A small fire now flickered in the centre of their makeshift camp, its shadows licking across the open ground and the brick wall towards the rear. They had carefully considered its comfort against the risk of drawing attention. Since the outbreak and even before then, small fires were not unusual at all in a context where most people had little or no access to electricity. As stores, petrol stations, and anything else holding anything of worth got looted in the aftermath of the virus, things literally went up in flames, be it by accident or arson. A small campfire, thus, they had decided, would pose little added risk compared to the benefit of temporary solace. Eagerly they heated a handful of MRE’s, shovelling the hot food into their mouth.
“What is this?” Amadou looked up from his meal.
“It’s good for you. That’s what it is,” Nadia laughed. “Puts hair on chest.”
“I don’t want hair on my chest!” Amadou put down the meal in disgust.
“I am sure Nadia doesn’t want any either,” Tom replied reassuringly. “It’s just an expression. It’s good. Or at least as good as it gets for now.”
“Eat! You need energy for the next wall!” Nadia continued to tease, earning her a dirty look from Amadou.
“You were running around up there like a squirrel on fire!” Papillon chimed in as he chewed a large mouthful of Macaroni and Cheese, the artificial food colouring staining his teeth a bright orange.
“At least I wasn’t screaming like a stuck pig.” Amadou came back more angrily than before, causing the huge Frenchman to drop his spoon and make a fist.
“You calling me a pig, skinny?”
“Guys, let’s not go there. I am in no mood.” Tom interjected.
The day had been hard enough without having the two men beat each other silly over a stupid exchange of words.
“I suggest we hit the sack and regroup in the morning. Lights out for now, as they say.”
He laid back and straightened himself out on the mat he had rolled out next to Anna’s, turning his back towards the campfire.
“Good night, ladies,” he mumbled, already halfway asleep before he even closed his eyes.
The others followed suit without further quarrels but kept their distance from each other across the fire. They would be taking turns throughout the night, maintaining a lookout for anything untoward. Amadou had volunteered for first watch, and while the rest of the group quickly fell into an uncomfortable sleep, he sat poking the fire, the moans of the desperate dead next door providing an unnerving lullaby. Here and there a loud clanging noise, the sound of glass breaking and furniture being overturned cut through the night. Each time they instinctively reached for their weapons, only to return to the stupor that these days passed for sleep.
The morning arrived without further incident, ushering away the shadows and nightmares of the night with gentle fingers, bringing relief to the group tucked deep into their blankets, away from the dropping temperatures of early dawn. The frenzied dead had returned to their moronic shuffle, the scraping of shoes and fleshless feet the only sound of the massive caravan of decomposition still in progress outside the walls.
“Dad…” Anna’s weak voice jolted Tom back into consciousness.
She opened her eyes for the first time and looked around in search of her father. They all gathered around her, speaking to her in soft tones, telling white lies about how things were Ok. They were on a camping trip of sorts, nothing more.
“And afterwards we go to the mall!” Papillon had added for extra credibility.
Anna could see through the charade but smiled at the giant sitting next to her, comforted by the group’s attention. Tom had cried a little throughout the night, and although his bloodshot eyes betrayed his raging pain and anger, he, too, tried his best to keep up appearances. The only one missing was Amadou. He had already gone on an early morning scout. “Just in case,” as he had put it.
Antsy as usual in the morning, though, it was clear that he wanted to keep moving. As Anna briefly drifted back to sleep, the men gathered out of earshot and debriefed the events of the previous night. As much as their plan had been sound to begin with, it had quickly become apparent that they needed to be more careful. The living, as they already knew, could pose as much a threat as the dead. But the number of armed encounters since their arrival was not only disconcerting, it would require a complete change of attitude towards other survivors if they themselves were to survive. With the top of the food chain heavily contested these days, ‘looking out for number one’ had taken on a whole new meaning.
They were a mere two clicks away from Westgate Mall. Tom sat on a piece of overgrown concrete and looked out into what once had been not just their suburb, but a symbol of the kind of new life they had aspired to as a family. At the outset of this odyssey, running from the research facility, then the rebel camp, and even when the full extent of the crisis came crashing down back at Lake Albert, he had still held hope for a clean getaway. Confidence that they would outrun the virus and that Julie, Anna, and he would eventually find themselves on one of the many commercial flights out of the Kenyan capital. Since then, his faith had taken one blow after the other, but not in a million years would he have expected this.
His thoughts wandered back to Julie and the stony shallow grave in the back yard. He had brought her here. Now he would leave her here. Cold, dead, and bereft of the future they had dreamed about. What would his and Anna’s own future hold? He shuddered to think. ‘One step at a time.’ He looked over to the small figure wrapped in thick blankets next to a freshly rekindled fire. If she survived, no, when she got through this, he would make sure nothing would ever happen to her again. He would find safety for them, wherever that would be. He only hoped the virus, just like Ebola before it, would either burn itself out or at least be contained to the continent. His heart stopped. What if this was already what it was like elsewhere, outside of Africa, in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and other regions?
Passing through health checks at Heathrow Airport, he had always laughed them off as a token gesture, as little more than window dressing to reassure an easily panicked public. Checking people’s temperature at random was hardly an efficient way to detect a virus as cunning as Ebola, let alone this new variant. Tom only hoped the rest of the world would detect the threat fast enough, and that for once, airport health checks worked better than they had in the past. There would, of course, be a hundred other ways by which the virophage could hitch a ride.
Most of the bigger ports were hubs for shipping routes to and from the East and West, serving both Northern European companies and Southeast Asian freight lines alike. Then there was the ongoing migrant crisis. Men, women, and entire families from Central and West Africa on the move northward to the shores of the Mediterranean, where people smugglers and slave traders would have them give up their meagre life savings for a chance to make the perilous journey to Europe. No doubt carriers were already among them, the virus just waiting to take hold.
Then there was the Middle East. With East Africa falling and the hordes, the likes they had seen in Juba, likely to continue their cancerous invasion, it was but a matter of time before the shores of the shores of the Red Sea would turn into another Lake Albert and the virus jump across war-torn Yemen, where mounting any meaningful response was all but impossible.
He would have to think further afield, somewhere where the creation of a bulwark against this juggernaut of a disease was more likely and, more importantly, more likely to succeed than anywhere in this or the immediately bordering regions.
‘What about the military?’ Tom cringed at the thought.
If what they had already seen in Nairobi was true elsewhere, getting wedged in a battlefield between guns and teeth was almost worse than trying to outrun the former. From what he could tell here, ordinarily security forces were already far less discerning about their targets than perhaps the civilian administration. But under the circumstances, with the military relegated to a protection force fo
r the wealthy and powerful, he had no doubt that a scorched earth tactic would be the preferred approach by many a top brass. He could only hope that this was not the case elsewhere. Tom sighed. Anna’s hand appeared below the blankets as she stretched, squinting into the morning light. He would have to give it more thought once they had reached Westgate, their first staging point.
“Nothing to report.” Amadou returned from his morning scout. “Nothing in that direction, anyway.”
He pointed at the enormous, sand-coloured concrete structure in the distance. Its mirror windows alight with the early sun like the eyes of a giant blast furnace Westgate towered over the neighbourhood. A beacon of consumerism as much as now a tombstone for it, the mall had survived not because, but despite the world around it in more ways than one. They were almost close enough to read the giant-lettered signage now. But taking into account last night’s incident, as far as Tom was concerned, the colossus may as well have been a thousand miles away. Moving as a group, the way they had done had proven almost fatal, and it was by nothing but pure luck that they escaped more or less unscathed.
The tension the night prior dissipated along with the near-miss back in the neighbouring compound, they quickly came back together and again focused on adjusting their plans. This time they would take a bounding overwatch approach. Instead of planning their movement according to the time of day, they would leapfrog from property to property, covering each other front and rear, while waiting for openings wherever an absence of the dead created them. Amadou would scout ahead, just as he had done before. Papillon and Tom would provide cover, while Nadia would stay with Anna in the last established safe haven, before being guided ahead by the others once an area was clear. It was double handling, Papillon remarked since they would have to cross each area twice – once to clear and once to pick up Nadia and Anna – but Tom wasn’t going to have a bar of anything that would put Anna’s life in danger again the way they had.
With the morning getting hotter, the stench of rotting flesh reappeared, the harsh African sun doing its part to further the corpses’ decay. Kit packed, weapons checked and reloaded, the group readied to depart to plan. They had spent much ammunition in last night’s battle, but provided they were able to avoid similar mishaps from here on out, Tom figured there was still enough to keep them going for a little while before they would have to resort to blunt instruments.
Before long, Amadou departed on another reconnaissance. He nimbly scaled the much lower brick wall surrounding their place of temporary reprieve and, narrowly avoiding detection by the few shambling corpses idling about along the single-lane service road made his way across to the next compound, where he pulled himself up a cable left behind from a botched installation job, dangling from a water tower designed to supply the handful of houses that had been turned into small offices. The improvised business park seemed deserted, most places locked, and although far less sturdy than the entrance to the compound next door, the gate locked and secured.
There were hundreds of places like this dotted about the suburbs. With the payment of a bribe to the right council rep, cheap townhouses were easily turned into commercial properties and then converted into high-return, low-service offices rented out to humanitarian agencies or small-time operators who didn’t know any better but to pay extortionist rents. In other cases, rezoning was simply used to launder money. Nobody ever actually occupied the properties, the business signs out front just for show.
Behind the scenes, title deeds changed hands between the very same people several times, the price on paper climbing higher and higher, assuring a lasting, safe haven for illicit revenues. It was the same the world over, but here in Nairobi, people had perfected the art of the con.
Amadou waited for a while, but there was no movement. Having inspected the entire compound several times, at one point, even kicking an empty can across the forecourt, he was satisfied the place was clear. Before returning to brief the others, though, Amadou decided to leap ahead a little further, just to make sure there were no surprises on the other side.
Using the window grilles on the ground floor of one of the two-story offices as a foothold, he pulled himself up onto the first-floor balcony and immediately flattened his back against the smog-stained plaster of the façade, as several sets of dead eyes from the procession in front of the compound locked on the sudden movement.
A gaggle of creatures stopped and tilted their heads, prompting others to do the same. Unsure about what had registered within their brains, they stood and stared in his general direction, while the rest of the dead caravan continued on its journey to nowhere. Rigidly pressed against the cool plaster of the maisonette and barely allowing himself to breathe, Amadou remained locked in a silent contest of endurance against the creatures’ moronic perseverance. Watching the watchers as they scanned for signs of life, he prayed for a diversion, anything that would have them refocus. His prayer was answered almost immediately.
Somewhere back up the road, in the direction of Tom’s house, something caused the caravan to halt, finally drawing his fan club’s attention away from his position. Maintaining economy of movement, Amadou removed a small pair of binoculars from his pocket. His view followed the stream of corpses attracted to something up the street behind them. From the elevated vantage point of the balcony, he was able to peer over the adjacent perimeter walls and the shrubbery lining most neighbouring properties.
His view panned across the masses staggering towards the roof of a large white vehicle, a twisted piece of metal gate still half-wrapped around its grill. The looter’s truck from the previous night was once again the centrepiece of the corpses’ interest. At least a hundred creatures urged on by thousands more, once again pounded against its exterior. Unless they had managed a small miracle, Amadou figured the remaining looters were still trapped inside. Probably desperate and restless by now, some unfortunate soul inside had made a noise loud enough to redirect the attention of every ghoul within several hundred yards. Through his binoculars, Amadou inspected the front of the delivery truck. The driver’s window had been smashed, and streaks of dried blood ran down its side, a sure indication that the driver was no longer among the living, much unlike the truck’s unlucky occupants still trapped inside. Something moved. Hardly noticeable at first, soon, the locking levers of the rear doors flicked up and down, manipulated from the inside. Like waves pounding a beach, the dead besieged the box truck with renewed zeal. Then the rear doors swung open. Amadou gasped.
Sending corpses tumbling back into the rolling onslaught of their rotting peers, whoever was still inside made a last ditch attempt at escape. Four men appeared and stood in the cargo bed. Holding various blunt implements they had improvised from furniture and appliances inside, they looked frightened, helpless, pathetic, even. Unsure of what to do next they looked at each other, then at the mass of corpses surging towards them, greedy hands already reaching across the platform.
A lanky but muscular guy in fatigues and sneakers was the first to make a move. Striking a large piece of wood at the heads of the nearest creatures already reaching inside, the improvised bat made contact with one of the taller ones toward the front, snapping its skull sideways, before sending its body to the ground to be crushed by others. The man’s first blow gave the signal to the others and the group all started swinging wildly into the crowd. Missing more than actually finding their targets, the action only served to infuriate the frenzied creatures even further. The truck swayed and rocked under the force of a thousand bodies, their numbers swelling by the second. Their march temporarily suspended and attention now fully on the walking meals standing in the cargo bed, like Safari ants more and more arrived from all directions.
Watching their futile attempt at a breakout, Amadou began to wonder what the men’s plan was, or if in fact they even had one. The men continued swinging their improvised weapons, hitting, missing and banging them against the chassis in an almighty racket. His question was answered when one of them disappeare
d back into the truck bed and moments later reappeared via a small hatch on the roof. Making every effort to stay low and out of the ghouls’ sight, the man crept forward towards the cabin. Within minutes their apparent strategy seemed to work.
The noise and commotion towards the rear drew the crowds away from the sides and front, focusing their energy on the men at the back. Soon gaps began to appear in front as the ocean of dead parted and flowed around it. Hardly noticeable at first, but then more and more pronounced, eventually a gap appeared, wide enough to allow at least for someone nimble and fast enough to make an almost clean getaway. Amadou gritted his teeth. After the previous night he had held nothing but contempt for the looters and their actions, but now he couldn’t help but quietly root for their chance at survival. He could see the man on the roof shout something to the others and they began filtering out the same way he had. As soon as the last one had disappeared from view, the first man jumped onto the cabin and down the front of the truck, momentarily slipping out of Amadou’s sight. The others followed without hesitation, all making a mad dash for the narrow avenue created by the parting masses.
As it turned out though only the man in fatigues was quick and agile enough. Ducking and weaving, swinging and striking he sprinted. Then he turned the corner into a side street and was gone. As the others tried to follow, Amadou’s quiet cheers quickly turned into a lump in his throat. The dead, quickly realizing the men’s disappearance, already closed ranks again on all sides. Out of view in front of the truck, it was the men’s piercing screams that told him they wouldn’t be turning any corners soon, at least no longer among the living. He put away the binoculars. There was no need to observe the scene any further as corpses, holding onto and chewing various body parts appeared from behind the truck. Momentarily satisfied by the warm flesh they staggered away, eyes rolling back in their heads with rapture. The looters had given escape a good try, but good, these days, Amadou thought, was certainly no longer enough.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 2): Dead Hemisphere [Keres Rising] Page 15
