by Justin D'Ath
I did not listen for its answer. A pair of car headlights had appeared in the distance, about four blocks further up the avenue.
‘Have you finished sicking up, Three?’
‘Finished,’ it said weakly.
I hurried back to pick it up, glancing nervously over my shoulder as I resettled the trembling brid on my back. I could see the vehicle clearly now. It was not a car, it was a van.
‘Hold on tight,’ I said and went bumping off down the footpath, with Three bouncing up and down on my back like a camel rider and the backpack banging against my hip.
If my guess was right, it was the same van that had chased the Mercedes. The van that had stopped for Three after I shot it in the ear. Mustafa’s van. Were he and AK-47 Man still looking for their runaway suicide bomber?
They were not getting it back yet. Three was not ready. The brid needed time to recover from its injuries, time to rest and grow strong again.
It needed to be reprogrammed.
But first things first. Right now I had to get off the avenue. The van was rapidly gaining ground on us. Soon they would see us in their headlights.
They had a whole city to search, I thought as I ran from them. How did they keep getting so close?
I came to a cross street and turned the corner into complete darkness. I was careless, I should have slowed down. One of my shoes rolled off the kerb, twisting my foot sideways. A sharp pain shot up my ankle. Aaaaee!
Mightbe another person would have fallen, but I was Magic Feet. One journalist had compared me to a leopard, the most sure-footed of all creatures. But I had never been less like a leopard – I was running bumpity-bump like an ostrich! Three had to hold on very tight.
‘Loosen up around my neck!’
‘Soh-soh-soh-ree-ee,’ it said, its voice bouncing like its body. ‘T-t-too mu-mu-much shake-shake!’
‘Not far to go,’ I puffed.
A large, square shape loomed in the darkness ahead. It was a matatu bus, parked at a strange angle so it blocked half the narrow street. When I limped closer, I saw that one of its rear wheels was gone and someone had propped up the axle-stub on bricks.
I went behind the broken matatu and lowered the heavy brid to the ground. But I stayed on my feet. Cradling the backpack against my heaving ribs, I listened for the noise of the van. I could not relax until it had crossed the end of the narrow street where we hid. I had to be ready to run, in case they turned here. But could I run? My ankle throbbed. Sweet Paradise! Why had I been so careless?
Suddenly there were lights. They were on the other side of the matatu, but I could see in through its dirty rear window and out through the equally grimy one at the front. In this way I watched the van drive slowly-slowly past the end of the street and disappear up the avenue. Finally it was safe to sit down.
A voice said, ‘Sunday hurt foot?’
Carefully, I flexed the ankle. ‘It might be sprained.’
‘Three give bandage.’
‘You need them more than I do,’ I said.
‘Three not carry Sunday.’
‘I am not asking you to carry me.’
‘So Sunday more need bandage,’ Three said.
I could see its logic, but I did not want its kindness.
‘Stop talking,’ I said irritably.
Once again, I found myself marvelling that this strange creature could talk. ‘What truly is a brid?’ I asked.
‘Sunday said Three not supposed talk.’
‘I know what I said, parrot-mouth. But I want to know what you are.’
‘Papio cynocephalus sapiens.’
I sighed. We had had this conversation before. ‘But where did you come from?’
‘Mustafa send.’
‘Before that,’ I said impatiently.
‘Doan remember.’
‘Do you remember your parents?’
‘Brid doan have parents.’
‘Everyone has parents,’ I said.
And then I remembered that I did not have parents. Aaaaee!
‘Mustafa like parent for Three,’ said the brid.
A strange sound came from me – like a laugh, but not one. ‘Parents do not send their children to die!’ I said angrily.
‘Three not die.’
‘You almost did.’
‘Not Mustafa fault,’ Three said. ‘Baboons done.’
‘Don’t forget my part in it,’ I said, still angry. ‘I shot you, remember? Then I gave you bad water and made you sick.’
‘Mistake,’ said Three. It touched my elbow. ‘Sunday friend for Three.’
There was nothing I could say to that. I massaged my foot. The ankle joint was tender, but the injury no longer felt as severe as before, praise God. I had to be fit by next weekend. There was a practice session in Nabozi City for everyone in the Cup squad. It was the first time all the team would be together and the first time we would meet our new coach from England.
How stupid to care about football now! I thought suddenly. And how stupid to think that I would ever play football again! My parents had been murdered and, if I was not truly careful, the same thing would happen to me.
‘I have something to say that is important,’ I said. ‘Mustafa is not your friend, Three.’
‘Mustafa talk to Three, give food, give drink.’
‘He put that muzzle on you, remember?’
‘Give reward after,’ Three said stubbornly.
‘He was never going to reward you, Three. You would have died if I had not taken the muzzle off.’
‘Mustafa not make Three die.’
I sighed in frustration. There was so much that the brid did not understand. And so much that I could not explain without telling it about the bomb.
‘Trust me, Three – Mustafa is not your friend.’
‘Not Three friend,’ said the brid, though it did not sound convinced.
‘He is not my friend, either,’ I said. ‘We must not let him find us.’
Three asked, ‘Was Mustafa in car?’
‘It looked like the van you were in today,’ I said.
‘Gone now?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good,’ said Three.
I looked at the brid. All I could see in the deep shadow of the matatu bus were the pale stripes of its bandages. It still did not know that I had its backpack.
More importantly, it did not know that it had been a suicide bomber.
And that it would be again.
With one finger, I lightly touched the broken wire where it went into the backpack. In the Holy Book it is written that animals were put on Earth for the use of humans.
So why was I feeling guilty?
13
Come and Get Us!
‘It is around here somewhere,’ a man’s voice said suddenly.
He sounded really close, just around the other side of the matatu, and I got such a fright that I grabbed the thing that was closest to me.
It was Three’s bandaged arm. The brid whimpered in pain.
‘Shhhh,’ I said very quietly, releasing Three’s arm and patting it to show I was sorry.
The beam from a handheld torch wobbled slowly along the buildings on one side of the street, then they crossed to the other side and went wobbling back out of view behind the matatu.
A second man spoke: ‘Where? I cannot see it.’
‘Neither can I,’ said the first man. ‘But the signal is really strong.’
They were both speaking English. I recognised their voices. One was the man with the overseas accent, Mustafa. The other was the man with the AK-47. They must have parked the black van out on the avenue and come sneaking back on foot.
‘Are you sure that thing is working properly?’ asked AK-47 Man.
‘Of course it is,’ said Mustafa.
I had to see what was happening. Being very careful not to put weight on my injured foot, I inched slowly up the back of the matatu and peeped over the lower rim of its rear window. My scalp prickled. Framed in the wide windscr
een at the other end was the white man who had sent Three to kill me.
Mustafa.
I could not see well because the matatu’s windows were not clean, but Mustafa’s skin looked pale green, not white. So did his hair and his glasses. The green came from a tablet which Mustafa held just below his face.
The other man stood off to one side, with his AK-47 slung across one shoulder. He was shining a powerful torch up at some tall buildings further along the street.
‘So where is it?’ he asked.
Mustafa turned slowly-slowly in a circle. His glasses reflected the green glow from the device. I saw now that it was not a tablet – the screen was too small. But it was bigger than a phone. It had knobs and buttons. There was a wire-thing, like a very small TV aerial, that poked out from the top.
‘He’s around here somewhere,’ Mustafa said, raising his eyes from the little screen. ‘Maybe up on one of these rooftops.’
Understanding came to me now: it was some sort of tracking device. Mustafa was using it to look for Three. That was how he kept finding us. He had spoken of a signal. Where was it coming from?
The only possible place was the backpack.
It must contain a transmitter as well as a bomb, I thought. Mightbe that was the radio Three thought was in there. And all evening it had been sending back electronic signals to Mustafa’s tracking device.
Signals that said: Come and get us!
But they had not found us yet. It seemed that the tracking device was not jackal-nose accurate. It had brought Mustafa roughly to the location of the secret transmitter, but not right to it. Now both men were peering back at one of the tall, hotel-like buildings on the corner of the avenue. The light from AK-47 Man’s torch probed back and forth along a third-floor balcony. It was a good place to look for a wild baboon, I supposed, but it was the wrong place to look for Three. Soon one or the other of the two men would remember that Three’s leg was injured. Then they would switch their search to ground level – where the obvious place to look for the missing brid was behind the broken-down matatu right next to them.
‘Three!’ Mustafa shouted towards the balcony on the corner. ‘Are you up there, buddy?’
Sliding quickly back down next to Three, I put my lips to its ear: ‘Don’t answer him.’
‘Mustafa not friend,’ it whispered.
Good boy, I thought. Then I mentally corrected myself: good brid.
Aloud, I said, ‘But I am your friend, Three.’
Regardless of what the Holy Book said, it still felt wrong to lie to the creature. But what choice did I have? If Mustafa and AK-47 Man found us, I was dead.
I had to get rid of the backpack – otherwise they would find me – so I pushed it gently into the narrow black space beneath the matatu.
‘Why Sunday hide bag?’ Three asked.
Aaaaee! I was hoping it would not notice. But even with just one eye, Three’s night vision was better than mine.
‘We do not need it anymore,’ I whispered. ‘And it is too hard to carry.’
I hoped the brid wasn’t wondering why Mustafa had gone to so much trouble to track it down. I was wondering the same thing myself.
But I did know this: without the bomb, I no longer had any use for Three.
Even so, I could not leave the brid here for Mustafa to find after I was gone. Three might tell him that I was nearby, and he and AK-47 Man might come looking for me. It claimed to be my friend, but I would be a fool to trust it.
Just as Three had been a fool to trust me.
I tested my foot once more. There was less pain now. I removed my shoes so I could walk silently, then I crouched with my back towards Three.
‘Climb onto me,’ I whispered.
When next I looked through the matatu’s dirty windows, Mustafa and his companion were walking away from us, going back towards the building with the lit-up balcony.
Now was my chance to escape. But I was terrified. They had a powerful torch. This time if they saw me fleeing from them, they would not mistake me for a woman.
They would shoot to kill.
Holding my shoes in one hand, I crept silently-silently down the dark street away from our pursuers, with Three clinging to my back like a living bad luck juju.
14
Girlfriend
Icy fingers of fear tickled up and down my back.
Three would be no protection from the AK-47 if they spotted us. Its bullets would pass right through the brid and come into me. Would it hurt? A bomb would be better, I thought. There would not be time for pain.
My parents did not suffer.
Making no sound in my school socks, I limped slowly down the dark, narrow street away from the protection of the broken-down matatu. And nobody shone a torch on us, nobody shot at us.
Finally I reached a street that crossed over and escaped around the corner.
‘Praise God!’ I muttered.
But my parents were still dead. And now that I no longer had the backpack with the bomb in it, the man who had murdered them would go unpunished.
Sorry, Baba. Sorry, Ama.
I sat on the kerb and unwrapped the brid’s smelly arms from around my neck. Pulling on my shoes, I tied the laces in the dark. Then I stood up and walked away.
‘Where Sunday go?’ Three asked from the footpath behind me.
‘To meet someone.’
‘Not take Three?’
‘My foot is sore,’ I said, exaggerating my limp because the brid could see in the dark. ‘I cannot carry you anymore. I am sorry.’
And I was sorry. But without its bomb, Three was no use to me. It would just slow me down.
‘Goodbye, Sunday,’ it called after me. ‘Thank you for be Three’s friend.’
Aaaaee!
But there was no reason to feel guilty, I told myself. It was not human; it did not have human feelings.
And it had been sent to kill me.
Suddenly, all up and down the street, the streetlights started coming on. The city’s power had been restored.
Then there was a small sound – Ping! – from inside my pocket. The phone service must have come back on when the power did. I stopped and pulled out Sergeant Aguda’s phone. There was a new message from Holly. It was long. I had to scroll down and down to read it all. Holly said how she was very worried about me and that she was so so sad about my parents; and she asked me ‘please please please’ to call her as soon as I was able. At the end there was a whole line of Xs.
I called her, but her phone rang and rang. It was strange. Normally Holly answered straightaway. Finally her recorded voice came on saying to leave a message.
‘This is Sunday,’ I said into the phone. ‘I am okay but please call me . . .’ (I almost added baby at the end, but did not.)
Then I checked to see when Holly had sent the text message with all the Xs. It was 20:42. The current time was 00:16. No wonder she had not answered. I noticed another thing, also – the battery icon showed nearly empty. I closed the phone, so it would not go fully flat.
Now what was I going to do? I could not go to Holly’s apartment at sixteen minutes after midnight and push the doorbell. It would wake everybody. What would her parents do if they saw the son of the murdered president at their door? Had Holly told them about me? About me and her?
There was a noise from back down the street. Three lay beneath a bright streetlight with its face hanging over the gutter. It was sicking up again. That will teach you for eating cockroaches, I thought. I did not believe that the water from the drum had caused it.
Had the light not been shining down, I might have turned and limped away. But Three looked so pitiful lying there in all its bloodstained bandages – so small and sick and alone – that I could not leave it for the rats, the vultures and the jackals.
And the brid and I had a thing in common. We were both innocent victims of the events of the previous day.
Neither of us spoke as I helped Three up onto my back. What was there to say that would not be l
ies? I was only helping it because I felt guilty. You could not be friends with an animal.
We had gone only half a block when the phone rang. I nearly dropped Three in my hurry to get it from my pocket.
‘Holly?’
‘Sunny!’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘Thank God! I have been trying to call you all night but the phones weren’t working. Where are you? Are you okay?’
There were so many things to tell her, but I was afraid the phone connection might fall out at any moment. ‘Please listen, Holly. I cannot talk for long – this phone is nearly out of battery. Can I come to your place?’
She was quiet for a short time. ‘That might not be such a good idea,’ she said. ‘Where are you now?’
I looked around, trying to see a street sign or anything that would tell me where I was. ‘I am not sure. In the city somewhere.’
‘Can you see the ZantOil tower?’
ZantOil owned the tallest building in Zantuga City (and also in the country of that name). Now that the power had come back on, I could see the flashing red light at the top. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Are you close to it?’
‘Mightbe five or six blocks away.’
‘Okay,’ said Holly. ‘There’s a bus stop across the street from the main entrance. Can you meet me there in a half hour?’
‘Is it safe?’ I asked.
‘I hope so,’ Holly said. ‘But be careful, baby – there’s a curfew. Nobody is allowed outside after six o’clock.’
Now I understood why the city seemed deserted. But it made me worry about Holly.
‘Will you be safe?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. Then she laughed softly. ‘As long as I can sneak out without Mom hearing me. Do you want me to bring anything?’
‘Could you bring some food and water, please?’ I said. Only now did I realise how hungry and thirsty I was. ‘Do you have a first-aid kit?’ I asked.
‘Are you hurt, baby?’
‘It is not for me.’ I flexed my ankle. ‘The . . . person with me needs bandages and stuff.’
‘What person?’
‘You will see when we get there,’ I said. I was still thinking about Three’s injuries. The horrible wound on top of its head might need more than bandages. ‘And, Holly? Could you bring sewing things also – a needle and cotton?’
