Lagoon

by Nnedi Okorafor

  When it released him, he ran. A woman fell right before his eyes, wisps of smoke issuing from a bullet hole in her leg. She was one of the women wearing the men’s clothing. The boy ran and ran. As the sun went down, the boy would witness more than his mind could contain.

  CHAPTER 27

  FISAYO

  It was different for Fisayo, the younger sister of Jacobs. The Yoruba woman who was the smart secretary by day and prostitute by night. Since seeing those three people taken by the fist of water the night before, she hadn’t felt like herself. Seeing the footage her brother had shown to the Black Nexus only made her feel more hopeless.

  She stood on the concrete walkway that ran alongside Bar Beach. Less than twenty-four hours after the creatures had invaded the water, she had returned to the beach out of habit. Since dropping out of university, this stretch of sand was where her future resided. She would walk it until the day some man wanted more than just to have sex with her. Since she’d put aside her dream of being a nurse, she’d embraced the idea of being a wife, like her mother. A woman who minded the home, the children and lay on her back for only one man. The prostitution was just to make ends meet until that time came.

  The time had already come for Bunmi, her best friend, the person who had first shown her how to exchange sex with men for money. Bunmi, whom she no longer heard from. Bunmi, who lived in a mansion on Victoria Island with a rich and powerful businessman she’d met while walking along Bar Beach. The future would come for Fisayo. Bar Beach was where she knew her destiny waited for her.

  Nevertheless, after the great boom last night, seeing the shape-shifting creature skulk out of the water and then the three people kidnapped, she’d started wondering if her future was somewhere else. Something else. She had started walking, and her legs took her to Bar Beach. When she got there, she barely recognized it. The waters had crept more than halfway up the sand. There were barri­cades set up in front of the concrete walkways, closed beachfront shops with signs up that said KEEP OUT. And in front of the barricades, every hundred feet, stood armed soldiers. The one she approached was young, probably no older than twenty. He was sweating and shifty-eyed. He clearly didn’t want to be on duty.

  Why are there soldiers on the beach? she wondered. And barricades? As she approached the young man to ask him, her phone went off. The caller ID said “unknown.” When she opened it, she saw the face of an angel. A serene African woman with dark skin and perfect braids. She reminded Fisayo of an old photo of her grandmother when her grandmother was young.

  “That’s the girl from the beach,” she whispered. And from the footage Jacobs had, she thought. My God.

  This woman on her cheap mobile phone that couldn’t do more than make and receive phone calls, gazed at her as if she could actually see her. Fisayo froze. If she had looked up, she’d have realized that people walking up and down the street had also stopped and were looking at their phones. Two cars and a truck on the road nearby had pulled over. Hawkers had stopped hawking.

  Then the woman on her phone began to speak. Right there on the walkway, Fisayo sat down. Today, she was wearing jeans, a gently fitting red blouse, and gym shoes, instead of her usual tight short skirt, breast-popping top, and pumps. So she was comfortable as she heard the most horrifying thing in her life. The alien woman had hijacked her phone. She was speaking about taking over Nigeria. Fisayo shut her phone.

  She got up. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was the rapture, the apocalypse, the end. She opened her mouth to take in more air. She wanted to get to the beach and stand before the water. She wanted to be taken, like those three people who’d been embraced the night before. What have I done that is so terrible? she wondered as she stepped up to the soldier. Selling my body? It is just a body. I have a pure heart.

  The soldier was staring at his mobile phone, his mouth hanging open, his gun leaning against his leg. His hands shook. Fisayo could hear the strange woman speaking on his phone too.

  “We do not seek your oil or your other resources,” the woman was saying. “We are here to nurture your world. So, what will you do?”

  “What the hell is this?” he whispered, looking at Fisayo. “Is this a joke? Are we under attack by terrorists?” Her heart leaped. His eyes were filled with raw fear. One could not gaze into such eyes and not feel the same thing.

  It was hard for her to speak but she did. “I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “But I know that—”

  BOOM!

  They grabbed each other and dropped to the ground. Fisayo screamed, clutching the soldier. Her head was vibrating. The ground was shaking. The young man, who smelled like sweat and soap, was shuddering and holding on to her, too. Everything trembled. Birds and bats fell around them. These were followed by smaller creatures—mosquitoes, flies, gnats—which fell to the ground dead. The concrete walkway cracked beneath them. Car alarms went off. Two cars on the road crashed into each other. Several people fell over. The air began to stink of fish.

  And then it stopped. Fisayo thought she might have gone deaf. Her ears felt plugged, and the young man was speaking to her. All she heard were muffled sounds. He was helping her up. Her nose was bleeding, as was his.

  He was asking her something. She squinted, straining to hear him. “Are you all right?” he shouted.

  “Yes!” she shouted back, wiping the blood from her nose.

  He grabbed his gun, looking beyond her. She turned and gasped. Four men were fighting. There were several naira notes on the ground. Two of the men were grabbing at them. Another two were trying to stop them; one picked up a large rock.

  Fisayo turned away before the man brought it down on the other man’s head. The soldier started running toward them, his gun in his hand. Not bothering to remove her gym shoes, Fisayo turned and ran past the barricade onto the barred Bar Beach.

  * * * *

  Aside from the surf being way too high and starting to flood some of the beachside restaurants, the water seemed normal enough. It wasn’t boiling hot or freezing cold. It was still clear and wet. She touched the water that lapped at her shoes and brought it to her lips. Still salty. A low wind blew gentle waves on the water and the sun was setting.

  “Take me!” she shouted at the ocean. The air smelled cloyingly fishy, yet the more she inhaled, the clearer her mind felt. Clean, clean air. “Take me!” She threw off her gym shoes and socks and moved into the water.

  Dead fish, large and small, littered the sand and the gentle waves that moved in and out. She saw a deflated jellyfish and the lumpy red-and-white claw of a large crab. She splashed past them. “Please! Take me, o!” she screamed, crying. Her head ached, her nose was still bleeding, and the world was still muted.

  She stopped, thigh deep, the waves moving around her legs, staring out at the vast, dark blue water. The sun was barely above the horizon. Soon to set. Yellow-orange like a piece of candy. She spotted an oil tanker in the distance. Then she saw . . . She didn’t know what it was. In the growing darkness, the huge thing was black and undulating, pushing up and pulling in great pillars like giant phalluses. Red lights pulsed within it. A horrible vehicle; the devil’s danfo. It stretched across the horizon. Had the oil tanker heard the great BOOM, too? Was it louder there? She couldn’t see the tanker any more. Had the aliens taken all of them?

  In the middle distance, something enormous and serpentine leaped out of the water and splashed back. She felt a lump in her throat. Strange ships in the distance, monsters in the deep. The end was certainly near. “TAKE ME!” she screamed. Then she dove in. Plash!

  She swam. The salt water stung her eyes, and her arms quickly felt strained. Soon, she was far out enough to not feel the bottom. She kept swimming.

  She felt her lace-front wig lift from her head, leaving only her wig cap. That wig had cost her far too many naira, but at the time she’d seen it as an investment in her future. Now it was gone. . . . She hoped she’
d soon follow.

  The water embraced her. Like a hand. Like a womb. It’s taking me, she thought. She shut her eyes and stopped swimming, held out her arms, floated on the surface. She could feel her body being turned in circles. She opened her mouth and inhaled her last breath of air, fighting to stay relaxed. Then she rolled over, exhaled, and sank into the darkness.

  * * * *

  When she was washed back onto the beach, she thought she was dead. She opened her eyes and tried to gasp. Instead, she threw up nearly a gallon of water. She vomited and vomited. Then she got up and walked to the water and shouted, “May God set you on fire!” She tore off her wig cap and rubbed her short, wet, damaged hair, freeing it. As she turned to leave Bar Beach, she noticed someone sitting on the sand. A man.

  She squinted. It was a man in military uniform. She went a few steps closer and then froze. He was soaked . . . because he’d just dragged himself out of the ocean. She recognized him. He was one of the stolen people. He, too, had been rejected. Or maybe he was one of them now. She moved toward him, her bare feet kneading the sand as she walked. She would shout at him. She would slap him. She would . . . She stopped. There was something enormous lying on the beach beyond him. Enormous like . . . a whale? There were people around and on top of it too. She could see that several of them had machetes and knives. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  Then movement in the water caught her attention and she gasped. They were coming out of it—people who were not people. Men. Women. No children. Tall. Short. Mostly African. Some Asian. They walked around her and past her without looking at her. Without seeing her. What looked like a white man dressed like an Igbo man; he even wore a red-black-and-white–striped woolen chieftaincy cap. Ridiculous! All wrong. Foreign. Alien.

  She felt something break, deep in her mind. Last night, she had sold herself to an American man who afterward told her she was not dirtier than any other women from any other part of the world. She had watched the devil snatch people into the ocean and return them, infused with evil. She had later seen one of the evil shape-shifters in recorded footage on her brother’s phone and then on the screen of her own phone. A whale had died on Bar Beach. Now she was seeing the city of her birth and upbringing invaded by the evil. And not one of the creatures turned to look at her. To them, she was nothing.

  Her eye twitched and her shoeless feet ached. She shoved her wig cap into her bra and scratched at her tender scalp. She had to find her brother. But she would help others, first. She had to tell people. She had to bring Lagos the news, and it wasn’t good news.

  When she’d walked down to Bar Beach, she’d been looking for her future. Now she had found it. The world was ripe, on the brink of rotting, of apocalypse. She had to save it. Save it from them.

  She’d start with him, the man they’d returned.

  But when she looked where he’d been sitting, he was gone. Then she saw him. There he was, stumbling onto the walkway. She took off after him.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE PLANTAIN TREE

  Adaora grasped her son Fred’s hand as they watched Father Oke, who stood a few feet away. Someone had thrown a rock at him, and then one of the people in his flock responded by throwing a bottle of Coke toward where the rock had come from. Now the tall, sour-faced man who’d initially thrown the rock stood before Father Oke. The woman who’d been splashed with Coke and broken glass stood behind him, glaring angrily at Father Oke.

  Father Oke raised his hands, pleading, “I . . . I didn’t throw—”

  The man slapped Father Oke hard across the face. As Father Oke went down, two of his followers surged forward, only to be yanked back by other followers.

  “You may not have thrown it, Father, but you’ve kept my mother poor with your damned church,” the man who’d slapped him sneered, looking down at the cowering bishop. “Rubbish.” He glared at the stunned followers and spat to the side. “All of you are rubbish.”

  “Look am!” a young man in the onlooking crowd said. “Na de idiot priest who go slap woman on YouTube! Na justice!”

  “See how you like it!” a woman shouted at Oke. “Who winch now?!”

  Adaora would have smiled if she hadn’t been in fear for Father Oke’s life. She despised him, but she didn’t want him beaten to death by a mob. She squeezed Fred’s hand harder, and he squeezed back. “Mommy,” he said, tears in his eyes. “Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t.”

  Near the front door in the yard, Ayodele was watching all the wahala in the crowd, a pleasant smile on her face. Anthony stood beside Ayodele, grasping Kola’s hand as the little girl continued to film, holding the camera with her other hand.

  Benson still stood outside the wrought-iron gate. “Shoot it!” Benson yelled to the soldiers on his left, spit flying from his mouth. He was standing beside Adaora, hopping from one foot to the other like a child about to have an accident, his eyes wide and wild. He was pointing at Ayodele. “Shoot it, Private Elenwoke! Shoot it now!”

  “No!” Adaora shouted. Still holding Fred’s hand, she turned to Benson. “No! Don’t!”

  Private Elenwoke looked confused as he raised his AK-47 and aimed through the gate at Ayodele.

  Ayodele’s eyes fell on him.

  “Don’t!” Adaora screamed.

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  The smile dropped from Ayodele’s face as she stumbled back and looked down at her abdomen. There were several holes through her white dress, at her belly and her chest.

  “Kola!” Adaora screamed. Kola had been next to Ayodele, filming her, when the soldiers started shooting. Now she was sitting at Ayodele’s feet. Her left arm was bleeding. Adaora let go of Fred’s hand and pushed past Benson and Father Oke’s white-robed followers, fumbling for her key ring. She shoved a key in the keyhole and opened the gate. The moment she was in, Fred ran to her and grabbed her hand. They both ran to Kola. Adaora heard people flooding into the yard behind her.

  She reached her daughter as Anthony stood looking down at Ayodele, who’d begun shrieking and thrashing. Adaora picked Kola up and moved her away from the woman writhing on the ground.

  Kola was whimpering as she sat, trying not to look at her left arm. “Is it bad, Mommy? Is it bad?”

  “It’s not bad, honey,” Adaora said, looking over her daughter’s arm. Blood pumped from the gunshot wound to the beat of Kola’s heart. It took all Adaora had to stay calm. “Relax,” she breathed. “Lie down, sweetie.” As Kola did so, Adaora took her arm and held it up. Gravity would slow the blood loss. She wasn’t sure if she should apply pressure with the bullet possibly still in there. Beside her, Fred began to cry.

  Adaora glanced at Anthony. He was looking down at Ayodele, who screamed and undulated and . . . began to melt. The sound of marbles on glass was everywhere, filling Adaora’s head, the noise making it hard to think. Adaora could feel even the tiny hairs on her face vibrating and pulling. Her stomach shuddered and her head throbbed. Benson and five soldiers stood over them, pointing guns at Ayodele, expressions uncertain.

  Benson was shouting at Ayodele; he’d been shouting the whole time. “Don’t move! Just, just, just stay right there, now.”

  A soldier knelt beside Kola with a first aid kit.

  “Keep her arm up,” he said, opening up the box.

  “Ah!” she heard Fred cry. She turned round to see Chris wrapping his arms around the boy, and every muscle in her body tensed.

  “It’s okay,” Chris whispered into his son’s ear. “Shhh.” He looked at Adaora. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s been shot,” Adaora said.

  They looked into each other’s eyes for several seconds. Then Chris nodded at Adaora and she nodded back. The soldier was examining Kola’s arm. The bleeding didn’t appear to be slowing.

  Yards away, Ayodele was still shrieking as Anthony stood over her, unsure of what to do. She had bled not a drop of blood
. She wasn’t just melting, she was disintegrating. Her skin was growing grainy, her hands and the lower part of her face losing their shape. Her dress melted away like cotton candy touched by water. She was staring at Kola, and Kola was staring at her. Then Ayodele looked up at Benson, her gaze moving wildly between him and the other soldiers. Her left eye had dissolved to nothing, but the look in her still intact right eye was one of pure hatred.

  Benson fired his gun, hitting Ayodele in the leg. Anthony leaped to the side. “Shoot it!” Benson yelled. “Kill it! Kill it!” Three soldiers opened fire on Ayodele again. They shot her in the thighs, chest, face, everywhere. Her fragile, graying body was hopping and jerking on the ground. Adaora pulled Kola close as the child screamed and sobbed. She hoped Chris was doing the same for Fred.

  The sound of marbles grew so loud that she hunched over Kola to protect her from the harsh noise. She struggled to keep Kola’s arm up. Through it all she could hear muffled screaming. The voices of men, not Ayodele. Then she felt more than heard a wet pop!, and hot liquid sprayed across her face. And then . . . silence.

  She opened her eyes and immediately wanted to shut them again.

  Where the soldiers had stood, heaps of raw meat wriggled and then became still. Her husband was covering Fred’s face. The one soldier who had been tending to Kola’s arm had his hands over his ears and his eyes shut. Anthony was on the lawn, mere steps away, his head pressed to the grass, his hands over his head. All of them were wet with blood. Adaora was the only one in the group who had her eyes open. There were people from the crowd in the yard, some running into the house, others standing yards away, staring. Most were still cowering, terrified by the gunshots and alien noise. However, Adaora focused only on her children, husband, the soldier beside her, Anthony, and . . . the alien. Ayodele slowly got up and stood tall before the veiny masses of yellow-white fat, pink-red tissue and muscle, bunched brown skin, and broken bone. She was whole, spotless, and now wearing a plain brown dress. She was scowling at Adaora.