The Prey Read Free Page B

where they’d once held honest jobs.
    Behind him, Chris heard footsteps, a stumble and a curse. Themba was making a run for it in the dark.
    ‘
Ola!
’ a voice called. Light flickered off the rock walls. The man was probably carrying a candle.
Shit
, he thought to himself,
this was not going well
.
    His peripheral vision was suddenly lit up and Chris looked back to see that Themba had switched on his headlamp. It was bobbing away from them, the bright light bouncing off the side walls as he ran.
    ‘
Fok
, no,’ Chris cursed under his breath.
    A series of explosions rang out, the crack and thump of passing bullets pounding Chris’s eardrums. He flattened himself onto the floor as sparks bounced off the walls and a muzzle flash seared his eyes. Someone was shooting at them, with an automatic weapon by the sound of it.
    ‘AK-47,’ Barrica said, his summation punctuated by a three-round burst from his own assault rifle. ‘Fall back!’
    Chris needed no urging. He crawled on his hands and knees over the jagged floor of the tunnel, scrambling as fast as he could. The AK fired again and a stream of red-hot fireflies whizzed over his head. He was glad he’d stayed low. Themba, however, was still running, and Chris saw his lamp pitch to one side, then fall.
    ‘Themba!’ he screamed.
    Barrica returned fire. ‘Run, check the young one. I will cover you,’ the security guard shouted out through the chaos.
    Chris forced himself up and started to run on feet that felt encased in lead. He’d had a dream like this, where he was being chased by a man with a gun and he couldn’t make himself move fast enough. He tensed his muscles, waiting for the spear of pain in his back that would pitch him into the abyss of death. ‘Themba!’
    His foot collided with something slightly yielding and he fell forward onto the rotting mass of the dead miner. He yelped as he scrambled to get up. Something popped and a hiss of foul-smelling gas jetted up into his face. He put his palm on an arm, or maybe it was a leg, and felt the putrid skin slide away from the body. Coveredin slimy, stinking fluid he finally managed to stand. He stumbled a few more paces, got clear of the corpse and glanced back to see if Barrica was following him.
    The guard’s R5 chattered again, silhouetting Barrica in flashes from the muzzle.
    ‘Grenade!’ Barrica shouted. He turned to Chris and started to run towards him. The homemade bomb, a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse in a can packed with nuts and bolts and screws to act as shrapnel, bounced on the floor of the tunnel behind Barrica and erupted. Barrica was blown forward, arms outstretched, as Chris was knocked off his feet and thrown onto his side. His ears rang and he felt like he’d been kicked and punched all over. He crawled towards a shard of light – from the door where they’d entered the chamber – and saw the beam of Themba’s light fixed horizontally across the floor from his helmet, which lay beside the young man. He covered a few more metres before he reached Themba, who was sprawled on the rock floor, face first, and placed his fingers on his neck. He couldn’t find a pulse. Chris half-rolled the fallen man and gagged. A bullet had drilled a hole in the back of his head, and the exit wound had ruined his once handsome face. Chris had feared death underground for so long – virtually every time he ventured below the earth’s surface – but it was not supposed to be like this.
    ‘Bastards!’ He tried to stand, but crumpled to one knee when his left ankle buckled. He started to hobble, but was knocked to the ground by something shoved into the small of his back.
    Chris rolled over and squinted as a miner’s lamp was turned on and shone in his face. A man in overalls stood over him, pointing an AK-47 down at him. He smiled. ‘
Bom dia
, mister.’
    *
    Kylie had started to take the media training seriously after her initial humiliation by the trainer. She still didn’t like the man,