I fling my jollof rice aside and shoot to my feet.
“David?” Shonekan and Shonuga are looking at me, confusion laced with anxiety written all over their faces.
I feel restless, as if with a fever. I strain my esper, woozy already but pushing it harder, trying to extend it as far as possible in all directions, waiting for a response, but I see nothing, feel nothing.
Then a loud scream, someone calling a warning. Everyone in the room hushes, freezes, waiting for confirmatory sound under the rumble of the impending storm.
Then the bell starts to ring, klagang, klagang, klagang. There is one gunshot, two gunshots, and then a clatter like someone took the bell and flung it into a wall.
The warehouse bursts into pandemonium, everyone scrambling to get out, screaming for their friends, partners, siblings, parents, children. Shonuga jumps to her feet and flies outside, Shonekan and her militia following right behind.
I’m frozen. I can smell the lightning, feel its crackle under my skin, my esper buzzing and buzzing like it should find something. I’ve been here before, and I already know I will be unable to do anything before it’s too late, before the Arena and everyone within it is licked to ash and dust by the tongues of Sango’s fires.
Chapter Twenty
WHEREVER YOU GO, orisha ’daji, death and destruction follow.
I snap out of it and follow the crowd out of the room. Everyone stands outside, their eyes on the gate, waiting for something to happen, for whatever it is attacking the Arena to come in and claim them.
Then the gates burst open and all the sentries and the militia are running towards us, waving their arms, screaming at the top of their voices, asking people to Run! Hide! And there’s Shonuga riding Aburo, leaning forward, driving the horse at a hard gallop, Shonekan behind her, his hands tight around her midriff. Shonuga screams over the sky’s growling and the lightning flashes for people to get out of the way, to run, to escape, to get the fuck out of this place now.
Then the shadows come pouring over the walls.
A flowing, sprawling mass of black forms, like ichor the consistency of tar, the blackness a lightin itself, gleaming with all its stolen things: all warmth, all hope, all existence. And out of this darkness, I see that they’re not really one thing but two, two-faced but not two-headed, beautiful in the shade, ferocious in the light. For a second, my heart shifts and I think of Ibeji, of Fati in whom they’re housed, and the thought that what I have tried to prevent has come true after all, but the ethereal shine in the eyes of these bearers of madness and energy and chaos is completely unrecognisable.
They move exactly in the same way as godlings, loping with lower limbs like tendrils, rounded torsos bobbing like amoeba as they climb the fence and drop to the ground, galloping into the Arena, smashing everything. With them comes a throaty wail, a mournful anger, like a call to arms braided into a call for home.
But this is not what unsettles me as I watch the horde of shadows spill over the fence. It’s that I can’t sense them with my esper. They’re completely immaterial, even this far away from their centre, yet I can’t sense a divine signature at all.
Then the militants are out of nowhere, shots ringing out. The spiked bullets strike one, two, three shadows, and I’m glad to see the shadows go down, squealing as if calling for a parent. But they’re too many and there are too few guns, and the fighters are now shouting, calling for everyone to fall back as they’re overrun. A shadow plucks a running man and feeds. It pulls the man by the neck, lifting him off his feet, and bites into his mouth. There is no blood, no fluid; but I see something, feel the moment when the man’s body loses its firmness, goes limp, and his skin transforms into a waxy grey as all life is sucked out of him. He falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes, completely devoid of all divine energy and existence.
Fuck. The Fiery Ones took the harmless godlings from Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó and turned them into vampires of godessence. And guess who is the one soul in the Arena with the most essence?
“David!”
Shonuga is before me, circling Aburo around, the horse agitated and refusing to stay in one place, her arm out, inviting me to get on the horse. I’m still numb and unmoving, looking at all of this in slow-motion. Shonekan jumps from the horse; he shoves me and yells for me to “Go now!”
“You too!” Shonuga turns again, reaching for the rifle slung across her back. “Climb.”
“Go, go, go,” Shonekan is saying, snatching a rifle from a guerilla running past us. “Get out now. We’ll take care of everyone.”
“No!” Shonuga is saying. “Shonekan, climb this horse—”
“Shut up and move!” Shonekan shoves me again. “You can’t carry all of us. Find it. You two find it, and maybe this will not be a waste!”
Then he screams and is off, charging into the horde and firing sporadically, a band of militants in tow.
“Come, David,” Shonuga says. Her face is stern, her arm out, not retreating. Getting to Amúnáwá is more important than my feelings about the group.
I take her hand and clamber onto the horse behind her. I get a flash of her thoughts—a stark focus and clarity within the chaos—before her hand leaves mine. The horse’s back is bony, like a very uncomfortable chair.
“Hold me,” she says, then slaps the horse, which takes off at a quick gallop, sending a shock up my tailbone and through my spine. I cling to her midriff, careful not to allow skin-to-skin contact, almost engulfing her within my embrace. I see the sense in what she says when she balances the rifle in the crook of one elbow and aims it at the horde in front of us.
The rattle of the gun is loud as she fires, bringing down two, four, seven shadows in front of us, as we ride towards the gate. Then Shonekan and his band are suddenly all around, with machetes, guns, anything they can carry; they’re swatting, swatting, clearing the shadows.
Thunder rumbles overhead. My collarbone prickles.
“Sango,” I whisper to Shonuga. “He’s nearby.”
Shonuga goes “Hyah!” and Aburo goes at full gallop. We burst out the gate of the Arena, into the expressway, so that the few shadows still chasing are soon left behind in our wake, and with them, the screams of Shonekan and the rest of the Arena militia beating their way to an escape that may never come.
Chapter Twenty-One
ABURO IS BONY and rickety, and after over an hour-plus bumping up and down on his back, my pelvis is sore and I’m due for a break. I can’t say anything to Shonuga, though, because she hasn’t said a word since and I don’t want to break the silence.
We are going to the airport, obviously. Shonuga didn’t tell me this, but after a few mumbled questions which she didn’t answer, I deduced this is where we are headed. I see the sense: an airplane hangar is literally the place where iron lives, being like the biggest piece of iron one can find here. The road past Oshodi leads to the airport, if you turn off at the right junction. It is also a place where Sango and his shadows will find it difficult to corner us, so there’s that too.
I’m not entirely sure why Shonuga is angry, or at what. There is a point where she stops the horse and asks me to get down in a cold voice, and as I jump down, I half expect her to ride off into the horizon, leaving me standing in the middle of the deserted Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, but I realise she’s only stopping to rest Aburo for a bit and walk a little way ahead to get her bearings. She returns soon enough.
“We’re not far.” Her voice is distant and impersonal.
“Did I... do something?” It sounds awkward, but I really have to ask.
“No,” she snaps.
“So why are you angry with me?”
She doesn’t say anything. In the darkness, I can’t see her expression. I assume she must be clenching her jaw or restraining herself from punching me or something.
“You think they came because of me,” I say. “You think they came for me.”
“No,” she says again. She goes to pat the horse, who nickers under her touch.
> I sit on the ground. Maybe she is right to be angry. Maybe I should just steer clear of everyone.
“I understand if you don’t want to come with me,” I say to her. “I can go to the airport alone.”
There is only quiet between us, before Aburo snorts again, nuzzling her. That’s when I hear a low whimper and a sniff, and I realise she’s crying.
I’m not the best comforter of people.
“I’m sorry,” I say without getting up. “I’m sorry that everything you built has been destroyed and everything you know is gone because of me. I’m sorry for being... me.”
Silence, then: “Shut up,” she says finally. “Shut up and climb the horse.”
I rise reluctantly, dust my bum, and we’re off again.
THE MURTALA MUHAMMED International Airport in Ikeja is split into two terminals. Terminal 1, for domestic flights, bears the battered look of a place that’s been looted repeatedly, which it has. It only took a few years after The Falling for the airport to stop supporting any sort of air transport, and it slowly dwindled into abandonment, leaving it open to the general populace of Ikeja. The wealthy moved away to Upper Island, leaving a hodgepodge of Lagos touts, street kids and militia groups struggling to protect the few neighbourhoods left from the infestation of godlings. Anything that wasn’t bolted in or anchored to the ground—planes, people, equipment—moved swiftly to the new international airport the government hurriedly set up in Upper Island (not like anyone was rushing to fly into Lagos anyway). Most of what was left was looted, swiftly and thoroughly.
I haven’t been here in over twenty years, not since Papa Udi brought me when I was seven to see what a plane looks like. I remember he had to squeeze some rolled-up cash into the palm of an airport official who let us in through an alternate back entrance to the runway and let me watch a plane take off, shading my eyes in the late morning sun. From where we stand now, in front of the entrance, abandoned planes peek over the top of the buildings, which themselves look crumbling and unlit, an invitation to death by all kinds of surprises.
Terminal 2, the old international terminal, still retains some of its grandeur and gleam, its edges not yet chipped by age and wear, looking like a younger brother with new Christmas clothes next to Terminal 1. For fear of bringing a whole building crashing down on us, we choose Terminal 2.
Shonuga dismounts and leads Aburo off to one side, whispering softly to the horse quivering under her touch. We leave him and go inside. The lobby of the second terminal is three floors and thousands of square feet of darkness, dust and emptiness. We can barely see beyond our noses, and since I’m not completely sure if this was one of the places cleansed of godlings, going further doesn’t seem like a good idea, especially when we’re not sure what we’re looking for. We also don’t have any weapons, having dumped the rifle from earlier for lack of bullets and to reduce load. Before we leave, I extend my esper, my collarbone throbbing, singing, calling, but receiving no response.
We go around to the terminal gate, jumping over a wire fence to the gate and the runway. The tarmac and the runway beyond are no different, dark and deserted. Shonuga and I walk about, my hand extended in front of me, seeking, a walking radar. Nothing gives. We find another entrance (or exit, according to the sign) and go in, only to find ourselves stepping on broken glass and see the shells of rows upon rows of cubicles, metal detectors like forgotten door frames. I move around, checking, bracing, hoping to suddenly pick up something hot, white, icy. Nothing. The airport is cold and dark and dead.
“There’s nothing,” Shonuga says in the darkness behind me, so suddenly I almost jump. “Just a story. Na lie them lie to you. Or, no be this place. We will never know now.”
She turns and walks out, back to the runway. I linger for a bit, disbelieving, refusing to accept that Olokun sent me on a wild goose chase just to get me away from their settlement.
I give up and leave. Shonuga stands outlined in the darkness, hands akimbo, at the edge of the tarmac, staring at the trees and buildings right outside the airport fence beyond the runway, listening to the whistle of the early night breeze.
I want to tell her we need to keep looking until we find something, because the shadows are right behind us and will be with us anytime soon, and if we don’t find Amúnáwá, we and the whole of Lagos are doomed, and we’d have failed completely, and the lives of Shonekan and his band and everyone at the Arena will all be for naught...
Then I decide against it, because I’m not sure if it’s her I’m really telling these things or myself.
Olokun was right after all, then. Everything I touch turns to dust.
I sit on the hard tarmac and let the breeze whip by me.
We stay that way for several minutes, Shonuga in the distance, listening to the night breeze, the coming of the end of everything as we know it, seeking some peace before we go.
It is the horse that snaps me out of myself.
Aburo comes about onto the tarmac at the far end, galloping and whinnying in that way that a horse only behaves when it is truly spooked. I shoot to my feet. The horse makes straight for Shonuga, who runs towards him and waves, making a loud clicking sound with her tongue and shouting incomprehensibles to calm him down. I get over to her as Aburo arrives, shaking more than he should be. Shonuga calms him in broad, sweeping gestures, but the horse remains restless, pacing, the click of his hooves on the tarmac carrying in the wind. Payu once told me that, next to cats and dogs, horses are one of the few animals who can sense a good load of godessence, and whatever this horse has seen has a truckload of it.
“What’re we going to do?” Shonuga asks, looking at me.
As I search her face in the dark, something clicks in me. Since the attack, it is I who have sought help, who have looked up to others. I’m not sure what it is, but in this moment, I realise the attack on Cardoso House did something to me, made me smaller, and I suddenly forgot how I used to be the one with the answers, of how people used to look up to me.
The attack made me something I haven’t been in a long time: afraid.
No longer. No longer. Bringer of fire or not, let it be known that the godhunter did not go easily. Let it be known that he did indeed bring fire down on these motherfuckers, that he did rain chaos and fire and blood and war, that he did not play fair, that he indeed became Amúnáwá, because by all that is light and living, for all that I have loved and lost, I will stand this down until my very last breath. I will not make the same mistakes I made at Cardoso House and the Arena.
I will not be afraid.
“Thank you,” I say to Shonuga, my eyes cloudy.
“For what?” she says.
“Thank you,” I say. “Now step behind me.”
I stand between them and the direction the horse came in, flexing my esper. My collarbone throbs, my skin heats and sweat starts to pool under my shirt. It all comes to nothing as usual—I am incapable of producing any charms of any sort, and the wave of nausea washing over me is getting stronger the more I hold this up. Now that I think about it, my greatest weapons have all been add-ons—my daggers, Payu’s recipes—and without those, I’m left with just myself.
And myself is not strong enough.
I flex and push my esper, willing it as Taiwo taught me. You must shape your godessence into form, he said. Send it across space and time to do your bidding. Well, dammit, how about we just get past the shaping first? I strain, try to mould the image with my mind, to make it into something tangible, but my mind finds nothing pliable, usable; I feel like I am meeting concrete, like the godessence I need to work with is locked away in a safe that I am unable to crack.
I push harder.
My esper sweeps a wide arc, projecting further than I’ve ever pushed it. It sweeps the airport, and for a second I’m a human radar, sensing little pieces of divinity in every living thing in the airport.
Then I am picking up two isolated signatures coming towards us, just around the hangars and loading bay, already upon us, moving cautiously,
as if they know we’re here. One of the signatures is much, much stronger than the other, which is very similar to a human’s, like Shonuga’s behind me.
Then the two figures come around the hangars, and at first I’m staring at them, confused, then dumbfounded, mouth wide open, and then I am running, screaming, and they too are running towards me, and in the middle of the tarmac in front of the passenger loading bay, I embrace Papa Udi and Fatoumata and Ibeji.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THIS IS THEIR story:
They fall out the window of the upstairs hallway of Cardoso House, crashing into a stack of plastic jerrycans stacked high on that side of the house, which Papa Udi piled there and procrastinated taking to Upper Island for recycling in exchange for cash. The jerrycan mountain turns out to be their saving grace, breaking their fall. Bruised and disoriented but not dead, they make a quick escape, which involves a lot of Ibeji/Fati pulling Papa Udi with all their might, preventing him from going back into the house, now completely in flames at this point. They manage to find a hideaway within the bushes of Ojo Close. They do not see me struck. They only see Cardoso House burn to ashes and come crashing down like a stack of poorly-arranged cards, submitting sparks and a cloud of black smoke to the sky.
They stay hours in the bush, allowing the dew to fall on them until early morning, before they return to the house. Not finding my body makes them believe I have been captured, and that is what they tell Femi Onipede when she arrives with a LASPAC team. But before they can wrap their heads around a next course of action, they receive word: at the same time that Sango has burst open the barricades at Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó, unleashing a horde of shadowy godlings, Aganju is at the State House, taking out every single top official, including the State Governor and every single LASPAC official stationed there.
Lagos state officially goes into the godpocalypse.
David Mogo Godhunter Page 16
