Fever

by Deon Meyer

Sometimes they caught people who came to Bloemfontein. The Mall didn’t have room for more people, the Mall was full. And the Sales Club paid a lot for people.

  Women?

  No, men as well.

  How were people and food exchanged for solar panels and batteries?

  Lorries came, sometimes only one, sometimes even five.

  Who rode in the lorries?

  Guys with guns.

  Did they know about Number One, and the Chair?

  Yes. They were the people who had the Sales Club.

  Where were they?

  Nobody knew.

  Domingo asked them about the Mall’s defences and their weaponry. They grew more and more uneasy; they said everyone who worked outside the Mall carried firearms during the day. All the weapons were from the School of Armour and 1 SA Tank Regiment and 44 Parachute Regiment and 1 Infantry Battalion.

  Were the tanks and armoured cars in working order?

  One nodded, the other shook his head.

  Don’t lie to me.

  No, the military vehicles in front of the Mall didn’t work. The diesel had run out a long time ago, the vehicles were just parked there as a deterrent. Some of the cannon still worked. All the guns could shoot.

  Domingo stood thinking about what he still needed to know. One of the Bravo team asked, did they have schools, doctors and ministers?

  The two looked dumbfounded. No. Everyone worked. Everyone had to work to build up the food supplies. The Mayor was strict, if you wanted to live there you had to work. Who were we? one of them asked. Where did we come from?

  ‘I think we should shoot them,’ said Domingo, but we knew him, we knew it wasn’t an order, it was a strategy.

  They pleaded, both men. Please, they said, they daren’t tell anyone we were here, they daren’t admit that they had been captured and interrogated. If we went away, no one would even know that we had been there, they wouldn’t tell a soul.

  Domingo thought about it. He ordered four Bravo members to stay with the men, with instructions not to say a word about who we were. He led the rest of us on to the Mall. We studied it through night sights and binoculars from a safe distance. We could see the tanks and armoured cars, there were people moving at the sandbag barriers, people who were awake and ready.

  We walked back to the cricket oval to fetch our comrades. Then Alpha and Bravo took another route back to the lorries.

  The notorious attack, that famous battle where four members of Alpha and three of Bravo were wounded, took place in Bloemfontein, just across the N1, in the veld between Langenhoven Park and the Makro hypermarket.

  Years later we would hear that it was such dangerous territory that the inhabitants of the Mall never dared go there at night, and in daytime went armed with guns.

  We were on our way back to the trucks. It was an hour before sunrise, after a long, hard night. The tension wore one out, the worst was behind us and we had left the built-up area, starting to relax, sleepy, not as alert as we had been earlier. Bravo walked ahead, in V-formation, Alpha was a hundred metres behind us.

  Pitch-dark.

  We only heard them at first, frightening sounds, beastly, aggressive, malevolent. Bloodthirsty sounds. Then we saw, between the two teams, the dark shadows start to move, low on the ground, but incredibly swift. An attacking horde. Before anyone could react or Domingo could say a word, they were among us, and they knocked us from our feet, massive monsters of three hundred kilograms or more, snapping at us, fangs ripping through flesh and crushing bone. We couldn’t shoot, for fear of hitting one another.

  Domingo screamed orders and clicked on his torch. He was at the vanguard of Bravo team and had to turn around to confront the danger. He aimed the torch and in its beam we saw the pigs – not wild boar, not warthogs or bush pigs, but farm pigs. American Landrace, and Cinta Senese and hybrids of unfathomable genes, massive and ferocious. Later the farmers among us would identify them from the carcasses we took along, those that we managed to shoot before we drove the rest away with the clamour of our R4 rifles. They said there must have been piglets nearby that had to be protected.

  Farm pigs. Domestic animals gone wild, perhaps the descendants of pigs that had been farmed somewhere in the area.

  They wounded seven of us, and one soldier’s femoral artery bled so much that we thought he would die before someone managed to staunch the bleeding.

  The Year of the Pig.

  Chapter 72

  Sofia Bergman

  No, I didn’t like Nico. Not at all.

  And I felt lonelier in Amanzi during that first year than when I had been completely alone on the farm. I know people will say, come on, how is that possible, but you must understand the way it was. You arrive there and you’re the flavour of the month, your story is the big one of the moment. And mine was. I was the one who was captured by the motorcycle gang, and I was the one who chased that disgusting swine with the spanner, the one who shot Nico Storm in the chest with a crossbow. Everyone thought that was the coolest thing ever, everyone wanted to talk to me and be my friend. Until the next group arrived, with another epic tale. Everyone’s story was epic, in those days. And then everyone would want to be their friend.

  That’s the problem, if you’re new, you can’t be friends with everyone, and I saw that happen a lot in Amanzi, then in the end you’re friends with nobody. I think it’s the most peculiar situation, a community like Amanzi, where actually everyone is new, but . . .

  The other thing was that, as far as I know, I was one of only a handful of people who arrived at Amanzi alone. Nero Dlamini, too, of course, but 98 per cent arrived in groups. Sometimes quite small groups, but at least they were groups. So when their fifteen minutes of fame was over, they at least had each other, until they were absorbed by the group as normal. But for me it was different.

  I was overwhelmed. Try to imagine being secluded on the farm for so long, and completely alone for months, and then all those things happen at once, and you’re thrown in with people and getting lots of attention and it’s overwhelming.

  I was sixteen, remember that, sixteen and socially inept.

  At first they said I should live in the Orphanage. Then, just after New Year, I had to move to Groendakkies. Just below the Orphanage in Madeliefie Street there’s a whole row of town houses or terrace houses, I don’t know what they called them in the old days. That’s where they let most of the teenagers – the orphan teenagers – live. The houses all had green roofs, and Groendakkies was apparently a nickname for a mental asylum before the Fever. In any case, it was . . . Today I know it was the best possible system. Nero Dlamini managed it, he trained the adults and advised the adults who acted as foster parents or sort of mentors to us. But in any case, I moved in with others, who were anything from twelve to seventeen, girls one side, boys the other. And they told me I had to go to school one week, I had to study mathematics, biology, science, geography and world history, and two ‘skills’. They suggested I take needlework and food technology as a skills.

  Maybe it would have been okay if I’d had a bit of school before. But I had gone four years without attending school, and they tested me and told me I was to be in a class with the fourteen-year-olds, and I also had to take needlework or food processing. I refused to attend school. Nero came to talk to me, and I told him I walked from the farm in boots that were too big, and I was okay. Now that I had shoes that fitted, I would rather walk back to the farm than sit in class with little children, and I wasn’t going to study such stupid skills.

  He negotiated with me. He must have been laughing up his sleeve at me, I was so silly, but needlework and food processing? Please!

  So he asked what skills I would prefer to study. And I said what is there? And he listed them all. I said agriculture and shooting. And he said okay. And would I just do six months of class with the fourteen-year-olds? Just for review. Then he would personally see to it that I was advanced, and then we would make a plan.

  I agreed to that. But I wasn’
t at all happy.

  The only thing that kept me from derailing entirely was running. Most afternoons after school I went running. For kilometres and kilometres.

  I never could understand why Sofia Bergman was so angry. At everything and everyone, but especially at me.

  At weekends if we wanted to go to Amanzi, we Spotters had to walk there, since Domingo forbade the use of the horses or the vehicles. It wasn’t far, only about three kilometres from the SpOT barracks to the Orphanage, but it was uphill, and it was often very cold or very hot. Sometimes it rained. But every Sunday I walked there to have breakfast with Pa and Okkie, and to try to have a word with Sofia Bergman.

  But she would ignore me. Clearly she hadn’t yet realised she was supposed to be my future wife.

  Sofia Bergman

  Of course I ignored him. He used to be a real little show-off.

  He would stop there in front of Groendakkies and the other girls would say, ‘Ooh, ooh, here’s Nico Storm,’ and they would bat their eyelashes and grab the nearest hairbrush or lipstick, and he would stand there in his uniform like he was God’s gift to women. He had a real attitude, he can say what he likes, he did have this way of walking; the other girls thought he was the sexiest thing they had ever seen, but I thought he was just arrogant and vain.

  He would come and hang about on the pavement in front of Groendakkies and ask if I was there, and the girls would come and call me, and when I went out he would say, ‘Hi, Sofia,’ in that funny way. He must have thought it would make my knees buckle, but all it did was annoy me.

  I asked them if Sofia was there. I’d been thinking about her all week. I would fantasise about her, how I would heroically rescue her from the clutches of a biker gang. Or something. All week I ached to see her.

  She came out on to the veranda at Groendakkies, with that long, blond hair of hers, and her slim body and skin that was sheer perfection. I drank her in, that beauty. My heart hammered in my chest, it squeezed my throat closed, paralysed my tongue and my brain, and all I could get out was ‘Hi, Sofia.’

  Sofia Bergman

  Then I said, ‘Hi, yourself,’ and I turned around and walked to my room, and my roommates and my Groendakkies friends came to say, it’s Nico Storm, he can shoot better than anyone, and he rescued Okkie and helped get the aeroplane and he shot so many KTM guys, it’s Nico Storm.

  Then I said he’s a braggart. And one of these days I will shoot better than him. Because I was a good shot. Very good.

  I didn’t even know what a braggart really meant, but it sounded just right.

  ‘Hi, yourself.’ With huge irritation in my voice. At sixteen. Today I’m mortified.

  I was angry at everyone when I was sixteen.

  Chapter 73

  The first murder

  They found the body of Matthew Mbalo just beside the crumbling parking lot near the gate to the reserve. On 2 August. He was sixty-one years old, a quiet, simple man; before the Fever he had been a janitor at the municipal offices of a small Free State town. He was one of our night shepherds, a duty that he had asked for and carried out diligently. They found his horse, still saddled and bridled, in the veld nearby.

  Everyone liked Matthew. Everyone who was aware of his existence.

  The cause of death was a blunt instrument that had smashed his skull with two violent blows.

  Our first murder.

  The Special Ops Teams were busy in Luckhoff. The town was our training ground. Some of the houses were shot to pieces, and our regular run up the mountain beside the town had worn footpaths beside the whitewashed stones that used to spell out the town’s name.

  We were running down the mountain with rucksacks, rifles and helmets. We saw Sarge X – Sergeant Sizwe Xaba – down below in his pick-up, the one with a hand-painted police star on the door. He drove into Luckhoff and parked beside the old, dried-up and broken-down sewerage works.

  Sarge X had been our police chief for seven months. The Committee reported that he had said during his interview for the job that ‘Eighty-five per cent of all crime is domestic in nature, drug- or alcohol-related, and happens mostly in disadvantaged communities. Amanzi is one big, domestic, disadvantaged community. Of course there will be crime.’

  He managed law enforcement along with his responsibility as chief of defence, and he and his slowly growing team of people had caused the crime levels to drop dramatically since January.

  Crime in Amanzi was nothing new. It began back in the Year of the Dog.

  At first it was just petty theft, people nicking minor, trifling things, especially food. They were hungry, and accustomed to taking whatever they found, or hadn’t grasped that private and personal ownership had been restored after the Fever. Nero Dlamini said post-traumatic stress had a negative effect on decision-making, which also contributed to crime.

  In the beginning, small infringements were overlooked. People confronted and rebuked each other directly. Later they brought their differences to the Committee, which sometimes had to act as judge and jury. But in the Year of the Jackal there were simply too many people and incidents for that informal system. Consequently, Sarge X was appointed head of law enforcement. A twenty-four-year-old aspiring lawyer, who had not even completed her articles, became our first magistrate. The Committee became the court of appeal, for the time being.

  The most serious incident that the APS – the Amanzi Police Service – and the court had to handle in the preceding six months was an assault, when two drunk dairy farmers came to blows over a bull that broke through a fence.

  Domingo called Alpha and Bravo to a halt a hundred metres from Sarge X and his pick-up. He walked alone to the police chief while we stood watching. We knew something must be wrong, because it was exceptional for Sarge X to drive all the way out here. It had never happened before.

  We saw the body language, Sarge X half apologetic, Domingo’s at first neutral, then indecipherable, then aggressive, his hands and arms demonstrative, Sarge X defensive. And then tempers seeming to cool.

  They spoke for another ten minutes, then Sarge X climbed into his pick-up and drove away. Domingo came walking back to us. Poker-faced, as usual. He stood in front of us, called us to attention. He waited, his eyes as always hidden behind dark glasses.

  ‘There was a murder last night. Old Matthew Mbalo. They found him at the game reserve gate. Does anyone think they might know something about this?’

  ‘Captain, permission to ask a question, Captain,’ called Jele.

  ‘Permission granted.’

  ‘How did he die, Captain?’

  ‘Why do you want to know, Jele? Are you a detective?’

  ‘No, Captain.’

  Domingo allowed the silence to lengthen. ‘Blunt force trauma to the head.’

  We stood there, wondering about many things. Later, back at the barracks, we would ask ourselves the same questions that everyone in Amanzi was asking: Who? Who would want to murder old Matthew Mbalo, surely the most harmless of all our inhabitants? And why? He had nothing, he had never offended anyone.

  And why in such a way? With violence and rage and a weapon that one might believe just happened to be nearby, a piece of wood or something. As though it were spontaneous and unplanned.

  And why there?

  It was soon obvious that no one believed the murderer was an Amanzian. The general argument was that everyone knew everyone and we knew there were no murderers among us. Fighters, yes. People who were petty thieves, people who distilled moonshine on the sly and damaged property or disturbed the peace in their drunken state, yes, we had those. But murderers? No. It was simply unthinkable.

  It must have been someone from outside sneaking in. Not impossible for one or two people, if they came on foot over the hills at night. Or rowed a boat across the dam. The main theory, entertained by most, was that Matthew surprised intruders, stock thieves or poachers. The old reserve was still securely fenced, it was the place where most of our livestock were kept, and the main gate was the exit where it
would be easiest to take out a few sheep or a cow carcass.

  And Amanzi’s success was widely known, it must have been someone who had been planning it for a long time and watching, envious of our abundance. Someone from outside. But it wasn’t one of us.

  There was another theory held by just a few of the more disillusioned residents. That Mbalo may not have been as harmless we thought. That it might be a case of quiet waters run deep; Matthew could have been involved in something bad. With someone from the outside.

  The investigation into his death drew a blank. Nothing.

  The only additional clue was that at about one o’clock that night Matthew Mbalo told his fellow shepherds that he wasn’t feeling well. They told him to go to bed, they would carry on. He rode away on horseback. That was the last time that anyone saw him alive.

  Pastor Nkosi took advantage of the situation. The arrival of the Seven Women and the renewed sense of unity it gave us had lost him support, so he exploited the murder, warning his congregation that the devil was (still) running amok in Amanzi.

  There was one thing that no one speculated about: Sarge X had fine-combed the scene of the crime the morning that the body was discovered. He found no sign of the murder weapon, even though he and his people had searched the area within a radius of two hundred metres. He ascertained that there had been no eye-witnesses. And then he got in his police pick-up and drove to Luckhoff to talk to Domingo.

  Why?

  And what was said at the police vehicle that made Domingo so angry?

  We would imagine that we knew the answers to all those questions, six months later, in February of the Year of the Lion. We would all be wrong.

  The full truth would only emerge after the murder of my father.

  Chapter 74

  Twenty days after the murder of Matthew Mbalo I turned seventeen.

  On the Thursday morning of my birthday Domingo woke me in the barracks, before six, when it was still dark outside: ‘Happy birthday. The chairman wants to see you. Go on foot.’