The Wall

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.