Zoo City

'Excuse me. Did you see who broke my window?'

He looks away.

'You were right here. You must have seen it.'

He flicks an offcut of rubber at my feet. It's as eloquent a gesture of contempt as spitting. 'Fuck off, apo.'

I look around for my yellow-eyed car guard. There is no sign of him. The rain is getting harder. But there is a bright sweet smell in the air that leads me to the tarpaulin strung up under the tree. I duck my head under the tarp, but even as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I realise that the shelter extends much deeper, that whoever lives here has burrowed under the rubble to extend their den. I crouch down and shuffle forward into the haze of smoke, heavier than mandrax or tik, and with a sour note, or perhaps that's just the body odour. There's another smell in here too, one that's all too familiar – drains. I can make out three figures sitting on their haunches, passing a pipe between them.

'Hey fokkof! Wat doen jy?' a girl screeches, clutching the pipe to her jealously as I shuffle towards them. She is not so old, late teens, maybe early twenties, but the lifestyle has eaten into her appearance, and her face is pocked with scars and bruises. There is a sullen knot at her jaw and her hair is clumpy, with inflamed bald patches as if someone has been ripping it out by the handfuls.

'I just want my phone.'

'Jussis. I told you, mos, I told you,' says Yellow Eyes, looking wild and scared. An older boy moves forward, all aggro. If Yellow Eyes is a junkie rat, this guy is a seriously nasty piece of work. Behind him, someone else stirs in the darkness, making a rattling sound. I have badly misjudged this.

'There's no phone, lady. Now fokkof,' Yellow Eyes says.

'Even just my sim card. It's worth money to me.'

'How much?' the girl says.

'Thula, Busi!' hisses the older boy, and Busi cringes as if he's already hit her.

'R200 for the sim card,' I offer. 'R300 if it comes with the phone.'

'R400.'

'Fine.' I open my wallet, careful not to let them see how much more money I have in there, peel out four R100 notes and hold them up in front of them.

'What's to stop us just taking it, hey?' Busi says with a leer, creeping forward again.

'Me.' My incarceration in Sun City taught me other things apart from how to wait. Like how to stare someone down. My eyes have adjusted to the dim light and at the back I can make out a drop into a cave of sorts. The kids have excavated a storm drain, or maybe it was already damaged when they parked their tarp over it. They probably sleep down there, all tangled up together like a rat's nest. There is someone down there, shuffling backwards and forwards. The movement makes a dry skittery sound.

'You some kind of ninja?' Nasty Piece of Work says, smirking at the others.

'You want to find out? You want to know what my shavi is? What muti I just bought at the market?'

'R500,' Busi says. This time Nasty does hit her, a cuff with the back of his hand. She whimpers, and glares at me as if it is all my fault. Maybe it is. Whatever is scuffling around in the back hesitates for a moment and then resumes its brittle nervous movements. The rain hurls itself against the tarpaulin.

'This is what I'm offering. Take it or leave it. It's good money.' I wave the blue notes and Yellow Eyes snatches for them and misses. 'Nuh-uh. Phone first. And tell whoever is skulking around back there to come out where I can see them.'

Nasty looks amused. He pats his leg, as if calling a dog, and a Porcupine hauls itself out of the darkness, limping forward on three paws, its quills rattling. It nudges his knee with its stubby snout in wary affection. Thick ropes of drool hang from its jowls. Its eyes are dull. Its back foot is missing. The stump has healed badly, the tissue grey, the spiky hairs matted with dried blood and pus. It smells of damp and rot, like the broken concrete of the hole it crawled from.

'What the fuck did you do to this animal?'

'It's good money,' Nasty wheedles, mocking me. 'You want some? We can get a good price for that Sloth. Rare animal, hey? Start with a finger. Or a paw.'

'Whole arm even,' Busi says, emboldened, edging forward. 'You won't miss it. You won't even notice.' The Porcupine watches me with its beady little eyes, and despite myself, despite Sun City Rules, I start backing out, slowly. Fuck the phone. Odi can afford to buy me another one. But Nasty has managed to get round behind me, blocking the exit.

The rain buckets down, the sound like the roar of a stadium crowd. Outside, chunks of hail plink off the concrete. Nasty takes a screwdriver from his pocket, the end sharpened to a point. It's filthy – if you got stabbed with that thing, tetanus would be the least of your worries. I've seen bad stab wounds. A gangster in prison got herself a kidney puncture compliments of her girlfriend. It took her weeks to die from the infection.

'Don't go yet, cherry,' Nasty says, raising his voice over the pelting rain.

'If you'd told me it was a party, I would have brought cupcakes,' I say. I open my fingers and let the notes flutter to the ground, anticipating the girl dropping to her knees to pick them up. This buys me a second of distraction.

I grab Sloth's arm and slash his claws across Nasty's face, before he can raise the screwdriver. He screams and stumbles backwards, clutching his nose and eyes. I don't stick around to evaluate the damage. I turn and slam into Yellow Eyes with my full weight, knocking him over the girl, who is still on her knees, picking up the notes. Her head hits the ground with a painful thunk. I don't have time to feel guilty. Sun City Rules: take out the leader and get out any way you can. I barge past the Porcupine, sharp quills snagging on my jeans, and go in the exact opposite direction Nasty is expecting, dropping into the jagged hole and the darkness of the storm drain.

On my knees, I shuffle forward down the tunnel past the tangle of blankets that smell of smoke and sweat and urine, one hand against the rough concrete for guidance. My sneakers squelch in the rivulet of rotten mud. I can't see a fucking thing, but I can feel the water sloshing around me. 'I hope you're looking where we're going,' I mutter and Sloth, still shocked, manages a squeak in response. The tunnel should open up soon to a central flow. There will be maintenance entry points that'll take me straight up to the street. I just have to get there before they catch me.

I can hear the distorted echoes of angry voices behind me. Hopefully, they're still deciding if I went left or right. Hopefully, they'll split up. Easier to handle that way. I scuffle forward through the dark, now on my feet and hunched. Water is soaking through my shoes, and at first I think it's because the tunnel is widening, but it's the water level rising with the swell of rain. Another reason to speed up this getaway.

Sloth grunts in warning a second too late as the tunnel opens out onto a wide and slippery plateau and I go skidding over the edge of it, drop two metres, and land hard on my coccyx, on the edge of a step. The pain is like a railway spike driven up my spine. It knocks the breath out of me. I lie there stunned, while Sloth whimpers and moans for me to get up.

I'm lying on the edge of a massive staircase that slopes down, each step inclined thirty degrees. Looking up, I can see several tributaries convening on the steps, each of them spouting a dark churn of water. Beyond them, the vaulted ceiling stretches like a cathedral. I can only see this because of the bright circle, like a skylight, and the narrow metal ladder that leads up to the manhole, mockingly out of reach, one level up.

The voices are getting closer. Yellow Eyes pokes his head out from one of the tributary tunnels a metre or two above my head and shines down a torch. 'Here! She's here!' he yells, his voice shrill with excitement. There's a muffled response, like someone talking underwater. 'Help me! Help me climb down,' Yellow Eyes shrieks. Sloth clicks in my ear, tugging at my shoulders to get up. I clamber painfully on all fours, pausing only to yank a porcupine quill out of my shin, and then scramble down the slope to the next step and the next.

The steps flatten out into a main artery a metre wide. I try walking along the narrow bank of the canal, but the cement is crumbling and slick with slime. I don't have time to teeter along the edge. I slide into the rush of water. It's hip-deep and horribly warm, like someone peed in it. There's a splash somewhere behind me, the sound twisted by the tunnel, so I've no idea how close it is. I risk a glance back, but there's only darkness.

The water flows into an alcove, a place for the stormwater to back up before the artery turns the corner. The scenery has changed, the modern cement giving way to ancient brickwork here, a Victorian relic from the