Mortals

been overconfident. Quartus did have a holstered pistol strapped on.

“You, you fuck, put your hands high. You hear me?” Quartus put his hands up. Ray couldn’t believe it.

Ray knew he had to be swift. He was an illusionist and the illusion was not going to work for long.

He was creating unhappiness. He strode to the cache of automatic rifles and stood over it. If he ever got reinforcements he would toss the rifles off the roof. He wanted Quartus’s pistol but he didn’t want to approach him to get it. He didn’t want scrutiny.

“Take off your belt,” he said to Quartus.

Quartus was moving too slowly in complying. Ray knew what to do. It was time to bring his own rifle into play. It was delicate, switching to a different way of menacing these bastards, because they might all jump at him in a rage when they realized his bomb was not a bomb, as they would soon enough. And then he would be forced to spray death at them, real death.

They might think that since he couldn’t kill all of them it would make sense for them to rush him. He had to get them on their bellies spread-eagled. It was going to be hard on them. There were the burning pebbles to contend with and there were glittering and equally burning hot spent shells everywhere, strewn everywhere. And he had to get Quartus disarmed and under control. Quartus was operating in slow motion. He was looking for an opening. But his rage was evident. He was nonplussed. I love it, Ray thought.

“I said to take your belt off. Let your pistol fall. Do what I tell you.”

He had to get everyone in a single clump, down on their faces, all of them, the six underlings and Quartus the boss. The six were conveniently arrayed side by side sitting on a low bench. They had responded beautifully to the threatening motions he was making with his AK. They had been drinking, if the empty beer cans in evidence around the position meant anything. Also they had been eating canned pineapple. Ray began to salivate. These bastards had had it cozy, with their beer, water bottles, cigarettes, parasols. There was a tarpaulin stretched over a framework and in the shade it provided were two cots. They had been able to get out of the sun if they’d wanted to, in shifts.

There was a surprising amount of equipment and gear collected there, which meant there must be another route of access from below at this end of the roof. He could see where it was. It was a large trapdoor, much larger than the one covering the stair-ladder access he had come up, at the center of the roof. Awkward objects had been brought up. The machine gun stands were bolted to heavy wooden skids. The good thing was that the trapdoor lid was locked, or shut securely, rather, with the hasp of an open combination lock passed through the hoop closure at the rim. There would be no surprises coming from that source, at least.

Quartus had dropped his belt and the pistol had fallen to the roof, still in its holster.

“Kick it this way,” Ray shouted.

Quartus complied, but feebly. Ray knew what Quartus would do next. He would kick the holster and belt as hard as he could in the direction of the other villains, on the chance that one of them could make a grab for it. That was not going to happen.

“Step back all the way,” Ray said to Quartus. He wanted him in the right-hand angle of the parapet, away from the mounted gun pointed down into the pan, away from anything. And then he would bring him around to join his fellow villains on his belly on the roof.

Quartus had taken his sun goggles off, ripped them off. He was staring at Ray. He had wanted to see if what he was seeing could possibly be right, that a naked man with some kind of box on his chest was indeed in charge of events and that the box on his chest was not a bomb.

It was urgent that he get the six foot soldiers down, flat, out of the way.

“Lie down, all of you! All you six, you lie down, ribama.” Ribama meant stomach in Setswana. Robala meant lie down, but it meant lie down and go to sleep.

They knew what to do, and they were spreading their arms without being told. And they were groaning.

“What are you playing at?” Quartus screamed. He was alarmingly red in the face. He was normally ruddy, but this was a new level of color.

“I’m not playing. I’ll kill you if you don’t listen to me,” Ray shouted.

“You prick, look at you! Your prick is showing. Cover your prick. I see they have let you out…”

“Ah no, meneer, I broke out of your prison. Hahaha.”

“You are going to die, I tell you that.”

“You move into the corner where I’m pointing. Go. I’ll kill you if you’re slow about it, meneer. And you say nothing to me from now on, nothing. Put your hands higher than that. The catch is up on my rifle.”

Quartus was beginning to obey, beginning to edge in the direction he had been ordered to take. Ray was feeling gratified. He had let his penis show, let it be there like nothing more exotic than a nose or an elbow, because that had been what was required. It was a personal victory, a thing he had done for the cause. The hair in Quartus’s armpits was red.

Quartus shouted something in Afrikaans. Ray had an idea that what he was saying was that Ray was carrying a fake bomb around, not a real bomb. He couldn’t be allowed to talk again.

“I warned you, meneer,” Ray shouted. And he pressed the trigger of his rifle, pressed it as tentatively and lightly as he could, intending to release a very short burst, not more than five bullets. The violence of the burst surprised him, and the volume of the fire he had released. He had used at least ten or a dozen bullets. He was trying furiously to remember how many shots there were, in the magazine. He had to be frugal. Quartus would be counting. He had only the one magazine with him.

Quartus was limping. Ray had directed his fire at the roof near Quartus’s feet. He hadn’t intended to hit him. He was sorry if he had.

The shooting had been salutary in its effect on the foot soldiers. Any restlessness among them was gone. They were unmoving. They were like carvings.

Quartus was where he should be, sitting on the parapet far to the right, his hands still raised. His legs looked all right. Ray didn’t know why he had seemed to be limping. It might have been a trick. Anything could be a trick.

Ray thought, This interlude has to stop being an interlude. He needed help. He needed reinforcements. He needed his friends to come to his aid. Where were they? He needed to get out of the sun. In fact he needed to get his naked penis out of the sun, especially. Because the two items of the body most susceptible to sun damage were, if he remembered what Iris had said on the subject, the penis and, sort of oddly, the eyelids. It had come up during a discussion of nude beaches. In any case he wanted his penis to accompany him into the next stage of his life. He might need it.

His ears were ringing. It was astonishing to him that technology had failed to address the fucking deafening racket guns made.

He was noticing something important at the back of the shelter housing the two cots. His attention had been drawn there by Quartus, who had been glancing nervously in that direction. And the important something was a radio setup. There was an aerial mast sticking up. He had missed it. He felt stupid for having missed it.

I will blow it to hell, he thought. He crouched and aimed and fired and his bullets tore the thing to pieces. But he had used more ammunition than he’d intended, again. Quartus was screaming at him. That meant Ray had done a good thing.

It was too difficult keeping his menacing attention equally on Quartus where he was and the foot soldiers where they were.

“Come over here, now,” he shouted at Quartus. Quartus stood up. He seemed to be smiling about something.

“No, get down and crawl, meneer. Crawl to me.”

Quartus was wearing a tank top and jodhpurs. He loved jodhpurs, apparently. He was moving slowly. He was continuing to smirk. Ray didn’t like it.

Witdoeke should be on hand. He wanted to know why they hadn’t shown up. Something was amiss.

Ray looked back along the roof and saw instantly what the problem was. He was appalled. He couldn’t allow