Deadlands Read Free Page A

couldn’t see what the hell she was talking about. As far as I was concerned not only was the city enclave as ugly as sin, but it also stank. The Mantis and Dad were always going on about the fancy-smancy sewerage system the Resurrectionists were constructing, but now we were edging into the centre of the sector and the place reeked of open drains and other foul stuff I didn’t want to think about.
    The rain was falling more heavily now, and the rickshaw driver paused to wipe the rivulets out of her eyes before flexing the muscles in her shoulders and moving onwards again.
    We topped a rise and I got another tantalising glimpse of Table Mountain in between the spilling clouds.
    The rickshaw driver slid to an abrupt stop.
    ‘What now!’ the Mantis said, looking at me in irritation as if it was my fault.
    ‘Resurrectionist parade, ma’am,’ the rickshaw driver said, pointing towards the road ahead where a solid wall of bodies was marching in formation, droning some tuneless phrase over and over again. I couldn’t make out the words, but it had to be the same kind of crap the Resurrectionists at Gran’s funeral had spouted.
    ‘Guardians!’ I said, unthinkingly grabbing the Mantis’s arm.
    ‘They’re not Guardians, Leletia,’ she said. ‘They wear the robes as a tribute.’ And looking closer I could see she was right. Two robed figures were cutting their way through the crowd, thrusting pamphlets into the hands of passers-by, and as I watched one of them pushed back his hood to scratch his thatch of brown hair.
    A woman with wide staring eyes and a lumpy rash across one cheek ran up to the side of the rickshaw and shoved a piece of paper into my hand. ‘Take this, sisi!’ she said, and before I could react, she melted back into the throng of bodies.
    The Mantis sighed. ‘Why on earth do they have to do this at this time of the day?’
    I looked at her in surprise. ‘Huh? But you . . . you’re a believer.’
    The Mantis shot me a shrewd look. ‘Take the market road,’ she snapped to the rickshaw driver, who nodded, jumped up on the balls of her feet and pulled us through a series of darkened alleyways, strung with sodden washing and full of the reek of unwashed bodies.
    While the Mantis carried on barking instructions to the driver, I opened up the pamphlet. The ink was smeared where stray droplets of rain had dampened it, but it was still readable. Beneath a crap ink drawing of a large-headed child gazing up at an oval sun were the words:
    Do you remember the terrible days of hijackings? Murder? Domestic violence? Robbery? Et cetera? Yes? Then join us in celebrating our Saviours Who Have Set Us Free. Become ReBorn with a view to a Glorious ReAnimation. New Green-market Square, Saturday, 12 July, Year 10.
    I scrunched it up and shoved it into the bottom of my backpack. Then, all too soon, we turned a corner and I caught a glimpse of my new school for the first time.
    My first thought was:
Oh crap
. It looked like the photos I’d seen of the prisons they’d had before the War. It was ringed by a low spiked fence, and the bland brick buildings behind it couldn’t have been more different from my old school, which was basically just a rondavel with a cosy thatched roof. Even from outside the gate I could smell the telltale reek of newly laid concrete. The sign on the gate read
Malema High: ‘A breath of fresh air’
.
    ‘Here we are,’ the Mantis said. ‘Remember, try to fit in, Leletia.’
    But, as I was about to find out, that was
way
easier said than done.

4
    ‘What did you say your name was?’ The woman in the reception office looked me up and down disapprovingly, taking in my shorn hair and of course the boots, which I’d quickly put on when the Mantis was out of sight.
    ‘Lele . . . Leletia,’ I said again.
    It was gloomy inside the brick office, the windows too small to let in adequate light. She flicked irritably through the papers on her desk. ‘And you’re really Cleo Mbane’s