Lagoon

by Nnedi Okorafor

  What struck him most when he stepped into the lobby of the posh hotel was the shiny floor. It was so shiny he could see the terrible state he was in. His fatigues were wrinkled, wet, soiled with sand, and spattered with his own blood. His face was puffy and ashy with sea salt, his lip and forehead crusty with dried blood. At least the swelling had gone down in his right eye and he could see through it now. Here, he could find out what had happened while he was in the sea. And use a telephone.

  The lobby was packed with terrified tourists and expats. The Eko was one of the few places in Lagos where, ordinarily, you saw more than a few white faces. European and American businessmen, mainly. It was no different now. To Agu’s eyes, they looked bloated and red.

  “The fuck if I know,” a thickset British man yelled, throwing himself onto a nearby sofa. He had a wheeled suitcase, but he didn’t look like he was going anywhere. “It’s a citywide 419! The whole bloody place is fucking itself !”

  The businessmen around him nodded in agreement.

  “I have a satellite phone. How the blazes did they hack into it?”

  “That guy says they’re tearing each other apart out there because everyone thinks everyone else is an alien and no one knows what the aliens really look like.”

  “Superstitious bollocks. At least this place is safe.”

  “For now.”

  “How can they just shut down the airports?”

  “Fucking aliens, my arse.”

  Agu tucked his chin into his neck as he slipped past them. He didn’t want to answer any questions. He peeked into the computer center. Every single one was in use. “Shit,” he whispered.

  He rubbed his forehead as he approached the reception desk. Focus, Agu, he thought. First things first. Get back to Adaora’s house.

  “Obi,” he said, leaning on the reception desk. A smile touched his lips, his first in who knew how long. It felt good.

  His little cousin Obinna’s back was to Agu as he spoke with several of his colleagues. Farther down the counter, one poor desk clerk was stuck arguing with a frazzled-looking group of white women.

  “Please, just calm down,” the desk clerk begged, holding up her hands.

  Two of the white women were leaning on each other and weeping as they glanced at the front doors. They were probably afraid that machete-wielding Area Boys were about to burst into the hotel. On any other night, Agu would have sneered at such women. Tonight, it seemed, their fears were more than justified.

  Obinna turned around. “Agu?” He grinned. “Brother!” He leaned over the counter to give him a hug.

  Agu held up his hands. “You don’t want to hug me,” he said. “I smell like hell and I’m dripping with sweat.”

  “You came from out there?” Obi asked.

  “It’s bad,” was all Agu said.

  “What happened to you?”

  Agu had always looked out for his little cousin. He’d been the one to get him this receptionist job. The son of his mother’s closest sister, Obi might as well have been his brother. But that didn’t change the fact that Agu had been aware of all his life: Obi lacked courage and imagination. When there was a fight, Obi fled. When challenged, he fled. When someone did wrong and it was time to stand, he fled. Best for him to stay at the Eko and know nothing about Ayodele or where Agu was headed.

  “I just got caught up in it,” Agu said. He glanced over his shoulder and met the eyes of the flustered, red-faced British expat. The man was staring at him as if he were an alien. Not again, Agu thought. He turned back to his cousin.

  “Obi,” he said. “You’ve got to help me.”

  “Na wao,” Obi said, looking him up and down. “Seriously, bro, what has happened to you?”

  “You will never believe me,” Agu said, lowering his voice. He hesitated, reconsidering his request. But what choice did he have? “Please, abeg, I need . . . Internet. Let me use your laptop. I know you have it back there.”

  “Why not use the public ones?” Obi asked, frowning.

  “I need to send a text. But all your computers are being used,” he said.

  “For?”

  “I just need to contact someone.”

  Obi paused, looking at him for a moment. Agu almost laughed at the ridiculousness of his little cousin looking him over as if he were some Area Boy. Obi was still the Obi he’d always known: a coward, and more loyal to his job than the cousin who got him the job.

  “How do I know you’re not one of . . . one of them?” Obi blurted. He looked as if he regretted the question the moment it escaped from his lips, but he didn’t take his words back. Agu snorted with disgust and sucked his teeth loudly.

  Two of Obi’s colleagues were walking toward them. One was a tall, intense-looking man, and the other was a short woman. Toyin and Vanessa, going by their name tags.

  “Who is this?” Toyin asked.

  “Abeg, fly,” Agu snapped at Toyin, growing impatient.

  “Do you know him?” Vanessa asked Obi, ignoring Agu. “We can have him thrown out. Look at him.”

  Obi, his own cousin, looked uncertainly between Agu and the newcomers. Images of all that had happened tried to flood Agu’s mind. Being underwater. The questions. Fighting Adaora’s crazed husband. And if he ever got his hands on Benson, that would be a dark day indeed. The speedboat and the men torn apart in the water by monsters. The sea cow that had brought him to shore. The dead whale. The riots. His power. He might have killed someone back there in the street.

  Agu took another deep breath, feeling a bit steadier. He had to get to Ayodele. If he could get her to the president, all this might stop. Might.

  “Look,” Agu said, raising his voice. “I know what’s going on. I am a soldier. You see my clothes? Ehe.” He nodded. “I have been to hell and back tonight.” He paused. “I have . . . seen them. I know them. Please, abeg, Obinna, brother, let me just get online for a few minutes, o.”

  Vanessa and Toyin stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “So you have seen them?” Vanessa finally asked, her voice soft with awe.

  “I have.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  They could be, he thought. “No.”

  Vanessa shook her head. “I have to disagree, after what that one did to the airwaves and networks.”

  “And by the way you are looking,” Toyin added.

  “They didn’t do this to me,” he snapped. “Human beings did!”

  “What the hell is going on out there?” Obi asked him, ducking down to get his laptop and setting it on the counter.

  “Chaos,” Agu said, waking the computer and clicking open Obi’s Skype application. Thankfully Obi had some credit on it. “And if you let it touch you, you become part of it. Do things you’d never do.” He looked up at his cousin. “Obi, I know you have a mobile phone.” Obi looked away. Mumu! Idiot! Agu thought angrily. “Just call my parents, sha. Please. Make sure they are all right.” He typed in Anthony’s number—he hoped he remembered it correctly—and quickly tapped out a brief message.

  Obi nodded, bringing the phone from his pocket and turning away.

  After hitting send, Agu leaned back against the counter. He could see that a building across the street was on fire.

  “They are okay,” Obi said, turning back and hanging up the phone. “They said there were some men—soldiers—but they stayed inside and they’re fine. Who—”

  “The story is too long to tell,” Agu said. He felt faint with relief. So it seemed that Benson had made good on his threat against Agu’s family. Evil man.

  “Do you think this is the end of days?” Obi asked, wide-eyed.

  “No.”

  CHAPTER 30

  CRUSADE

  Adaora read the text message from Agu three times: “Stay put. I’m coming. Agu.”

  She handed the phone back to Anthony, put her e
lbows on the table, and let her head fall into her hands. Hassam, the soldier who had tried to administer first aid to Adaora’s daughter, had left. He said he was going to try to restore peace to Victoria Island. Adaora was glad he was gone.

  The windows were open to let in fresh air—hot, humid air. The house stank of smoke, regardless. She wasn’t sure if it was from the fire Chris had put out or the burning house a block away. With her eyes closed, the sounds of windows being smashed, a door being kicked in, screeching tires, and people running and shouting on the roads and lawns was louder.

  She peeked through her fingers at the tiny monkey sitting on the kitchen table looking sullen, and her belly cramped from suppressed giggles. The monkey was fuzzy, soft, brown, had a pinched face like a sour elder, and was so small it could comfortably sit in the palm of Adaora’s hand. It looked exactly like a smaller version of the stuffed animal Kola grasped in her arms every night.

  “Please,” Kola said to it. “Don’t be like that. Didn’t you say that you came here to talk to us?”

  Fred was staring at the monkey, his eyes glassy and his mouth hanging open. He needed a nap. He needed real rest. They all did. The monkey pulled the sides of its mouth down, looking even more sullen. It crossed its tiny thin arms over its furry body and turned its back to Kola. It was clenching its fists so tightly that Adaora could hear the tiny joints pop. Ayodele had changed herself into this creature an hour ago because she’d decided that she no longer wanted to be a human being.

  “I don’t think we should stay here long,” Anthony murmured, looking out the front window.

  “I know,” Adaora said, joining him.

  They watched Father Oke for a moment. He’d approached with about twenty-five others, and now they stood on the lawn in front of the plantain tree. Father Oke marched back and forth, speaking passionately and gesticulating wildly. His flock clapped and waved their hands in the air, rejuvenated by whatever he was stirring them up to do. On the road behind them, a band of young men set upon a parked car, smashing the windows with tire irons and bricks. Some of them laughed and pointed at Father Oke and his people.

  An okada pulled up to the curb outside Adaora’s house, and someone climbed down. Adaora squinted, trying to see what was happening. The woman and the driver exchanged words, and then the driver sped off. The woman shouted after him, looked around, and started walking. She was wearing jeans and a red blouse, and she walked with an unafraid, angry gait.

  When the woman passed the group of destructive Area Boys, they pointed and laughed. One even smacked her backside. The woman glared at the boy and slapped him in the face. He only laughed as he shoved her along. She cursed at the boys but kept moving. Father Oke and his congregation were too preoccupied to notice the woman and her troubles, let alone offer her any assistance.

  Bad, bad, bad, Adaora thought, shivering. This is a bad situation about to get worse. She got to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

  * * * *

  Adaora closed the door quietly and descended the stairs into her lab. Chris was staring at the remains of her aquarium. She didn’t follow his eyes. She could smell her dead pet sea creatures and that was enough.

  “Chris,” she whispered.

  He didn’t turn around. After eating the bowl of jollof rice Anthony had placed in front of him, Chris had gone on to eat some leftover gari and egusi soup Adaora had made days ago. Then he’d eaten some biscuits, a bag of groundnuts, and three oranges, and washed it all down with a bottle of Guinness from a box the rioters had missed in the cupboard.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll go out and talk to Father Oke,” Chris said.

  “No,” Adaora replied. “Are you blind? The man’s gone mad.” She took a deep breath and made herself speak before she could lose her nerve. “Take the children to your mother’s. They live in that gated community and—”

  Chris whirled around, fire in his eyes. “How stupid do you think I am?”

  “What? Chris, I’m just—”

  “I saw you,” he said.

  Adaora frowned, confused.

  “Witch, harlot, tramp . . . whore!” He whispered his words, but this didn’t make them any less painful to him or Adaora. “I saw you with him, Adaora.” He sneered. “Wife.”

  “You . . . saw? Saw what?”

  “‘Saw what?,’ she asks.” He stepped up to her. “Saw you! You and that soldier in the car, kissing. Out in public, like a common whore.”

  Adaora was too shocked to speak.

  Chris nodded. “God shows all,” he said. “In Jesus’s name.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Don’t!” He lowered his voice. “Don’t give me that rubbish. You did something to me . . . before you left, you did something to me. You probably did it to him, too. If I could beat it out of you, I would. Because I love you, you are my wife. But you’re evil. Father Oke was right about that. You’re a marine witch. Tell me you are not a witch, tell me I didn’t feel what I felt. Tell me it wasn’t you holding me down on the floor when we were fighting.” He paused, and when she didn’t say anything, he added, “I don’t want you near the children.”

  “I don’t care what you want,” she snapped. “They’re my children too. I gave birth to them, not you!”

  His eyes grew wide, and his face went from brown to a deep dark brown red. He clenched his hands into fists. But Adaora wasn’t afraid of him. She could feel it inside her. All she had to do was let herself loose and this fight, like the last one, would be over before it began. She stared him down.

  “Is everything okay down there?” Anthony called from the top of the stairs.

  “Mommy?” Kola called. “Daddy?”

  Chris’s eyes were twitching, but he was unclenching his fists.

  “Yes, we’re fine,” Adaora said. She didn’t let her eyes leave Chris’s. “Just . . . talking. Kola, we’ll be up soon.”

  “You sure?” Anthony said.

  “We’re fine.”

  “Okay.”

  Adaora didn’t hear the door shut, and she was glad. She swallowed and repeated the hardest words of her life. “Take them to your mother’s. It’s safer there.”

  “And you’ll stay here? To wait for him?”

  “To finish this thing with Ayodele,” she said. “We need to get her to the president.”

  “Let the soldier do it. That’s his job, not yours.”

  “It needs to be the three of us.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s . . . it’s God’s will.” Adaora held her breath.

  Chris laughed hard, and she was relieved when he stepped away. “You know nothing of God’s will.”

  Neither do you, she thought.

  “You’ll leave your children to go with him?” he asked.

  “Oh my God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Didn’t you see what Ayodele . . .” She took a deep breath, gathering herself. “Listen to what’s going on out there! Did you not hear what she said? This isn’t about our relationship, or whether I’m a bad mother!”

  “You’re leaving me.”

  Adaora sighed and looked away. “This is not the time for this conversation, Chris.”

  “You decided to allow him to touch you.” His eyes glistened as he traced his fingers over her face. Every part of her wanted to flinch, but she didn’t. “God is always in control,” he said. Then he strode past her and up the stairs. Adaora sat down on the bottom step and looked at her feet, smelling the destruction.

  * * * *

  Later, upstairs, she found Kola and Fred slipping on their shoes and arguing over who got to tell Grandma everything. Chris was packing biscuits, groundnuts, and bananas into a briefcase. Anthony leaned against the counter, his arms across his chest, silent. Chris glared at Adaora but said nothing. Ayodele, still in her tiny monkey form, sat on the dinner table
, her furry back to everyone.

  “We called Grandma,” Kola said. “She said if we could get there, we will be safe!”

  Adaora nodded. “She’s right.”

  “Yet you’ll stay here where it isn’t safe at all,” Chris said.

  Silence. Something outside crunched loudly.

  “Correct. I’ll stay,” she finally said.

  “Why?” Fred asked, breathing heavily. His nostrils were flaring. Adaora knew the look; he was trying not to cry. Kola hugged him to her.

  “We need to wait for Agu,” Adaora said, trying not to cringe at the anticipation of Chris’s reaction.

  “Why?” Chris snapped. “Is he your husband?”

  Anthony chuckled to himself and looked at his feet, muttering, “Nonsense.”

  “Kola, Fred, go upstairs and grab some of your school books.”

  “Mommy, you should save the world,” Fred said. “If you have a chance to—”

  “Shut up and go upstairs,” Chris shouted. “What kind of child enters adult conversation? Abomination!”

  Kola and Fred ran upstairs.

  “I’m not having this discussion, Chris,” she said when they were gone. Unconsciously her hand went to her cheek. “We’ve talked enough.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “I should never have laid a hand on you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Pause.

  “Adaora,” he said. “What . . . I . . . What was it that you did? When . . . when we were fighting?”

  She felt her belly flip but said nothing.

  He stepped closer and she didn’t move away. “Does it have to do with how you were born? You—”

  “Chris, didn’t you dismiss me as a marine witch or whatever the hell you and those people fear so much?” Her eyes stung but she continued. “Just go with that for now, if that sets your mind at ease. Three things need to happen. One, our children need to be safe. Two, Anthony, Ayodele, and I need to find Agu. You won’t understand and I’m not going to explain. Three, we need to get Ayodele to the president. And guess what, Chris, I happen to know where the president is going to be at six a.m. If Agu comes soon, we’ve got all night to get there. But we have to get there. With what’s going on outside, that’s going to be difficult.”