Beneath the Shining Jewel
Page 9
“Ah Daarila,” Toy sighed. “Maybe the blade-name ‘BIG Dummy’ is more fitting.”
Mba swallowed his beer in one long drink. He belched. “Come on. We have business that can’t wait.” He sat his bottle on the bar. Mba saw Toy’s hesitation. “He’ll catch up.”
Toy nodded.
Mba sauntered toward the exit with Toy at his flank.
“Captain,” Toy began as they stepped out on the street. “Weren’t you rough on Hux?”
“No.” Mba replied, snapping his head left and right. “What’s west?” He squinted at the overcast sky. “Someone found a body.”
“That way,” Toy said, pointing to his left.
“Sure?” Mba said, walking toward the spirits store.
“Hey!” Dummy called, springing onto the street after them.
They turned to see him hit the sidewalk at a jog.
“Feel better?” Mba asked with a grin.
“Yeah,” Dummy smiled.
“Good,” Mba said. “Let’s go.”
####
“In the early stages of infection, you have to keep your eyes open,” Mba said, moving at a brisk walk. “But once you have full-on Gnaw Maws, it doesn’t matter, just swing your sword. There’s nothing subtle about an eater in full manifestation.”
A short distance down the block, an older gentleman appeared where an alleyway opened between two buildings. He carried a broom and looked anxious.
“Okay,” Mba whispered. “Someone found a body.”
They nodded.
“Investigate, but don’t touch anything,” Mba said.
The man saw them approaching. He twisted the broomstick in his hands. Farther on, Mba saw a woman and child were watching them. The man hurried toward them.
Mba felt a surge of energy in his chest. He almost drew his sword.
“Are you Captain Mba?” The old man cried. His face was flushed. “I paid Dido – he’s a psychic who owns a shop around the corner – to call security. They said you would be coming. There’s a body!”
The old man was dressed in a plain, brown dashiki, matching trousers and brown leather shoes an apron was tied around his waist. He was a baker or a barber. Mba sniffed the air. No smell of bread. He was a barber.
Thank Daarila you didn’t find those children; I’d have to kill you, Mba thought. He showed the man his credentials. “I’m Captain Mba,” he said. “Tell us what happened.”
“I was just taking out the trash,” the old man said, squinting at the identification. “Does this have to do with the roadblocks?”
Mba noticed that the woman and child were approaching. “Secure the area, Toy!” He ordered. He grabbed Dummy’s jacket. “You come with me!”
Toy walked toward the woman.
The old man kept talking as he led them to the alley. “I opened a bin to throw in the garbage from my shop…” He panted, gesturing to a building on the right. “And I saw some footprints smeared on the ground by the bins. They looked like they were made by red paint or oil. An overhang protected them from the rain. I looked behind the bin and there’s a body.”
“Did you touch it?” Mba asked, his fingers creeping toward his sword.
“No!” the man replied. “It was covered in garbage. I ran to Dido’s shop.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I think some of his skin was off.”
“Daarila!” Dummy cried.
Mba drew his sword. “Okay, sir. Behind the bin?” He shot a glance at Dummy. The constable’s eyes were wide as saucers.
Mba nodded toward Dummy’s sword. Dummy drew it.
At the end of the alley, an old horse cart was parked by the back door of the old man’s shop. Three large bins sat nestled up to a fence that ran parallel to Market Lane. The fence was made of eight-foot tall planks. Corrugated sheets of copper canted out at the top to form a roof over the bins.
The old man stopped. He pressed his back against his building and crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t think it’s…”
“Shut up and stay quiet!” Mba hissed. He nodded his head to the far side of the dumpster.
Dummy kept his sword high and crept over to approach from the far side.
“I remember…” the old man said, voice breaking. “It can’t be happening again!”
“Stay there!” Mba growled. He could see the footprints on the stone ground now, right under the copper overhang – dark on the dusty surface.
“They said it was over!” The old man was almost crying now.
“Shut up!” Mba spat, distracted by the man’s whimpering. He had the angle now; there was something back there behind the bin. Dark brown, it lay across the base of the fence.
“See that, Dummy?” Mba said, pointing with his sword.
Dummy nodded.
“I can’t take it again!” the old man shrieked.
Mba drew his throwing club. He contemplated striking the old man with it. He took a few more cautious steps.
Dummy walked in step with Mba on the other side of the bin.
The footprints led to a tangle of wood. It was wet. In the poor light, it looked like a body lying there.
Mba glanced at Dummy.
They both laughed, relieved.
“That’s all there is to it?” Dummy snickered.
“That’s all,” Mba said with a shrug.
“EEEAT!”
The word echoed across the alleyway.
The old man screamed.
Mba whirled around toward the sound.
The Gnaw Maw must have been hiding behind the cart. A dark red shape leapt on the old man, jaws snapping on his face. There was a ripping noise.
The old man’s screams were terrible. There were hissing and tearing sounds and the cart shook from the powerful assault.
Mba’s nerves flared with old wine, beer and aşe – the spiritual power that had saved him and driven him in his long war against Bacillus.
Dummy was moving, approaching from the rear of the cart.
Mba darted toward the front.
The old man’s screams grew louder.
Mba ran around the front of the cart.
The old man’s bloody form writhed on the ground. His face and neck were torn; a bloody ruin of muscle and tissue.
Mba heard footsteps running, voices echoing up the alley.
Dummy scanned the back of the building. The door was closed. There was a window with heavy shutters.
Mba raised a finger to his lips, then tapped his ear and pointed toward the ground beneath the cart.
There were wet, chewing noises coming from underneath: Slurping and sucking, guttural licks and burping. And then: “Eeeat…” whispered – lovingly, longingly. More chewing sounds. “Eeeat…”
Dummy’s eyes were saucers; his eyebrows rose to his hairline.
Mba mouthed the word, “Ready?”
Dummy nodded.
Mba knocked on the side of the cart with the pommel of his sword.
“EAT!” The word bounced around the alley. There was a sound like nails scratching at the ground.
Mba and Dummy charged toward the far side of the cart.
Nothing.
“EAT!” Came, suddenly, from over Dummy’s shoulder.
The Gnaw Maw stood in the cart. Long strips of the old man’s face hung from its lower jaw. Most of the creature’s head and upper torso had been skinned. Tattered cloth clung to its legs. Its lidless eyes flashed madly over Dummy’s dark flesh.
“EEEAT!”
Dummy slashed madly over his shoulder at the creature.
It moved with blinding speed, bobbing and weaving from side to side.
Dummy missed completely.
“EAT!”
Mba hurled his club.
The Gnaw Maw moved. The club sailed past its skeletal face. It leapt toward Dummy, its jaws snapping; its sharp, blood-encrusted finger bones slashing.
Mba hurled his spare club.
Plumes of flesh and bone exploded from its shoulder.
The creature lan
ded in a low crouch, screaming in agony.
Slashes from a sword sent pieces of the Gnaw Maw’s back flying as Dummy found his mark. More of Dummy’s fear-driven slashes tore at the Gnaw Maw’s head.
The Gnaw Maw fell against the back of the cart, where it twitched and shuddered in death.
Toy ran into the alley, stopping behind Dummy. His sword was at the ready.
“Did you see that thing?” Dummy asked, wiping the Gnaw Maw’s blood off his sword with a cloth he pulled from his jacket.
The young men stood over the Gnaw Maw, their expressions disbelieving.
“So that’s a…” Toy gasped. “That’s a…”
“Did you see...” Dummy gasped. “Did you…”
Mba moved around the cart. The Gnaw Maw’s head was pretty much gone.
The old man moaned.
Mba dug into his pocket, pulled out a pair of leather gloves and slipped them on. He looked inside the cart. There was a big orange cloth and some lengths of yellow rope. “Come on,” he said to Dummy and Toy.
Mba grabbed the cloth and a coil of rope and hurried around the cart to the old man. He frowned at the poor man’s face. It was ripped open. The skin was gone on the left side down his neck and across his exposed sternum. One of his eyes hung out of the socket.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Mba said, unfolding the cloth beside the old man.
“Shouldn’t we call a medicine priest?” Dummy asked, still keeping an eye on the dead Gnaw Maw.
“Tiptoe, remember?” Mba replied. He gestured for Toy to grab the old man’s shoulders. “He can still turn.”
Mba and Toy lifted the whimpering old man onto the cloth.
“Help me,” the old man wept, his skinned jaws showing his wisdom teeth.
Mba ignored the old man’s cries. He wrapped the cloth over him.
“Tie him tight,” Mba warned Toy, throwing him an end of the rope. “Watch his teeth.”
CHAPTER thirty
Mba leaned over and vomited. He wiped at his face with his bandaged hand. The vomit overloaded his sinuses. It was all he could smell and he almost tossed his guts again, but he was distracted by the meaty thump of Toy’s body hitting the ground. The young constable rolled on his back, said something and then lay still.
Dummy was as drunk as Toy and half as drunk as Mba. He laughed uncontrollably at Toy passing out.
“Captain Mba!”
Binta’s voice yanked Mba’s eyes up and away from the puddle of afternoon eggs and beer that painted the grass. He heaved his bulk to attention, still wiping at his face. His bandaged right hand was a mess and stank of pepper, yolk and beer.
Binta marched over, glaring. “You’re drunk!”
The rest of the constables hung back by the horses, glad to be out of her line of fire.
Mba patted salt and peanut dust from the front of his jacket. The day careened through his mind…
Binta and eight nervous-looking constables had turned up at Dorn’s Deals. They parked a pair of horse-drawn carts down the alley about fifteen minutes after the incident; they had to move quickly to maintain the Tiptoe. It was still too early to bring in the oga’koi-koi and the full force of the squads.
Mba, Toy and Dummy turned the curious citizens away from the end of the alley while Binta’s crew isolated the old man, stabilized his vital signs, slipped his torn body from its crude bindings and then bagged it in something official – nigh indestructible cloth and bindings purchased from the tinkerers of Kamit.
Mba studied the expressions he saw through the new recruits’ masks as they struggled with a nightmare come true. Children, or babies, or unborn during the First Outbreak, they had never been face to face with Bacillus, but they had certainly heard about it.
The dying old man was transported with Binta and a pair of constables in one cart. In the other cart, four worried-looking constables followed. The Gnaw Maw’s corpse had been bagged and they were tasked with guarding it.
Constable Foots stayed behind with a constable called Blaze, on account of his bright red hair. They were there to help Mba, Toy and Dummy secure the area and wait for the Fire Team. They couldn’t bag the building during a Tiptoe, so they put up yellow tape, blocked the alley and waited.
Dorn’s Deals – the old man’s shop – had been searched and the protocols applied. The place would be burned during the night. The Fire Team would burn anything outside the building, too.
When the Fire Team finally arrived, their machine disguised as a heating oil cart, they took up position in front of the building to wait for word from Binta.
The higher-ups were hemming and hawing. Kundo and Vos were debating the fate of the shop – holding back the destruction until they had test results – something irrefutable that would justify burning a city block. Lighting it up for protocol’s sake would tip their hand when secrecy would better serve the mission – and they had to be sure before they could do it. This wasn’t twenty years ago.
Some locals had gathered because of the screams, but the scene was kept secure by the single access to the alley…and skillful lying. Eventually, the gawkers wandered off. It wouldn’t take much though, just the glimpse of a masked constable, and they would have a panic. For the time being, the people believed it was a military matter – something related to the roadblocks on the highway; maybe an armed robbery, or simple murder. Some kind of trouble from metropolitan Sati-Baa was all it was. Mba and the others refused to comment.
After the Fire Team settled in, Mba began to feel he had to answer his churning guts with a shot of something. The encounter with the children and with the Gnaw Maw had left his back hurting and his mind reeling.
“You and Blaze lock the area down, Foots,” he said. “Me and the boys are going to pick up supplies and then head back to the stationhouse.”
He had planned to go to the spirits shop, buy a bottle of wine and hide it in his saddle bag. In Mba’s mind it was time to frog. Bacillus was back; was manifesting – might as well toast his soon-to-be-dead comrades. He was also a firm believer that frogging bolstered his defenses against Bacillus. It had worked before. He needed to frog and so did his squad. Maybe he was getting old and protective. Maybe that was just a good excuse to partake. Maybe he didn’t need a reason.
Dummy and Toy were still shell-shocked by what they had seen. Children suffering from a madness that made them murderous; a Gnaw Maw: someone with their skin off who wanted to eat yours. So Mba didn’t need to convince them. They went back to the Companion and ordered a round of honey wine…and another…and then a couple more.
Dummy and Gani disappeared again – only ten minutes. Mba had teased Dummy about that.
He knew the constables needed to decompress. They lost track of time at the inn. He remembered staggering to his horse a couple of hours later, Dummy ahead of him staggering, carrying a box of bottles and laughing with Toy.
“Mba,” Binta shouted, her heavy fists clenched.
“Take it easy, Binta…Squad Protocol,” Mba slurred. “These men have seen the elephant…”
“The skelephant!” Toy blurted.
“Pink elephants!” Dummy laughed.
“So…” Mba coughed and dragged a sleeve across his face. “We had to toast it. Squad rules!”
“Sober up,” Binta said, glowering. “We’ve got trouble.”
Mba took a breath. His tongue felt thick.
“It’s the old man,” Binta said. “Dorn, the barber and shopkeeper…”
Somewhere far off, Mba heard it.
“Eeeat…”
The word slithered through the warehouse.
CHAPTER thirty-one
Jima had parked his wheelchair close to the transparent Kamite holding cell. He had been there since the old man was brought in and he was there when the old man manifested.
Mba and his team returned three hours later – they were drunk. The younger men were ordered to sleep. Kanan Biko had taken Mba aside to ply him with coffee and a cold shower. An hour passed.
“Where are the bodies?” Jima whispered as he watched the old man squirm in his restraints, flinching as the skinned face whipped toward him and hissed through its leather shroud.
“Pardon me?” Iya Siju said, stepping up to Jima’s side. Constable Mau stood at Jima’s other side.
They slid into thick, padded armor before entering the cell to collect samples. Kamite cells were made of heavy sheets of unbreakable glass, bracketed with steel. The squads had five of them, set up along the wall opposite carts that had been parked bumper to bumper to form a barrier.
“Where are the bodies, Iya Siju?” Jima snapped. “Here we have a fifth Gnaw Maw.”
“I don’t see your point,” Iya Siju said, pulling her mask on. She gestured to the old man. “There’s our fifth body.”
“History, Iya Siju,” Jima said. He shifted in his wheelchair. “History must be studied if you are to learn from it.”
Iya Siju paused while strapping the front of her armor, registering the insult.
“Such study will warn you of new dangers,” Jima said, studying the old man’s face. The remaining eye glared at the activity outside the cell. The other orb hung from the naked socket by its optic nerve. The Gnaw Maw’s yellow teeth glinted as they snapped. The stress of captivity would have the old man yearning for Ritual.
“Back in the day, there were more bodies,” Jima whispered, distracted by the old man’s Gnaw Maw-eye.
The creature was studying their movements: yearning to pinch, to tear and bite – to e-eeeat.
“I know,” Iya Siju said, handing a set of copper examination tools to Mau. “We can’t let that happen again.”
“Listen! That’s not what I meant,” Jima spat, his chest constricting with anxiety as the Gnaw Maw watched him, its teeth glistening with bloody saliva. There was a clicking sound deep in its throat. It was calling the pack – that’s how they did it back then, how you knew they were near...
Click, click, click…
“The ratio then was three Gnaw Maw manifestations to every ten attacks,” Jima cried.