Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

I'm sitting rocking when my head explodes. I look down and see a snarling creature, a monster with ghoulish eyes and flesh peeling from its face. It's snapping at me, teeth ripping at my arm. I scream and push it to the floor. There another one next to me and I lash out to stop its advance, but a third demon looms over me.

Then come the patterns. Patterns crawling across everything, writhing, like a curtain of fire ants digging holes in my vision. I scratch at my face to get them off and feel wetness on my fingertips. The snarling things advance. I know something is not right but I can't think. There is a knife on the kitchen table.

Oh God I need help. Something is seriously not right.

Agent HK

This is always the worst part. The waiting. Waiting for the first media reports of the massacre. He'd rip as many people apart as possible before something stopped him. Rage drugs. Military-grade neurotropics, a cocktail of steroids, PCP and pure adrenaline enhanced with nano that rips through the blood-brain barrier. Street name: Hatepills. Discontinued after a platoon had been dosed with them and gone zombie on a routine mission in the Rural.

They'd find anti-corporate material in his apartment. Data linking him to known resistance groups through his brother and directly to the Lioness herself. Media channels were primed for the full scoop. Embedded casters would have photos of the bodies "leaked" to them. It was like driving a spike into the heart of the resistance.

My debriefing with Shaw is quick. Debriefings are a necessary part of the process. Back in the bad old days agents had been known to do stupid things. Phone the families of victims and beg for forgiveness. Put service weapons in their mouths and squeeze.

"Do you feel remorse?" Shaw asks. I shake my head. People would lap it up. The titillation of it all happening so close. Inside the mind of a terrorist, a killer. One of the bad guys.

But they would feel safe because the good guys are protecting them. Thank God, I'm protecting them.

Featuring a gritty, dirty, urban selection of the hottest

independent South African music hand-picked by

Lauren Beukes and HoneyB.

www.africandope.co.za/zoocity

Get 50% off the album now with the promo code:

"marabou amp;malt3s3"

Moxyland soundtrack also available.

Psssst!

Get advance

intelligence on

Angry Robot's

nefarious plans for

world domination.

Also, free stuff.

Sign up to our

Robot Legion at

angryrobotbooks.com/legion

Or die.