War Girls

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  “And what if there is no ram in the bush for us, eh? After everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve done, what if there is no one to come out of the sky and tell me to stop and reward me for my faith?” Onyii is on her feet now. Spilled palm wine soaks the rug at her feet.

  Adaeze rises more slowly. She isn’t tensed for battle. Nor is she coiled to strike. She stands ready for whatever it is she expects Onyii to give her. “There is no ram for us, Onyii.” She inclines her head toward her door and seems to indicate the whole expanse of Biafra outside of her home. “Be the ram for them.”

  CHAPTER

  44

  A small drizzle patters on the leaves above Ify. The elephant grass swishes around her as she moves at a crouch. Fireflies, their lights made brighter by the trace amounts of radiation in the air, flare briefly before winking out. It’s almost like they float past, appearing in one place then in another a meter or two above.

  Gone are the bangles and bracelets that once ringed her wrists. Now, instead, she wears thin silver wristbands, stolen from an armory at a Nigerian outpost along the border with the Middle Belt. They expand to form the laser blades she uses to cut through the brush.

  In the first months, Ify missed her Accent. The longing would pass over her in waves. But then the rest of her senses learned the world. She had to engage with all of it, and she began to see and see by smelling and see by hearing. A second second sight.

  Developing her natural senses had helped her skirt the outposts. It had helped her know which food was edible and which wasn’t. It had helped her move fast when she needed to steal weapons and rations and her tablet.

  For nine months, she had wandered and grown stronger. Now, she tells herself, she is ready.

  The treeline stops abruptly at the edge of a small cliff. Below is a copse, and in it, a group of boys younger than her. She is reminded of the boys in the detention center Daren had once shown her. It seems like so long ago. She collapses her blades and kneels in the wet grass at the cliff’s edge. The boys wear rags, and some of them sit on wooden crates made soft with rain, chewing meat from the jungle rats that hang from a spit above an electronic space heater. Some of the boys have holsters for their pistols. Others have their guns tucked haphazardly in their pants. The longer guns, the sniper rifles and the shotguns, lie at their feet. There doesn’t seem to be any order to them all. They look like weapons taken from different armies, weapons she has seen Biafrans use, then sleeker guns she has seen on Nigerian soldiers. Metal glints off the boys. Their limbs. Teched-up arms. A prosthetic leg peeks out from the shorts of one of the boys. The skin on their Augmented parts has been applied sloppily or not at all. None of them seem to care that their machinery is out in the world for all to see. Maybe they want others to see their tech. Maybe they want people to see it all and be frightened.

  The boys stir and get to their feet. In their midst stands an older man wearing a vest over his bare chest and ample belly. His arms are more muscled than the rest of him. Light flares yellow in one eye. Tech. The others turn his way, awaiting his command. He picks up a large Gatling gun from the center of their circle with ease and slings it over his shoulder, the ammo belt slapping against his chest. Ify bets that the boys see that and admire the man for his strength. Just like an old man to brag with his body. The boys crowd around him, and he gives them instructions that Ify can’t hear. If she had her Accent, she would have heard the man crystal clear, but now it’s just lips moving too fast for her to read.

  After, one of the boys fiddles with the space heater, and it stops glowing. Then, suddenly, a settlement springs to life in the clearing. Small huts and larger adobe dwellings. A compound with walls that spread into the forest. The buildings come out of nowhere, dirt paths overlaid on the grassy floor. There are no more people where the clearing used to be, but the sound of chatter reaches Ify.

  The rain starts back up again. The settlement shimmers.

  A hologram.

  She turns back to her left and sees, through the trees, a path. And on that path is a caravan of what look like refugees. Someone in the front lets out a cry of joy and points in the direction of the new settlement.

  It’s a trap. And they’re heading straight for it.

  Her heart doesn’t fill her chest with panic. She notices it and is grateful. It’s a new feeling, confronting danger and not being scared.

  She hears the noise of animals around her: the soft crush of a shorthorn’s hooves on fallen leaves and small branches, the cry of a bat from above. She turns slowly to see the shorthorn grazing a short distance behind her. No fear.

  She sneaks a small tablet out of the pack at her waist and makes sure the light is low. It’s as thin as a sheet of paper but made out of durable plastics. Facing the shorthorn, she sits in the grass cross-legged and types in a sequence of keys. There’s no metal, no tech on the irradiated beast, but that is no longer a problem. It is Ify who has been upgraded.

  The shorthorn’s neural network appears on her screen. A few strokes and slides later and the image rotates and zooms in. This is the secret. Radio frequency.

  She inputs a final sequence, then feels the soft concussive wave radiate out from her. When it hits the shorthorn, the shorthorn looks up. At first, Ify can’t tell if it’s startled to find a human being sitting in front of it or if it’s now under her control. She types a sequence with one hand, and the shorthorn takes two steps back. Another sequence, and the shorthorn steps forward. A longer sequence, and the shorthorn dances in a circle, rearing and bucking. Ify stifles a laugh. It worked.

  She doesn’t have much time left. The caravan is almost on top of the fake settlement.

  She lies on her stomach, so that no one looking up the small cliff will see her. Then she inputs a key sequence and waits.

  The shorthorn snorts, brays, then charges down the cliff, rumbling like a one-beast stampede straight for the clearing.

  Suddenly, a clamor of voices fills the air. People shouting, angrily screaming questions, boys asking what to do as the shorthorn crashes through their campsite and stomps all over their projector. The caravan comes to a halt, bunching up like the middle of a caterpillar as the call to stop passes down the line.

  Someone whistles behind her. She turns just as a lightknife swings by her head. She dodges. A tuft of silver hair falls to the ground, singed. She scrambles out of the way. It’s one of the boys with a machete whose blade glows and crackles with electricity. She doesn’t have time to scan him. He takes one giant step toward her and swings, and she leaps out of the way and rolls in the grass. Her wrist blades activate. She gets to one knee and raises them in a cross just as the boy’s machete slices down. It sizzles with electric charge. Sparks rain on her. He swings and swings, and she shifts to deflect each blow, her body swaying this way and that, feeling the whoosh and heat of the electrified machete inches away from her skin. She feels, simultaneously, hard as steel and bendable as rubber, like she can take any shape she wishes, contort herself into any position, and strike out without hesitation. Which is what she does when the boy lunges for her again. She catches him on the shoulder, then rolls and kicks him off the cliff’s edge.

  More whistling.

  She sees shapes move in the forest and runs off into the grass.

  The steps of the bandits slow around her. She hears them hissing commands at each other. She went this way. Into the grass. Spread out. They’re not connected. Even though they’re Augments, even though they have machinery for arms and legs, they can’t connect over a shared comms network. Ify doesn’t have time to puzzle over this as a shot rings out. The bullet grazes her shoulder. She lets out a grunt and spins from the impact, falling to the ground.

  Just ahead of her are downed tree branches and the hollowed-out husks of abandoned maglev cars. She scrambles through the grass and leaps onto the roof of a car. Gunfire rips through the roof under her feet. She leaps over one of th
e fallen tree branches to roll onto the muddy, puddle-filled path.

  Up ahead, more burnt vehicles form a barricade. This must be another place where they trap innocent refugees, she realizes.

  Something rams into her with all its strength, hurling her against a fallen tree trunk. She swings her wrist blade wildly, but the boy who charged her bends back, dodging the swing. She ducks beneath his blow, and his machete sinks into the wood. She slices at his chest. The blade peels the skin back to reveal gears and a metal breastplate. Ify scrambles away and runs. Her wrist blades retract. The light around her fades. She can hear footsteps around her. People running. They don’t speak, but she hears them close in. The sound of grass rustling grows nearer.

  She leaps up and grabs a low-hanging tree branch. Then she hauls herself up, too fast to linger over the pain burning in her shoulder. As soon as she pulls herself up, she jumps onto the next branch, then pushes off, throwing herself through the air to grasp another branch. She leaps from branch to branch, swinging and vaulting until she can no longer hear the sounds of bandits chasing her.

  When she gets back on solid ground, there are only a few patches of tallgrass around her. But she manages to crawl under a van propped up on cinder blocks. Very little of its frame remains, most of the metal harvested or recycled. But the empty, blackened van casts enough shadow to hide her from unaided eyes.

  Under the burnt-out maglev van, Ify catches her breath.

  Suddenly, something grabs her ankle and yanks her out from under the van.

  Ify raises an arm to activate her wrist blades, but the commander smacks her wrist away so hard that sparks spray from the band. It short-circuits, dead. He takes her other arm and smashes it so hard onto the ground it cracks open her other band. His hands wrap around her throat. He slams her head into the ground. Once. Twice. She goes dizzy, the world blurring for a moment. Her hands are on his, squeezing, prying. He’s too strong.

  Her bag.

  It’s trapped beneath her. Her legs kick and flail, but he’s right on her chest. She slides an arm behind her and searches until she finds what she’s looking for. She snakes her hand out and slaps the small magnetized device the size of a bulubu ball cut in half onto the man’s back.

  He feels the new pressure and scrapes at his back, trying to reach it. It starts beeping, and the commander’s eyes grow wide with fear. He leaps off her chest, twisting, turning, trying to get the thing off of him. He seizes, his whole neural network short-circuiting.

  An EMP. Electromagnetic pulse. Designed to completely fry any tech it’s attached to.

  The commander collapses, his body spasms on the ground, then lies steaming in the grass, nothing more than junk metal.

  * * *

  Ify finds the caravan back in the clearing. The boys are gone. There are more refugees and other types of people in the caravan than she had initially thought. Many of them wear rags instead of clothes, and many of them are nursing wounds that haven’t healed properly. Some of them carry sacks on their backs that hold the few possessions they have left. A few women have young children wrapped to their chests. Most people walk with nothing on their shoulders but their heads.

  She skids down the small cliff and comes to a stop at the bottom. There doesn’t seem to be a leader. Everyone mills around, confused.

  A large trailer takes up a bunch of space in the clearing, one whole end disappearing into the woods.

  Out of it steps a woman with features Ify has never seen before but with a face that broadcasts kindness like a beacon. She wipes dust from her forehead and her cheeks, and Ify notices that she has a device on almost every limb. Bands on each wrist that glow with numbers and letters. A necklace with what appears to be a wireless transmitter, an earpiece, a Geiger counter at her waist. It’s as though each thing a Nigerian tablet is capable of doing has become a separate piece of tech jewelry on her body. She is probably wearing anklets to help her tell the time.

  When she sees Ify, she stops, then joy and relief burst onto her face. “Child!”

  Ify squints at her. She’s not speaking Igbo or Hausa or even English. Then Ify remembers the letters on the woman’s wristbands. Mandarin. A Beijing dialect. Automatically, the translation layers over the woman’s speech.

  “Oh, thank goodness you are safe.”

  She wraps her arms around Ify and practically lifts her off the ground, even though she looks as though holding a heavy box over her head would snap her back. When she holds Ify out, Ify sees that her arms are muscle and sinew and that the optimism that shines in her eyes has to fight through clouds of cynicism and despair. She has seen war. Maybe she has seen this war.

  She looks around. “Are you traveling alone?” she asks, returning to Ify. “Are there others with you?”

  “No. It is only me.”

  She taps her chin. “Do you know if . . . if there was a settlement here?”

  “It was a trap.”

  The Chinese woman squints at Ify. “A trap?”

  “There were bandits here. They created a hologram to trick you. And maybe steal your supplies when they were finished with you. It is okay.” Ify puts her hand to the woman’s shoulder. “I saved you. You no longer have to worry about them.”

  “What did you . . .” Her face softens. Ify can tell the woman has realized it’s better not to ask. “My name is Xifeng.” She puts a hand over her heart and bows slightly. “And what is your name?”

  “Ify.”

  “Well, Ify, would you like to join us?”

  “Where are you going?” Ify asks, even though she already knows the answer.

  “We are on our way to Enugu. I am leading a group of Biafran refugees, and we are going to try to reunite them with their families. Now that the war is over, the healing can begin.”

  Ify nods. “I am going to Enugu as well.” She pulls her tablet out of her sack, inputs a sequence, and a hologram of a face appears. “I am trying to find this person.”

  Xifeng smiles. “Good. This is good. I will do everything in my power to help you find her.” Then she turns over her shoulder. “Agu!” she shouts.

  Ify turns off the tablet and puts it away.

  A little boy emerges from the mass of people. He has a scar running across his face and another long one snaking from his left shoulder to his chest. In one arm, he holds a worn musicboard. Without smiling, he sticks out his hand. “Agu,” he says.

  “Ify,” she replies, taking his hand in hers.

  “Welcome.”

  CHAPTER

  45

  Onyii stands by the fence that rings the receiving center.

  Outside the perimeter, armed with minimal gear, stand Biafran soldiers.

  On the ground with Onyii stand those who have chosen to camp this close to the border. Still, even after the declaration of the ceasefire, a band of lawlessness wraps around Nigeria’s waist in what used to be that fertile land just before the Middle Belt. Now it’s a no-man’s-land separating Biafra from Nigeria, filled with shorthorns, radiation, outlaws, and boys for whom the violence never ended, all of them poisoned by radiation.

  Some of the people who stand with Onyii were refugees themselves not long ago. They had walked along this road or roads similar. Or they had been received in stations along the coast. Some of them had come in boats trailed by other boats, those latter boats carrying Biafran authorities or Han Chinese aid workers. And they had passed through receiving stations where they were given the first truly warm blanket they’d worn in years. Their shoes were replaced, they were given food, medics tended to their wounds. Their physical hurt was managed in places like this. It will take longer to heal the psychological damage. Onyii knows all too well that some of the people at this fence with her will wake in the middle of the night in cold sweats for the rest of their lives. She has seen grown men who have turned into something kids skip past and jeer at and call the “look-look
man.”

  But she stops thinking about that. Now she looks at them and the hope in their eyes. The way they peer expectantly down the road as far as it will go before it vanishes into the forest. Some of them have been coming here every day for the past nine months. Watching. Waiting.

  A whistle sounds from on high. Movement in the towers.

  She trains her eye on the path, and the others press themselves against the fence. Some of them crane their necks to get a better look at what’s coming around the corner and starting to move into view.

  The caravan is arriving.

  Someone approaches her from behind. It’s Chinelo. She stands at Onyii’s side with a satisfied grin on her face and arches her back to get the kinks out.

  “You’re not back at the station getting ready to hand out blankets?” Chinelo asks.

  Onyii shakes her head. “I want to watch today.”

  Chinelo follows Onyii’s gaze, squints into the distance, then chuckles. “Are you waiting for a boy? A long-lost lover?”

  Onyii smacks Chinelo’s arm. “Come on now.”

  “They’ve spent all this time holding a gun. And now they must learn how to hold a girl.” Chinelo smirks. “Can’t be all that different.”

  Onyii grows quiet. This morning, she had woken up with the desire to watch the reunions. She’d had a feeling another caravan would arrive. And she’d wanted to see the moment it came into view, the moment when those at the fence would begin to shout out the names of their familiars in the hopes that they would be heard. She wanted to see the refugees look up at the fence, at real live shelter, and quicken their pace. And she wanted to see everyone embrace. She will never forget the first time she saw it. The huddled mass of refugees emerging from the forest, then, with the last of their strength, making a mad dash for the gates. And how quickly and efficiently the Biafran and Chinese guards had organized them into lines so that they could, as quickly as possible, get them food packets and blankets and medical attention. She will never forget how some of those who had been working at the gate had stared, stunned, at the face of someone they hadn’t seen in years, someone the war had separated from them. The cries of joy, the tears, the hugging.