by Jaco Jacobs
Aunt Hantie and I watched in silence as they crossed the lawn towards us.
‘Three zombies reporting for duty,’ Vusi’s dad said to me and put his arm around his wife’s waist.
Miranda smiled that smile of hers that made you feel slightly shaky.
‘We’ll have to change the entire story,’ Vusi said. He smiled at me. ‘But that’s OK.’
Just then there was a loud bang from the direction of the street.
Surprised, I asked Vusi, ‘Is that the school bus?’
He shrugged.
The rattletrap bus drove right up to us and stopped in a cloud of smoke. One by one, the plot plodders got out: Patrick with his thick glasses, Safraaz, Waylon, even the blonde twins, Mandi and Jolandi. I swallowed hard when Chris also appeared from the bus. Last but not least, Mr Oldman got out.
‘Do you have a role for a one-armed zombie?’ he asked.
Vusi looked at me and a big smile lit up his face. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said. ‘You’re perfect!’
Safraaz grunted. ‘I only came along because my dad told me to. Because you guys helped catch those guys who broke into our cafe twice.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Safraaz sighed. ‘My dad said he’d bring us all some cold drinks and snacks later on. I just have to call him on my mobile and let him know how many people we are.’
Two more cars approached and stopped next to the school bus.
‘I hope your dad knows what he’s let himself in for,’ Aunt Hantie said drily to Safraaz. ‘Seems like we’re going to have a whole horde of zombies!’
I looked at Chris. She was standing a little way off, with her back to us. I summoned up all my courage and went over to her.
‘I’m so sorry about everything.’
She turned around. ‘Actually, I have to say sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off like that. It was just…’
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘C’mon, we have to start making up the zombies before it gets too dark.’
Vusi was already explaining to people what they should do. When Chris and I approached, he started giving us orders as well.
More people joined us. At five sharp, I counted thirty-one people.
With a gesture, Vusi gathered everyone around him. When they all grew quiet, he started to explain the story behind the movie.
‘We’re going to shoot the last scene of the movie first. With a mob of zombies sweeping down on Chris and me. Then we’re going to open fire… We’ll decide which of you will be shot dead.’
‘But then how are we going to gobble you up?’ asked Mr Oldman. He let out a spine-chilling zombie roar.
Everyone laughed.
Vusi shook his head. ‘No, Chris and I will escape. But one of the zombies is going to bite me. Clucky, that’ll be you. And then I have to say goodbye to Chris at the end of the movie before I also turn into a zombie.’
Aunt Hantie shuddered. ‘It sounds like a terribly bloody affair. Are you sure there–’
She stopped speaking suddenly. It looked as if her mouth had fallen open with amazement.
Chris softly put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Clucky, look…’
I turned around slowly.
The last time my mum had left the house was two years, four months and nineteen days ago. That was how long ago my dad was buried.
Everyone watched in silence as Mum walked towards us over the lawn. On her left walked Uncle Hendrik and on her right was Cindy. It looked like Mum could feel every inquisitive eye on her but she resolutely kept walking towards us.
Cindy’s eyes were still a little puffy, but she was smiling. I almost couldn’t remember when I last saw my sister smile. ‘I came to help,’ she said. ‘Last term we did special effects make-up at the college. Zombie make-up can’t be that difficult.’
‘And I haven’t been in a movie for years,’ Mum said, ‘but I’ll try my best. That is, if you have a part for an old has-been like me…’
Then she smiled and pulled me close to her. And only then did I realize she was wearing Dad’s leather jacket.
Einstein, Time and Another Newspaper Article
Einstein said that time is relative. I knew this wasn’t what he meant, but when lots of things are happening and you’re busy all the time, you sometimes don’t even notice how quickly time passes.
Winter passed, and then spring, and then it was summer. The year had nearly come to an end. Soon we would start taking our exams, and after that the long-awaited December holidays would follow.
Late one afternoon I popped in to visit Vusi. A pigeon was cooing high up in a tree and somewhere in the distance you could hear children playing and laughing.
As usual, I sat down next to him.
‘I went for another advanced maths lesson this afternoon,’ I said. ‘It was really tough, but a thousand times more fun than Mr Faure’s maths classes.’
I hardly believed my ears the day the headmaster summoned me to tell me about the extra maths lessons. Miss Cullen, the student teacher who was doing her practical at our school, had found the page on which I did sums that afternoon in detention. I hadn’t known that the sums were part of an old university paper. She showed the page to one of her lecturers at university, and they then invited me to become part of a programme for people who liked maths a lot. We met every Friday afternoon. Miss Cullen came to pick me up in her car. I was one of only two schoolchildren – the rest of the class consisted of university students.
‘I have big news…’ I said to Vusi. ‘Miranda came to visit Uncle Hendrik. And I saw him kissing her when she left!’
The evening we shot the final scene of the zombie movie, Uncle Hendrik and Miranda had started chatting to each other. At first I thought my eyes were deceiving me because Uncle Hendrik had always been so shy, but maybe all the laughing and chatting zombies around him had made him come out of his shell. Or maybe it had just been Miranda. She was still one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. I still struggled to speak when she was around.
I started telling Vusi about the things that had happened at school.
‘Chris and I are working on an Afrikaans project together. We have to do something on an author.’ I laughed. ‘We’re still fighting about who we’re going to choose.’
A few weeks before his death, Vusi finally admitted that Miranda had told him that Mum used to be an actress. Miranda in turn had heard it from Mrs Moosa from the cafe. And everyone knew that there was nothing that Mrs Moosa didn’t know about other people’s affairs.
‘Oh yes, I have more great news,’ I said. ‘My mum got a job at a radio station. She says they won’t pay her much, but she’s going to host a chat programme every weekday.’
In the beginning it had been strange to come and chat to Vusi like this. But after the second or third time I’d grown used to it.
I was in school the morning he died. His mum and dad and Miranda were with him. The doctors hadn’t thought that it would happen that quickly, but one day he suddenly took a turn for the worse. He had to be taken to hospital, where he stayed for the last three weeks of his life.
Before he died, I convinced his mum and dad to rent a movie projector and one evening we invited everyone in the cancer ward to come and watch The End of the World. Even the doctors and nurses joined us – and, of course, Chris and Mum and Uncle Hendrik and Cindy and Miranda and Aunt Hantie. Everyone laughed a lot and Aunt Hantie shut her eyes tightly every time a zombie appeared on the screen. (But she did peep when she was hobbling across the screen herself – with a hideous, blood-smeared face, thanks to Cindy’s scary make-up.) At the end of the movie, everyone clapped and cheered and congratulated Vusi. I could see that he was very, very proud.
A light breeze was blowing through the trees. I looked at my watch.
When I got up, I felt in my trouser pocket to make sure the newspaper clipping was still there.
‘I have to go now,’ I told Vusi’s gravestone. ‘There’s something else I still have to do.’
Ever
since that evening when I lay on my bed thinking about it, I thought of death as zero. Zero isn’t the end – it’s the middle. It’s halfway between the positive and the negative numbers – on either side of zero are two rows of numbers that extend to infinity, far enough to make you dizzy with excitement.
I never told anyone about that. It was just my way of seeing it. Maybe Mum and Cindy and Uncle Hendrik all thought of it in different ways. Just as there are different ways to do a difficult sum.
I slowly walked through the rows of gravestones. Past forty gravestones, then left and past another eleven.
I stopped in front of a simple black marble slab. For a while I just stared at the name and the dates that were engraved into the marble with white letters.
‘I finally saved up enough egg money, Dad,’ I said. ‘To buy computers for the school. But don’t worry – I’m still selling eggs. Aunt Hantie said Safraaz’s dad’s cafe has become even more expensive.’
I unfolded the newspaper clipping, bent down and put it under the vase with the plastic flowers. I looked at it for a moment, then turned around and walked back to where my bike was leaning against the tree, waiting.
Einstein, Time and Another Newspaper Article
SCHOOL PUZZLED OVER
ANONYMOUS DONATION
The headmaster and governing body of Rocklands Primary are elated about a mysterious donation their school received this week. Out of the blue, a consignment of ten new computers was delivered to the school, but the name of the donor is unknown. The company the computers were bought from said the donor has asked to remain anonymous.
‘It’s still a complete mystery,’ the delighted headmaster, Mr Devon Claasen, said yesterday morning. ‘But we are very grateful for this donation because our students badly need exposure to the latest computer technology.’
Apparently the government had provided funds for a computer centre two years ago, but on its way to the school the original consignment of computers was destroyed in a collision.
Acknowledgements
While, sadly, I did not inherit my dad’s amazing maths skills (ask my high-school maths teachers), there are countless other ways in which he has inspired me – and we’re both very fond of chickens. Thanks for always believing in me, Dad, and for allowing me to pursue my dreams.
Elize, Mia and Emma, thank you for being patient those days when I’m counting chickens in my head. I love you gazillions.
This book would not have been possible without the hard work and encouragement of Miemie du Plessis, my publisher, friend – and also a maths whizz, who helped check Clucky’s sums in this book.
A big shout-out to Lizé Vosloo, Stefan Enslin, Morné du Toit and the rest of the team responsible for the film adaptation of this book, released in South Africa in 2017.
Thank you to Kobus Geldenhuys for the wonderful English translation and to Madeleine Stevens for the sharp-eyed copy-editing – it’s an absolute pleasure working with both of you.
And last but certainly not least, thank you to my editor, Shadi Doostdar, as well as Paul Nash, Kate Bland, Harriet Wade and the rest of the team at Oneworld and Rock the Boat. If I ever had to face a zombie horde, I would be lucky to have a crew like you by my side.
A Rock the Boat Book
First published by Rock the Boat, an imprint of Oneworld Publications, 2018
This ebook published 2018
Originally published in Afrikaans as Oor ’n motorfiets, ’n zombiefliek en lang getalle wat deur elf gedeel kan word by Lapa Uitgewers, 2013
Copyright © Jaco Jacobs, 2013, 2018
English translation copyright © Kobus Geldenhuys, 2018
The moral right of Jaco Jacobs to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78607-450-8
elSBN 978-1-78607-451-5
Oneworld Publications
10 Bloomsbury Street
London WC1B 3SR
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