Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

"The water," Carmen sings, pointing at the pool. "Water, water. And not enough to drink."

A shadow swells up from the bottom of the pool, eclipsing the wan rays of the pool light. Something sickly white and huge with scales explodes from beneath the surface, snaps its jaws shut on Benoît and slides back into the water before he can draw breath to yell. Like a fucking dinosaur. I'm still blinking from the icy shock of water that burst up with it – and Benoît is gone, like he never was, the choppy waves the only sign that something happened.

"Pop goes the weasel!" Carmen says, clapping her hands in delight.

I don't think about it. I jump in after him. The water is cold enough to knock the breath out of me. I hear the Mongoose scream and splash in after me. But Mongooses can't dive. I fight my way through a dense skin of slimy rotting leaves, Sloth clutching my neck in terror. I hope he knows how to hold his breath. I dive into the pallid gloom lit up by the underwater light. There's a hole at the bottom of the deep end, a tunnel wide enough to steer a truck through. I swim into it, following the curve down into pitch darkness, like swimming into the heart of the Undertow. The pressure in my ear gear-shifts from a dull ache to a screaming drill bit in my head, but then the tunnel curves up again, like the U-bend of a sink, into water that's brutally cold and black. I can hear distorted music through the water and a slapping sound. Lungs burning, I kick up to the surface and break through into the cool air of an underwater cavern.

There is music pumping. An innocuously sweet pop ballad. One of iJusi's.

Baby it's a drive-by, drive-by…

The slapping is the sound of the blast as the monster breaches, twists in the air and flops back into the water, Benoît hanging limply in its jaws. Not a dinosaur. An albino crocodile, six metres long. It's rolling to drown its prey.

I start to swim for the thing, but Sloth tugs at my arms, to hold me back. He's right. There's nothing I can do until it stops its death roll. I tread water in the darkness and try to slow my heart and take in what's going on, try not to focus on the monster's thrashing.

The cavern is maybe twenty metres across. Natural rock with man-made features: the speakers pumping out iJusi, the bare neon bulb mounted on a set of stairs so steep it's basically a ladder, rising from a cement outcropping that juts into the water like a pier. The smell of damp and rot is overwhelming. Old vase-water.

Drive-by love

Huron, bare-chested, his belly hanging over his shorts, with a gun holster strapped under his arm, is standing on the landing with the twins who are naked, handcuffed together and swaying slightly. Their faces are empty. The Marabou is spreading a plastic sheet over an old-fashioned wooden butcher's block.

There is a cage at her feet big enough to hold a medium-sized dog. There's something else – not a dog – inside the cage. A hunch of mammal with brown fur. A flutter of feathers.

It's not even love at first sight, it's love at a glance

Huron shouts over the water at the Crocodile, "That better not be Carmen!" He laughs, but adds to the Marabou, "Go see what's going on."

"I'm sure Mark has everything under control," she says.

"Then where the hell is he? And who is that ?" he says, pointing to the water. For an awful moment, I think he's pointing at me, but he's indicating Benoît in the monster's mouth.

"Whoever it is, he's not a problem anymore," the Marabou shrugs.

"Hurry up, you overgrown fucking gecko!" Huron shouts. "We need to get this show on the road."

Saw you in the back of a taxi, passing me by

Sloth makes little panicky gasps in my ear. "It's okay, buddy, they can't see us." I hope. Sloth gives a little sob.

Tried to raise my hand, tried to catch your eye

I retreat into the darkness, to the wall, find a low rock to cling to. Sloth clambers onto it, shivering.

"We should start on the animals," the Marabou says. "There might be other intruders."

"Don't we need booster boy?"

"The twins will be enough. The doubling effect-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the expert here, baby. I'll do whatever you say," Huron says. "Let's get this party started."

"Indeed," she says and opens the cage to pull out a rabbit-eared creature with a long piggy snout. Patrick Serfontein's Aardvark. Still alive. She picks up a machete from the butcher's block.

But you looked straight past, didn't see me

The Crocodile slows its thrashing. It rises from the water and shakes its head violently as if testing the resistance of the body in its mouth. Benoît's right arm flops grotesquely from his body. He's not moving. The Crocodile smacks its jaw against the water and then sinks under, dragging Benoît with it.

Baby it's a drive-by, drive-by, drive-by love

I take a deep breath and dive down, reaching for my own lost thing. The tea-coloured blackness swallows me whole. The faint distortion of the lyrics, mixed with a terrible high-pitched squealing, accompanies me down.

Drive-by, drive-by

I clamp down on the panic, the claustrophobia and the vertigo of blindness, following that slender thread.

There is a rush of current. And something massive sweeps towards me in the darkness. I can't see but I can sense its mouth gaping and I fight back the terror, the urge to thrash for the surface. Its hoary tail sideswipes me as it brushes past, hard enough to crack a rib.

I have to be close. I have to be. I swim another couple of metres or maybe a mile, and bang my wrist against a rock. I grab it and feel the shape of it with my hands, like a blind woman reading a face. The rock face curves under. I follow it down and grasp a revoltingly soft hand. The flesh gives way under my grip. I can't help it. I scream into the water, expelling valuable air.

Get a fucking hold of yourself. I reach out for the hand again. It's pliable and doughy like wet bread, but I can feel a hard edge. Bone? No. It's a splint. Two of the fingers are bandaged together. Ronaldo. His face looms into view, bloated, unrecognisable. But this time I'm ready for it.

I drag myself past him, deeper, grasping for Benoît, terrified of what else might be down here in the black. I run my hand along a fracture in the rock, over a body jammed into it. I grope my way up, trying to find a way to identify it, to pull it loose. Tiny bubbles escape from a fold in the shirt, like little fish nibbling at my fingers. I touch plastic. Benoît's burns.

His arm is caught in the crack and I'm running out of air. Dark spots pop in front of my eyes. I brace my feet against the rock and ease his shoulder loose. It rotates obscenely under the skin, his arm flopping loosely from the socket. I pull again, hard, and he comes away. Only Ro comes with him. I kick out in blind panic as the bulk of the rotting bouncer drifts into me. My foot sinks into his stomach. A stream of thick bubbles erupts from between his lips, and his head flops back and up, his arms dragging, like a man called to the Ascension, the trapped gases sending him bobbing up to the surface.

I kick up after him, but I have the disadvantage of a cracked rib and 95 kg of my one-time lover in tow. The black spots have turned to bright sunflares. My lungs have moved beyond burning to the sear of napalm. And I break into the air and the music, gasping and choking. And it's not even nearly over.

Baby you can drive me crazy, drive me anywhere you please

Huron's voice carries across the water. "Kids, this is my friend, Mr Crocodile. Say hello, Mr Crocodile. He'd like to be your friend too. Your special friend. Because quite frankly, I'm sick to death of the thing."