‘I hate to be the bucket of ice water that douses those flames, Zakaria,’ Njinga muttered sourly, ‘but your boy is about as eager to help us now as he was in April ‘94.’
William’s face fell, and he broke off eye contact with Zakaria, staring guiltily at the ground. Zakaria’s smile crumpled into a deep frown, and his grip slackened on William’s shoulders.
‘Why? Why my brother, why do you not want to return to your rightful place among us? Has Njinga not explained to you the dire severity of the current situation? The desperate urgency of the calamity that is almost upon us?’
‘I told him,’ she said coolly. ‘And he don’t give a shit. You know man, I told you … I told you this whole fuckin’ rescue mission was bullshit. I told you it was a waste of our precious time an’ resources, that it was gonna turn out just like this, with this weak, cowardly dick wanting to run straight back into his fuckin’ rathole, to lose his mind to heroin an’ crack, an’ try to fuck his sorrows away in the pussies of a thousand mortal whores. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, what a fuckin’ waste of time. What a goddamn fuckin’ waste of time.’
The muscles of Zakaria’s jutting jaw were straining against his stubble-rough skin, and as Njinga was finishing off her tirade he began shaking his head.
‘No,’ he said firmly after she fell silent. ‘No. Not after everything we’ve done, after all the sacrifices we’ve made. No.’
‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ William grunted, his eyes downcast. ‘I’m done. I’ve been done with it all for twenty-six years, and I’m as done with it now as I ever was. Don’t imagine that I’ve been living under a rock, either; I know what’s going on. I know how bad it all is … but I realised, a quarter of a century ago, that there was nothing I could do to stop any of it. I realised just how naïve and futile we’d all been in hoping, in imagining that we could change any of it. We’re like ants trying to stand in the path of a bulldozer, mate, like a couple of fucking ants. What’s the point? It’s not all going to end … it’s all already over. The end arrived long ago; we’re in the death throes now. I might as well just live the last few years I’ve got just … just losing myself in whatever ways I can, dulling the pain for a few moments here and there.’
Zakaria’s eye was aglow with something else now; wrath, hot and ugly like an infected wound. His right hand darted out, and he drove his fingers like lion’s teeth into William’s jaw, gripping it with such crushing power that the bone beneath almost splintered. He forced his friend’s face up, compelling him to meet his gaze.
‘No.’
‘Zakaria,’ Njinga began, ‘it’s hopeless, it’s a lost fuckin’ cause, don’t waste—’
‘Nothing is lost forever,’ the big man said, his crushing grip on William’s jaw unrelenting. ‘And I refuse … I flat-out refuse to believe that this man, whose spirit once shone so brightly among us, has crossed irretrievably over into shadow. You might not believe it, Njinga, and you, William, perhaps you do not believe it yourself … but Ibelieve, with all the fire that rages within the deepest core of my soul, I believe that some part of the William I once knew is. Still. In. There. And you, this drug-addled shadow, this shrivelled imposter who stands before me, wearing the skin of my brother … you will leave him forever, and return to us the true William Gisborne. That is what is going to happen; there is no other option.’
With the pain in his jaw now rivalling that of the agony throbbing in his broken ribs, William darted a hand up, gripped the big man’s wrist in a Krav Maga hold and bent it with swift and unexpected power to the point at which he could have broken his adversary’s wrist.
‘Let me go, Zakaria,’ he hissed through anger-clenched teeth. ‘Your faith means fuck-all to me. Njinga’s right; you wasted your time, and I’m—’
Zakaria yanked his hand out of William’s grip, and in the blink of an eye he whipped a crashing Muay Thai kick up into William’s broken ribs. The agony that blitzed like a searing-hot lightning strike through his flank was beyond crippling in its intensity, and he dropped to the ground and curled up into a foetal position, groaning and gasping.
‘I will bring the old William back, whatever it takes,’ Zakaria growled, staring at his wounded friend with a pitiless gaze. ‘This is for your own good, as well as for a cause far greater than yourself. We will purge your heart, mind and soul of the poison that has afflicted them … and release your body from its dependence on the foul substances to which it has yet again become a slave. It will not be a pleasant process, not for any of us … but it will. Be. Done. Come Njinga; now we know that we must lock him in here. It pains me to make you our prisoner, William, but if that is the only way, then that is the only way. Remove that machete and leave this ungrateful wretch to stew in his misery for a while. Pain, as he is well aware, is a good motivator of change.’
With William still groaning on the ground, immobilised from the agony of his freshly rebroken ribs, Njinga snatched the machete away from him. She turned and fired a scorching, accusatory gaze at Zakaria.
‘You should have searched this room more thoroughly!’ she growled, thrusting the weapon
