“Since all this started, I, we, have seen many people get bit. I ask you: how many of those did not turn into one of those things?” Amadou took another swig. “I tell you how many: None!”
Of course, Tom had realized that Anna was different the moment she had regained consciousness that morning. But what it meant in real terms and beyond her recovery was another question. One that he had decided to postpone answering until they reached safety. One thing he knew already though: he would never let his daughter become a bargaining chip, her blood a sought-after commodity for the very people responsible for this catastrophe.
“Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise. Or something like that.” Tom poured another double.
“What’s that?” Amadou looked perplexed.
“Sophocles. I think.” Tom shrugged and emptied his drink in a single gulp.
“Not who. I meant, what do you mean by that?”
“I am saying that we both know that Anna is likely immune. But for now, that’s neither here or there, if you catch my drift. And that’s exactly how I’d like it to stay. Got it?” Tom was in no mood to explore the subject any further. There was no telling how many people out there were immune to the disease, but it stood to reason there weren’t many. The dead were enough to contend with without the living pursuing them for a potential cure. Sure, he would help the right people in the development of a cure if that was on the cards, but it was he who would choose the time and place for it. And besides, there was still the memory stick with all of EUPHARM’s research notes he had retrieved from the facility back in the Congo. An insurance policy if ever there was one. For now, though, for everyone’s safety, the fewer people knew about it, the better. It was best to leave it at that.
He needn’t have worried. Amadou nodded solemnly, pretend-zipped his lips with his fingers, and raised his glass in a silent toast.
As another evening arrived, the survivors were careful not to turn on any additional lights, and noise control was at a maximum. The last thing they needed was for their oasis to get invaded in the middle of the night. They made camp in a department store on the first floor, where an entire bedroom furniture department offered the most comfortable sleep they had in weeks.
Tom, having had enough blue label to kill an elephant, staggered along Amadou, who was equally struggling to maintain balance. They each fell back into the soft cushions, and soon their snoring competed with the low hum of the emergency generators in the basement. A full moon shone through the skylight of the dome-like roof, and its pale beams fickly danced around the mall’s interior. As if honouring an unspoken ceasefire, even the dead kept their peace.
The next morning Tom was the first to wake. The hot coffee from the Italian machine downstairs tasted as good as coffee ever had and quickly lifted the single malt fog that still wafted through his mind.
‘Thank goodness for top-shelf liquor,’ he thought to himself as he watched Amadou.
A shadow of his former self, the Congolese staggered towards the coffee stall, struggling to keep a straight face.
“I hope you don’t feel like you look,” Tom grinned and handed him a large cup of dark brew.
“Worse, “Amadou whispered and dropped back into a seat, holding his head.
Within the next half hour, everyone drifted in from their temporary department store home and had breakfast. Coffee and more of the biscuits. All, except Anna. Tom had saved the last packet of long-life milk for her, along with a muesli bar.
“There has to be something better around here than this. There is a whole supermarket down there!” Papillon complained.
“There is, but the shutters are down, and last night was not the time to attempt a break-in. We will try it later.”
Tom had no intention of staying longer than they had to, and unless it was shopping for essentials, they would save their energy for the important things. They finished their coffee among small talk and the usual banter and were just about to explore the food store at B-level when a sound like distant thunder and a sudden rush of air caused the mall’s doors to rattle.
“What the heck?” Nadia turned towards the entrance to get a better look, but Tom held her back.
“Let’s stay away from the glass doors. Whatever this is, we don’t want to be seen. I’d say we get a look from the rooftop instead.”
With the elevators out, it was a long climb up five sets of escalators until they reached the top floor. From there, a small door marked ‘staff only’ led them to a corridor and a further stairway to the roof. The hair on Tom’s neck stood up when they took the first flight of stairs. This was unnervingly reminiscent of their encounters at the research station, and just like then, there was a sense of foreboding that he wasn’t able to shake. To his surprise, the door to the roof was unlocked. Stepping out into the early morning sun, the air was filled with the smell of burning fuel and flesh. Up ahead in the distance, a large plume of black smoke rose into the sky.
“What is that?” Papillon tried to focus in the plume’s direction.
“More to the point,” Tom corrected,” where is that?”
Mama Samaki, still huffing and puffing from the climb, breathed heavily as she pointed at the smoke. ”Kibera. They are burning Kibera.”
“Holy shit,” Amadou shook his head.
“Is that what I think it is?” Papillon pointed at two small dots in the sky.
Approaching rapidly, then turning in a wide circle almost to the horizon, they accelerated back in the direction of the smoke. A sonic boom confirmed Tom’s suspicion.
“They are not burning Kibera. They are bombing Kibera.”
The two jet fighters began a low sortie over the city, and a split second after they passed the initial plume, more explosions sent fire, debris, and black soot into the ether in a rapidly expanding pyroclastic cloud. A few seconds later, another pressure wave swept across the city. Red and orange flames and the tarry smoke of burning fuel and plastic licked violently at the sky as fires spread, consuming mile after mile of slum settlements along with their inhabitants. Mama Samaki covered her eyes, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Even Papillon averted his gaze. A thousand voices silenced in an instant lives extinguished in the fiery rain of the bombs. Cut off from any escape, the trapped population helplessly annihilated. The poor, as always, the first to feel the brunt of government force.
The fighters circled the area and then disappeared over the horizon. Minutes passed, and the survivors watched in horror as the flames grew higher and higher. Occasionally they thought they could hear cries drift over with the breeze, but it was hard to tell. Soon the moans of thousands of corpses wandering Nairobi’s streets drowned out all other noise. Tom and the others hung their heads. Whatever humanity had remained until now, it was dying in these very flames.
They turned to head back inside when the two dots reappeared on the horizon. This time in a slightly different location and from what Tom could make out, with a different flight path, they came around in a very wide circle almost beyond the international airport. Then they accelerated directly towards Westgate.
The survivors froze as the two fighters approached with lightning speed. Papillon threw himself to the ground and covered his ears. Tom knew it was too late. All they could do was brace for the strike. Mama ‘S’ screamed, trying to dash for the rooftop exit. Amadou fell to his knees in silent prayer. The fighters were now headed directly for their position. Three. After all, they had been through, they were about to be obliterated by Kenya’s air force. Two. Tom laughed, then closed his eyes and relaxed. There was nothing else he could do. One. The roar of the engines. A massive jet blast. A violent storm of explosions and fire as they passed overhead within yards. Tom was abruptly pushed to the ground, the heat of the explosions blistering his face. A split second later, the negative pressure of the blast wind threatened to suck the entire group off the roof and into the firestorm. Shredding clothes and grazing skin, rooftop gravel exploded into the air like bucksho
t.
Within seconds, a ghostly silence descended all around, leaving but the ringing in their ears and the distant crackle of the enormous fires as the only soundscape. Eyes stinging, Tom got to his knees and wiped the soot off his face. Through watery eyes, he took in his surroundings. Covered in ash and debris, the others lay all around him like victims of a volcanic eruption. Up ahead, maybe 500 yards away, a wide path of fires and destruction trailed off towards the east.
“Mathare,” Mama Samaki coughed from beneath her dishevelled weave. “They took out Mathare slum.” A delta of tears down her face displaced the soot. “700,000 souls.”
“Did you have family there?” Papillon dusted himself off and spitting black residue.
“You will never understand us, Mzungu. We are all family.”
To his surprise, she hugged him tightly, pressing her face against his huge chest. He put his arm around her, and she sobbed inconsolably.
“They must have been off-target a bit,” Amadou stood at the edge of the roof, looking over the mile-wide alley of destruction.
Mathare, according to Tom’s map, was at least two miles away, and yet, the incendiary bombs had hit as close as the next block.
“Maybe they wanted to add a margin of assurance,” Tom thought out loud and immediately regretted his statement as he watched Mama ‘S’ cry even more.
He had seen it in Afghanistan all the time. In the news, they would call them surgical strikes, but they were far from that. The footage always showed the money shot. The single explosion irrefutable proof that what the anchor was saying was true. One strike and it was lights out for the bad guys. But there was always a margin of collateral damage, a few additional runs dropping munitions in the broader vicinity. Assurance, nothing more, nothing less. MOABs may have been just that, ‘mother of all bombs,’ but the trick was to ensure that an area was ‘cleared’ fully and beyond any doubt. Death by proximity, thus, often found many more than was necessary or warranted.
But that was war. What they were looking at now was pure slaughter. Slaughter on a grander scale than the world had ever known. Tom couldn’t help but wonder where the UN, AMISOM, the Americans, and even though thousands of miles removed, NATO stood on all this. Had there been a summit, a joint decision? Or was this the product of another semi-despotic regime that was already ordinarily hell-bent on eliminating poverty by making it a moot issue one way or another? The number of questions, as it had from the very beginning of their odyssey, still outweighed the answers. He couldn’t help but wonder whether what they had just seen was being replicated in Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan. If containment had failed on a spectacular scale, then the only cure, logically, would be an equal or greater response. A response like the one they had just witnessed.
What would this mean for the living, for the ones not, or not yet, infected? If they chose to eliminate the hotspots of the infection and level entire neighbourhoods in the process, where would the ‘healthy’ people go to stay safe? In world war two, the populations of Britain, Germany and other countries subject to aerial bombardment by one country or another, hid in their cellars. Entire populations of children living underground for their first years, the whistle of the incoming bombs as etched in their memories as the lullabies their despondent mothers sang to them. But there were no cellars here, no bunkers. No places to hide. And besides, the bombs dropped from above barely compared to the horror of what lurked at street level or even within their own homes. The range of options was narrow at best for most and the virus would continue to take its toll no matter what. Where would it stop and who could stop it? It was impervious to negotiation, didn’t acknowledge the value of human life, nor did it care about anything but its own transmission. It was as efficient as it was simple. A war machine in itself which left behind only losers, as the battle just couldn’t be won. It could only be halted. But where? That was the one question Tom needed to answer.
His thoughts were interrupted by the faint whoosh of helicopter blades. Far away, they could see the small silhouette of an Iroquois as it circled the distant end of the bomb site.
“Inspecting the impact?” Amadou pointed at the moving object.
Papillon put a pair of binoculars scavenged from a hiking store on the second floor.
“I think you should have a look at this.” He handed the binos to Tom, who traced the helicopter’s flight path for the longest of times.
“This is not a military craft. It’s a private helo.” He finally concluded.
“News crew?” Papillon and Amadou shrugged.
It was the best they could come up with. Tom raised the binos again and took another look.
“News crews must be heavily armed these days then. This one has side-mounted rocket launchers!”
It was next to impossible to see with the naked eye, but Tom had immediately spotted the chin-turret and tubular rocket launchers mounted on either side of the craft. He dropped the binoculars.
“And they are headed this way.”
Still reeling from the impact of the explosions, the survivors rushed back inside and downstairs to where Nadia was keeping Anna company. With Anna’s recovery progressing, Nadia’s apprehension eased, allowing the two to grow a little closer. Frightened and confused, they had cowered behind the café counter as the firestorm rattled the very foundations of the building. Now Anna ran and jumped into Tom’s arms before he had even reached the last step of the escalator. He quickly briefed Nadia on what they had observed. Although a lift out of their current predicament was exactly what they needed, the helicopter’s appearance immediately after the bomb drop did not instil confidence that these were, in fact, friendlies, or at least officials prepared to listen to the plight of a ragtag group of survivors. At least not if these officials were at all involved in obliterating three-quarters of a million people, as they had just witnessed.
“Did they see you?” Nadia asked what Tom was thinking.
The sound of approaching rotors filled shattered the silence, the echo inside the vast space amplifying to a level that belied the fact that it was but a single helicopter.
“What do we do if they land? I mean, land here?” It was a rhetorical question.
They didn’t get to finish the conversation. The thunder of the landing helicopter reached deafening new heights. Its skids scraped across the gravel as it settled into position. They could hear the rapid woosh of the rotors slow as the pilot cut the engine. People, it was impossible to tell how many yelled commands at each other.
Down below, the survivors moved off to the side, into the wings of the mall, away from view from the skylight high above. If someone wanted to find them, they would not make it easy until they knew what the intentions were. They had minutes, maybe less, before they would need to take action one way or the other. Tom and Amadou conversed in hushed tones, already creating an impromptu contingency plan.
“Psst,” Tom tried to get Nadia’s attention. “Do you know how to fly one of these things? An Iroquois. A Huey Helicopter.”
She looked at him blankly for a moment and then smiled at his explanation.
“I have flown Russian helicopter. Ten times better than your Western ‘Huey.’ This is like a toy.”
She made the statement with all the conviction she could muster, but there was something in her eyes that had Tom doubt she was telling the truth. And by now, he had learned to rely on his hunches. Their plan would need to exclude her flying anything other than what they had seen her being capable of handling. He and Amadou went back to their conversation while the others looked anxiously at the upper floors. A wave of moans drifted in from the outside. The dead were not oblivious to the new arrival, and the first decaying hands began to pound at the doors as more and more corpses streamed into the immediate area.
The rooftop had suddenly fallen silent, and between the mob of corpses just outside the glass doors and the threat a mere few floors above, the survivors were momentarily left to their growing feeling of dread. The irritating feedba
ck from a microphone screeching through the empty mall like fingernails down a chalkboard provided the answer they had been waiting for. Someone was fumbling with the Huey’s loudspeaker. Broadcasting nothing but indistinguishable chatter at first, finally, a man’s menacing voice broke through at full volume.
“You inside! We know you are there. You are trespassing on government property.”
“Shit,” Tom ducked deeper into the recesses of a storefront.
There was little use in pretending. Whoever was up there had them pegged. The voice, dark, calculated and threatening, continued.
“Although according to law, looters are shot on sight, I can assure you we are not animals. You have three minutes to leave the premises empty-handed or turn yourself in to our troops here on the rooftop. Three minutes. Starting now!”
And with that, the speaker went silent.
“That’s what I thought,” Tom turned to the group, looking into their faces one by one.
Between the corpses outside and the threat from above, anger and defiance took over their fear. They had been given an impossible choice.
‘Good,’ Tom thought with relief at the resolve burning in their eyes.
“Government? What government?!” Mama Samaki was the first to speak.
“These are the same people who have just killed almost two million people without thinking twice. And now all they want is a shopping trip without witnesses. It was like this when this place was attacked by Al-Shabab, and it is still the same.” She shook with fury.
“I would say, let them come,” Papillon joined in.
He was not the sort of man to just lay down arms at the first threat, and he had had enough of the walking corpses. He would prefer dying in righteous combat against government Marauders, to slashing and hacking his way through throngs of the dead. He was ready to do whatever it took.
“Or better yet, let’s take the fight to them.”
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 2): Dead Hemisphere [Keres Rising] Page 19
