Zoo City

There are two boys sitting on the plush red couch. One is bare-chested in jeans, the fly unbuttoned. He has natty little dreads and a small gold loop in his ear, and he's pouting like he ordered strippers for his birthday and got clowns instead.

The other I recognise from glimpses of a music video. The boy-half of iJusi has big heartbreaker eyes, an upturned button nose and dimples. He'll grow out of it, maybe even in the next six months, but S'bu still has something beautifully childlike about him, and even his poser attitude can't undermine the sweetness that rises off him like fumes. He's practically edible.

They're both holding Playstation controllers, the source of the gunfire, I now realise, and they're both staring at Marabou and the fat kid, who is holding his bloody nose with both hands. The Stork cranes its neck forward to nudge her hand with its beak. She looks at the blood on her knuckles with forensic distaste, and wipes it off on the side of the couch. Dazed, the fat kid collapses into the La-Z-Boy.

Mark sets the Mutt down, picks up one of seven remotes on the coffee-table – by coincidence, it just so happens to be the right one – and kills the stereo.

Half-naked boy opens his mouth to complain, 'Hey, that's-'

The Dog gives a shrieky little snarl and Mark says, 'Shut up, Des. No one's talking to you.' He perches on the edge of the low black teak coffee-table, pushing aside a gimmicky odour-free silver ashtray shaped like a flying saucer, and folds his legs. 'Well, boys, this is quite the scene.'

S'bu stands up and walks over to the ashtray. 'I know, I know,' he says, in the patented world-weary way of teenagers. He pushes down on the top of the UFO, which whirrs open with a buzz and strobing lights, and stubs out his joint.

'She bwoke by dose-' the fat white boy starts.

'Shut up, Arno. It's your own stupid fault,' snaps the half-naked kid with the dreads.

'You know you're not supposed to be smoking, S'bu,' Mark chides.

'Didn't I already say, I know, I know?'

'Can these two take a hike?'

He shrugs. 'Arno and Des are my boys.'

'We need to talk about your sister.'

'Whad's up wid your sisduh, dude? You didn'd say budding about your sisduh. Whad's up wid da Song?'

'Shut up, Arno,' Des and S'bu say in unison.

''Cos she hasn'd been awound. Shid. When lasd did we see her?'

'Dude. When last did you see your arse?'

Arno looks hurt, although it's hard to tell if his hangdog expression is par for the course, or just a result of his eyes starting to swell.

'Is that the only contraband?' Amira says.

'Des is holding,' S'bu indicates his friend. Des cringes, pulls out a bankie of weed and gingerly hands it over to Amira.

'What's wrong, sweetie?' Mark asks.

'Nah, it's just, we thought you were-' Des says. 'The cops.'

'Zombies,' Arno says at the same time.

'Why would you be worried about the cops?'

'I dunno. Just. 'Cos.' He waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the ashtray. There's a couple of video game boxes lying next to it, starring flesh-eating undead and aliens. One, Grand Theft Auto VI: Zootopia, features a badass in a hoodie, packing a shotgun with a snarling Panther by his side.

'You know this means we're going to have to search the house. Again.'

'Whatever,' S'bu says, and slumps back into the couch, picking up the controller and going right back to his game, a first-person slayer. He's playing a mini-skirted girl with spiky green hair and a machine-gun for an arm facing down shambling hordes of particularly monstrous aliens.

'Do you want to go back to rehab, S'bu?'

'Doesn't bother me.' But I notice he flinches, enough to throw off his shot. On screen, an alien manages to gore his arm, knocking his health down to 89 per cent.

'This is Zinzi December. She wants to talk to you. Help her out,' Mark says.

'It's for a story for a magazine. Credo?' I bluff.

'Oh yeah?' S'bu isn't even vaguely interested, but Des perks up dramatically.

'Credo cooks, bro,' he says, nudging S'bu's arm. 'You're in Credo, you're in. Hells yes, lady. My boy is down.'

'Great,' I say.

'Whatever, you clear it with these guys,' S'bu says, still intent on his game.

'Oh, we're 'down',' Mark says. He whistles for the Mutt. The Dog jumps off the red pouf and immediately starts sniffing around the room with great seriousness, tail wagging. S'bu lifts his feet for the Dog as it snuffles around the bottom of the couch.

'Just seeds, man,' says Des.

The Dog follows its nose out of the room, Mark and Amira behind it. We can hear them climbing the stairs. A minute later, there is the sound of objects being thrown around.

'Shid, dude, whad if she breags by shid?' Arno says.

'Then I'll buy you more shit. Will you shut up? You're wrecking my concentration.'

Everyone is quiet for a moment. Des and Arno watch me watching S'bu kill aliens. Upstairs, there is more thudding. Impulsively, I shrug Sloth off onto the recently vacated pouf, squeeze in next to S'bu, and pick up Des's discarded controller.

'This is two player, right?'

'Yeah, but-'

'Killing aliens with S'bu Radebe. That's profile gold. Credo will love it.'

'They're Cthul'mites, actually.'

'Whatever. They all bleed the same.' From the player screen, I select the huge black guy character with Mike Tyson tattoos on his face and whipblades mounted in his forearms. Nice to see game designers keeping up the stereotypes.

'You any good?' S'bu gives me a sideways glance.

'Fucking terrible. It's all you.'

'Oh great.' But he cracks the slightest of smiles.

'Anybone wand a beer?' Arno says, heading for the kitchen.

'Get them now before they're all confiscated,' S'bu calls out after him.

'I'll have one,' I shout, gutting a particularly loathsome specimen with slobbery jaws and elongated fingers with my whipblades. I'm already down to 46 per cent health. It's only when Arno comes back, cracking the bottles of Windhoek open with his teeth, and sets mine, foaming, on the table in front of me, that I realise what I've done.

'Oh thanks, but actually, I'm gonna skip.' I barely manage to duck as an arachnidy thing with a wobbly glutinous mass on top, like the bastard love-child of a jellyfish and a spider, spews a cloud of mechanical insects at me. Luckily S'bu is there to liquidise it, and most of the insect cloud terminates in shrieking sparks.

'Our beer too good for ya?'

'No, it's just that I don't particularly want to go back to rehab either.'

'No shit, man,' Des says. 'That place is ill. All full of whining junkies with the shivers.'

'Abnd zombies,' Arno adds, hopefully.

'Don't you guys have some place to be?' S'bu snaps.

'No, man. We're here for the duration.'

'Seriously, I think I heard your moms calling.'

'Dude. Uncool.'

'Madoda. Take a hint and hamba.'

'Fine. Come on, Arno, let's go aim for hadedas on the fourteenth hole.'

'Bud I like hadedas.'