The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

  When the bots run out of ammunition they safety their machine guns and trot to a makeshift depot. Humans fit them out and change coolant like high-performance engines in a Formula One race.

  There are three ragged holes in the top of the dome, but all are partially fixed. The real problem is nothing is deterring the green things. As each one falls, humans in hazmat suits pick up the bodies and take them to a building.

  “Autopsies. Analysis,” Dahun says before I ask. “The results have been uniform. They’re made of leaves, vines, stems, some wood, and that’s it.”

  “Do they ever attack humans?”

  “Not unless you attack them first, and only if the attack is a nuisance. They’re single-minded, although mind is an exaggeration. They have no brains. The xenobiologists agree that they’re drones of some kind, but natural enemies to the alien.”

  It’s interesting that I’ve not heard of this but access to the dome has been restricted since the war began. Cordons are set up a mile in all directions for non-military personnel. You can still see the tip of the dome, and the uppermost perforation, but little else. There are other matters keeping the people of Rosewater busy, most to do with survival. There are… new things, or perhaps old things that are emboldened by the sickness of the alien, of Wormwood. I have stayed in my home for most of this conflict, but I’ve heard rumours.

  I ask Dahun where the green things come from and he says this is our next destination. These are, he says, the only two fronts within Rosewater, although there are protests and saboteurs undermining the war effort. He calls it that: the war effort.

  Again, there is a cordon, then half a mile of demolished buildings, patrolled by irregulars, freemen and combat bots. Drones criss-cross the sky and we have our ID checked several times. What I’m looking at is akin to a tree bursting out of an apartment block. Some of the external walls are intact, but a complex trunk system and several stems exit through windows and cracks. There is no roof; a florid explosion of flowers occupies that space and even though it is mid-morning, even I can tell that there is bioluminescence. A root system has worked its way into the ground creating cracks that creeper vines grow towards.

  “What the hell is this?” I say. It is hard to be understood from behind the mask, and I have to repeat myself.

  “We don’t know,” says Dahun. “It’s not terrestrial is all I can tell you.”

  “The green things come from this?”

  He nods. “They come from the flowering part. It moves, too, so be careful.”

  This thing is mostly green, but there are red, mauve and brown parts, excluding the flowers, which are a mess of colours. There is pollen in the air, explaining why Dahun has me in a face mask. Hallucinogenic, maybe? Or poisonous. From time to time an organ pumps out the particles, but otherwise the plant looks docile.

  I don’t have to wait long for it to extrude one of its proxies. The roots and stems experience a tumult and start to agitate, then they part slowly to form an orifice with a vine-encrusted humanoid thing coming through. It has to snap connecting tendrils to finally be free, and it takes to the sky with flaps of its wings. It’s not like a new animal, and nothing about its flight is tentative. I am not sure why it has six wings, but in less than a minute it has shrunk in the clouds and disappeared. The limbs and roots rearrange themselves until the hole that spawned the creature is closed.

  It is difficult to breathe through the mask. “So, there is a new alien creature, growing to giant proportions, just like the old, and it’s at war with Wormwood? Is this one of those ‘only room for one of us’ scenarios? High Noon over Rosewater?”

  In my notes I call this creature the Beynon, because I always did love The Day of the Triffids, but when I give my first review of the situation in Rosewater the name sticks and Jacques’s people have called it that ever since. My first contribution to history?

  We drive north. Here I am given a protective helmet where I did not need one before. I can hear gunfire and shelling. There are concrete barriers and short-span force fields that we have to weave around.

  “What we have here,” says Dahun, “is machine warfare. Our turrets and drones fighting the Nigerian government’s turrets and drones. Our spotters think that so far they are evenly matched, but it becomes a matter of time. The feds can keep this up for ever, but we cannot continue to supply ammo or technicians for maintenance and repair. We can print parts, but we don’t have limitless material. And there are snipers who pick off our technicians. In turn, our snipers try to pick off theirs. Like I said, we seem evenly matched.”

  “How long can we hold this line?”

  “I can’t say that out loud. Surveillance bugs.”

  The enemy has the high ground in the north as Rosewater occupies the river valley cut by the Yemaja through hill country. It forms a bowl with the dome at the centre, and the exhalations and extrusions of the alien provide a microclimate. When driving in that way you can look down to a vista that captures the entire city. Dahun concedes that it was a mistake early on, not fortifying and holding the area outside the city limits.

  “The brief the mayor gave me forbade invading Nigeria, which, technically, holding those hills would be.”

  It is not exactly a stalemate. We’re landlocked, we have no supply lines, and time is on their side. The sides of the roads are littered with discarded placards from yesterday’s protest, most of which say NOT IN MY NAME or I AM A NIGERIAN. It’s impossible to tell what percentage support the rebellion.

  While observing food distribution I hear rumours and whispers of spontaneous human combustion.

  Food is given away daily in various halls in different wards. The emaciated people of Rosewater have started to resemble the Africans you used to see on those infernal charity appeals back in the day, always begging for money that would ultimately go into the pockets of the local big men. All things considered, it’s an orderly process and I drift among the people, trying to get a flavour of the opinions. There’s a lot of verbiage about the hardships, which, to be fair, is normal for Nigerians. I mean, yeah, life outside Rosewater can be shitty, but even within, even when I started living here, people complained. It’s a communication tic.

  But this is specific. It’s one thing for kids to complain that you can’t find snails any more, which is true because the defoliants removed the food source and threw the entire ecosystem out of whack. It’s quite another to talk of people bursting into flame.

  “She burned to ashes. My brother came back from the market to see her corpse.”

  “… in the middle of the night, set the house on fire…”

  “My husband was right there. The woman started sweating from heat, then collapsed, then just started burning, starting from the thigh.”

  I’m sceptical at first because the most likely explanation is some kind of mob justice for stealing or witchcraft. Necklacing is a common form of retribution or punishment. I don’t want to observe sacks of rice or grateful crowds, so I decide to follow this thread.

  I interview those with the most specific stories, those with detail. I question those from whom they heard the story. It convinces me that there is something strange happening. I convince Dahun to follow me. There are specific addresses and they have the pattern of an infection to me, but I’m not a doctor. I know they have one in the mayor’s mansion, so I call Lora.

  “I’ll tell Dr. Bodard, but if there’s an infective agent I wish for you to leave the area immediately.”

  “Because you want me to be safe?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Because you like me?” I say.

  “No, because you are important to the cause.”

  “So you don’t like me?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m busy. Goodbye.”

  She’s odd that one. I do not leave the area. Instead, Dahun and I go to each address. Sometimes kids throw rocks at us, mostly because of the uniform, but Dahun doesn’t mind and I have a flak jacket and helmet. Dahun is not just baby
sitting me. He takes calls and gives instructions over the radio, and he is monitoring the conflict in real time.

  There are no stray dogs; they have all been eaten or blown up.

  We find one burned corpse in a house. The paint is scorched, but no evidence of petrol or any accelerant. The person also seems to have burned from the inside out, like she swallowed phosphorous or something. I take flesh samples.

  “It’s a xenodisease,” says Dr. Bodard later. The xenobiologist sounds harried and tired. “Wormwood must have served as a balance on the alien micro-flora, and with it incapacitated, organisms are becoming bolder and stronger. This one is an insect—no name yet, I’m calling it B718—lays eggs on the skin, the larval forms burrow into the subdermal fat. As it feeds, its waste causes host cells to generate heat and combust.”

  As I write this no cure has been found, and people burn up every two days or so.

  Jack Jacques is surprisingly upbeat and has taken to yelling “scribe!” at me when we pass in the corridors of the government building. Today, I am meant to sit in on a cabinet meeting but there’s heavy shelling and we’re all confined to the mansion. I have a sort of date with Lora. I bring coffee and chocolate rations. We stake out a corner of the canteen and the buzz of conversation seems normal, not wartime at all. I have never seen a woman eat in such a regular fashion. I watch her for a while, and the time between each bite, each swallow, is exactly the same. It does not seem strange to her that I am watching her, or that I am not eating. She does not make any small talk, and expects me to lead.

  “How do you smell so clean?” I ask. Why, I don’t know. I ask strange questions when I’m nervous. I get nervous when I like a woman.

  “Because I am. You don’t smell clean, though. You smell… of sweat and antimicrobial soap and gunpowder. Did you fire a gun?”

  “No, but Five Yellow, one of my escorts, had to shoot at some people trying to rush the school convoy.”

  “Why were they attacking schoolchildren?”

  “Nobody knows yet. They ran away. Dahun docked Five Yellow’s pay for not hitting a single one.”

  She has no pimples. Her skin is this russet colour, and I’d have put her as coming from the East of Nigeria, but who knows? Her hair is pulled back with not a strand out of place. She has those Indian extensions that fluff out beyond the hair tie. Her eyebrows are precisely cut, her lashes businesslike and unenhanced, and she wears no jewellery. I suspect she can look a lot more glamorous if she wants to. She watches me watching her. The coffee and the chocolate are gone.

  “Walter, you are spending time with me because you like me,” she says.

  “You have a strange way of talking, but yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s what asking you to have coffee is about, isn’t it? You definitely don’t remind me of my mother.”

  “How so?”

  “I never met her. She died giving birth to me and my twin brother, who also died, by the way.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” She inclines her head towards me. “Does it make you sad?”

  “Not really. I never knew her, like I said, so it’s this vague… absence. I did have a surrogate, a step-mother who was really cool, if a bit stern. She was a widow, manufactured in bereavement counselling for my dad.”

  “She was manufactured?”

  “No. Figure of speech.” Now I’m wondering if she’s one of those literal people. I struggle to remember if she’s ever cracked a joke in my presence. She is always so serious.

  “I sometimes struggle with symbolism,” she says. She smooths her skirt. “Time for me to go. Thank you for the chocolate and coffee. I hope to reciprocate soon. I don’t know if I like you, but I am happy that you choose to like me and demonstrate by inviting me here. Well.”

  She gets up and leaves with no backward glance. Decisive. I like that.

  I don’t want to talk about atrocities, but I have to.

  I’ve procrastinated a number of times, but I can’t get away from it. There are three types of soldiers in this conflict: automatons, mercenaries and freemen. As yet no government ground troops have entered the city. The automatons maintain the perimeter, with gaps plugged by the freemen. Most of the human soldiers are “freemen”: incarcerated criminals serving in the makeshift army to earn freedom. The mercenaries are paid by Jacques, some say from his personal fortune and not the government coffers.

  Freemen are less well trained and subservient to the mercenaries, but remember these are criminals, and not known for their obedience to authority. Fadahunsi, I found out, leads the mercenaries, and, of necessity, the war. There is no civil defence to speak of, and there are no military police. In some wards there are Rastas who have taken it upon themselves to defend their neighbourhood, seeing it as the honourable thing to do, but there are very few of them, like three, four hundred, and they have primitive weapons, often refusing to take ordnance from the government, who they consider to be “contaminated babylon.” They won’t accept food supplies. The Rastas have brief, bloody clashes with the freemen infrequently. A lot of the freemen are bored, hopped up on drugs and trying to amuse themselves. Drills won’t quite cut it. They have hours to burn and we, the civilians, learn to avoid roving freemen.

  There’s a lot of interrogation of “saboteurs,” some who can be found hanging from street lights next morning with placards around their necks. There’s theft, although it doesn’t get people anywhere because transactions are now by eru and the banks are shut. Lots of rumours of systematic rape in some wards. Dahun responds swiftly to these incidents, and I have heard from one of the grunts that he is brutal. Then there is the problem of the twins.

  The twins are the heads of organised crime in Rosewater. What we’ve done, what Jacques has done in the last few weeks, is to train all the foot soldiers for the bosses. There is human trafficking and organ harvest. I don’t know how they get past the blockade but they do. Drugs, of course. And they run the black and grey market.

  People disappear all the time and nobody can say if they’ve been taken by a xeno-lifeform, murdered, vaporised in a bombing, trafficked, or what. Nobody knows who keeps attacking the school buses or why they want the children, so attendance has dropped. The good news is that no pupil has been successfully taken. That we know of.

  There’s a unit that goes on patrol with flame-throwers every day. Their job is to burn the droppers that have proliferated during this time. Dual organisms, perhaps plant-based, but we don’t know. They have two parts, one that mimics human form and the other that drops or sprays digestive liquid on anyone curious or stupid enough to investigate. Few natives of Rosewater fall for this, but animals do, and sometimes they can catch you by surprise.

  I think the flame-thrower unit burns humans sometimes, just for laughs. There is so much that I won’t be able to unsee.

  Whenever this war ends Rosewater will be a different place.

  There is a direct hit on an ammo dump. It is beautiful and terrifying. It has to be allowed to burn out because the fire service is not functional. Fireworks, random metal fragments falling from the sky at odd times that smell of spent ordnance, that gigantic blue-black cloud in the sky for days, it’s tiring.

  The girlfriend of one of the soldiers told me it wasn’t an enemy shell or a missile. She said one of the freemen set charges in the dump to cover up munitions they had stolen.

  I believe this.

  The night after the dump explosion, there is a bombardment for real and we cannot leave the bunker. I lie in my bunk writing. The door opens and Lora comes in, and locks the door.

  “I didn’t give you a key,” I say, sounding stupid.

  “I have all the keys,” she says.

  There’s a lot of fucking going on in the wartime cabinet spaces, people being desperate or just looking for some comfort, a “for tomorrow we die” vibe that I have taken advantage of once or twice. When Lora disrobes, I am unsurprised. It lasts a long time, by which I mean, she lasts a long t
ime, never gets tired or bored. I hold her afterwards and she never goes limp or changes her breathing. I fall asleep first. I wake up in the dark and she’s sitting across from me. The bombardment has ceased and an eerie silence stalks the halls. We sneak into the kitchen and look for stray rations. Lora knows where there are sachets of honey and, though now it seems silly, sucking out of them seems hilarious. We act like we have a cannabis high, though the war is cramping my style.

  “Walter,” she says. I’m still giggling.

  “Have some more honey,” I say.

  “I’m a construct.”

  “What do you mean?” At this stage I’m thinking it’s too early in the morning for philosophical discussions.

  “I’m a robot, Walter.”

  “I don’t get the metaphor, girl. Is this about working for Jacques? You work all the time?”

  “I am a woman manufactured, not born. I have personhood, and a passport, and autonomy, but I am not human in the conventional sense.”

  I finally understand what she is saying.

  “Breathe, Walter. You have stopped.”

  I exhale.

  I’ll tell you one thing: a time will come in your life, at least one time, when you have to confront your own self, your own mind, your own prejudice. I don’t know what is on my face, but my mind is racing and I imagine my speech centre is asking the other parts of my brain, What the fuck do I say? Give me instructions, motherfucker.

  Say her name.

  “Lora.”

  “I’ll understand if you don’t want to proceed.”

  Speak. Buy time.

  “You’re not playing with me, right?”

  “I’m very serious.”

  Do not say, “You look so lifelike.” Do not say, “I couldn’t tell.” Say something honest, dumbass.

  “I have never been in this situation before.”

  “I have.”

  The words seem uninflected, but even at that moment I know it’s untrue. My mind’s eye has changed, that’s all. In reality, those words are heavy with her personal history, with disappointment.