Virus

by Ifedayo Akintomide

  “The guys at the mortuary said they deposited his body around one am this morning and sealed him in. But when his parents came to claim him to prep his body for burial it had vanished.”

  Swallowing, Makinde leaped off his chair and hurried out of the room.

  Elsewhere

  Collins strode with long determined strides to Judith’s house. A hard frown roughened his brow. Frowning had become a part of him nowadays. You did not have to look too far to know the reason for his awful temper_ JUDITH!!!

  He spat her name out through tightly clenched teeth. The girl was insufferable. The devil and his accomplices must have been on high alert the day he ran into her. Since she had had the abortion, she had not stopped complaining. Her stomach was paining her, she was bleeding excessively, and the pain was too severe to stand. Blah blah blah!!

  He stirred clear of her house since she had the abortion. He was on his way there now, because she threatened to tell her parents what he had made her do. Fear entered his heart when he considered the disastrous consequences that would have.

  He would be in a real pickle if something happened to her. Her getting pregnant caught him unawares. If it had not, he would have been better prepared financially and could have taken her to a better place to get it done. Everyone knew the Oloriburuku* (Bad head) doctor was a quack. However, when you had a serious cash flow problem and a pregnant girlfriend breathing down you neck; life forced you to take certain risks.

  Her house loomed up in the distance and another sigh burst from his lips. Seeing her house made him want to turn and hightail it back the way he had come. He played in his head about half a dozen ways his encounter with Judith would play out and none of them was in any way cool.

  Summoning courage, he willed his feet to move. They reluctantly obeyed him. A couple of seconds later he stood at her front door. He had to quell the urge to flee again. Sighing deeply and frowning at the same time, he reached forward and knocked on the door twice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I am coming.” A familiar voice called out.

  His frown became harder. Was it his imagination or was that____ before he could complete his train of thought the door was unlocked and pulled inwards revealing a healthy looking Judith standing in the doorway.

  She looked extremely beautiful, clad in a tight fitting skirt, which reached a point just above her knees and a pristine blue blouse hugging her young and supple looking top half. Collins eyes and mouth opened wide in shock.

  “You best close your mouth before a fly flies into it.” She snapped looking so fierce that he was taken back.

  It took him almost fifteen seconds to recover and put together a coherent stream of words that he could spit at her which could best describe what he was thinking. But even with that the best he could manage was__

  “How could you?”

  “How could I WHAT??” She screeched in fury. He jumped, startled by her outburst as he took two steps back. Judith always had a fiery temper. Her volatile nature was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place. Her ire however was something he could very much do without now.

  “It’s been almost three days Collins! You have not even bothered to call text or even find out how I was doing. I could have been dead for all you cared.

  ‘Might have been better__” He mumbled in a low tone, too low for her to hear. He let her rave and rant for five minutes. When she stopped for a breath, he quickly cut in.

  “How dare you threaten to report me to your parents? Is something wrong with you?”

  “Would you have shown up otherwise?”

  A long silence ensured after her question.

  “I thought not!” She snapped with a furious and somewhat pained look on her face.

  A short silence followed and then she hissed stepping back to slam the door in his face. Thoroughly incensed now he lunged forward, holding out his right palm in front of him. The door and his palm connected with a loud crack and he winced at the pain that coursed through his arm.

  Enraged, he shoved the door hard flinging her backwards. She barely managed to keep her balance as the door slammed into the wall with a crash.

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?” She shouted in fury. “DO YOU WANT TO DESTROY__”

  He did not allow her to say more. Crossing the intervening distance between them in a thrice he pulled her against his body seizing her lips in a hard and somewhat brutal kiss. She screamed into his mouth in righteous indignation struggling desperately to free herself from his crushing embrace.

  He tightened his grip refusing to give her any leeway. Her struggles became less violent a few seconds later. Soon she was kissing him as hard he was kissing her. Their clothes came off in a thrice and they were sprawled on the floor coupling like two sex starved animals.

  ‘Hoo boy! Na wa!’ Collins couldn’t help thinking as he thrust into her. ‘Upon all her shakara* (posing) na for floor everything end.’ He thought nothing more for the next thirty minutes.

  Wole was in shock struggling to catch his breath. Chike was dead! How could that be? His eyes brimmed with unshed tears. For some strange reason they refused to spill. So consumed by his shocked and somewhat morbid thoughts, he became unaware of anything around him. The wind, the sun, or even the scurrying of tiny creatures in the bushes on either side of the path he walked on.

  It was Tunrayo’s swaying arm catching him a glancing blow on his wrist that made him realize she was still walking beside him. Unlike him, however she sobbed loudly talking at the same time.

  “Omale Oshii* (Stupid son of a thief), Oda(fool), Osiwin Aiye__ I warned him. I really warned him, but the fool was too dumb to listen. Why would he not listen?” She cried in despair.

  From her tone, Wole got the sense that it was a rhetorical question. She was not expecting an answer, which considering the circumstances, suited him just fine. He would not know what to say even if she expected a reply.

  The principal summoned the students just before closing time and told them the bad news. As a way of mourning his death, the school was closed down for the day much to Tunrayo’s and Wole’s relief.

  They separated at the tee-junction beyond the path in the forest. No words were exchanged. There was nothing to say. As he walked towards his house the sounds of Tunrayo’s loud sobs slowly receded until it disappeared all together.

  Baba Adora the old cobbler sat at his usual spot under the teak tree beside the sunflower bakery. The delicious scent of freshly baked bread hung in the air, but Wole was too distraught to care.

  Baba Adora’s wise and somewhat sad looking eyes were fixed on Wole as he approached. A strange thrill of irritation rippled through him. He hoped the old man did not take it upon himself to start sharing his usual anecdotes and words of wisdom, because he was so not in the mood.

  Shock went through him as soon as he thought this. He never thought about anyone with such bristling impatience before, especially someone like Baba Adora. ‘Guess its not everyday one of your best friends dies.’ A soft voice in his subconscious said. He sighed.

  An overwhelming sense of sadness filled him and the tears brimming in his eyes spilt down his cheeks. A second later, he was sobbing as if his heart would break. There was a sound on the periphery of his consciousness. Low, sounding as if it was coming from a place far away. For a few moments, he felt the sound was in his head. It took him fifteen seconds to realize the sound was not in his head.

  “Why do you cry my child?” Baba Adora asked looking very troubled. A heavy silence followed, followed broken only by Wole’s loud sobs. The silence stretched on for so long that Baba Adora felt he was not going to get a response. Wole eventually opened his mouth, and when he did the words came rushing out.

  Baba Adora listened intently without interrupting him once. When he was done a fear greater than anything he had ever felt surged into his heart. Wole grew still looking at the myriad of terrified expressions zipping across the old man’s face. His face was now the color of ash and he lo
oked as if he was on the verge of collapse.

  “Baba Adora__” He said taking two steps forward. “Are you alright? You look sick. Do I run and get help?”

  The word ‘help’ seemed to get through to him and he snapped out of his panic induced haze.

  “No son__ there is no need ___ I will be fine.”

  “Was it something I said that scared you so much?”

  Another long pause followed.

  “Its not important son ___ go home now while you still can.”

  Wole’s eyes widened at his strange choice of words, but he said no more and hurried home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Taiwo Betiku stood two feet in front of the door of the hospital’s mortuary watching as two of his men examined the lock. As expected, it was intact. The lock over the refrigerated compartment where Chike’s body had been stored too was intact. There was no sign of forced entry anywhere. So where in the world had the boy’s body disappeared? A frown hardened his face. There was more to this puzzle than met the eye.

  “No sign of forced entry sir__” One of his men said turning to face him.

  The frown on his face grew harder. Was the man retarded? Of course he could see there was no forced entry. Did the goat think he was blind?

  Quelling the urge to give him a stinging retort, he took a deep breath and nodded. Several moments of silence ensured.

  Taiwo stood still, his heavyset body stiff and rigid. He always assumed that position whenever he was deep in thought as he was now. The three other men in the room moved restlessly. He knew what that meant of course. The dim wits were waiting for instructions from him. A sigh left his lips. He was loath to do what he was about to do, but he could see no other way around it.

  “Are the men that were working in the mortuary that night still outside?”

  “Yes sir.” The bulky sergeant on the left growled snapping to attention.

  He nodded with a grim look on his face. “Ok arrest them all. A couple of days in prison should loosen their tongues somewhat.”

  “Do you want us to apply pressure?” The broad sergeant asked. He had a cruel smile on his face.

  The frown on Taiwo’s face deepened. He knew what apply pressure meant. To put it simply, it meant torture. That was a term Taiwo was not overly fond of, he was not averse to using threats and other forms of psychological wrangling, but he drew the line at torture.

  His sergeant on the other hand seemed to get off on it. There had been many unconfirmed reports that he had been quite brutal with a few suspects in the past. Investigations into those reports had yielded nothing of course. Police officers tend to stick together when one of them got into trouble. All it needed was for one officer on the scene to corroborate the victim’s assertions.

  No one did however. All of the officers stated that the sergeant’s action had been strictly professional with no bias or violence whatsoever. A look of disgust crept into his eyes as he thought this. Some of his colleague’s reports on him bordered on him described as some sort of misunderstood saint.

  “No pressure Sergeant Diran! If I hear any of you strayed from my explicit instructions by even an iota, you best get prepared for six weeks suspension without pay. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”

  The faces of all the men present grew grim at the D.P.O’s harsh words. They all hurried out of the cold room without another word. Sighing Taiwo hurried after them.

  That night

  Dr Makinde trudged towards his front door. He lived in a three bedroom brown bungalow built on the edge of town. It had no fence. He and his wife Victoria had not been able to raise the funds to build a concrete fence around the property.

  The fence was the last thing on his mind however. He felt sick. Sweat poured down his skin in rivers. His clothes were soaked through, as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over his head. That however was not his biggest concern, not by a long shot. His arm was almost three times its normal size and it leaked a pus like substance. Bright light lit the inside of the house and he could hear noise coming from the television. Victoria was still up.

  He fumbled with the lock for what seemed like an eternity before he finally got the door open. Victoria turned on her seated position on a plush leather couch. She was a buxom beauty with hazel eyes and full pouty lips, which broadened with a smile when she saw him.

  Her smile disappeared the instant she noticed the sick look on his face and the ashen color of his skin.

  “Darling what is wrong with you?” She gasped leaping off the sofa and racing to his side. He pushed past her without responding and staggered to their bedroom.

  “OH MY GOD!!!” She wailed. That puzzled him for a bit until he realized she had just spotted his arm. He had the sleeve rolled up to the elbow, so his swollen arm was now in full view.

  Glancing at it as he stumbled to the room, he was shocked to discover that his arm was now a reddish brown color and very knobbly looking, with tiny holes through which a white pus like fluid seeped out.

  He began to heave as he approached the bedroom door. He made it as far as the door of the bathroom before throwing up violently. A thick darkness loomed around him as soon as he was done. The last sound he heard was his wife’s frightened cries before he passed out.

  Morning

  Tunrayo and Wole walked to school in silence. Their greetings had been quiet and rather perfunctory. From the shadows under her eyes, Wole could see she had not gotten much sleep. It occurred to him that he probably did not look any better.

  He spent most of the night tossing and turning. He cried quite a bit too. Chike had been a stubborn goat sometimes but he had had a good heart. He wondered how his parent’s were coping with his loss.

  His eyes closed as he considered it. They opened a couple of seconds later as he came to the decision that he would not dwell on it. Getting through the days ahead would be hard enough without fixating on something he could nothing about.

  The tall wrought iron gates of the school loomed ahead. The sight of them filled their hearts with dread. Their eyes moved inexplicably to the teak tree on the left side of the dusty road. The incidents of the day of Chike’s attack flashed before their eyes in Technicolor and they both shivered as they realized that Eze could have attacked anyone of them.

  It could easily have been him or Tunrayo lying dead now. Wole sighed and walked through the gate with Tunrayo following slowly.

  Victoria was beside herself with terror as she watched half a dozen doctors and nurses racing around her husband’s bed. There were three needles stuck into the veins of his arms feeding him medicines intravenously. He was breathing when she dragged him into the hospital in the early hours of the morning. Now he gasped for breath.

  That fact was horrifying in itself but what was even more horrifying was the blue, black and reddish color of his skin. In addition, several orifices had opened along both sides of his abdomen, and they opened and closed like the gills of a fish every couple of seconds. The most horrible part of that was, each time they did, greenish pus seeped out.

  The doctors were thumping hard on his chest. His heart had just stopped. Big hot tears poured out of her eyes. He was gone. Deep within her, she knew no amount of chest pumping would revive him. Her husband was DEAD!

  She retreated into the corner of the room as the doctors battled to revive him. Sinking down into a crumpled heap on the thinly carpeted floor, she continued to sob. Her greatest wish now was that her own heart would stop beating. With Makinde gone, she had no reason to continue living.

  A horrendous itching on her left wrist caused her to pause. She examined her wrist closely. Her first thought was that something on the carpet bit her. But she was wrong. A crescent shaped set of marks marred the milky brown color of her skin. The skin was broken around the edges of each mark, and out of the holes seeped a little blood.

  Her tears came down faster when she saw it. She had almost forgotten about the marks. In his delirious struggles last night, Makinde had bitten her. Seeing the bite mark
only made it more real to her that Makinde was dead. Her cries grew even more intense as she buried her face into the carpet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The school day seemed to fly by in Wole’s mind. He remembered little of what he was taught and even when people spoke to him; it always seemed as if their voices were coming from far away.

  Mercifully, most people stayed out of his way and for that, he was very grateful. They all seemed to sense he needed space and no one intruded on his private moments. The sound of the closing bell was a big weight off his neck. He raced out of the class like a shot from a gun, tearing through the school gates like a cannon bolt. He drew to a screeching halt three feet in front of the gate shocked to see Tunrayo standing a few meters in front of him.

  “I couldn’t wait for classes to be over__” She cried hanging her head.

  “Me too__” He murmured.

  They both hung their heads in silence for a minute before the sound of several hundred thumping feet roused them from their reverie. The other students were coming out.

  “I think we better go.” They said almost in unison. Wan smiles broke out on both of their faces.

  “Can I hang in your place for a couple of hours?” Tunrayo asked suddenly. Wole paused for about two seconds before he responded.

  “What about your mother? You sure she won’t be worried about you?”

  “No, I told her I would come to your place after school and she agreed. As long as if was ok with your mother.”

  Wole shrugged smiling wearily. “Ok then__ lets go home.”

  They took a couple of steps forward walking side by side when Wole on impulse reached forward and took her hand in his. She stiffened for two seconds before relaxing and linking their fingers. They continued walking towards home with both of their arms swinging slightly as they moved.