After the shot and the crashing glass, total silence descended for a second. Maybe a little longer. Even the dog didn’t make a sound.
Then the silence ended again.
80
It was like a bad bit of dialogue. First the one shot, then the next, followed by a third after the same time span. And then everyone was talking at the same time. Moses had gotten caught in a shootout once that had escalated at a gas station. A robbery gone wrong. Everyone in close proximity had taken cover as best they could. By the end, the four thieves, two cops and two schoolchildren were lying dead on the pavement. He’d never forget that. Above all, because he’d been caught in the middle of it all. He had hidden under one of the delivery vans, hoping its gas tank wouldn’t be hit. The day that he’d come the closest to dying.
But that wasn’t anything like this situation. Back then he’d been lying under the delivery van, listening to the burst of individual gun shots. This time he could hardly distinguish one shot from the other.
The three men had immediately thrown themselves onto the ground. Even the referee, who had just needed support to walk, found a new lease on life in the moment he thought he might die. It took a few seconds for the three of them to realize that the gunfire was some distance away from them. They stood back up and took cover behind a shoulder-height wall. They then ran singly to the next closest hiding spot. Heading toward the shootout.
The referee left a trail of blood behind him.
81
The first shot—not the one that had gone out but the one that came in—finished demolishing the already damaged window. The next shot landed somewhere, but Thembinkosi didn’t spend long wondering where.
He had fallen back a few steps when High Voice had aimed at him. By the time the first two shots had been launched outside, he was already in the process of falling to the floor. His head landed against the wardrobe wall as Thembinkosi tried in vain to catch himself somehow with his hands. The blow hurt, a lot. But what shocked him even more than his own pain was Nozipho’s scream. She must have thought he’d been hit.
Timing. Thembinkosi fell deeper into the wardrobe. Now a barrage of bullets hailed in from the outside. Deep Voice leaped to the side to escape them. As he did that, he pulled a giant gun out from somewhere. And he glanced over at Thembinkosi—if I didn’t have other things to do, I’d shoot you. When Thembinkosi landed with his upper body in the wardrobe, he called: “Stay in there! Get down!”
Getting down was what the two others were doing even though his words weren’t meant for them. Shots flew into the room, and the two men didn’t risk moving out of their defensive positions. The response to the one shot fired by High Voice had been too massive. Thembinkosi pulled up his legs and tried to draw his entire body into the protection of the wardrobe. As he was about to pull the door shut behind him, a salvo of gunfire shredded the upper part of the door.
“Stop!” a loud voice shouted from outside.
He didn’t know if that was meant for the two whites hidden in the room or for the people out on the street shooting into the house. The shots slowly petered out. One last one struck a bedroom wall, but then everything was quiet.
82
Moses watched the bleeding referee and the two guards. The fat man who had struggled to climb over the wall was having a hard time following the other two. The second guard took the lead, followed by the referee, who was holding his head with one hand and stretching one hand out in front of him to keep his balance. After taking cover behind a car parked outside a garage, they checked their surroundings and waited on number three.
On the one hand, this is good, Moses thought. The attention was no longer focused on him. Someone had done something else, so hunting him down was no longer as urgent as it had been. Retreat. Take the furthest route to the exit along the wall. Try to escape. On the other hand…
It might be good to know what was going on over there. Maybe it would be helpful for him to know what was so important. Helpful for his escape.
The shots died down.
Moses looked around. In the distance, the mail carrier was standing and chatting with somebody who was hidden by a tree. Impossible to tell who that might be. A Polo drove up beside the two of them, came to a stop. A window was lowered, brief exchange. The Polo drove on and stopped in front of a house. Nothing in sight the other way.
Moses ran across the street and down the one the other three had already taken. They had a major head start on him. He took the first opportunity to hide behind a large, mid-height bush.
There was one thing he needed to avoid at all costs: The other three shouldn’t see that he was following them.
83
It wasn’t really quiet. At least, not for long. Not even a little.
People were yelling. The dog was barking again. More than one police siren was going off in the distance. Thembinkosi listened to the nearby breathing of the two whites, which sounded as loud as a power plant. Behind him, Nozipho was sobbing. A weeping full of fear and desolation.
That was good. As long as she was crying, she was alive.
Thembinkosi’s vision was blocked by the half-shredded wardrobe door. He couldn’t see out the window. He was lying half in, half out of the wardrobe, his arms crooked over his head. High Voice was stretched out on his stomach between the bed and the window. He didn’t see any blood. He could see Deep Voice’s head, also on the floor, turned away from him. Neither of them was moving.
“We’re going in,” a male voice outside declared.
“Absolutely not!” Another male voice.
The dog barked.
“Carl?” High Voice said quietly. “Carl?”
“Hm?”
“You okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
Thembinkosi didn’t know if that was good news or bad. Neither of them had moved a millimeter, but they were alive. What did that mean?
If they were dead, the people outside wouldn’t need to keep shooting, he thought.
Except at him and Nozipho. Would they first ask who they were and what they were doing in the house? Not likely.
He slowly reached a hand to the wall that separated the wardrobe partitions. He scratched a fingernail down it. An answering scratch quickly came from the other side.
“Carl?”
“Hm?”
“What should we do?”
“Survive.”
“Exactly! That’s what I was thinking.”
High Voice’s body tensed. He was stretched out like a swastika on the floor. One hand holding his pistol, the other not. The hand not holding the pistol pushed off a little from the floor. A silent wave gradually moved through his entire body. One knee reacted with similar pressure, and High Voice was already halfway to the shot-out window.
“What are you doing?” Deep Voice asked. He began to crawl after the other man.
“Surviving!” With this word, he lifted his pistol over the edge of the windowsill and began to shoot.
“No!” Deep Voice shouted.
The first reaction from those outside was a man yelling, “Get down!”
84
The two guards and the referee reached a cross street, and hastily disappeared around the corner. Whatever had just happened over there, the three of them weren’t all that far away from it. Moses imagined how the street under his feet curved slightly as it moved forward. The shooting had to be happening along there. In any case, it had just stopped. Maybe everything was already over.
He had to be careful. Two more properties on both sides, and then he would also reach the cross street. He glanced around. The coast was clear. Nobody at the intersection. Another look over the houses he wanted to pass. Nothing.