Kill Me Quick

by Meja Mwangi

  Meja had nowhere to run to get away from them. His heart was pounding wildly. Sweat poured down his face into his eyes and into his mouth, a salty sweat spiced with terror. He heard the pursuers behind him get closer with every second, but he dared not look behind him. His mind now said to stop and wait for the mob, ask them why they were chasing him. His fear said to run back to the safety of the backstreets. His legs took off up the road, away from the mob that was now almost on top of him.

  He ran into window-shoppers and beggars and busy Main Street people. He ran into messengers and delivery people sending them to the pavement. Someone grabbed at him, missed, and fell slowing down the mob. Everyone was grabbing at Meja and shouting.

  “Kill, kill, kill.”

  He still had no idea why they were after him, but there was no time to find out now. He had seen the violence a mob unleashed with flying rocks, swinging clubs, stomping boots, and bullets. He would die if he did not get away from it.

  He left the sidewalk and started across Main Street. The second he stepped off the sidewalk, he realised he had made a mistake. From then on, everything he did, saw or heard unfolded in a slow, dream-like manner, a series of pictures that seemed to have nothing do with one another, or with him.

  He heard a woman scream. A car hooted. There was a loud rumbling, followed by the screech of car brakes. Then there was a whoosh of warm air and the smell of motor oil, and his feet left the ground. He felt no pain, just a strange detachment as he went spinning head over heels in the air, a car gliding noiselessly below him, tires smoking as they skidded on the asphalt. He saw his pursuers upturned faces frozen with fear, as they watched him fly over the car and land several paces behind it with a noiseless thud, thud, thud. Then blackness. And still there was no pain.

  Through the darkness, he heard voices, a cacophony of voices, speaking in many tongues, excited, marvelling at what had happened.

  “Did you see that?” one said to the others.

  “He flew like a bird.”

  “He must be dead.”

  “I think he is alive”

  Meja’s eyes popped open. He was on a bed of pain in the middle of the street, surrounded by curious faces. There was a policeman with him, inside the circling crowd, looking down at him uncertain what to do. The car stood a few paces away, forgotten by all but the young men trying to extort money from the driver.

  “He is alive,” the policeman announced.

  “Finish him off,” someone said.

  The crowd surged forward.

  “What did he do?” asked the policeman.

  “He broke a car window.”

  “And stole the radio.”

  “No,” someone else said. “He snatched a necklace.”

  “You were not even there,” said a woman’s voice. “It was a purse.”

  “A purse and a watch.”

  Meja lay on the road and heard them talk about him, and the terrible things he was supposed to have done. Most thought he was dead, but he was alive, and still holding the bag that Maina had thrown at him. Now that he was no longer in any hurry, he took a good look at it. Through a rip in the plastic saw two smashed mangoes. Flies hovered over his hand outstretched, but they were more interested in the blood.

  He wondered what happened to Maina, why he was not there with him. Then he remembered the gunshot.

  Chapter Five

  Maina ducked in the first alley and kept running. He heard a gunshot, heard the outcry die out behind him and ran on. He did not stop running until he was way out of the city centre. He did not have to worry about Meja, he said to himself. Meja would be all right. They would meet later at the usual place when the outcry was over.

  He gradually relaxed the farther he got from the city centre. He walked along roads that he and Meja had travelled before looking for work and filling up potholes. Some of the potholes that they had filled were still good. He marvelled again at the size of the houses and the cars. It seemed he had never seen them before and he wondered who owned them, what schools they had gone to and what sort of jobs they had. He shrunk from the road, and tried to be invisible, as they drove past him.

  The suburbs had been all right in the days, when he had come looking for work. Back then he could lose himself among other job seekers, fruit vendors and hawkers. None of those were there anymore. Now there were signs everywhere forbidding hawking, solicitation, and loitering, and warning of fierce dogs. Maina felt naked and exposed, shaken and guilty. He had to get out of there back to where he belonged, before a policeman appeared to ask what he was doing there.

  He was rushing down Lower Hill Road, keeping away from the gates and the fierce dogs, when he came across a man sitting on a culvert by the roadside smoking.

  “You,” the man called. “Come here.”

  He stopped. His feet said to run, but his legs had done the entire running they could do in a day.

  “Me?” He asked the man.

  “Who am I talking to?” said the man. “Yes, you. Come here.”

  “Why?” Maina asked.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  He was in black jeans, a white shirt, and a green tie. His hair was down to his shoulders in dusty dreadlocks. He was thin and hard face, and he did not look like a policeman. Maina approached. The man offered a handshake. Maina kept his distance.

  “Sit down,” the man showed the place by his side.

  His eyes were hard and bloodshot, and he had a small beard.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To town.”

  “You are in town, man,” said the man. “Where are you going?”

  Maina shrugged.

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Nanyuki.”

  “Nanyuki?” the man asked. “Is it true your donkeys smoke bhangi?”

  “I don’t know,” Maina said.

  “I heard they chew khat too.”

  Maina heard a lot of bad jokes about Nanyuki, told by people who did not know Nanyuki, but he had not heard those two.

  “Do not worry,” said the man. “I am also from Nanyuki. What is your name?”

  “Maina.”

  “Razor,” the man again offered a handshake. Maina took it this time.

  “Sit down,” said Razor, dragging him to the culvert.

  Maina had no choice.

  “You don’t remember me,” the man said, “but we went to school together. Do you remember Manga?”

  Maina did not remember such a name.

  “What about Kim?”

  He did not remember any Kim either. A passing car slowed down as the driver checked them out.

  “What are you looking at?” Maina’s new friend asked the driver. “Get lost.”

  The driver waved and drove on.

  “Where are you going?” Razor asked Maina.

  “City.”

  “I will walk with you.”

  Razor continued questioning Maina as they walked. He was out looking for a job too.

  “What sort of a job?” Maina asked him.

  He did not look like a cook, a gardener, or a watchman.

  “A future job,” he said. “Where do you work?”

  Maina did not know the safe response to that one. He now knew that the man was not a policeman, but he still did not trust him.

  “Here and there,” he said.

  “And where do you live?”

  “In the city.”

  “We all live in the city, man,” Razor said. “Where do you live?”

  The road dipped downhill through a park, crossed a highway, and made straight for Main Street. They could now see the tall buildings and the smoke that hang over them like a rain cloud. Maina pointed vaguely.

  “There,” he said.

  “Alone?” asked Razor.

  “With a friend.”

  “Female friend?”

  The man asked too many question, like a policeman. Maina shook his head.

  “Do you have a gang?”

  “N
o,” Maina said.

  “Would you like to join mine?”

  Maina hesitated.

  “What sort of gang?”

  “A gang,” said Razor. “Working together for the good of all. We do not hurt people. We just take stuff, while they sleep, and that is all.”

  He stopped to look about and pointed.

  “You see that window?”

  He was pointing to a house just visible over the fence.

  “They do not close that window at night,” he said. “They think it is safe, because it is high and surrounded by a stone wall. Nyoka can jump that wall, squeeze through the window and come out with their TV, and they will not hear a thing.”

  “How?” Maina asked.

  “He has talent,” Razor started walking. “What is your talent?”

  “Talent?”

  “What are you good at?”

  “Mathematics,” Maina said.

  He had earned the highest marks in his school.

  “Any fool can pass a school exam,” Razor said. “What else can you do?”

  Meja had played football at school. Everyone had said he was a talented player.

  “We don’t play football in Shanty Town,” said Razor. “Come with me and I will show you what we do. My boys will be happy to see you.”

  He saw Maina hesitate.

  “You can’t live alone in the street anymore. They will gang up on you and take what you have. Where is your friend?”

  The last Maina had seen of him, Meja was flying down an alley with a load of mob justice at his heels.

  “He can join us too,” said Razor.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Maina said.

  He related the incident with the plastic bags, the fleeing street boys, and the chase. There was no telling whether the mob caught up with Meja.

  “When a mob comes after you,” Razor said to him, “you run to, not from the police.”

  Maina could not remember giving that life-saving advice to his friend, but he did warm him against running on Main Street.

  “I will look for him later,” he said.

  They passed the afternoon at the park, watching preachers berate job seekers over unemployment, immorality, and crime in the city. Meanwhile, Razor educated Maina in the workings of the streets and the gangs that ruled them. Maina had experienced the intimidation and the extortion by gangs that hounded them in the suburbs claiming to own repair rights to potholes. Now he learned that dumpsters and garbage dumps in certain parts of the city had gangs that claimed exclusive rights and assaulted anyone found foraging without paying protection. Beggars too paid homage and a part of their take to the gangs that controlled the streets.

  The sun was going down when Maina decided the time had come to go find Meja. The park was deserted. The preachers, the jobless and the hawkers had gone. The last of the freelance photographers took a last picture of a couple holding hands by the fishpond, and the last ice cream seller was pushing his tricycle out of the park.

  Maina and Razor went looking for Meja, starting their search at the back of the supermarket. They worked their way through the back lanes, looking anywhere Maina and Meja had spent a night. Razor kept his patience in check by whistling a tune that made Maina nervous and more desperate. After looking everywhere, he thought his friend might be, Maina began to worry.

  “Why do you look in dumpsters?” Razor finally asked. “Is your friend a dog?”

  “Let us go,” Maina said. “I will find him later.”

  They left the city centre with the masses heading home after another day in the city, crossed the river, and left the city far behind. Maina did not ask where they were going and Razor did not say. After an hour of walking, they topped a rise and began the descent into a sprawling slum settlement inside the city’s old dumping ground. The houses were made of recycled plastic paper, rusty metal cans, mud, grass and anything that could give shelter from wind, sun, and rain. They were thrown together with no plan or pattern, and built so close together that they appeared to be a waste dump, from the top of the rise. The only sign of life, the only prove that there were people under all that paper and plastic garbage was continuous hum like that from a beehive.

  “Shanty Town,” said Razor. “I am happy when I find it here.”

  Corrupt city officials wanted to move it and its residents somewhere far away from the city, but the fat people at City Hall could not decide where to move it, and how or when to do so. The county had surveyed the land and gave it to the councillors, to the politicians, to judges, and important Government people. The slum dwellers were living on borrowed time.

  “But you are safe here,” Maina said. “Whatever you were running from cannot follow you here.”

  He led the way down, through lanes and footpaths so narrow they sometimes had to walk sideways to pass through. Smoke, dust, and the smell of sewage were everywhere. There was also the smell of burning rubber. Razor said it was from the old tyres that the dwellers used for fuel. There was also a stench of burning flesh. That was from a crematorium across the valley. Most of the sewage smell was from the river that split the place in two, but some of it was from a fertilizer factory at the other end of the valley. Then there was the smell of people, many, sweaty, unwashed bodies living cooped up together.

  Maina began to relax. The tensions of the backstreet, the fears that had kept him running like an overwound clock about to detonate, begun to slip off his shoulders, and be replaced by a warm feeling of wellbeing, as he squeezed his way through the narrow lanes after his newfound friend. Razor called into some of the houses as they passed inquiring how they were. Occasionally a voice answered from the pile of plastic and rusty sheets assuring him they were all right. A bleary-eyed face peeked out of a doorway to gape at Maina. It ducked back out of sight when Razor asked what he was staring at.

  Some distance into the heart of the slum, Razor entered one of the houses leaving Maina outside. Maina heard voices from within, a short exchange within followed by a woman’s laughter.

  “Chokora,” Razor called out.

  It was dark inside. Maina could barely make out the shapes of the people there. Some of them were smoking bhangi and the room was full of smoke. He stood by the door peering, waiting for Razor to tell him what to do or where to go.

  “Away from the door” said an angry voice.

  Maina moved stepped aside and onto someone’s foot.

  “Watch it, fool,” a voice said.

  Then his eyes got used to the gloom and he saw them. There were eight men sitting on boxes and on upturned buckets and on the floor looking weary. Razor sat on the only bed in the room with his hand caressing the leg of the only woman in the room. She lay on the bed, supporting her head on one arm, and eyed Maina with dark suspicious eyes. When she spoke, her voice was hard and unfriendly.

  “What are you?” she asked him.

  “Maina,” he said.

  He did not know how else to respond. The others were watching him, asking the same question with their eyes.

  “He is Chokora,” Razor said.

  “You never told me you had chokora friends,” said the woman.

  “It was a long time ago,” Razor said.

  Then he turned to Maina and introduced her.

  “Chokora, this is my gang,” he said. “The boys I told you about. The one-eyed one is Jicho. The hungry-looking one is Nyoka. We call him Snake. The bearded one I call Professor Hakuna Kazi. He went to University and could not find a job. We do not understand what he says, so do not listen too hard. The one sitting on the floor is Kifagio and that one by his side likes us to call him Jitu. I do not know why he wants to be called giant, when he is so small.”

  Maina interest in the gang rose as each name was matched to a face. Jitu was thin and frail, but was Jicho even thinner. Jicho was in a faded red, or brown, football jersey and old jeans like Razor’s. His claw-like fingers clutched a thick stub of bhangi. His one good eye watered so much from the smoke, he had to keep rubbing away t
he tears with the back of his hand. Between the wiping and the watering again, the one eye watched Maina.

  Professor was smoking too, and examining his fingernails with interest. He had a pointed beard that looked distinguished, bald and wizened, but from what Maina could see in the gloom, was not so old. Kifagio was thick and, as Maina was to find out later, not just in body, and he was older than everyone else in the gang. His cheeks were sagging and some front teeth were missing. The remaining teeth were brown from smoking and chewing tobacco.

  “And this is Sara,” Razor said, kissing the woman. “She is my woman.”

  Sara was thin and tall. Her dark eyes had long eyelashes that, when they blinked, which they did constantly, were invitingly and frightening.

  The gang had no guns or any sort of weapons, as far as Maina could see, and there was no radio, fridge, cooker or furniture in the house. All they had was their bhangi and one another. Maina’s idea of a gang of vicious criminals hiding away from the police, and only coming out occasionally to rob a bank, suddenly faded.

  “I am glad to meet you all,” he said to them.

  There was momentary silence in the room. Then everyone resumed whatever he was doing before Maina’s arrival. Kifagio rose, stepped up to Maina and stood glaring at him. He was bigger and meaner than anyone Maina had ever faced so close.

  “How do I know you are not a policeman?” he asked.

  Razor shot from the bed.

  “Because I say so,” he said.

  “The last friend you brought us led the cops here. How do we know this one is different?”

  “Because I say so.”

  “Razor,” said the woman, “we are concerned for the safety of all of us.”

  “We?”

  Razor looked round the room. Most of them avoided his eyes. Finding himself without support, Kifagio stepped back to his place and sat down. Then Professor rose and spoke up.