Virus

by Ifedayo Akintomide

  Conversation was little. There was nothing to say really. A sigh burst from Wole’s lips first and then Tunrayo followed five seconds later. They both felt an overwhelming sadness fill their insides. Something was missing, or rather someone__

  Memories flitted through their mind as they walked. The smiles, the laughs, the incessant bickering et all. They were on the verge of crying when the cobbler’s tree and sunflower bakery came into view. That sight normally wouldn’t have changed a thing about the way they were feeling. Today however was different.

  Baba Adora was not sitting down calmly as he usually did. He was walking around in circles in front of the tree murmuring to himself. His clothes looked rough and disheveled, and his bushy hair was scattered and dusty.

  They paused in their tracks gaping at him. He did not seem to notice their presence even though they were standing ten feet away from him. Swallowing, Wole took two steps closer. This close he could make out some of the words of Baba Adora’s manic ramblings.

  “It’s too soon__ it can’t be happening yet. Not for another ten years at least, they lied__ they all lied.”

  Frowning, Wole stepped closer still. Baba Adora continued to mutter and ramble. Wole’s face grew even grimmer. As close as he was now, the old man ought to have acknowledged his presence.

  “Be careful Wole__ remember what happened to Chike.” Tunrayo called from behind him.

  Tunrayo’s words immediately brought him to a halt and a sense of dread filled his insides. Could Baba Adora have the same twisted spirit that Eze did? He did not answer that question in his mind before Baba Adora spun on him so suddenly that he jumped two feet in the air with fright. Baba Adora’s eyes focused this time, not the manic wildness that had been in them a few minutes ago.

  “I don’t have the darkness Wole. Of that you can be very certain.” He started towards Wole as he said this; his movements slow and cat like. Too petrified to move Wole froze until Baba Adora’s cold hands closed over his elbow. He bent low bringing their faces level. Loud gasps from behind told him that Tunrayo was almost overcome with fear.

  “But you are right about one thing___ there is darkness and that darkness my little ones is coming. You must be prepared__ you must be READY.”

  Both of their eyes were wide with fright now. Tunrayo’s heart was beating so fast that for a second she was afraid it was going to burst out of her chest. Baba Adora held Wole’s fearful gaze for ten seconds before he leaped to his feet and continued his manic pacing, the two children behind him completely forgotten. They exchanged troubled glances and slowly walked away.

  A week later

  Taiwo Betiku’s face was troubled as he studied the report in front of him. There was something very wrong in Oraromi. Over the last three days, reports had been coming in that people were going missing. This was in addition to the dead bodies that could not be found.

  His eyes grew sad as he remembered Dr. Makinde. He died about a week ago. Like Chike Chidozie before him, his body had disappeared the next day. This was even after posting armed guards outside the mortuary.

  His wife too was missing. The last time anyone saw her was a day and a half after her husband’s death when sympathizers gathered at her house to console her. Their house was boarded up a day after that. Thinking she was still in mourning, the town’s people decided to give her space. When three days past without anyone seeing a hide or hair of her, Taiwo had dispatched a couple of his men there.

  When they eventually got the locked door open, an awful stench wafted out of the house. For several tense seconds, the men were convinced they were going to find a dead body. All they found however was a house in complete disarray.

  Bedclothes were shredded, lamps overturned, pots and pans smashed on the floor and the cutlery strewn all over the place. Asides from that, there was nothing. They found no trace of the good doctor’s wife.

  Another sigh burst from his lips. His forces were spread thin. They were scouring the town looking for those who were missing. However, until this present moment, they had had no luck, and still the reports kept coming in. More and more people were going missing.

  His hard frown turned into a scowl. Unable to sit still any longer he reached forward pushing the intercom button. A barely audible zinging sound rang out in the outer office. The door leading into his office opened a few moments later and Diran his fist-swinging sergeant walked in.

  “Yes sir!” He barked snapping to attention.

  “Get the car ready__ we are joining the rest of the men on patrol to look for the missing people.”

  “On patrol sir?”

  “Did I stutter?” Taiwo barked glaring at him.

  “No sir__ I will get on it right away.”

  The drive to the outskirts of town seemed to take no time at all. Taiwo could not help feeling surprised when he saw the signboard with the words goodbye to Oraromi written on it out of the corner of his left eye.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he must have been more deeply entrenched in his thoughts than he realized. Oraromi was nestled by several large blue black hills. They rose up on either side of the long road meandering through the center of them.

  These hills were so close to each other that the edges of the road were barely able to go through them. The frown on Taiwo’s face deepened. He had never been able to understand why the hills and this part of Oraromi were shrouded, by a thick cloud of mist that you could barely see through. Many motorists plying this route usually drove with their headlights on.

  Another hill loomed up on the right; surrounded on all sides by thick bushes. A barely discernable path snaked through the center of these bushes disappearing behind three others standing in a semi circle behind the first one.

  The battered Toyota hilux truck they were in, slowed to a halt with a sickening screech of brakes. Taiwo made a mental note to remind his sergeant to see to it that he fixed the brakes.

  His men leaped out of the back of truck with their weapons held at the ready. Taiwo was the last to alight. Three of his men crouched a few feet in front of the start of the narrow path.

  A sigh burst from Taiwo’s lips as he adjusted his somewhat rumpled trousers. He checked his sidearm to make sure it was still in place, nodding when he realized that it was.

  The faint murmur of voices reached their ears. In the distance, they caught the flickering of more than half a dozen lights. The men crouched in front of the path turned and looked back at him. With a quick nod, Taiwo gave them the go ahead to proceed. These men rose slowly, pausing for a couple of seconds to check their weapons before edging forward.

  The two in front held out flashlights, which illuminated the misty path ahead of them. Taiwo and the others followed a few seconds later.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The screech of the walkie talkie strapped to Taiwo’s belt startled him and his men so much that the man beside him almost squeezed out a burst from his slightly rusty AK 47. Hissing in anger, Taiwo unclasped the walkie talkie, raising it to his lips slowly.

  “This is Vector one! Where are you people?”

  There was a pause followed by a screech.

  “This is Vector twelve sir. We are about twelve miles away from the start of the path over.”

  “Have you found anything over?”

  Another pause followed.

  “Not really sir__ over.”

  “What do you mean not really? Over__”

  “I think you might have to come see for yourself__ over.”

  Taiwo and the men in front of him exchanged puzzled looks before pressing forward bravely.

  “We will be with you soon__ over.”

  The faces of all the men present grew grimmer.

  Twenty minutes of walking brought them to a wide clearing. The mist here was much thicker than it had been in other places. The faint glimmer of more than two dozen lights some distance away made them realize that the clearing was much wider than they thought.

  The sounds of several familiar voices reached th
eir ears and they lowered their weapons slowly. They had found their colleagues.

  Diran who was ahead started forward with a hard frown on his face. He took about three steps before a hand landed on his shoulder gripping it so tight that it forced him to a halt. A sense of panic rippled on his insides as he turned until he heard Taiwo’s gruff voice ring out behind him.

  “Relax Diran, if anyone is going to be in front, am afraid that person has to be me.”

  Diran stepped aside still frowning, lowering his gaze as the full force of Taiwo’s hard gaze came on him. Satisfied by his sergeant’s submission, Taiwo took the lead gripping the Glock he held in his hand so hard that his knuckles became slightly grey.

  As he moved further into the mist, visibility became better for some strange reason. The further in he went, the better he could see. It began to lift after two dozen steps, revealing a strange looking orange rock covering the ground they walked on.

  Taiwo slipped, wincing as a sharp pain raced down his left leg. He kept his balance, but just barely.

  “Easy sir__” Diran barked from behind.

  “Yeah__ you best watch your step. The ground is a bit treacherous.”

  Loud murmurs greeted his statement. He grunted, proceeding more carefully. The light mist that remained cleared completely. He stopped, looking around warily with his gun held at the ready.

  There was a strange structure fifteen feet ahead. It appeared to be part of or built into a small hill almost hidden by a thick cluster of mahogany trees. The structure looked like a fifteen-foot tall hut cut out of the side of the hill.

  In a semi circle around its opening were what looked like five open graves. The openings of these graves radiated an eerie neon red glow. The same glow also came from the stone hut in front of them.

  Half a dozen rifles cocked behind him as his men spotted the strange sight.

  “Welcome sir__” A deep voice called from inside the hut. Seconds later, the rest of his men came out of the hut in their ones and twos.

  Taiwo and his men relaxed surging forward slowly. Their eyes widened as they walked past the open graves. To their immense relief, they found that the graves were empty. The insides of the graves were made of a grayish rock. Apparently, someone dug the graves out of the hard rock they were standing on. Carved into this rocky interior were more than two dozen strange inscriptions.

  The red light shinning out of each grave came from the letters and inscriptions written inside them. Taiwo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at it.

  “Yeah it’s the same thing inside the hut as well.”

  Taiwo’s hard gaze instantly rose to meet the man’s face. The man was tall, his large frame stuffed into the black uniform he wore. Two dozen men milled around him, all holding their weapons at the ready.

  “Did you find any bodies?”

  “No sir__ just the strange glowing letters and something__” his voice drifted off.

  “Something?”

  The big guy shrugged not saying anything. Taiwo sighed and entered the hut. The inside was wider than he imagined. The floor covered by orange rock. High rock walls rose around him. The sound of footsteps behind told him that some of his men were following.

  Carved into the rock walls were more inscriptions. Unlike the ones outside however, they weren’t written vertically but horizontally, almost with mathematical precision.

  The space between each line of inscription was the same. The frown on Taiwo’s face deepened as he took a step closer. Some of the inscriptions did not seem like words at all. They looked more like numbers with symbols, which resembled some form of calculus.

  Taiwo’s eyes widened as he turned in a half circle. The wall of the hut was covered with the stuff. He kept turning gasping when his eyes settled on a crypt carved into the wall on his right.

  The crypt was not empty. A strange creature lay strapped to the inside. It was man shaped, but the head looked severely deformed. Caved in at several points as if bashed in by something heavy, its jaw was long, too long. It poked out like the beak of a bird and the waxen papery looking brown skin stretched tightly over it.

  It did not appear to have any lips. But the skin surrounding the mouth area was jagged and serrated, looking as if the lips had been cut off. The resulting effect was that the white teeth were bared like fangs. The two incisors seemed longer and sharper than any incisor had the right to be. The eye sockets were empty making the face seem even more grotesque.

  “What in the name of heaven and earth is that?” Taiwo gasped taking several steps back.

  “We don’t know sir.” The large man behind him replied.

  “Is it dead?”

  “We are pretty sure it is sir__ Matthew found the cave. It startled him so much that he fired a couple of shots at it.”

  Taiwo nodded only just noticing the holes in the thing’s torso. Instead of blood, flakes of dust trickled out of the holes. Emboldened by the sight Taiwo edged closer until just a foot separated him from the crypt. This close and with the dank stench coming from it, he got the sense that the things had been here for ages.

  He did not know much about decomposition and such, but something told him that the rate of decay was not commensurate to how long it had been there. It looked as if it was decaying slowly__ too slowly.

  He was so engrossed with his examination of it that it took a while to realize that his bulky subordinate was speaking to him.

  “What did you say?” He asked turning around.

  “I asked what do we do next?”

  “We keep searching of course.” He replied with a deep sigh as he strode for the entrance of the hut.

  “What do we do about this thing?” The man asked pointing at the creature strapped into the crypt. Taiwo paused with a thoughtful look on his face.for a few moments.

  “I will send someone to come and pick it up later. It needs to be properly examined, let it stay here for now. We move __ we have tons of missing people to find.”

  Without another word, they hurried after him as he strode out of the hut.

  Chapter Twenty

  A day and a half later

  The chief hematologist at the Kargo teaching hospital stared at the blood sample he was examining under a microscope with fear in his eyes. This was not possible, not by a long shot.

  To be certain that what he was seeing was indeed the right thing, he had examined the screened blood sample almost a dozen times and the results remained the same.

  A cold chill ran down his spine. Could this be a trick? A sick joke? Planned for the specific purpose of unnerving him, if it was a joke, which he doubted it was, it was a damn cruel thing to do.

  Raising his head, he caught the frightened looks on the faces of three of his colleagues. The fear and unease inside him grew. He knew now that it was no joke. The result of the sample was as real as the microscope he had before him.

  “When did this sample come in?”

  “About two weeks ago.” The slim gangly looking man on his right said, his frightened eyes gleamed gleaming from behindind his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “And you are just showing me now?” He yelled in fury.

  “We weren’t sure of what to make of it. Plus we had so much work backed up that we didn’t get round to examining it until four days ago.”

  A long frightened pause immediately followed. “Has the big guy been informed?”

  “I showed it to him yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. He advised we destroy the sample and never mention a word of it to anyone.”

  There was another pause.

  “Where did the sample come from?”

  “Oraromi___”

  “You mean that small town between here and isoko?

  The man nodded in the affirmative. There was more silence.

  “Someone has to warn them__ let them know what they are up against. The federal government should also be informed.”

  “Sir did you not hear
what we just said? The big guy does not want this thing linked to this hospital. Not a word or else ___ those were the exact words he used.”

  “But don’t you block heads see? If this thing gets out__ no one anywhere is safe. Not even US!!”

  “Sir according to the tests, its mode of transmission is still somewhat limited. It must be injected into the blood stream before it can do any harm. Its working is barely dissimilar from the HIV virus.”

  “And who is to say it won’t eventually mutate and become how do we put this___ AIRBORNE!!!”

  “If it does, then God help them.”

  “US___ GOD HELP US!!” The chief hematologist screeched. An eerie silence followed.

  7.45pm (Same day)

  Collins strode down a narrow path heading towards home. He was tired and almost totally worn out. The reason for his weariness brought a sly grin to his face. He was playing with fire, he knew that but he could not help himself. After all, fire never felt this sweet. Judith was a fire that seemed hell bent on consuming him.

  He had slept with so many girls. Some of them were wild cats in bed but none of them could hold a candle to Judith. The girl could literarily screw a man’s brains out. The smirk on his face slowly faded away at the reprimanding voice in his head.

  A hard frown replaced the smile. He was not a total imbecile. He made sure he never slept with her without protection, not to mention guilting her into taking birth control pills.

  The dumb broads! They were the ones who had the most to lose and the nitwits would not take extra care to ensure they did not get pregnant. It was tiresome having to monitor them like children. The stupid bitches.

  A rustle from the bushes to his right snapped him out of his reverie. He stopped, examining the bushes for several moments before walking off again. He did not notice the red eyes that followed his progress as he headed home.