Beneath the Shining Jewel

by Balogun Ojetade

  CHAPTER nineteen

  Montu’s death still nagged at Mba, but he found ease in knowing he had convinced everyone that Abea murdered Montu and that he was only doing his job when he killed Abea. The medicine priests used herb pastes to quiet his skewered palm, soothe the raw skin at the back of his neck and deaden the throbbing in his spine. The pain disappeared altogether as he rode in his litter across Sati-Baa to his old stationhouse. The sight of the old building rejuvenated him.

  The faded sign over the building’s mahogany door bore the Bacillus Squad emblem – a bull elephant with outstretched, condor-like wings. Mba stepped inside the stationhouse.

  “I see you’re living up to your threat,” a familiar voice called.

  Mba rolled his eyes. “Jima,” he said dryly.

  Jima sat in his wheelchair in the shadows of the capacious room, like some dark and twisted incarnation of failure and loathing. Several yards behind him, a group of men and women sat on a long bench against the back wall. The men and women were young – in their twenties. They wore indigo dashikis with matching pants and black boots – the uniform of the squads.

  Jima anxiously grabbed at his wheels and then rolled toward Mba and Bande, who stood at Mba’s flank. “What’s all this for?” he hissed from under his hood.

  “No mystery,” Mba said. “The Elder Merchants aren’t taking chances with what we found.”

  “Now they want us to teach the new recruits,” Jima said. “But I see only enough volunteers for a single squad, but we found three Gnaw Maws. We never…”

  “Mba!” A woman’s voice echoed in the stationhouse. They turned toward the double doors and caught a partial silhouette. The woman’s wide hips, muscular legs and full chest suggested a strong sensuality. She had a square chin, broad nose with flared nostrils and dark, penetrating eyes. Her black hair was cropped close, with gray at the temples. Her goatskin bag dropped from her broad shoulders with a clunk.

  “Binta?” Mba said turning toward the voice. “Daarila’s axe! I can’t believe it!”

  Binta Dambe strode across the stationhouse floor. She was a rookie when the Bacillus Squad was disbanded, no more than eighteen when she signed on. She walked up to Mba smiling, lifting a hand like she was going to shake, but at the last second she dropped her shoulder and punched him hard in the face.

  Mba’s ears buzzed and roared; his vision blanked momentarily, but he was too heavy, too well balanced to knock over that easily. He swayed back toward her, blinking.

  Binta stood defiantly in front of him, fists up and ready. She surveyed her former superior officer, eyes darting up and down his bulky frame.

  Mba thought back and realized she was ready for promotion back then. He wondered what her rank was now. He rubbed his jaw, pressing the pain into numbness.

  Binta turned to Jima and did a little half bow. “Captain, it’s an honor to work with you again.”

  Jima nodded, keeping his head low. He muttered something unintelligible.

  Mba flinched when Binta swung back to him. “I heard what happened, Mba!”

  She was Montu’s protégé, a hand-to-hand fighter second only to him; of course she had heard. Binta taught basic fight training to the squad’s constables in the good old days.

  “You murdered Montu!”

  “Montu?” Jima gasped, his body suddenly rigid with interest. “He murdered Montu Montu?”

  “Not murder,” Mba said, shaking his head. “Read the report. It was his crazy wife that did it. You weren’t there.”

  “Lucky for you, I wasn’t, you fat son of a...” She brought her fist to her lips and sucked on the knuckles. “That punch was for killing a friend.”

  “He wasn’t the same,” Mba said. “He went crazy, right along with his wife. They had a lifetime supply of Ebandela tucked away in that house!”

  Jima blew a blast of air from his nostrils. “They were crazy alright; crazy to let you into their home.”

  Mba felt pressure build behind his eyes. He turned to Jima. “Shut up!”

  Jima clutched the arms of his chair and then lifted himself up like he was about to argue; then he dropped his chin, looking down to pick at his scarred palm.

  Binta shifted her gaze from one to the other, smiling.

  Mba could not tell what that meant. He steeled himself for another punch.

  “You are like an old, married couple!” She chuckled. “I’m glad I never wasted time missing you two.”

  Bande cleared his throat. “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way…we have several things to discuss before the Elder Merchants arrive.”

  Bande nodded at the volunteers as he sauntered toward the big room at the back of the stationhouse, where the squads used to eat lunch, get frogged and hold meetings.

  The recruits had been standing there the whole time, wide-eyed, watching the old guard arrive – unable to hide their excitement at the mix of notorious characters the djele sung of at Sati-Baa’s many festivals.

  “The recruits have been briefed,” Bande continued. “As far as training goes, we don’t have time for simulations. They have the basics; that will have to be enough.”

  “Why don’t we have time?” Jima asked as he wheeled along at Bande’s side.

  “You’ll soon see,” Bande said over his shoulder.

  Mba followed, wishing he had something to frog himself up a bit; something stronger than the stationhouse coffee. His little calabash was half-full of wine, but he had been running on that cheap fuel for too long. That rubbish worked fine during peacetime, but if he was going to war, he would need something to sharpen his edge.

  CHAPTER twenty

  Mba would have never survived the twenty minute wait for the Elder Merchants in the stuffy stationhouse lunchroom if he had not managed to slip a stiff shot into his coffee under the table. It wasn’t Bande’s and Binta’s painful conversation that had him squirming in his seat; he could take that. No, it was Jima. He sat at the lunchroom table opposite Mba, his black clothing and hood draped over him like negative echoes. Jima had canted his head in such a way that his shadowed hood fell partially open, the fold of dark material gaping at Mba like the black mouth of a rotten corpse. And he smelled like a bag of old meat soaked in turpentine.

  Mba’s skinned hand throbbed through the haze of wine and herbal salves. The missing strip of dermis on his chest burned like the lash of a whip. By the time the Elder Merchants finally entered, Mba was close to exploding.

  Kundo, the youngest of the Elder Merchants and Director of Security for the Sati-Baa Market’s business owners, stood nearly seven feet tall and all the extra years had done nothing to diminish his bullish frame. In fact, Kundo seemed bigger, more robust than he did twenty years ago. Back then, he was liaison and Security Chief for the medicine priests who developed Ebandela, brought in to coordinate efforts with the constables and the Elder Merchants.

  Kundo had coffee-colored skin and only the slightest haze of gray in his hair, which he wore trimmed tight to his scalp. He smiled broadly at the table after he shut the door and then turned to Jima. He had to bend at the waist to speak to him. “Captain Jima,” he began. “We are fortunate to have you on board to meet this threat.” He extended a hand to shake.

  Jima kept his hood low.

  Kundo reached out and took Jima’s skinless right hand in both of his.

  Mba watched this with a scowl. Kundo had always been slick – a bureaucrat who could talk his way out of his own grave. He was the public face for the squads back in the day. There was grudging admiration in the ranks because he protected them. It wasn’t until years later that pensioned soldiers like Mba came to realize that Kundo’s sugar coating did not follow them into retirement and that same silver tongue often shaped the orders that sent them to their dooms. And Kundo worked for the people who designed Ebandela. Although, by proxy, so did the squads. Who could you trust in a set up like that?

  The medicine priests who created Ebandela also worked with the Namaqua to create the Bacillus Squads
. The squads were then leased to Sati-Baa to contain and destroy Bacillus. Squad members were contractors, working under the umbrella of the constabulary, so they had the power to make arrests and to kill with impunity. The Elder Merchants could not handle the legal ramifications of constables cutting down skin-eating schoolboys, suicidal priests or grandmothers gone cannibal. There was no way to make it look good, but Kundo did, somehow. Forked-tongue bastard.

  “It is good to see you again,” Kundo said, studying Jima’s lowered hood. “I know we didn’t see eye to eye back in the day, but I have always admired your fortitude under the grave circumstances that ended your career.”

  Jima hissed something and snatched his hand away.

  Kundo continued smiling. He turned to Binta. She was standing rigidly at the end of the table with a hand extended. They shook. “Captain Dambe, I am pleased that you could come, he said. “We need your help more than ever.”

  Mba raised an eyebrow. He realized that Binta might have led her own squad had things not ended.

  Finally, Kundo turned to Mba. “Well, Mba, I read the report.” His features melted with empathy. “Terrible.”

  “Not my lucky day,” Mba said, smiling.

  Kundo reached out to squeeze his elbow and then spoke to the group. “It’s not anyone’s lucky day. None of us wanted to meet again under these circumstances.” His eyes fell on Jima, who continued to mutter with his head down. “But, thank Daarila, we have you to meet this new threat.”

  Mba was just about to suggest a washroom break before they got started when a banging sound brought them all around. A shape moved outside the window in the lunchroom door. The knob ratcheted, there was another thump and the door slowly swung aside. The candles in the stationhouse’s chandeliers silhouetted a skeletal form that stood in the doorway. The form stepped forward. Long, thin jowls streamed down from the chin and tucked into the stiff collar of an indigo uniform. Tufts of white hair curled from under a tall peaked cap. The external light gleamed off golden necklaces.

  The man took a step into the lunchroom, revealing that the cuffs on his sleeves and pants were wrapped and held tight by thick gold bands. It was “the Old Man” – Inspector Vos Anana. A liaison between the privately run Bacillus Squads and civilian law enforcement, Anana was infected, but only with a mild manifestation. Bacillus had made him terrified of spiders. He chain smoked to deal with the irrational fear until the medicine priests had to remove one of his lungs. It was rumored that he had good days and bad days after, but was still twitchy on his best days. Vos Anana never trusted the younger Kundo because of his connections to Ebandela and his apparent comfort with sending men and women into lethal situations. The Old Man believed the squads should never have been privatized.

  As he took another shaky step forward, Mba was able to register all the affects of age on him. Anana was in his late fifties or early sixties twenty years ago, thus the ‘Old Man’ nickname, but Mba could see he was really there now: old; near death. But looking deeper – past the skeletal frame; past his face, which was a sack of wrinkled skin – Mba noticed that old Vos stood ramrod straight and was steady on his feet once he got moving. His cheeks and hands were mottled with age spots, but the same big hard bones showed through. He still had a riding crop tucked under his arm that he kept as evidence of working with the mounted constable division in his youth. He used to talk about that a lot.

  Vos never liked Mba. The Old Man had threatened to kick him off the squads many times, but couldn’t. Kundo had the final say in that regard, besides, it would take a lot to give the grandson of Old Hunter the boot. The Old Man believed Mba was on the squads as an excuse to drink and kill. Mba thought that was partly right.

  Mba and his constables delighted in getting payback on the Old Man by planting realistic-looking wooden spiders around the stationhouse whenever Vos arrived for inspections or debriefings. Setting off his Bacillus-induced arachnophobic response was fun. It started with high-pitched howls, growing in intensity and terror until the Old Man ended up curled in a corner like a fetus. It was too unsettling to repeat often, though.

  Mba watched for the Old Man’s trademark twitch and he wasn’t disappointed. Four steps in and his rheumy eyes glanced from face to face and then swept down, flashed to the baseboard, by the fireplace and into the corners, before sliding along the juncture of ceiling and wall. He was looking for spider webs, dust clouds and conglomerations; anything that might hide one of them – any bug, really, could get his anxiety spiking. He relaxed when he saw that Kundo had pulled a chair out for him a good two feet from the head of the table: somewhere defensible, free of corners and overhangs. The Old Man looked at Binta and gave a quick smile as she shook his hand. He glanced at Jima, raised a hand to shake and then stopped: too many folds of material to chance it.

  Bande was on his feet and offered a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  The Old Man gingerly took Bande’s hand.

  “I’ve read all your scrolls,” Bande said, smiling. “Excellent work, sir!”

  “Your lips; my ass, eh, Lieutenant?” Vos said.

  “Inspector Anana,” Kundo said, stepping briskly up to him. He shook the Old Man’s hand and then led him to his chair. “It is an honor to have you here, sharing your wisdom with us.”

  The Old Man glared at him suspiciously as Kundo offered a steadying arm. “It is not an honor to be here, I assure you,” Vos grumbled. “It never was.” He bent and swung his riding crop under the chair, inspecting it for webs, before he turned and sat.

  He was in direct line of sight to Mba.

  “Mba,” the Old Man said. “You look terrible.”

  “Like looking in a mirror, isn’t it” Mba replied.

  “Ago!” Kundo shouted. “Listen!”

  “Ame!” Everyone responded in unison. “I am listening!”

  “Iya Siju,” Kundo said, gesturing toward the door. Everyone looked.

  A woman stood in the doorway. She had an athletic body under a formfitting shirt and wrap skirt. Her hair was in long, black braids that framed a beautiful face that looked ten years younger than her thirty years of age. She carried a square box tucked under her armpit. She smiled and walked quietly up to Kundo.

  “Greetings, everyone,” she said. “I am Iya Siju, medicine priest, diviner and Director of Psychic Operations. We offer our every resource to meet this new threat.” She shook Kundo’s hand and then handed him the box. “Here are our preliminary findings.”

  “Excellent, Iya,” Kundo said, smiling broadly.

  He turned to the table, introducing Iya Siju to everyone.

  “I’ve read everyone’s files,” she said. “It feels like I already know you.”

  Mba frowned. A Psychic never said anything they actually meant. Innocent questions kept you distracted while they clawed their way into your thoughts. A hiss escaped from Jima’s hood, suggesting he felt the same as Mba.

  “Then we can dispense with the introductions and get down to business,” Kundo said as Iya Siju walked to the end of the table, shook hands and had a word or two with the Old Man. He frowned too, distrustful from his own troubles with Psychics who worked with the squads.

  “Captain Mba, would you mind getting the door?” Kundo asked in a pleasing tone.

  Mba lurched to his feet. His back ached. He needed a drink; badly; but the room was too crowded to sneak one. “Sure.” He took a step toward the door and then spun on his heels to face everyone. “Maybe, before we get started, I can grab a breath of air and relieve myself?”

  “Certainly, Captain Mba,” Kundo said with a nod. He snapped a look at Bande who stepped forward, seeming to understand. “Bande will accompany you.”

  Kundo stared at Mba with a knowing smile. “To make sure that’s all you grab.”

  Mba shrugged like he didn’t know exactly what Kundo meant. He led Bande out of the room. He was sure he heard a chuckle slip from under Jima’s hood.

  CHAPTER twenty-one

  Vos Anana’s ziza �
�� a multi-stemmed water-pipe, used for vaporizing and smoking medicinal herbs – bubbled wetly when the Old Man inhaled.

  The ziza was a common sight among survivors of the First Outbreak, especially those who suffered one of Bacillus’ milder forms. The water-pipe delivered a mild cocktail of herbs that calmed the fight-or-flight response. Bacillus survivors used them in stressful settings and situations that might induce panic.

  Mba had his own cocktail for that – honey wine. He had taken a few swigs while Bande waited outside the stall. The wine had settled him; kept his fingers from trembling.

  Jima had whispered something derogatory as Mba re-entered the lunchroom, smiling.

  Mba shut the door after Bande and took a seat across from Jima. The Old Man had turned his chair so he could watch Iya Siju at the front of the room. Binta sat across from Kundo. Bande took a chair near the far end of the table.

  Iya Siju started, “Shanu Moso, the Alpha and first person in twenty years to infect another with Bacillus, manifested the disease full on six days ago. The other two Gnaw Maws were turned by Mr. Moso.”

  The Old Man’s ziza gurgled. It bubbled as he took a hit.

  “Shanu Moso’s first victim was Eswa Obaka, a scribe who left her job at the docks at sundown, six days ago,” Iya Siju went on. “That was when she was last seen alive. We are assuming Moso got her as she passed by the Ndeleya furrier building. There’s no proof of that, but as a lone Gnaw Maw, before any flesh fights, he would still look human. Once Eswa transformed, she and Shanu Moso jumped the third, a fisherman named Ro Medu.”

  “Who reported the blood bird?” Mba asked. “Who found it?”

  “The building’s ownership is being contested by the Ndeleya heirs,” Kundo explained. “While it is held up in court, a private firm was hired to do monthly patrols – security and maintenance checks. A Mr. Mamud Hashim was doing his security rounds; he reported it. Constables checked it out, but they were rookies. An older desk sergeant recognized Bacillus similarities. His report made it through the chain to me the following morning.”