War Girls

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  As they head back through the forest, Enyemaka silent and stoic, Ify looks up at the android. “When Onyii goes through your logs at the end of the day to see what I’ve been doing and where I went, can you erase the part where we went by the beach? If she finds out I skipped afternoon classes . . . I don’t want to make her angry. And I don’t want her to find out about my Accent. Can you, please?”

  For a long time, Enyemaka is silent. It seems like she’s sad, almost. She speaks to Ify silently, through her Accent. You are asking me to erase things that I’ve touched and heard and seen, the data I have accumulated and added to my core.

  Shame rushes through Ify. Her cheeks burn. Enyemaka sounds so much like Onyii sometimes that it’s easy for Ify to forget that, in so many ways, she’s just like a child. Figuring out how things work, gathering experiences, organizing the world around her. Learning.

  “Consider it done,” Enyemaka says, then holds Ify’s hand. “That portion of my logs has been erased.”

  Ify squeezes Enyemaka’s mechanized hand and brings it to her cheek.

  The android doesn’t miss a step.

  CHAPTER

  3

  If Onyii and Chinelo had timed their run for earlier, they could have avoided the mosquitoes. But their skinsuits provide them at least some level of relief. The Geiger counters on their wrists beep, noting the radiation levels around them. Still, the vegetation persists: the fat tree leaves, big, almost like they’ve mutated; the tall grass that swishes against them, brown and yellow in some places, green in others.

  Onyii wasn’t alive when the oyinbo went to war with themselves and the Big-Big went off an ocean away and the wind swept red clouds over the entire continent. She wasn’t alive when the sky began to bleed. But she’s heard stories. Stories of a time before the domed cities and before people started fleeing to colonies in space. A time before the oyinbo—the whites—raced to the stars and built America and Britain and Scandinavia and other places where they were able to—were the only ones able to—hide from what human stupidity had done to the planet. A time before Biafra had declared its independence and the war started.

  Now detritus litters the forest floor where they walk. Juice packets, torn clothing, bits of broken tech.

  Chinelo stoops at a pile of blackened earth, moves some twigs and brush around with her foot, then spots an ancient smartphone buried beneath it all. She picks it up with her gloved hand, her rifle in the other, and blows away some of the irradiated dust. The dust swirls in a cloud before her visor. For a long time, she stares at it, then slips it into her pocket to be added to the string of broken smartphones she wears around her neck.

  Mist hovers in the air around them. Visibility is low. But Chinelo, properly cyberized, can see. The level of moisture in the sky. The dips and grooves in the ground, too tiny for Onyii to see, heat signatures of Agba bears or mutated wulfu with their two heads and ridged backs.

  Leaves swish to their right. Chinelo puts out an arm, stopping Onyii. They crouch, hidden by bush. The noise is organized. Chinelo squints. Onyii follows her gaze.

  Slowly, an animal emerges from the fog. Its skin is pink in the light and glows a soft green in places. Its ribs show, but its four legs are thick with meat. Fur ripples along its spine. Its hooves squish in the mud. A shorthorn.

  If they were more than just Onyii and Chinelo, they might have tried to capture it to bring it back, cleanse the meat, and cook it. But they can’t spare the ammo, and the thing is just as likely to kill them as it is to feed them.

  The beast ambles past them, bending fallen tree trunks beneath its weight, drawing the mosquitoes to it with its radiation-rich blood.

  Onyii and Chinelo wait until it is completely out of sight, then a few minutes more, before continuing onward.

  In a small clearing, they find more traces of people. Broken comms devices, more torn cloth, ratty sneakers. The mark of people who left in a hurry.

  Chinelo, ever curious, moves to examine the broken and discarded tech. More jewelry to wrap around her neck.

  Onyii hisses at her. They’re not here for necklaces. They’re here for rations.

  They continue in silence, pausing briefly as a familiar shriek rips through the air. Mechs streak across the sky. The wind sways the tree branches overhead. Onyii and Chinelo don’t stop but crouch even lower as they continue.

  “They never think to leave any pads behind,” Chinelo sneers.

  Onyii doesn’t speak for several seconds, then realizes she can’t let it go. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “The refugees, of course. Or whoever leaves all their trash in the forest like this.” She doesn’t look at the ground, but she manages to step over the upturned roots of a fallen tree. “No, it’s just empty Fanta bottles and old mobiles with rusted chips.”

  “More for your necklace,” Onyii says, and allows herself a small chuckle.

  “The little ones, if they find us, we can put them to work at least. Give them new lives.” Chinelo continues to scan the forest, her head moving left to right, right to left in a steady rhythm. “Teach them how to fix things.”

  “And the older ones?”

  Chinelo shrugs. “If they are women, we send them to Enugu. Maybe Umuhaia. They find some use in the Republic. Maybe they make more children.”

  “And if they are men?”

  Chinelo smirks. “We shoot them.”

  They both giggle. It feels good to go on a run with a friend. Most runs pass in silence. They’re quick things. Run out, find supplies, run back. Or, more often: run out, find nothing, run back. But when Onyii’s out with Chinelo, she lets herself move slower. The more time she can spend with her, the better.

  “I would like to see Port Harcourt one day,” Onyii says, surprising herself. “I hear it’s beautiful. And it’s right on the water, and you can’t see any of the derricks blocking the way, making all that awful jagga-jagga noise.” A smile crosses Onyii’s face. “And there are proper hospitals and a women’s clinic.”

  “What would we do in Port Harcourt?” Chinelo jokes. “What is there to build there?”

  “Biafra.” Onyii knows she sounds dreamy when she says it. And normally she would call this stupid. To believe in something as lofty and invisible as the Republic of Biafra. But when she thinks of Biafra, she thinks of buildings of glass and stone and steel that scrape the sky and paved streets and clean fruit that you can eat straight off the trees. She thinks of a place where there is no rust. Anywhere. Where the radiation-poisoned air doesn’t scrape against your lungs as you breathe. In this dream, her arm has a proper skin attached to it instead of the black band she always wears, and every time she looks at it, she doesn’t have to be reminded that it is metal and gears and circuitry and maybe she can convince herself that it’s proper flesh and blood and bone. In this dream of Biafra, she’s fully human.

  “Wait.”

  Chinelo sticks her arm out just in time to stop Onyii from stepping on a mine. Onyii can’t see the red light blinking under the mud, but Chinelo probably can. If it’s not from the Green-and-Whites, it might be from some other rebel group.

  Onyii curses herself. This is what happens when you lose concentration. Likely a sign that they should head back.

  “Come on,” Onyii says, turning. “There’s nothing out here. Not today.”

  But Chinelo doesn’t move. She crouches until she’s nearly sitting on the ground and peers into the distance. Then she points. “There.”

  Onyii tries to follow her gaze.

  “There.”

  Onyii squints. Then she sees a small cloud of mosquitoes.

  “What is it?”

  Onyii riffles through her rucksack and pulls out a small mound of clay. An eto-eto. “Whatever it is, it’s still warm. I’ll look.”

  She sits, careful to avoid the mine, and molds the white clay into a something with arms and legs. Then, wi
th a small pin, she pokes two holes in what has become the eto-eto’s face. She twists the limbs out a little more until it looks like more of a starfish than anything human.

  “This’ll do.” Then she spits a glob of mucus over the eyeholes on its face. The nanobots in her mucus burrow into the eto-eto’s skin. Like Onyii’s DNA, biomech colonizing the clay, putting pieces of Onyii into it, animating it so that it becomes a thing she can see through. An extension of herself. Like a mobile device connected to Onyii’s neural network by wireless internet.

  Its arms and legs wiggle. Then it squirms in her palm like a little baby. It glows blue at its core.

  She sets it on the ground, then pats it on its backside, and it waddles forward. What it feels and what it sees and what it hears echo in Onyii’s brain like a whisper. A voice underneath her own.

  The eto-eto heads toward the mound, then stops and tilts its head, looking it over. At first, it’s just leather and torn cloth, but then the eto-eto sees hair. It runs an arm through it, and the hair curls around its white limb. It scurries around and sees that it’s a person. A human. And it’s breathing.

  “She’s alive,” Onyii says. Before Chinelo can stop her, she’s up and racing toward the body. She comes to a stop, drops her pack, and fishes out her aluminum pole stretcher. When she’s got it out of the pack on her back, she takes her eto-eto and squeezes it. It makes a soft whirring sound, almost like an exhale, as it powers down. Then she stuffs it back into her rucksack.

  Chinelo hesitates for only a moment before helping to lift the woman. Onyii starts, raises her rifle, and peers down her scope into the forest. Something had moved. She spends several moments scanning, though she can barely see through the fog.

  “We’re safe.” Chinelo puts a hand to Onyii’s shoulder, and Onyii relaxes. “Help me carry her.”

  Onyii shoulders her rifle, and the two of them lift the woman and head back to camp.

  “You are getting soft, you know. In your old age.”

  Onyii’s in front, but she can feel Chinelo’s smirk at her back. “Oh?”

  “A year or two ago, you would have left this woman to die.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  When Enyemaka and Ify get to the line of stones painted blue in the forest, Ify realizes just how far away from camp she’d run. If she flicks on her Accent, she can easily see the mines buried beneath the ground and covered by brush. She can track the paths and where she’s free to walk, but she has already spent so much time online that any more would surely give her away to Onyii. It will take too long to go around the mines. By the time they complete the circuit and get back to camp, there’ll be no food left, and the rumbling in Ify’s stomach tells her she can’t afford to miss this meal.

  Mist thickens, and what little Ify could see of the ground vanishes. Her heart sinks. Her stomach twists and turns.

  “Come on, little one,” Enyemaka says, and holds her hand out. Her eyes are growing faint, and Ify can tell it’s because her battery life is running out. But Ify takes the droid’s hand, and Enyemaka hoists the child onto her back. Ify drapes her arms around Enyemaka’s neck and squeezes.

  Step by assured step, Enyemaka makes her way through, walking what feels like a straight line but what Ify knows to be a complicated back-and-forth dance to avoid the traps the War Girls have laid for intruders.

  Toward the edge of the forest, where it opens out onto the camp, mosquitoes buzz over something lying still among the leaves. Enyemaka stops, and Ify moves to slip off her back, but Enyemaka grips the child behind her and holds her fast.

  “Enyemaka, what is it?”

  For several seconds Enyemaka doesn’t move, and Ify wonders if the droid has powered off completely, which would be a problem because then Ify would be stuck in her grip, practically glued to her back.

  Then the telltale hum and whirr of tech turning back on. Enyemaka straightens but doesn’t loosen her grip. “A two-fang. It is not yet dead, but it has been poisoned by the air. It has wandered here.”

  And that’s when Ify sees it. It lies on its side, its flank rising and falling slowly, one head lying on top of the other, both mouths open, gasping for breath. It’s as though the mist has cleared to reveal it, and a memory flashes behind Ify’s eyes.

  She’s younger, a baby almost. And the ground is cold under her, and she holds an animal by its neck close to her chest. It’s gasping for breath, its chest heaving against Ify’s, and she’s crying into its fur. Someone has shot it, this animal she cares for, and she has gathered it in her arms while the shooting and the screaming continue outside her room.

  Then, she’s back.

  Enyemaka’s shoulder is cold against her cheek, snapping her out of the memory. The droid’s fingers press into her bottom, cradling her. The wet air cools her scalp. She shakes her head.

  “Let’s go, Enyemaka.” And she prods her heels into Enye-maka’s ribs like she’s seen people in her downloaded movies do when they ride horses in the desert. Enyemaka plays like she’s galloping in place, and Ify giggles.

  Before long, they get to the armory, and from there, it’s a short trip to the mess hall for the evening meal.

  Between the armory and the mess hall lies the clinic. Ify slips off of Enyemaka’s back when they get near. A crowd of girls gathers outside the tent. Onyii sometimes helps with the women or girls rescued from outside the camp or whenever someone catches an infection because of their tech or when some of the girls’ night terrors keep them awake. Even though she’s scared Onyii will find out about her Accent, she smiles at the thought of seeing her sister again and skips ahead of Enyemaka to the tent’s entrance.

  She makes her way to the front of the crowd and takes it all in. A nurse named Nneka is leading a bunch of the others around a table that has a woman on it whose face is scrunched up in pain while she clutches her stomach. Ify looks around, then finds Onyii sitting on a crate by the tent entrance.

  “Hey, little one,” she says with a tired smile. “How was school?”

  The woman on the table moans. Ify can’t stop staring, as the woman in torn clothes clutches something to her chest. And Ify feels something invisible press against her own chest. The memory of that wounded animal she’d held as a child. And she’s caught, trapped where she stands.

  A snapping sound brings her back. Onyii’s face is directly in front of hers.

  “Hey!” Onyii says. “Where’s Enyemaka?”

  “At her side,” the droid says, lumbering past the gathered crowd. “As always.”

  Onyii looks up and smirks, as if to say, Are you being smart with me? “Good.” Then Onyii gets up from her crouch. “Well, let’s go. It’s mealtime.”

  The three of them head toward the tent’s entrance, but Ify turns and sees that Onyii has stopped and is looking at the ground. She’s got her fists balled at her sides, and it looks as though she’s at war with herself, trying to decide something. The woman on the table whimpers. Then Onyii reaches into her sack and pulls out a piece of clay. An eto-eto!

  Swiftly, Onyii forms arms and legs out of the clay and a head with something of a face. She turns and brings it to the woman, and the woman stops her squirming and groaning for a moment to stare into Onyii’s eyes.

  Ify sees Onyii struggle with being kind from time to time but feels a surge of pride every time she watches Onyii move with love.

  The woman grabs Onyii’s wrist and tightens.

  A bell rings inside Enyemaka, but the mealtime bell already rang.

  The machines the woman is hooked up to start beeping.

  Faster. Faster.

  “Oh no,” someone whispers.

  “Ify!” Onyii screams. “GET OUT! IT’S A BO—”

  CHAPTER

  5

  The world comes to Onyii as though she’s wrapped in gauze. The sounds are muffled, the shapes blurred together, so that it’s all colors s
wimming. The screams and the explosions sound like they’re happening on the other side of the forest. But the pain. The pain is immediate. It screams through her limbs. Twice, she tries to get to her knees but can’t. On the third try, her head hits something metal. Flecks of something black and gray come off in her hair. She turns around and falls on her back to find the burned-out husk of Enyemaka crouched over her. Enyemaka shielded her from the worst of the blast. There’s almost nothing left of the droid. Just its blackened limbs and charred torso. Silhouetted against the light-enflamed medical tent, Enyemaka looks like a silent, solemn tree.

  Onyii pulls her way free and staggers to her feet, and that’s when she sees Ify. The little girl has her cheek pressed into the dirt, her entire body caked in mud. Skidding to a stop at her side, Onyii pores over her body for wounds, tests her wrists and arms and legs for broken bones, cradles her head in her hands. “Ify, please,” Onyii whimpers. “Please, please, please.” And when she opens her eyes again, Ify is looking at her, dazed but very much alive.

  Thunder booms overhead, and both their gazes snap skyward to track the arc of a burning mech as it sails through the air. It trails a comet tail of smoke behind it and crash-lands in the forest so close to the camp that the impact tosses Onyii onto her back.

  Automatic weapons fire chatters all around them. Katakata. Chaos.

  Onyii scoops Ify up in her arms, and the child murmurs in Onyii’s ear, “What’s happening? Where’s Enyemaka?”

  “The camp is under attack,” Onyii breathes as she runs toward the camp’s periphery. On the way, she catches Chinelo leading a small squadron of War Girls from the armory. “Chinelo! The mechs.”

  Chinelo nods, then shouts a command to Chike, one of the smaller girls in the group, who salutes, then leads the others into battle. Chinelo dashes in another direction. Onyii runs and runs, past the Terminal and past the storage area for the suits and past the greenhouse to a small patch of untended land. Ify hops out of Onyii’s arms, and Onyii scrambles around for something but can’t find it. She lets out a curse, then starts digging with her hands.