‘Hey, K. You okay?’ Toby raps on the door.
‘Is she coming out?’
‘Yeah, she’s coming out. Just relax.’
‘I didn’t say she could use the shower, man.’ The door shifts but jams against the laundry bin. ‘Just chuck her out. Shit.’
‘I’ll pay for the fucking water,’ I shout. There’s no shampoo, not surprising for a bald guy, so I use the sludgy bar of green anti-bacterial soap on my hair. I scoop the dress from the floor and try to deal with the stain. The bile and blood are too thoroughly bonded with it, though, and there is a faintly chemical odour too, reminding me of the overwhelming hysteria that came over me at the station, when the dogs surged forward. I couldn’t help it. I had to go with them. I scrub and scrub at the stain, but all I’m doing is rubbing it in.
I dry off with a musty blue towel, the only one I can find. Scratching around in the hamper, I find a green t-shirt that isn’t too stained. I wring out the dress and roll it down around my hips, tucking in the wet spots as best as I can, and pull the tee over it. It has a decal that says Ecco-5, which I think is a game. Or maybe a band. I avoid the mirror.
‘Finally!’ says jittery bald guy as I slide open the door. He pauses; the gears in his brain pop and grind. ‘Hey, that’s my shirt.’
‘Are we going to get out of here?’
‘I dunno.’ Toby is suddenly nervous. ‘Maybe it’s not a good idea. After, well.’
‘Hey. You absolutely cannot stay here. I am not kidding.’
‘I mean, have you thought about it?’ Toby asks.
‘What?’
He laughs, but it’s forced. ‘Whether we should go or not. Or wait. To see, you know?’
‘No, bullshit! You guys need to get to one of those vaccine places soon as.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, are we in your way, Unathi?’
‘This isn’t my problem, Tobias. You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘You were the one who hooked me up with the fucking mission! It’s exactly your problem.’
Their fighting is making the pain in my head worse. It’s like a flash-bulb popping, like the veins in my temples are threads of filament burning out.
‘Do you have any Ghost?’ The questions shuts them both up.
Baldy – Unathi – whatever, smirks. ‘There’s a spaza. On the corner. On the way out.’
The kid with the bad hair – I still don’t know his name – tramps sulkily after us through two sets of security doors, which buzz open in succession to let us out through an alley that backs onto the delivery entrance of the spaza, which is closed.
‘Tighter than a nun’s—’ Toby starts to say.
‘Okay. Just. I’m sure there’s another one.’
‘Not in this neighbourhood.’
We’re not exactly residential. It seems to be mainly warehouses and stacks of metal containers, which must mean we’re near the old docks, not too far removed from the station. It’s desolate, apart from a rat, loathsomely huge, perched on a mound of rotten tarpaulins. It stops to look at us, incuriously, and then resumes cleaning its face in little circular motions with both paws.
‘We’re never going to get a taxi now.’
‘Couldn’t pay for it anyway,’ Toby says.
‘What?’
I glance at my phone to check the time, but the screen is unnervingly blank. I hit the power, but the screen doesn’t light up reassuringly, my signature tune doesn’t kick in. I pop the battery, click it back in and thumb it again. But there’s nothing.
‘Yeah, they amped up the juice when the defusers weren’t working.’
‘Fried everything one time,’ the kid says with genuine admiration.
‘Even my illegit handset got toasted,’ Toby says. ‘How do you think we ended up here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘No phone. No cash. The last taxi kicked us out.’
‘Does this mean I’m disconnect?’ It’s too much. I sink down heavily on the kerb, not even worried about the rat. ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to see.’
‘My mom’s going to butcher me if I’m disconnect,’ the kid says glumly, flicking a stompie at the rat, which only twitches its ropy tail and goes back to cleaning itself.
‘Hey, come on, baby girl. Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not fucking crying.’
The kid looks away embarrassed. Toby checks his watch. ‘Look, it’s 3.18. My place is nearby. Well, relatively nearby. It’s about six kays, we can walk it. And we’ll just go chill out until morning, maybe email some people. Persuade someone to make a call on our behalf.’
‘I’m going to an immunisation centre,’ blurts the kid. ‘You can’t stop me. Don’t even try and stop me.’ He’s holding a gun, his hand shaking.
‘That’s fine, Eddie. I don’t give a fuck what you do. All the better. Means you’re out of my fucking hair,’ Toby says.
‘There’s nothing you can do. I’m going.’
‘So fucking go already!’
The kid stands there trembling, his eyes wild, and then, with a little bounce on the balls of his feet, he turns and bolts away down the alley.
Toby shouts after him. ‘Oh, and Eddie! The guns aren’t real, remember? Fucking moron.’
It occurs to me that he’s terribly young to be alone and disconnect in this neighbourhood at night. But then it occurs to me, so are we.
‘So what happens after that, Toby?’
He yanks me to my feet. ‘We talk to my corporate friend. She might be able to sort us out. Or we go get ourselves a vaccine and we deal with whatever comes up along the way.’
Toby’s apartment is surprisingly immaculate. I know that was an unfair assumption. But when I comment on it, feeling awkward and sweaty after the walk, he laughs and drops a crumpled piece of paper onto the floor. Instantly, a VIMbot shoots out from under the couch, scoops it up, and then darts for cover.
‘My secret sharer,’ he says, collapsing onto the couch and sliding off his boots with his heels. After the tense silence of the long walk for endless kays, surely more than six, to get here, and the mission at the entrance to convince the doorwatcher to let us in without the benefit of Toby’s SIM, it’s a relief to be inside, to be safe. Although safety is relative.
‘Is that a reference to something? Am I supposed to get that?’
‘Oh god, how pretentious. Sorry. It’s Conrad. I’m still registered for a literature degree. At least as far as my folks are concerned. Don’t ask me to recommend him, though. The book was boring as fuck, but all his stuff is. Total wank.’
‘I didn’t take you for the literati type.’
‘Well, between that and bioscience…’ he shrugs.
‘Or the studying type.’
‘There’s no reason to be rude. My darling mother’s probably stopped paying the tuition along with everything else. He shrugs, oneshouldered, ‘Hey, what was I going to do with a Master’s in lit, anyway? You want some sugar?’
‘Got any Ghost?’
‘You really don’t let up on that shit. Have some sugar, it’ll chill you out.’
‘No, I really don’t—’
‘Whatever you want to do, sweetness. Doesn’t affect me in the slightest.’
He stands up and disappears barefoot into the kitchen. A cupboard door bangs harder than necessary. I sit down on a folder chair at the dining-desk, so that he can’t sit next to me.
‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to take drugs on top of whatever we’ve been infected with.’ The desk is stacked with neat piles of epaper, the edges perfectly aligned.
‘Best time,’ he shouts back. Another bang disproportionate to whatever the hell he’s doing.