 – 21, and we’re on our way up again.

‘Clever,’ says Rhoda. ‘We’ve got HELLO NONHLANHLA DANIEL. I can’t wait to hear what they’re going to say next.’

But I’m thinking of home again. How my mother would put on that Elton John song to soothe me after Dad died. I think it soothed her too, to sing along to it softly, combing her fingers
through my hair. We had the same hair, Dad and me, thin and straight, got knotted a bit, could respond to the gentle tug of Mom’s fingers. This has to be some fucked-up dream. My dad’s
ghost coming back to me in the middle of a long and terrifying night to shit on me for not mourning him properly. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I was thirteen. You don’t know how to
grieve at thirteen. When are you supposed to learn how to grieve?

I wipe at my eyes. It’s sore as if it was yesterday. I wonder if Rhoda’s noticed I’m crying, but she’s standing at the other side of our box, just staring into nothing, a
blank look on her face.

‘Hey, Rhoda. You okay?’ She looks at me dully, as if she’s just woken up.

She slurs, ‘No. I don’t think so.’

I rifle through her jacket pockets, still damp and stinking from the sewer. They have to be ruined, surely. But in the lower inside pocket I find a crumpled box of Stuyvesant, the plastic
wrapping protecting the lone cigarette from too much damage. It’s bent and damp, but it will do. I rummage for the lighter, and have to click it several times before it catches. I take a deep
drag and put it between her lips.

‘Here.’

She pulls the smoke deep into her lungs, coughs, and shakes herself straight.

‘Thanks. That’s better.’ Resuscitating someone with cigarettes. Ironic. My life has changed a bit.

She takes another drag, hands me the cigarette and then there’s screaming and grinding machines and the lift is imploding and people are chainsawing things and smashing cars and I realise
we’ve stopped and music has come on again but these are no panpipes this is war and a guy or an army is screaming from the pit of their stomachs and then holy shit I recognise the noise
somewhere in the noise a pattern not of music nothing so regular but I see a scene of blood and carnage headslayer five level eight with all weapons unlocked that is the racket that accompanied the
full-on slaughter and now I remember Karl has the game soundtrack video and my head is so tuned into the noise that I can read the caption on his screen as we play I am blowing his monsters to
blood clots band is called Sons of Tombspawn and the track number seventeen level eight unlocked was called

READY TO DIE

5 – 2 – door open – 3 – 11

Shit. Space? I look to Rhoda, but she’s just standing there, covering her mouth, eyes wide and this noise is killing me, I can’t think straight. Which one did I say was the fucking
space?

I try 25 and we start to plummet again, the familiar buffeting and I don’t even bother to brace because honestly having my brains knocked out would be better than this noise, this trying,
this up and down and this TINY FUCKING BOX MY BRAIN’S GOING TO EXPLODE I’m going to stop breathing. Then it will be quiet. Then I can go and walk out on my meadow, wash in the cool
stream, lie in the sun. Die in peace.

Then my angel speaks to me in a calm, clear voice.
You can do it
. I want to believe it.

5 – 2 – door open – 3 – 11 – 8 – 20 – 3 – 17 – 2

Ding.

The lift opens. We’re in the mall.

chapter 11

RHODA

‘So we’re seriously locked in, then?’

‘Looks like it,’ Dan says.

‘After all that? We get back here and we can’t even leave?’

He shrugs. He doesn’t seem too outwardly bothered by this setback; no doubt he’s still overwhelmed with relief that we’re not a pile of shattered limbs at the bottom of the
lift shaft. But Christ, it’s a killer not being able to get out of this fucking place. From what I could make out after we fled from the lift, the four interlinking aisles that make up this
floor don’t seem to lead anywhere, and every shop window is concealed behind rolldown metal shutters. Total security overkill. We can’t even get up to the next level. Another gate seals
the top of a pair of frozen escalators that lead to the floor above.

I sit down on the bottom step of the escalator, wincing as the metal grooves dig into the bones of my bum. ‘So the only way out is the lift again,’ I say. ‘And that’s out
of the fucking question.’

‘No shit,’ he mumbles.

‘Where in the mall are we, Dan?’

He shrugs. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘How can you not be sure? I thought you worked here?’

‘Ja, but it’s a big place, Rhoda.’ He sighs. ‘This looks like one of the enclosed mezzanines.’

‘So where’s your bookshop in relation to here, do you think?’

‘Probably up.’

‘Oh brilliant, Dan. Thanks. You’re a great help.’

‘What do you want me to do, Rhoda? We’re back in the mall, what more do you want?’

‘I want to get the fuck out of here, Dan, obviously. We’ve just been to the fucking twilight zone, and I really,
really
need a shower.’

We both start giggling, although I didn’t actually say anything that funny. Besides, it’s true – I
am
desperate to get clean. Both of us reek of that putrid water, and
my skin feels greasy, damp and itchy.

But I suppose that’s the least of my problems. My legs are throbbing with exhaustion; my thigh muscles feel as if they’ve been beaten with a metal pipe, and the rest of my body aches
like one big bruise. And I don’t even want to delve into my mind and see how that’s holding up. There’s no way anyone could go through all that crazy, fucked-up, unbelievable shit
without some sort of psychological damage, is there? Images of the nightmare swim in that stinking canal keep bubbling up, but I’m just not ready to go there. I stand up, hobble over to one
of the shopfronts, and rattle the metal shutter that masks the window display. It’s impossible to tell what the shop sells and the signage doesn’t help. The words ‘Bite
Size!’ are printed in jumbo Comic Sans lettering above the window.

‘This normal?’ I say, kicking the metal shutter for good measure. ‘I mean, we’re inside a mall, right? Isn’t this security a bit OTT?’

‘Probably another lockdown,’ Dan says.

‘A what?’

‘It’s what they do when there’s been an incident in the mall. You know, like an armed robbery, that kind of thing.’

‘So they’ll open the exits up soon?’

‘Maybe. Or if it happened near closing time they’ll probably leave them sealed off until the morning.’

‘Fuck. And we don’t even know what time it is. We could be stuck here for hours.’

He shrugs again. ‘It’s possible.’

‘What do you think they sell in this store?’

‘I dunno. Sweets? Teeth? Dental supplies? Who cares?’ He slumps down on the escalator. He drops his head and runs his fingers through his wet hair.

Although my legs are screaming for me to sit the fuck down and relax, I’m twitchy and on edge. I should be relieved. I should be on my hands and knees kissing the floor tiles and thanking
God that we’re alive. But I can’t crush the nagging feeling that something’s wrong. Could it be because the place is so quiet? Save for the squeak of my sodden trainers on the
tiles, it’s ominously silent. I can’t even hear the background buzz of electricity or air-con. And the lighting is way more subdued than I remember it being. Maybe they’re
trying to save electricity.

But why bother with lights at all if the place is sealed up tighter than a bank vault?

Then something strikes me. ‘But why isn’t this place alarmed?’

‘Nah, the mall itself isn’t. The individual shops are,’ Dan says without raising his head. ‘Relax, Rhoda. We’re safe, okay?’

‘You might be.’

‘Are you still worried about the security guards? After all that’s happened?’

He’s got a point. If Fingerling and Yellow Eyes were to pitch up right now, I’d probably hug them. I’d do almost anything to be sitting safely in their stinking office right
now.

‘We have to tell someone about the kid,’ I say. ‘Tell them that he got lost down there ASAP. They need to send out a search party.’

‘The security guards would have called the cops, Rhoda.’ His patronising tone is beginning to grate.

‘They need us to tell them where he went, though.’ I fumble in my pocket and pull out the phone, my fingers grazing over the knife’s handle. ‘We’ll get a signal
here, right?’ He slaps his forehead like an old-school comedian parodying forgetfulness, and pulls out his own cell. My Nokia’s screen is blank, and it’s so out of juice it
won’t even switch on. Either that or it’s finally succumbed to water damage. ‘Shit. Dead. You?’

‘Also.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Look, don’t worry,’ he says. ‘There’ll be someone here early to open up. Cleaners or whatever. We’ve just got to wait it out.’

‘What about payphones?’

‘They’re normally next to the toilets.’

I don’t remember seeing any after we’d raced out of the lift, but I hadn’t really been looking. Too hysterical with relief to think about anything else. And the mention of
toilets makes me realise that I need to pee really desperately.

‘Come on,’ I say.

‘Huh? Where you going?’

‘See if I can find a phone. And a fucking toilet.’

‘I really don’t want to go back there, Rhoda,’ he says.

‘I’m not going near the lift, Dan. Anyway, we jammed the door open, there’s no way that psycho can get up here after us.’

‘You still think it’s a psycho?’

I don’t know what to think. I just know I can’t think about that right now. Besides, even though my stomach’s telling me something’s off about this place, my mind’s
still dizzy with relief at the normality of our surroundings.

‘Whatever. Look, you can hang here if you like, but I’m going to check it out.’

I stride off, not waiting to see if he’s going to follow. I’ve barely gone ten metres when I hear the slap of his boots behind me.

We walk past shops sealed with uniform metal security gates; the signs above the battened-down windows are each as brightly coloured as the next, and just as crassly named: Clips ’n’
Crap, Curl Up & Die (although shouldn’t that be ‘Curl Up & Dye’?) and Diabeatties. Dan slows down as we reach the point where the four aisles meet. At the end of the aisle
to our left, the lift is still wide open, the empty trolley we’d used to keep the doors open still jammed in place.

‘See?’ I say. ‘We’re cool. Like you said, we’re safe.’

Dan tries to grin at me, but fails miserably.

The aisle in front of us ends in a locked-down dead end, so I hang a right – the only other option. The shops in this section are similarly shielded, but none have the garish signs above
the windows.

Dan grabs the back of my T-shirt. ‘Wait, Rhoda!’

‘What?’

‘Check.’

There’s a narrow corridor to our right. It’s gloomy and ends in a brick wall. There’s no sign of a phone, but there are two doors opposite each other about halfway down. I
follow Dan towards them.