The boy looks at the vehicle for a moment, then smiles softly, and, without losing another second, leads the way towards it.
Sascha catches up and directs him to the back door. While Ikaros jumps in the driver's seat and turns the key in the ignition, he watches them clamber in the back, then releases the clutch just as Sascha sits herself down next to the boy and holds his hand in hers. The door slams shut as the Jeep takes off.
Ikaros quickly does a U-turn and races the Jeep towards the main street and the road that leads back the way they came, straight to the border. Too easy, he thinks nervously to himself; he then steps on the accelerator, not wanting to spend any more time in the country than they absolutely have to.
Driving out of town, they awkwardly introduce themselves. The boy follows along and repeats their names while pointing at them. Ikaros and Sascha then try and get his name, giving him space to answer.
"Sam-u-el," he says quietly while pointing to himself. "Samuel," he repeats more quickly.
Ikaros glances at him twice, slightly surprised to hear a Western name, and one pronounced so nicely. "Pleased to meet you, Samuel."
Sascha rubs the top of Samuel's head gently and smiles warmly at Ikaros. "I think we're all gonna get along just fine, don't you?"
"Hopefully," replies Ikaros as he glances at them both in the rearview mirror and manages a small smile in return.
Sascha takes Samuel's hand and looks out the window, almost allowing herself to get lost in the beauty around them while contemplating the new path they all have before them.
Twenty-five minutes later
Ikaros sits in the driver's seat staring vacantly into the distance through the side-view mirror while Sascha stands on the side of the road waiting for Samuel to return from behind a tree. She smiles softly, thinking about the clever way Samuel communicated that he needed to take a pee.
Ikaros opens the door, gets out, and walks several steps beyond the tail end of the Jeep, where he stops and stands quietly.
Sascha tracks his movements with curiosity. "What are you doing?"
"Can you hear that?"
"Hear what?" she asks, suddenly getting the impression that she may have a hearing impairment. She follows his gaze nearly two kilometers down the road to where a cluster of trees and a sharp bend make it impossible to see any further.
"I think you should drive," suggests Ikaros flatly.
Guessing his intentions and immediately experiencing a sharp surge in fear, she spins and sees that Samuel is already walking back towards her with a smile on his face. "Baby, we have to get going." She ushers him towards the Jeep.
Ikaros opens the back door, leans in and pulls out a fifteen-year-old Kalashnikov they picked up in a flea market after hunting for something utilitarian briefly before starting out.
Having seen it resting on the floor earlier, Samuel wasn't overly-concerned, but now that Ikaros is holding it, he becomes noticeably apprehensive and his smile appears just to slide off his face. Ikaros notices and feels a bit uncomfortable. "Ah, it's okay, little dude… Just get in the Jeep with Sascha. She'll drive and I'll just sit in the tray, okay?"
Samuel doesn't say anything but keeps his eyes firmly on Ikaros while getting into the back seat and pulling the door shut behind him. Sascha immediately starts the engine, then turns her head to watch Ikaros jump onto the tray and sit back against the cabin. She places the shifter into first and rides the clutch, then accelerates as fast as her under-developed driving skills and the Jeep's nearly thirty-year-old-yet-well-maintained engine will allow.
Staring down to the bend in the road as it gets further behind them, Ikaros finally sees two large four-wheel drives come into view and, after the drivers spot the Jeep, start gaining speed in an attempt to catch up along the straight stretch ahead of them.
Although Sascha does her best to take the Jeep to high speeds despite the rough conditions, it's nevertheless considerably slower than that of the modified vehicles now in pursuit; consequently, the two trucks bridge much of the gap in less than a minute, leaving merely three hundred meters between them — well within effective firing range.
Nearly every other second, Sascha nervously glances into the rearview mirror alternating between their pursuers and Ikaros, knowing that something has to happen soon. Feeling nervous, she reaches back and squeezes Samuel's knee reassuringly.
With the barrel of his gun still pointing up towards the sky, almost too casually, Ikaros watches the trucks approach for a few more seconds, then wraps the strap around his left forearm for stability, takes hold of the barrel firmly, and rests the forefinger of his right hand lightly on the trigger; not quite ready, he deliberately finds time to reflect on some of his feelings and impressions about his violent past and his present need to engage violently.
With a curious sense of detachment, Ikaros coldly observes the men standing against the cabin of the leading truck and beginning to take aim. A bullet whistles past his head; it pierces through the rear window near his left shoulder and exits out the front, leaving an almost clean hole in both cases but causing both Sascha and Samuel to breathe sharply in trepidation. Samuel slides onto the floor and crouches low behind Sascha's seat while holding onto it tightly; more anxious than ever, Sascha looks into the rearview mirror for a prolonged moment, trying to work out whether Ikaros has lost his nerve or is just playing recklessly with danger and chance. Please, shoot, baby … please … just shoot!
Almost as though he heard her, he purposively gets into firing position, tucking his right foot under his butt and placing his left one firmly on the tray. He lines up his right eye with the high-powered, auto-zoom-and-focus, bump-resistant sight and shifts his attention to the pressure he's placing on the trigger.
Another bullet races past the right side of his face, the wake from which he distinctly feels.
Limiting his awareness to the confines of his sight, he squeezes the trigger: first, he targets the soldiers standing behind the cabin with a few quick bursts; then, after blowing out the two front tyres, causing the truck to start slowing down and become difficult to handle, he raises the barrel and sprays a few bullets through the windscreen, hitting the preoccupied driver once in the face. Crippled and out of control, the vehicle drifts to the side of the road and slows uneventfully to a stop, allowing the next truck to take the lead position only to be immediately set upon by Ikaros, his Kalashnikov, and his natural marksmanship that was identified and taken advantage of on many occasions in Botswana, leaving Ikaros with a well-developed talent, an unparalleled kill rate amongst his peers, and a penchant for taking opportunities as they present themselves.
With his curiosity getting the better of his fear, Samuel slowly raises his head and looks up at Ikaros aiming and firing smoothly and deliberately. Samuel repositions himself to get a better look over the back seat at the action going on behind him just in time to see the driver of the final vehicle fall onto the steering wheel as it careens off the road and slams into a tree, causing the six men still alive in the back to be hurtled into the air and the front passenger to smash violently through the windscreen.
Ikaros takes his eye away from the gun's sight for the first time since engaging and looks on at the scene being quickly left behind. He rests the butt of the gun on the tray and turns his head towards the cabin, making eye contact with Samuel. They stare at each other for a few seconds not knowing how to respond. Samuel then smiles warmly but briefly at him, turns around and sits back down behind Sascha, who smiles with relief at Ikaros through the rearview mirror and feels a certain kind of pride and also hope that this experience will help him to position his past in a more positive and effective light. She continues glancing at him as he leans up against the back of the cabin, rests the gun against his shoulder, and almost immediately gets mesmerised by the dust being flung up behind the Jeep as they make the final dash towards the border, now only a few minutes' drive away.
• • •
Over the following few days, they made thei
r way across to Nigeria, where they found themselves a hotel in a relatively secure area of the capital, Abuja. They proceeded clumsily to teach Samuel some English and German while they did their own crash course in his dialect over the first few weeks to help him along a bit. They soon found that he had something of a proclivity for languages, picking up the basic structures and vocabulary quite quickly, making their attempts to learn his language look clumsy in comparison, but giving them all satisfaction about being able to communicate increasingly effectively and aiding the further development of their relationships.
Their main purpose of staying in Abuja was to gain a passport and visa of some description for Samuel so that he could go with them to Germany and begin formal schooling. This was by no means an easy task: after almost immediately discarding the authorised route, they set about searching for people and groups who could help them put together the required forged documents and assist in bribing and — if they absolutely had to — blackmailing particular officials that had the power to speed up the visa processing time and increase the likelihood of it being granted.
They made slow progress at first, searching the dark crevices of the Internet day and night for months on end; then, after approaching a shortlist of likely prospects, rejecting most and being rejected by some, they eventually established connections with a handful of underground agents and gang members from some surprising corners of the globe, most of whom proved to be invaluable to attaining the desired result. Being determined and pragmatic, Ikaros and Sascha were satisfied that they were only cheated out of large amounts of money twice during the whole process.
Once all the prerequisites were put in place, they then had to wait nearly twelve months for clearance from the German Immigration Department, which predictably proved quite pedantic and difficult to circumvent by illegitimate means; nevertheless, despite being highly suspicious of every case presented to them and able to identify the vast majority of forged documentation being produced at the time, the visa application went through smoothly and without gaining any unwanted attention. This was in large part due to all the paid-off, and in one case, blackmailed, Nigerian officials playing their roles with genuine talent when queried by the Germans on several routine points of concern.
Twenty-two months after arriving in Abuja, Samuel finally received what ended up being a twelve-month student visa. They immediately packed their bags and set off to the airport to catch the next flight, not wanting to stay in the country any longer than they absolutely had to as they had observed it spiralling rapidly out of control and into dismaying and desperate dysfunction over the previous seventeen months.
• • •
The calamitous and rapid rising of the world's average sea level began five months after they arrived in Abuja with an initial 3.6 meters being added over the first seven months and reaching a total of 6.2 meters after nineteen months — a result of the alarmingly fast deglaciation of much of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Although having been extensively and repeatedly forewarned by many mainstream scientists and organisations for years previous to this, the world was still taken by surprise, but only in the sense that it was drastically underprepared for the ensuing events — and still further rises were expected before the end of the century.
Like much of the rest of the world, apart from those directly affected, Sascha and Ikaros could just watch the events unfold on their TV, almost relieved that what they'd been fatalistically expecting since they were small children had finally occurred, and that they could now start dealing with the consequences and, importantly, stop waiting for it any longer, which gave many a strange sense of relief.
Then there were those directly affected by the devastation. The world's map was in need of being completely redrawn in a matter of months, with nearly 3.5 billion people displaced, the majority of whom were the world's intractably impoverished, such as one hundred million Bangladeshis. A significant chunk of Bangladesh was lost to the rising tides, causing most to become homeless and the country to be left without enough land and infrastructure to supply the population with an adequate food supply. The governments of neighbouring countries, with their own problems to deal with that were taking their resources and capabilities well beyond manageable limits, mercilessly blocked the movement of the Bangladeshis across their borders. Consequently, with little international aid made available, by the end of the following winter, nearly 90 percent of the Bangladeshi refugees had died of starvation. This desperate situation was found around the world with nearly half of the refugees being allowed to die over the following two years.
As for Nigeria, being the largest economic hub in the region and one of the few to have maintained its standing through the interminable difficulties of the century, it too suffered from a deluge of refugees crossing its borders; however, unlike those neighbouring Bangladesh, the authorities were too ill-equipped to stop most due to the country's relatively small army and police force, which resulted in too many easily traversable gaps in the borders being left unsecured. The rapid influx of migrant refugees caused a massive strain on the social, economic and infrastructural conditions of the capital and its satellites, putting stress on the diminishing resources and the productivity from what remained of the arable land, much of which was undergoing stress from a prolonged drought.
A rapid influx of nearly thirty million people from the surrounding countries, in combination with the reduction in the total area of the country due to the rise in sea levels, also caused many of their own citizens to become displaced refugees, which only added to the untenable situation that quickly erupted into violent social unrest and chaos: wherever possible, those considered wealthy, including farmers, landlords and business owners, were targeted and their resources plundered, which steadily escalated to a constant flow of heinous murders that the authorities soon came to ignore because of their inability to cope with the sheer scale of it all. Further, a dramatic plunge in the availability of food and drinking water led to a quickly rising death toll: the strong stench of rotting corpses lying strewn in the streets, and all the carts and trucks that carried away the dead were two more grim indications of how far the country had fallen in such a short time.
Amid all this, Ikaros and Sascha were able to put together a decent sketch of the situation from the information they received from the local media, the Internet, hotel staff and other patrons; moreover, the view from their eighteenth-floor balcony provided a panorama of much of the south side of the city, which was where a representative sample of the chaos could be observed, including bomb blasts of various magnitudes, a near-continual series of fires blazing out of control, and fierce skirmishes that were sometimes able to be heard continuing throughout the night.
In the initial phases of the collapse of the country, Sascha and Ikaros were first of all advised to stay within certain districts, then, because circumstances eventually required police barricades to be erected around the centre of town, they were only allowed to wander in this very restricted area; they finally decided to venture out rarely and do their best to keep Samuel busy indoors, making frequent use of the hotel's more-than-adequate recreational facilities. They were left only with the hope that they could make their getaway sooner rather than later.
• • •
The afternoon of their departure
Being required to hire the services of an expensive military escort in order to get from the hotel to the airport, the group of seven people departing witness up close the destruction and detritus from the continuing violence, although their view is often obscured by hordes of people lining the streets, only kept back by makeshift barricades put in place especially for the motorcade, which is nevertheless targeted by a constant stream of rubble and Molotov cocktails.
Ikaros tracks one such bottle as it hurtles towards their armour-plated truck; he flinches slightly as flames erupt and streak wildly across the side windows, yet to no detrimental effect. After gently reassuring Samuel of their safety, Ikaros and S
ascha turn their heads to watch as several nearby soldiers aggressively pull the boy responsible out from the crowd, force him to his knees and proceed to shoot him in the head point blank. The nearby witnesses recoil only slightly but maintain their ground, evidently numbed by the violence and the death toll in the current conditions. The scene recedes into the distance and Ikaros and Sascha quietly turn to the road ahead.
The motorcade proceeds towards an elevated highway, which takes them unimpeded directly to the airport just outside the city limits. All three remain silent throughout the trip, partly due to emotional fatigue; Ikaros and Sascha reflect repeatedly on the boy's face, which expressed such a disturbing mix of rage and terror just moments before his death — a sight and scene that will revisit them intermittently for years to come.
Two hours later
Sascha and Ikaros sit quietly on either side of Samuel aboard a half-full plane mainly consisting of journalists, diplomats and other foreign workers and their families. Now climbing towards the stratosphere, Sascha looks out the window and catches her last glimpse of Africa as they head due north for Europe. "What's Germany going to be like?" she asks softly and to no one in particular.
Ikaros hears this and looks over at her, spotting a small trail of tears running down her left cheek. "We can't escape from it … but at least we've still got somewhere to go."
"I just don't want it to be all for nothing, you know?"
Ikaros doesn't reply, unable to reassure himself, let alone her.
Distracted by her words, Samuel looks up from his book and straight into her eyes. "Don't worry. I won't allow something to happen about you. I'll take care of you."
NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) Page 13
