Kujana Farm, Hluhulwe, South Africa
14:30pm
Buffel sat in the lounge area, barricaded in. He rocked back and forth on his haunches. He had tied Shilo to the couch and put the gag in his mouth once more.
He had seen the police arrive, followed closely by the riot police, and he had seen them rush to join Kujana’s game guards. He had watched them swarm in and take up positions. He knew that there were more guns pointed at the house than he had seen in many, many years.
‘I am lost, Impendla,’ he said. ‘I have failed you.’
He looked over to where Shilo sat gagged and bound.
He was no threat now.
He was no help either.
He was the one man who had come close to being a friend. Together they had fought side by side. Then he had gone away. He didn’t understand. He didn’t want to help Impendla, even back then.
He walked over to him and undid the cloth from his mouth before crouching down on the carpet in front of him. ‘Tell me, Shilo, how am I going to save Impendla if they have blocked my way out? When I get The Butterfly, how am I going to get out?’ he demanded.
‘You are not, Buffel. There is no way out,’ Shilo said, shaking his head. ‘Wayne and his men will never let you walk from here. And now that the police have arrived, you are stuck in here. No escape.’
‘The Nyamhika Nehanda, she will find a way out. She will get The Butterfly, and she will run. She will escape—’
‘There is no escape. You will be killed. There is no way out from this one, Buffel.’
‘But Impendla? His soul?’ Buffel shouted.
‘Why do you think you can save him if you have Tara? How was she going to save him?’
‘Now she is a woman, she is ready. She can save him, and all the butterflies she calls to her when she dies, she can set their souls free,’ Buffel said.
‘Where did you get that crap anyway, that you needed to kill her so long ago?’
‘In a dream, I saw it in a dream. She set the children free and their voices stopped crying out and sung as if they were angels instead. The sound was happy because their souls were saved, they were with their ancestors and had crossed over into the light.’ Buffel rocked backwards and forwards.
‘A dream? Buffel, dreams are not true. It’s like the nightmares, they are not real. Just thoughts, old thoughts, they don’t mean anything anymore,’ Jamison said, his voice level, controlled.
‘It’s real. He told me I had Nyamhika Nehanda inside. I have to save him. Mwari told me—’
Jamison shook his head. ‘Buffel, you can’t save him, it’s too late. That was years ago. It’s too long ago now. You should have said something years ago, I would have told you the truth then. Your friend, Impendla, his spirit is lost. He can never walk with his ancestors. That is the way. One year. You only had one year to find the worm or the caterpillar on his grave once they removed the stick, after he was buried, and then you could save him. One year. Now, he is part of this world. His spirit is here. That is the way it is in the Shona traditional burials. Mwari must have told you that too. You cannot save him now, it’s too late. It was always too late, even when you became PSYOPS. But you can save yourself. You can let me go. You can let Tara live, and you can stop the killing.’
‘No, I must save him,’ Buffel said, shaking his head violently from side to side. ‘I have to save him. I have to stop the voices.’
‘You need to save yourself, Buffel. You need to think of your own soul. Right now, you need to think of your own safety. Your life.’
‘You still don’t understand.’ He shook his hand at Jamison, pointing, then balled it into a fist. ‘My soul was claimed by the devil when I lived, and Impendla died when I was only ten years old. It was me who walked into the Karoi’s area first. It was me who disturbed her bag of muti, and it was me who didn’t believe until he was taken. It should have been me.’
‘It could never have been you. You are a white man,’ Jamison said. ‘The Karoi, she would never have taken a white child. It was never meant to be you who was taken. I am a black man, I know the Shona god Mwari. I know of the Karoi, and her customs. I know that even though she killed your friend Impendla, she would not have taken you. Never.’
Buffel cocked his head to listen. It was too quiet outside.
‘So many dead, and for what? For nothing. You can’t save him, Buffel. He is lost to you. The police will storm in here any moment and shoot you. With tear gas and stun grenades. You need to surrender. They will shoot you and if you survive, they will take you and put you into an insane asylum, they will put you in the Ingutchini, not a prison. Is that what you want? To be inside walls all the time? They will keep you inside and never let you see the sun. Chained to a bed somewhere, like a dog. Never see your farm again. You need to surrender. But perhaps you can save your own soul—’
‘No. Shut up with your lies,’ Buffel said putting his hands over his ears.
Jamison shouted so he would hear him anyway. ‘What will happen to your soul if another POU is killed because of you? All this time, I have kept my oath. Now you are going to kill me, you will not see this through to the end. You are abandoning me, just as you did your friend Impendla when you were a boy. Running away from your true responsibility. You are breaking the oath, Buffel. You are breaking your oath. The others, the POUs, they will come for you. Remember that if you kill me, they will get you even if you walk away from today. You can’t save Impendla, that was over fifty years ago, but you can still save you, and you can still save me.’
Buffel got to his feet and put the gag back on Shilo, despite Shilo’s struggles. Eventually he had to hold his nose and only when the other man finally opened his mouth to breathe did he manage to force it in.
‘No more talking, Shut up! Shut up!’ Buffel repeated over and over as he walked over to the barricaded window where he had left one small viewing section between the mattresses and the upended table. He could see the armour-plated vehicle that the riot police had arrived in and the police captain or someone in charge standing with his legs apart, waiting for his moment.
This was never in his plan.
He had not planned, and his impulsiveness had got him trapped.
‘What am I to do, Impendla? I don’t feel like I am the Nyamhika Nehanda now. I am in a hole, like a rabbit. Trapped. The spirit, the voice of Mwari, is trapped this day. I cannot be a mhondoro, I can not run free and save you. How can I not save the only friend I ever had in this world? If Shilo is right and I only had a year to save you, then all the sacrifices, they have been for nothing. The Butterfly, she is better living than sacrificed to the spirits. It’s too late. It’s too late for us.’
He looked back at Shilo still trying to get loose.
He could surrender, go outside as they asked.
But Shilo had said that they would put him in a mental hospital. The Ingutchini. They would torture him. Shock him with electricity. Drip water on him. Keep him from the sunlight. Try to restart his brain, say he was sick.
But he wasn’t. He was Nyamhika Nehanda, and he had served Mwari faithfully. So why had she failed Impendla and kept his soul?
All this time he had tried to appease her with sacrifices, and yet it had already been too late. He took his rifle from where he had left it by the window after firing his warning shot and walked back towards Shilo on the couch.
He took a deep breath, he squared his shoulders. He was 1st Psychological Operations Unit.
He was one of the elite.
One of the untouchables.
He heard the riot police breaking the windows as they began their assault on the house.
‘They are coming, Shilo,’ he said. ‘Tiri Tose. We are together. I have failed you, Impendla, my friend. Forgive me.’
He sank to his knees, and raised his favourite hunting rifle, his 416 Rigby with its wooden handle that reminded him so much of the rifle he had lost when Impendla was taken, and he loaded it.
The explosions from the grenades hurt his ears. He smelt the gas and his eyes watered.
He pulled the trigger as the first human forms appeared in the smoke.
One of the riot police, dressed in full helmet, fatigues and body armour, walked out the front door, his weapon pointed to the floor. He removed his gas mask.
‘Clear!’ he shouted. The head detective walked to the man.
While they were talking, Wayne could see a body being carried out on a blanket and deposited on the front lawn. He knew the clothes and the shape of the person well. ‘Jamison!’ Wayne cried and ran towards the riot police. He covered the short distance and threw himself down next to the policemen.
‘He’s alive. He’s got burns from his ropes where he fought them and a nasty bump on the head, so he’ll need a hospital to ensure he has no concussion.’ The detective spoke from behind him. ‘You shouldn’t have crossed the barrier.’
‘Detective—’ Wayne began, but got no further as Ebony pushed through to her husband’s side too, despite being told to stay behind the police vans. Wayne noticed that Moeketsi had discreetly picked up her .303 from where she had left it leaning on the wall of the tractor shed, and he watched as he put it inside the Mack truck, out of sight, tucking it behind the driver’s seat so that the police didn’t give her any trouble about it.
He gave him a thumbs up, and turned back to Jamison.
Jamison was coughing, and Ebony encouraged him to sit up, making it easier.
‘What about Buffel?’ Gabe asked behind him, as he too ignored the police instructions. ‘Detective, where is Buffel?’
‘In the house.’
Gabe started to walk to the house but the detective cautioned him. ‘Unless you have a cast-iron stomach, don’t go in there. Apparently the man’s head has been blown apart, and there isn’t much of it left attached to his body, and a lot of it is on the ceiling.’