Beneath the Shining Jewel

by Balogun Ojetade

  CHAPTER twenty-eight

  “The igin flowers in your masks will provide you breathable air for up to forty minutes,” Binta said, her voice echoing in the open space. “Because Bacillus is blood-borne, not airborne, the masks are basic, tough coverings designed to keep biological fluids and chemicals away from your orifices.”

  “Sexy, isn’t she?”

  The words were whispered into Mba’s ear.

  He flinched. He could feel his blood pressure rise. He turned toward the voice. Kanan Biko stood beside him, a wry smile twisted over his scarred features. His dark eyes glinted from under gray-flecked brows.

  “You know she is,” Biko said. “I can tell by the way you’re standing.”

  His voice was rougher than Mba remembered. He sounded as if he had spent long hours screaming.

  “Biko,” Mba said, offering his uninjured fist.

  Biko bumped his fist against Mba’s. “Heard about Montu.”

  That meant someone told him. Mba gritted his teeth in anticipation of the worst.

  “Nice work.” Biko said. “Montu must have gotten sloppy and underestimated that fat wreck of a body.”

  “Must have,” Mba said.

  “Just tell me you’re not smoking too,” Biko said. “I’m not judging, though. “I’m hoping you’ll forget the things I did…I’m not like that anymore.”

  “So, I hear,” Mba said, looking away toward the troops.

  He and Biko stood side by side, watching the young faces; remembering old times.

  “If things get bad, we gotta get those children out alive,” Biko said.

  “Yes, we do,” Mba said dryly.

  “Biko!” Jima shouted, his grating voice cut the space between them as he wheeled up. “Expect no absolution from me. I’ll be watching.”

  Biko turned toward Jima. “That will give me great comfort, Nire.”

  Jima’s fists clenched under his heavy hooded coat. “Captain Jima, or is your rehabilitation unfettered by protocol and chain of command?”

  “No. I apologize, Captain,” Biko sighed, shoulders slumping. “I was speaking fondly.”

  “He’ll cure you of that,” Mba snickered. He sauntered toward Binta. She had just ordered the constables to jog around the warehouse. It was big enough for a half-mile loop.

  She looked up at Mba, noticed his uniform and smiled. “God help us…” she chuckled. “He’s back.”

  “I’m going to take a few of the constables into town for lunch,” he said, ignoring her taunt.

  “For Kundo’s scouting mission is more likely.” Binta said.

  “What, you’re just green-lighting it?”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said. “But Kundo said you would want to go in first and I should allow it. This is Kundo’s call. I don’t know why you’re here now, and I don’t want you around if the going gets tough.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Binta,” Mba said with a smirk.

  “I have no confidence in you, Mba,” Binta said. “Not in Kundo, either. Neither of you minded sending warriors to their deaths.” She glared at Mba, her fists clenching.

  “I didn’t send anybody,” Mba said, watching her hands. “I led them.”

  Binta was about to retort, but the words died on her lips. She shrugged and said: “I guess that’s something.”

  Mba nodded. “It’s all I have.”

  “Take your pick to go along,” Binta said. “And I’ll brief them on your status and my expectations…now get out of that damned uniform and into your civilian clothes.” She shook her head and half-smiled. “This is a Tiptoe.”

  CHAPTER twenty-nine

  Mba insisted on riding the only blue-furred horse in the group of steeds offered to the squad for their use. He fumbled with the reins with his newly bandaged hand for a moment, found his grip and then climbed on.

  Toy trotted up beside him on a lean muscled stallion with amber fur. As pretty as him, Mba thought.

  “She has it out for you, Captain?” Toy whispered.

  “Her and all of Ki Khanga,” Mba grumbled. “And don’t call me ‘Captain’ when we get into town. Remember this is a Tiptoe.”

  “Yes sir,” Toy said.

  Mba shook his head. “No ‘sir’ either.”

  “We’re undercover,” Dummy said, riding up to Mba’s other side.

  The trio rode out of the encampment and headed up the road.

  It was a couple of hours before midday when they set out. The sky was overcast. A light rain had started. The trio galloped toward a fenced and fortified tunnel. They were told it led to the civilian part of Badundu.

  They rode into the darkness.

  Mba held his lantern before him. Glimpses of maintenance gangways and cramped spaces flashed before him. The hair at the base of his neck stood erect.

  Eeeat…

  He shook his head, casting out the brutal memories.

  After a short ride, they got back to the surface. There were soldiers – dressed in red leather vests and trousers that fit like a second skin – scattered about. They were armed with javelins and battle axes.

  Iya Siju had informed the squad that Badundu was comprised of several gated communities and residents with money – the kinds of people that hated any inconvenience they could not make disappear by waving a purse at it.

  Mba, Toy and Dummy rode across a large field where horses grazed, stopping by a gate with a set of guards. Mba showed them the credentials that gave him special investigator status with the Badundu Army Reserve.

  The guards opened the gate and waved them in.

  Past the gate, the road quickly wound into neighborhoods of small houses originally populated by military personnel. Now, the citizens who worked in the homes and the shops of the affluent people of Badundu lived here.

  Mba, Dummy and Toy rode up on a group of ten or more children who were braving the mild rain. The children ranged in age from about five to twelve by the looks of them. They had formed a circle on a big patch of grass. Mba stopped to watch them. He adored children and often wished he had a few of his own, but no way was he bringing children into a world where people at each other’s flesh.

  The children joined hands. Their high-pitched voices rang out:

  “Iya has Bacillus; Baba is an ass to us; bash it, bag it, burn it all down!”

  The children danced in a counter-clockwise circle. Hands joined, they skipped in toward the center and out.

  “Bacillus; ass to us; burn it all down!”

  Now the children danced clockwise, skipping in and out – their eyes fluttering. They moved back out until their clasped hands pulled their arms straight. They stopped and turned to face Mba and the constables. One of the smallest pointed toward the trio on the horses. She screamed. The others opened their arms, eyes glaring.

  “Captain,” Toy shouted. “What do we do?”

  Mba drew his sword. “They’re infected. We kill them all.”

  “But…they’re just…they’re children!” Dummy cried.

  “Not anymore,” Mba said. “They die, or you do. What’s it going to be, constable?”

  Dummy drew his sword. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Mba’s conscience was forcing him to make a decision, prodding him like a farmer does his cattle. He knew that Toy and Dummy – especially Dummy – felt indecisive, confused and maybe even afraid. This was their first dance, after all. Mba slid his throwing club from the sheath inside his jacket.

  There was a long, suffocating silence; a cold stillness.

  Mba’s eyes darted from child-to-child, searching for the slightest movement.

  The children exploded forward.

  Mba hurled the club.

  There was a loud crack as Mba’s club crashed into a little boy’s skull. Hot, black blood poured down the child’s face.

  The boy hissed in anguish, stumbling backward and clutching the gaping wound in his head. He collapsed with a dull thud and then lay still.

  The children charged toward Mba, slobberi
ng and growling through half-smiles. They extended their arms, their fingers curled to form talons.

  Mba pointed the tip of his broadsword at them. “Trample them!” He ordered, snapping the reins into the horses back.

  Toy and Dummy did the same with their reins.

  The horses galloped forward, their hooves kicking up chunks of dirt and grass as they sped toward the children.

  The tremendous weight of the horses descended upon the maddened youth, rending flesh and pulverizing bone.

  Mba swung his sword furiously, cutting down any child who managed to avoid the horse’s hooves.

  High-pitched hisses and screams echoed across the morning sky.

  The trio turned to inspect the carnage.

  To their amazement and horror, only seven of the children were dead, the rest, while broken from torso to skull, crawled toward them, hissing weakly but with a fury born of madness. They clawed at the damp grass.

  “Come on,” Mba said. “We need to finish the rest of them off and we need to do it quickly; their parents will come searching for them soon…if they aren’t already dead, or infected.”

  “I…I can’t,” Dummy sobbed. “Let’s just leave them. They can’t hurt us now.”

  “Look, we can’t leave any of them alive,” Mba said. “If we do, they will heal, attack others and spread the infection. We have to finish the bashing and then report it to the others, so they can burn this godforsaken place.”

  Mba dismounted and jogged to his club, which lay a few yards from the trampled children. He picked it up and then stomped toward the surviving infected.

  “Come on!” Mba ordered.

  Toy and Dummy climbed down from their horses.

  The three men began hacking and bashing the survivors until they were all unmoving.

  Mba hopped back onto his horse. His back did not ache as he suspected it would. In fact, he felt good; recharged.

  “You’re a bastard!” Dummy said, climbing back on his horse.

  “What did you say?” Mba said, turning to him.

  Dummy stuck out his chest and sat tall on his horse. “I said you’re a bastard!”

  “Dummy!” Toy shouted, scowling at his fellow constable. “You will not address our Captain in that manner!”

  Mba waved his hand as if he was batting away flies. “Don’t reprimand a squad member for being honest, Toy. I am a bastard. And being that bastard is what is going to accomplish this mission.”

  “At what cost?” Dummy asked.

  “You can’t put a price on what we have to sacrifice,” Mba replied. “There aren’t enough ingots in all of Sati-Baa. Now, let’s move out.”

  The trio rode on in silence, passing some older houses, until they came upon a row of shops that made up Market Lane, where business people sold all manner of goods. Mba read the signs on the buildings: Keta’s Spirits Shop on the right; The Companion Inn to the left – Mba was in Heaven. He pointed to a hitching post by the inn. They rode to it, dismounted and then tethered their horses.

  Mba strode toward the door of the inn. Killing those infected children had done something to him. There was heat behind his eyes. He could not catch a deep breath. He needed a drink. “Look,” he said over his shoulder. “We can pop into this inn, get the lay of the land and have a drink.”

  “You call this working?” Dummy said.

  Mba raised a warning finger. “We are going to have one damned drink to fit in, for Daarila’s sake, but no all-out getting frogged; we aren’t going into battle.”

  Toy and Dummy shared a look and shrugged.

  The stench of old smoke and sour beer wafted out of the inn’s entrance as Mba heaved the door aside. He relished the smells. How long had it been since he had a drink with company? He stood aside and let Dummy walk in, then waited for Toy to follow him. Toy looked up and down the street.

  “Come on,” Mba whispered. “Before you draw attention.”

  “Just making sure,” Toy said.

  “We weren’t followed,” Mba assured him.

  Toy stepped into the inn. Mba followed him.

  The air was cool in the inn. It was dark. Mba smelled disinfectant. They had probably just opened for the day. Toy pointed across the room at a tall silhouette leaning up against the bar. Dummy was talking to a woman who poured beer into a tall glass. Mba made his way carefully through the shadows toward them.

  Dummy turned, handed a cold glass of beer first to Mba, then to Toy. He smiled at the woman as she handed him a third glass.

  “I’ll get the first round, gentlemen,” Dummy said, raising his glass.

  Mba returned the cheers with a clink of his glass, before pressing it to his lips and then devouring half of it. The beer was tart, but solid; nothing frothy.

  “This is Gani,” Dummy said, gesturing toward the woman behind the bar.

  Gani smiled, eyes lingering on Dummy’s face. She appeared to be in her late forties. Mba thought she must have been beautiful in her time but the long nights and heavy smoking – things that went with the job – were etched into her face.

  “I was telling Gani we’re here to meet with Badundu civilian authorities to fill them in on what’s going on at the base,” Dummy said.

  Mba glared at him for a second and then shrugged. That story would do. It didn’t explain much, but said enough. He cleared off the rest of his beer and tapped the glass.

  Dummy squeezed Gani’s hand where it rested on the bar. She smiled and poured Mba another glass without taking her eyes off the lean man.

  I wonder if she would be making eyes if she knew Dummy was a sex addict, Mba thought. Probably so.

  “So, what is going on out there?” Gani asked.

  “First things first,” Mba said, nodding at Dummy.

  “We’re interviewing a few of the locals,” Toy piped in. He peered into the shadows and pointed. “Who’s that gentleman at the table?”

  Gani followed the gesture. “You’re going to talk to Hux?” She shook her head.

  “And I’m going to talk to you,” Dummy said, reaching across the bar. He laid a comforting hand on Gani’s bare shoulder.

  “Hux is no gentleman,” Gani said, blushing.

  “I hope you aren’t one, either,” Dummy said, flashing his bright teeth.

  “I’m all woman, love,” Gani crooned.

  Mba rolled his eyes. He ordered himself another beer and one for Toy. He followed the younger man into the shadows and took a chair beside a worn-out old man with half a gourd of beer and a small pile of salt on the table in front of him.

  “This is Hux,” Toy said, a curious grin on his face.

  “Good to meet you,” Hux said to Mba. He flashed a smile, showing brown teeth with a missing incisor. “Strangers in town?”

  “Yes,” Mba replied.

  “I thought you was Gaters,” Hux said. “But pretty boy here says you’re asking questions for the military.”

  “What’s a Gater?” Mba asked before finishing his second beer.

  “They’re the uppity folks from Budundu,” Hux answered. “They live out in neighborhoods with gates. We opened our doors to them back in the day and they locked their’s on us.”

  Hux’s hands shook as he dumped salt into his beer.

  “Have you seen anything strange lately?” Mba said, cutting to the chase. “People acting differently?”

  Hux thought a bit and then said: “I have a room upstairs and my pension goes right to the tab. All I have is strange things to talk about.” He ran a yellowed fingernail through his gray whiskers. “The young ones fight and make love like always, but nothing new. You should talk to Sharif Maho.”

  Mba shrugged. Iya Siju and Binta were waiting for Sharif Maho. He was bringing the wife of Shanu Moso, the Alpha and first infector in twenty years, out to the warehouse. They thought it was just a talk, but the squad had to bag the wife. Iya Siju was going to do a complete examination on her. Apparently, the wife said Shanu had been missing a full week before turning up in metropolitan Sati-Baa.<
br />
  “So,” Mba said, feeling an uncomfortable kinship with the old man before shaking it off. “Anybody disappear?”

  “Hmm,” Hux mumbled, scratching his chin. His eyes brightened and then he said: “Two nights back, Gege…he’s a fellow I throw knives with. Gege came in for a game. We played over a couple of gourds. He ordered two more, went off to the toilet…but never came back.”

  “Is that significant?” Toy asked.

  “Gege wouldn’t walk away from all that beer,” Hux said earnestly.

  There was a sudden tugging at the base of Mba’s skull. A telepath was attempting to form a psychic link for long-ranged communication.

  “Just a minute,” he said, turning sideways in his chair and leaning forward. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, allowing the telepath into his mind.

  “And you haven’t seen Gege?” Toy continued, throwing Mba a quick glance.

  “He never came back,” Hux said, leaning toward Toy.

  “Captain Mba,” a woman’s voice crooned in his head. “It’s Digger. We have received a call from Badundu. Someone found a body. Where are you, Captain?”

  “The Companion Inn on Market Lane,” Mba replied.

  “Captain Dambe wants you to proceed five hundred yards west on Market Lane to Dorn’s Deals.” Digger said. Her voice was very calm in Mba’s head. “She is prepping a recovery team.”

  “On it!” Mba closed his mind and then turned to Toy. “Come on!” His back ached as he stood up. “Thanks for wasting our time, Hux.”

  The old man frowned. So did Toy.

  Mba started toward the bar. Halfway there, he realized Dummy was gone.

  “Gani’s gone too,” Mba said, shaking his head.

  Toy raised an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me that they…”

  Mba nodded.