It was already late afternoon as they picked rooms, rifling through whatever was there, more out of curiosity than in actual search for anything usable. The main living area overlooked part of the airport and National Park, and from what they were able to see from their 5th-floor vantage point, the contrast couldn’t have been more staggering.
Sitting on the sun-drenched balcony, Tom and Nadia opened one of the warm cans of soda from the kitchen cabinet and watched in silence as almost the entire fenced-in area of Wilson airport’s grounds filled up with the infected. Stragglers, attracted by the gunfire, screams and general commotion, streamed in from nearby Kibera and the new estates along Langata road, where Kenya’s much talked about new middle class scraped by on a wing and a prayer, paying exorbitant rents to fat landlords whose greed was only surpassed by their lack of interest in maintenance. There was money even in poverty here, and no humanitarian agency would ever change that. Were it not for the fact that his choice had landed Julie and Anna in all this, Tom would have laughed at his own naiveté. He knew this was no time for blame and self-pity, but it became harder and harder to shake the feeling that leaving their home had been a potentially fatal mistake.
More and more infected now pushed through the open airport gates, drawn to the large area by the moans of those already roaming the grounds. By Tom’s estimation, Wilson airport would soon be home to five, maybe ten thousand or even more corpses. A time bomb in the making if they ever decided to go on the march as they had back in Juba. All it would take would be for one of them to sniff out its next meal, and the rest would follow. A nudge from Nadia had Tom look over to the Southern bypass.
“There!” She was pointing at something in the distance.
Something was moving through the tall grass along the fence line separating National Park from the highway. At first, it looked like the wind rippling through the grassland that stretched towards the horizon as far as the eye could see. Soon enough, though, a dark mane appeared, followed by several shadows gliding through the brown savannah.
The lions were the biggest Tom had ever laid eyes on. Slowly, strategically the group of perhaps four females and two males brushed up and down the fence, falling into the kind of pattern of hard-pacing he had otherwise only seen in caged animals.
“They are probing the fence,” Nadia opined, and it was not hard to see why.
A mere 200 meters across from the pride were thousands of walking corpses, their stench wafting in all directions. Even from their 5th-floor perch, Tom still caught the occasional whiff of decay. A sickly-sweet reminder of death’s siege. To a lion’s acute sense of smell, the allure of an endless food supply would be spellbinding. Impossible to resist.
“Let’s hope they get the bastards!” Nadia raised her can of soda, toasting the pride now gnawing voraciously at the wire mesh.
“Careful what you wish for,” Tom thought out aloud. “It’s enough we have the stinking corpses to contend with. I’d hate to throw a bunch of lions into the mix.”
They continued to sit for a while, watching the dead and the lions square off as if waiting to be unleashed into a massive cage fight. But in the end, neither succeeded and the pride trailed off into the distance, before disappearing into the urban areas of Langata.
As the sun set, Tom and Nadia retreated back into the apartment and joined the others. Gautier and Amadou had prepared a simple meal with whatever food supplies they had scavenged from the cupboards. They enjoyed the luxury of a hot meal, thanks to the gas bottle-fuelled stove, in their newly-acquired modern environs. Tom drew the curtains, and Papillon lit some candles.
“No use advertising our presence.”
The others nodded in silence, enjoying the moment over their candle-lit dinner.
“Who’s on dish duty?” Amadou grinned, rubbing his stomach and letting out a satisfied belch.
“My wife would kill me if she knew I am saying this…”, Gautier chimed in,”…but since we are leaving in the morning, I would say screw the dishes.”
David looked up at his grandfather in surprise, and Gautier quickly put his hands over the boy’s ears.
“Did you just say ‘screw the dishes’?” Papillon burst into laughter, and the others following suit.
“I didn’t know you had it in you!”
“Well, I have not always been a preacher,” Gautier shrugged apologetically.
“Why do the dishes need screwing, grandpa?” David looked puzzled.
At that, Amadou nearly choked. A spray of soda spurted from his nostrils as he tried to contain the fit of laughter.
“I think it might be time for bed,” Gautier announced sheepishly.
“Let me tell you a story in the room.”
The boy still looked a little confused but complied, and the two disappeared down the hallway.
“Screw the dishes…” Amadou was still chuckling.
It had been a long time since anything had lightened their mood. Now, with the proverbial seal broken, they sat up for a good while, swapping stories of hilarity each one of them seemed to have stored away for a rainy day.
“Big day tomorrow.” Looking at his watch, Tom was the first to pull up stumps.
He gathered up his pack and weapon he had strategically left by the door and retreated into the bedroom farthest from the entrance. Amadou chose the couch, while Papillon joined Gautier and David. Despite Nadia’s protest, they had left one room for her alone. At first, she had called them chauvinists for singling her out, but then secretly thanked whoever was ‘up there’ that she would finally get a night away from the group and in a comfortable bed at that.
Within minutes an eerie silence returned to the building, only broken here and there by Papillon’s snore or a lion’s roar; it was hard to tell which. Tom tossed and turned for a long time, images of Julie and Anna flickering like mirages every time he closed his eyes.
‘What were they doing right now? Where they Ok, alive even?’ He had fought back the questions that had beckoned every waking second since the outbreak began, but it was in these moments of solitude that they came out to play with his mind, as did the demons of the past. His sleep was a restless one when it finally arrived sometime in the early morning hours.
CHAPTER 3
Humming and banging around pots and pans as he prepared breakfast, it was Amadou’s dish-clanking that sent the first noises of activity through the apartment, creating an atmosphere of the familiar.
“What’s this, then?” Papillon yawned, drawn from his room by the smell of fresh Mapa bread emanating from Amadou's busy kitchen.
“A taste of home,” Amadou replied, half to himself as he pulled the hot tray from the oven.
“No frilly apron?” Papillon grinned, earning him the kind of stern look he had by now gotten used to receiving from the Congolese.
“Make yourself useful, if you can carry that tray without breaking it, you ogre!” Amadou smirked.
“I see our famous couple is having domestic issues.” An uncharacteristically jovial Gautier peaked around the corner.
David followed, still confused by the change in mood since their arrival. Soon they were all gathered around the table.
‘One big happy family’ as Nadia quipped sarcastically. She had come to appreciate their camaraderie but also had not forgotten the circumstances that had brought her here. The missed opportunity for a proper escape from all this, back before she got chained to some bathroom piping at Juba airport, still nagged.
Tom ate in silence, appreciating the company of these people he had met as strangers and who by now had indeed become something of a quirky extended family. But focusing on the task ahead, he also hoped it would be the last day before seeing his loved ones again.
Papillon pulled open the curtains and flicked his tongue. The airport was still teeming with the dead, now pushed into its perimeter so densely that they stood shoulder to shoulder. Their heads lulled, and their bodies swayed in a trance-like state. With nothing else to do, they remained station
ary in the kind of moronic stupor that seemed to overcome them whenever there was no meal to pursue.
“At least the fence is holding.” Tom tapped the big man on the shoulder. It was time to go.
They said farewell to the apartment, and with it, the first good memory they had been able to create since… It was hard to think back to the last time laughter had filled their midst.
Downstairs, things were as they had left them the day before. Amadou began working on the padlock of the large gate. A dutiful ‘click’ soon indicated he hadn’t lost its touch as the human lock-pick he had always claimed to be. Carefully poking his head through the single door built into the larger steel panel, Amadou inspected the area outside.
The street was deserted. The few vehicles still parked along the curb had either been broken into or torched. Rubbish littered the asphalt, and the occasional gust of wind sent empty packaging and plastic bags flying high into the air. Apart from its howl through the gaps between the buildings, there was no other sound. He stepped through the door. The others followed, immediately taking cover behind the nearest car, a burnt-out Mercedes. ‘Vintage’', as Papillon remarked with some sadness.
There may not have been any activity in the street, but standing out in the open among the apartment blocks felt not only uneasy but ill-advised. Even though he could not see them, Tom could feel eyes, living and dead, locking onto their group from above as they moved from cover to cover. A brief look up at the penthouse in the compound next door confirmed his suspicion.
A pale face appeared and pressed against the thick panoramic windows. Bloodied hands smeared across as the dead resident clawed at the glass. Its mouth opened wide, and Tom could virtually hear its silenced wail as it honed in on its meal in the street below. 'Thank Goodness for double glazing.'
They continued zigzagging between anything that afforded cover from view until they reached their first T-section. It was hard to get one’s bearings were it not for the occasional street stall usually selling phone credit, soft drinks, bananas, or some such, eking out a living 20 cents at a time. Bland structures with little regard for aesthetics, the residential compounds in this part of town all looked the same. Like oversized discarded tins, the metal boxes that served as shops, colourfully painted with Coca-Cola adverts and mobile phone company signage, lay open and abandoned. Their wares long-gone, along with their proprietors.
‘A kingdom for a compass,’ Tom thought, trying to remember the city’s layout from a map he had studied when they first arrived. Navigating by the sun was an option, but without at least some knowledge about where they were exactly, they could easily waste precious daylight on course corrections. Not to mention putting themselves at great risk by going off in the wrong direction altogether.
“Which way?” Nadia was growing impatient.
She didn’t want to be out in the open any longer than she had to. A sentiment increasingly shared by the group as the wind once again carried the wailing sounds and stench of the dead across the suburb.
“Going by where we have just come from, the airport is somewhere to the left. Mombasa Rd should be further down to the right. Problem is, we really don’t want to go in either direction.” Tom thought out loud.
“Come on, guys,” Amadou hissed from behind, “This place is giving me ‘les chocottes.’ Can we move, please?!”
They went right. After all, Tom figured, the unknown was better than what was waiting for them in the other direction. His instincts proved right after about four hundred meters. They reached another turn-off; this one not only in the right direction but also revealing the familiar outline of Kenyatta Hospital in the distance. Under the circumstances, anyone else in their right mind would have avoided hospitals like the proverbial plague. In the first days of the infection, medical facilities would certainly have been overrun. But later, as doctors and nurses alike became part of the 'catering' and services collapsed, that would have changed. Given what he had seen, Tom reasoned, chances of encountering dead in the vicinity of the hospital were now about the same as in any other place where people normally congregated. Tom had seen it in the Congo during Ebola, and it would have been no different with the disease’s present offspring.
They rounded the turn, walking along the middle of the street. ‘Slicing the pie’ along its apex reduced the risk of running headlong into anything unwanted coming at them from right around the corner. This time though, things were different.
Tom froze in place. The sudden stop caused the rest of the group to run into one another, nearly toppling like dominoes. Breaks screeched, and in a split second, Tom saw his life pass before his eyes. The oncoming vehicle bounced and jolted, swerved, and screeched. Tires squealing, the Matatu skidded to a halt, its bumper all but touching Tom's knees. Behind the tinted windscreen of the banged-up minibus, the white of the driver’s eyes was the only thing visible.
“Jesus of Nazareth!” He exclaimed. “I nearly got you!”
For a moment, Tom and the others stood there, perplexed and dumbfounded.
“Mzungu, if you need a ride, I am your guy.”
The young man in his early twenties wore knock-off aviator glasses and a faux army jacket. Tom still couldn’t believe they hadn’t heard him coming.
“I was just rolling along. Saving petrol, as you do these days.” The driver seemed to have read his mind.
“You nearly got us, you know?” Tom replied, somewhere between relief and anger at himself. He had gotten caught off-guard.
Instead of replying, the driver peered over the top of his aviators and pointed to the front of the vehicle. 'Jesus Saves' in bright, extra-large cursive script adorned its hood, next to a comically vague depiction of David Beckham.
“So he does, apparently.” Nadia let out a chuckle, inspecting the artwork.
Amadou and the others brushed themselves off and gathered around the vehicle.
“You seem like you might actually be in need of transport.” The man looked them over before extending his hand. “Nero, at your service, Sirs…and, of course, Madam.”
“Did you just say your name is Nero?” Tom asked bemused. “Played the violin lately?”
Nero looked at him as if he had gone insane.
“Never mind." Tom shook his hand.
“You are not wrong,” Nadia jumped in. She had had enough of sneaking around the hot empty streets of a suburb and city she increasingly cared very little about. “We do need transport.”
Tom cast her an upset look. This was not a part of the world where one readily admitted one needed anything, let alone help. Need meant higher prices, need meant inferiority and need usually led people to take you for all you had, or at least all you could part with on the day. 'She knows this all too well,' he told himself. She had been part of this corner of the globe for quite some time. The fact made him even more cross with her.
“If you allow me. I've got this.” Nadia stepped between them, oblivious to Tom's sentiments.
Nero looked puzzled.
“Of course we do need transport.” As she addressed the young Kenyan, Nadia’s voice took on the Russian coarseness the others had already become accustomed to. “As would anyone walking around this shitty place full of dead people trying to take a bite out of their ass.”
Tom and the others took a precautionary step back.
“So since you are here and your stupid minibus is still working, we will take your offer. But guess what: if you think you can rip us off, then I will shove this gun into your mouth and see if Jesus saves your brains from getting splattered over the cabin."
Nero’s face grew ashen. Beads of sweat covered his forehead as she pointed a small Derringer pistol between his eyes. Then he grinned.
“You are not new to East Africa, Madam, are you?”
And with that, Nero slowly reached behind his seat, unlocked the minibus’ sliding door, and pushed it open in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre.
“We will pay you,” Tom offered apologetically. “She has just had a r
ough couple of days.”
“Amen to that!” Nero smiled and unlocked the passenger door for Tom to take a seat next to him.
The others got into the back seats, with Gautier and David taking the middle. Papillon, his huge frame barely fitting into the vehicle, sat by the door-well, giving his muscular legs some reprieve. If anyone tried to force their way into the vehicle, they would have him to contend with first. Amadou was last, squeezing past them and taking up the back row as fire support towards the rear if needed.
“Now that we are all on board, Madam and Sirs, may I ask your names?”
Nero was, of course, right. It was time for introductions. As it turned out, he had not been a Matatu driver for long. In fact, Nero wasn’t a Matatu driver at all. He had made the best of a bad situation when most of the other passengers, including the original driver, abandoned ship when the dead attacked. Stranded, he had cowered on the back seat until he found himself alone, surrounded by nothing but the remnants of his fellow travellers. With no means to get back ‘up country’ and nowhere to stay, he had made the Matatu his home as best as he could.
“Not a bad living, actually.” Nero rubbed his chin, coming to the end of his story. “You would be surprised how many people don’t have cars, but places they need to be, especially when the risen are after their backsides.”
“Well, Nero, I am not complaining we ran into you. Or was that the other way round?” Tom smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
"Don't you think it might be time to put that thing away?" He turned and whispered to Nadia, who was still semi-pointing the Derringer.
"Where did you get that anyway?" Tom asked, but then remembered. "Your glove box insurance?"
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 2): Dead Hemisphere [Keres Rising] Page 4
