AfroSFv2

by Ivor W Hartmann

  “I would have no problem if it was just a case of Christianity versus African religions,” the mayor said. “But this man is preaching hatred against wazungu.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Baba said.

  “Stop him,” the mayor said. “He claims the ancestors have chosen him, but if people knew it’s actually you who was blessed, they won’t listen to him.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You do it. You are the mayor. You are the politician.”

  “I’m also a Christian.”

  “So?”

  “People listen to Teacher because all along he has preached against Christianity and all kizungu things. They won’t listen to me if I told them the ancestors are speaking through me. But you, if you showed people your eyes, they’d believe you.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Why not? You’ve got to stop the hatred.”

  “I’ve never been a political person,” Baba said. “All I ever did was work metals. But you are the mayor, and what you are asking me to do is actually your responsibility. You. The reverend. The other leaders. You can convince the town to embrace the new gods without embracing racism.”

  Kera licked his plate dry, left them arguing, went to his bedroom, and promptly fell fast asleep. He wandered again that night, into the world of superheroes, where he flew with Kibuuka and fought beside Luanda Magere. He dreamed of Mama too, that she had prepared malakwang and they were eating together as a family, in those happy days before the soldiers came.

  He woke up to find Baba sitting on one of the other beds, watching him.

  “How did you sleep?” Baba said.

  “Fine,” Kera said, sitting up, pulling the bed clothes to cover his nakedness.

  “I’ll tell you where they are holding Karama,” Baba said.

  Kera looked up, wondering about the hoarseness in Baba’s voice. Only then did he notice that Baba’s skin was peeling off.

  “I’m dying,” Baba said.

  “No,” Kera said.

  “The sun,” Baba said, “it’s killing me. I have to go to a place of total darkness.”

  Like the hissing creatures, Kera thought. He is becoming one of them. Please, no.

  “You have Karama,” Baba said. “Rescue him, and then I’ll destroy that gun. I can’t leave it behind. You can stay with the bruka.”

  Kera felt something cold running down his face. He hated himself at that moment. How could he ever be Kibuuka, how could he ever be Luanda Magere, if his tears came as easily as that of a little girl? He buried his face into his palms to hide his shame, but that did not stop the pain that wrecked his heart.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” Baba said. “But the sun will kill me if I stay.”

  4

  Rage propelled him through the sky. The chill bit into his face, his fingers froze on the handlebars. Behind him, the horizon reddened with the waking sun. He flew over the valley of spirits, over the vast swamp, going west, away from home, away from his dying father.

  If he failed to save Karama, he would not have any one left. He would be all alone in the world, just a little weepy boy playing superhero.

  Doubts plagued him.

  Attacking during the day, rather than in the night when the gun’s flashes might warn the soldiers, had sounded like a good idea. The flash was invisible in daylight, and the gun made no noise, so theoretically he could kill all the soldiers before they realised what was happening. Yet soldiers would see their comrades falling dead, or vanishing into thin air if he used a wider flash circumference. They were not fools. They would know something was up. They would hide. And then what? Would they sit back like ducks and watch as he took them out one at a time? Some warlords had attack helicopters and anti-aircraft guns. What if someone spotted him in the sky and fired?

  Fear fanned his anger. The realisation that maybe he would not save his brother flooded his mouth with the taste of rotten milk. He would soon be all alone. Baba was turning into a shadow. He had a machine that would dig a hole in the bedroom, tunnel under the town, and then into the valley where he would join the hissing creatures. There would be no grave, just a hole under the bed. They still had some days, five at most, Baba had said, and then Kera would have no one left.

  Unless he saved Karama.

  Villages and small towns appeared far below him. Burnt huts, bombed out buildings, vehicles upturned on the roadsides. Yet, amidst the wounds, life bustled. People crept out of their huts armed with hoes, or jerry cans as they went to draw water. He flew over the ruins of a trading centre. Two men staggered out of a bar. It had a make-shift roof, no windows, no door, and its walls were black from a fire. Kera could not hear the drunks, but he could see them singing, dancing, falling on the road and laughing. An old woman swept the front yard, empty clay pots and beer straws were scattered around her.

  Shortly after passing the ruined town, he came upon a bunch of soldiers. There were ten of them on foot patrol. They had stopped four women, two of whom had babies on their backs, one had a suitcase, another had a bundle of clothing. Refugees, Kera thought, in search of a mythically peaceful land.

  One soldier used a knife to rip off a woman’s dress. She dropped her luggage and tried to cling on to her dress to cover her nakedness. Kera thought she was screaming, as the other women begged, as the infants wailed, and as the other soldiers cheered. The soldier’s knife slashed, and slashed, leaving the woman stark naked.

  Kera engaged Gear Three. The bruka went into hover mode. He pulled the ray gun from under the seat, just as the soldier threw the naked woman onto the ground. He could use a wider ray circumference to vaporise the boy, but that would take several seconds, as opposed to a bullet-hole sized circumference, which would happen in a split second.

  He turned a dial on his goggles. It zoomed in until he could count the pimples on the soldier’s face, a boy, about his own age, eyes red with flames of alcohol. Maybe this pimple infested goon had thrown the grenade that ripped Mama to bits. Maybe his gun tore up little Acii and Okee. Maybe he had raped dozens of women old enough to be his grandmother. Kera thumbed the trigger.

  The boy fell dead beside the woman. The other soldiers laughed, maybe thinking it an antic, until the blood flowed out of the boy’s head onto the tarmac. One soldier stepped closer to examine the dead boy’s head. Kera shot him. The others broke into a run, jumping for cover into the drainage ditch at the roadside. Kera swung the gun from one to the other, thinking he was too slow, but a slight press of his thumb was all it took for the gun to flash, one by one, he killed them all.

  The women were flat on the road. Kera wanted to go down to them, to comfort them, the way he had not comforted his mother. He could not, but he could show them where to go, so he burned holes and lines on the road, drawing an arrow pointing east, and spelling out the name of his town. Katong.

  One woman stood up. She looked about in confusion, at the bodies, at the blood flowing down the grey tarmac, and then at the writing on the road. Kera hoped she could read.

  Only when he resumed flight did he hear the pounding of his heart. His fingers trembled. Unable to concentrate on steering the craft, the flight became bumpy, as though he were driving fast over a potholed road, so he set the ornithopter to autopilot and let the emotions wash over him.

  He had just snuffled out the life of ten people, ten boys, who in another world might have played football with him, maybe grazed goats with him, boys who were torn away from their parents and turned into monsters. He had punched holes into their heads just as he had done the rats he used for target practice. Did that not make him a monster too? Maybe their mothers were still alive, somewhere, praying for their safe return home. Maybe they had little Aciis and Okees who were waiting for them.

  Kera felt faint. Tears blurred his vision. He engaged the hover gear, and cried out aloud, for the first time since he was ten. He wailed for a long time. The sun rode higher into the sky. The day became warmer. He was numbed, unable to
go forward, unable to go back.

  Then, he saw smoke on the ground, in the horizon, black fumes over the trees. He zoomed in on it, and saw a village burning. There were corpses on the ground, some hacked to pieces, others riddled with bullets. No sign of the perpetrators. He scanned the bushes, the road running from the village, and then he saw whiffs of dust in the air. A car had just passed by. He followed the dust and caught a pick-up speeding away with a machine gun on its back, a dozen soldiers crammed beneath the gun. Blood dripped from their machetes.

  He pulled out his gun, and aimed at the soldiers. One of them, whose nascent moustache was smeared with blood, had a frown on his face. Kera moved his gun to the next one, but these soldiers were not cheering as the foot patrol had. The blank expressions probably indicated they derived no joy in their deed. Before he could make a decision, the car plunged into a forest and vanished from his sight.

  He took off the telescopic goggles and he thought he would resume crying, that grief would overwhelm him, yet all he felt was a tightening in his stomach. He clenched the handlebars, teeth grinding.

  “You are the flying man of stone,” a voice whispered, in such a low tone that it could have been the wind singing to him. He looked over his shoulder, expecting to see someone standing on a cloud behind the bruka. Nothing.

  “You are Kibuuka,” the voice continued. “You are Luanda Magere.” He now thought it belonged to his mother. “You are the salvation of your people.”

  “Ma,” he said. It came out a weak whisper.

  The voice did not speak again.

  He searched the clouds, and only then did the surreal morning strike him. It was something straight out of a dream. Maybe it was all a dream, and anytime now Mama would awake him and give him a mug of hot porridge and a bowl of roasted njugu.

  “Ma,” he said again, a little louder. “Is that you?”

  The clouds did not answer. They did not open up to reveal the gods within them. They sailed by in silence, lazily, on their way to make rain and bless the ground.

  Kera felt strangely at peace. The miasma of guilt vanished. He was the flying man of stone. He had just saved four women and two children from rape and death. Why should he feel bad about it? The world lay in ruins. A war raged, filling the rivers with blood and choking the swamps with corpses. The streets bled, homes burned down, dreams turned to ash, and misery flowed in the veins of the people. They needed a god to fight for them. He could be that god, just like Kibuuka and Luanda Magere, he could bring peace back to the land.

  Kera donned the goggles and resumed flight.

  He sped after the pick-up, eager to vaporise the murderers. But, he did not see it again. Instead, he came upon Kapeto Army Barracks, a sprawling complex of circular huts built in a dozen rings around a three-storied brick structure. The warlord lived in that brick building. A flag waved on its roof. About two hundred meters north of the barracks was a separate ring of huts, encircling hundreds of wooden cages, each about ten square feet, each with about a score of prisoners inside. His brother was somewhere in one of those coops.

  Kera zoomed in. The prisoners were eating porridge, which seemed nothing more than dirty water. From their gaunt faces he thought they were probably starving. Maybe the thin porridge was all they ever ate.

  In a clearing at the edge of the prison, some of the male captives, cuddling wooden guns, stood in four lines in front of three soldiers. Recruits, Kera thought, out for training. He guessed that those in the cages had not yet yielded. Most bore the signs of beatings, eyes swollen shut, bloated faces, torn lips, broken noses.

  He searched from cage to cage, aware of the futility of his mission, for many people were face down, maybe unconscious, maybe dead. When he found Karama, after nearly an hour of searching, for a few moments he failed to recognise him. A bandage wrapped half of Karama’s face, covering up one eye. Blood had soaked through the bandage, a smudge where the eye should have been. Had Karama lost his eye? Would Baba invent a machine to cure him?

  But even if Baba’s dreaded machines could clone life, or generate food, or heal, he would do nothing if he saw Karama’s face. He would simply say, ‘Your brother is back. Look after each other,’ and then vanish into that dark world inside of rocks.

  A soldier stood beside Karama’s cage. He had streaks of grey in his hair, wrinkled skin, and a faded green uniform with tattered seams. A rusty AK47 hung on his back on a sisal rope. His hands trembled as he filled mugs with porridge, probably a sign that he drank too much alcohol. The prisoners accepted the meal, seemingly without complaint or thanks. This soldier would be the first to die in the rescue mission. Kera’s thumb hovered above the trigger button. He could not shoot. The old man was not doing any harm, and probably had never hurt anyone. He was only feeding prisoners.

  Kera instead turned the flash gun onto the frames of the cage, and pressed, vaporising wood. One side fell open. The prisoners scrambled away in confusion. The old soldier dropped the serving jug, splashing porridge, and snatched his gun. He cocked it, but did not shoot. He did not even point it at the prisoners. He stepped away from the cage, confused, and shouted something.

  Kera’s goggles zoomed out to gain a wider field of vision. Three soldiers were running to the cage. Kera thought he heard the clank of metal as they cocked their guns, but it was only in his head. He could not hear anything. He was watching a silent movie.

  A soldier with sergeant’s stripes inspected the cage. Then he took out his pistol and pointed it at a prisoner, a man with a bald head. The sergeant asked a question. The bald man shrugged. The gun flashed. A cloud of red exploded from the bald head, splattering the people closest to him. The prisoners dropped their mugs and scrambled away from the sergeant, screaming. They had nowhere to run. The sergeant turned his gun on another prisoner.

  Kera’s gun flashed.

  It was easier when he thought of it as Shooter, a video game he used to play at school.

  The sergeant dropped. His finger pressed the trigger as he fell. The bullet hit the soldier standing beside him, and again Kera saw an explosion of red.

  The other soldiers opened fire, shooting randomly at unseen enemies, shooting at the prisoners, who fell flat onto the bed of the cages. Kera fired and fired, aware that he was too slow, dropping one soldier after another. Panic spread through the camp. Soldiers ran towards Karama’s cage in confusion, some took cover behind wheelbarrows, boulders, whatever shelter they could find.

  Karama and other prisoners slipped out of the cage and took cover beneath it.

  “Run!” Kera screamed, but they could not hear him.

  He cut open more cages. Prisoners scrambled out. Some were bold enough to pick up the guns the soldiers had dropped, and now they shot at the uniformed men. The battle intensified.

  Not once did anyone look up into the sky. Even if they did, they would not see Kera. He was just a speck in the sky, with the sun behind him. His gun flashed, and flashed, invisible rays, one at a time, searching for men in green and punching holes into their heads, just as the virtual gun had searched for bad guys in Shooter, searching for wooden bars and vaporising them to free prisoners.

  It seemed like an hour had passed, but probably it was just a few minutes. He had killed many of the soldiers inside the prison (score twenty six thousand more and he would overtake Odeng who topped the highest score list). The rest were hiding, out of his sight. Tanks and armoured cars were racing from the main barracks, as a host of soldiers ran to the front line. Kera turned his gun on the vehicles, ripping tanks apart, slicing machine guns off armoured cars, vaporising engines, turning them to scrap.

  But the foot soldiers were closing in on the prison. If they went in, there would be too many of them. Kera would not be able to stop a massacre, but he could stop them from reaching the prison. He cut a ditch in front of them, moving his gun slowly over the ground, keeping the trigger pressed down. The ditch formed steadily, but too slowly. He wished he could do it faster, but even then it had an effect. Soldiers saw
the ground opening up in front of them, no fire, no earthquake, no digging, just a ditch twenty feet deep suddenly appearing, growing longer, and longer. They dropped their guns and fled, only to face fire from their commanders anxious to stop a mass desertion.

  Artillery fired, distracting him from the ditch. The shell fell inside the prison. Kera heard the boom. The explosion sent prisoners scampering, trying to get out, but getting out meant passing a ring of sandbags and machine guns, which tore them apart.

  For a few seconds, Kera was conflicted. He could not take out the artillery and the machine guns at the same time. Tears spouted afresh, clouding his vision. He was no superman. He could not fight a whole army. His super gun could only kill one soldier at a time. He was not fast enough to stop the massacre.

  More shells fell in the prison. Kera turned to the artillery, a row of six guns. He fired. Nothing. The batteries were dead. He ejected them, popped in others, and then he cut the artillery into pieces. Soldiers watched in horror as the big guns broke up in front of them. Then Kera turned to the machine guns. He took out one at a time. Too bad his gun was silent. If it made noise, maybe it would tell the soldiers where he was, and then they would stop shooting at the prisoners.

  All of a sudden, the soldiers abandoned the sandbags and fled. Maybe they had finally realised that a ghost was killing them. Their flight enabled the prisoners to get out. Beyond the prison were open fields, bush, and forest. Many prisoners headed for the forest, knowing it would give them better cover.

  Seeing that the massacre had ceased, and numerous prisoners now had guns and were fighting off the few soldiers remaining in the prison, Kera spent a few moments etching a message onto the trunk of several trees. Just one word. Katong. It was difficult work, and drained more batteries, but he created enough messages scattered over a wide area. He hoped the prisoners would get it, and head for Katong.

  Kera could not be in all places at the same time, but if there were as many people as possible within the walls of his town, it would be easier for him to protect them.