Lia's files 2_Heading down south

by Kathrin Kilambya

  Yuki shouted to Josh and Paul who were exploring the path and had gone almost all the length toward the grove. She waved her arms excitedly, trying to make them see. But they had already grasped what was going on and had stopped.

  We all stood staring at these strangers, as they stood staring at us.

  Everyone seemed to wait for a hint how to proceed. It would have been comical, had it not been so nerve-rackingly tense.

  I saw that the strangers had hardly any weapons, just one or two guns and otherwise mostly machetes. Whereas we were armed to our teeth, theoretically. But our guns were in the cars, only Nin had bothered to carry his along. Still, we must have seemed formidable, even though they outnumbered us. Neither they nor Nin held their guns at the ready, but it was clear that a fight could ensue anytime; all it needed was somebody making a wrong move.

  In the end, Yuki made the right move.

  She still stood on the rock from which she had gestured at Josh and Paul. But now, she turned to pull Alice to her side. Then she waved her hand in a gesture of greeting to the other people. And Alice joined in.

  After a few seconds, three or four of the strangers waved their arms in reply. Then there was a movement and suddenly a child squeezed past the adults and stood in front of them. Then two, no four other children followed. They waved their arms, too.

  “I can’t imagine that they could be Nemesis.” Rob said. “They look too normal. If you understand what I mean.”

  “Stop being witty.” Winter exclaimed a bit exasperated. “What are we to do now, pray?”

  “It seems to me, Yuki is just doing the right thing. Look, she is heading down to the path and on toward the people.” Rob had lowered his binoculars and put his arm around Winter.

  Nin, meanwhile, had hastened to reach Yuki, but she gestured to let her lead the way. So he contended himself with following so close on her heels as to actually step on them every now and then. She hissed at him every time and he apologetically but not very convincingly stepped back a bit, only to instantly resume his close stand the minute she moved on. It looked comical; and it made Rob chuckle, Winter punched him in the side. But the humour of the situation was apparently not lost on the strangers, some of them grinning appreciatively.

  Yuki, Alice and Nin had by now reached Josh and Paul. Yuki and Alice passed them and continued toward the strangers. Yuki gestured something to Nin, Josh and Paul who stayed back and looked on rather tense.

  “Hey, I don’t like this. This is way too dangerous!” I exclaimed, starting forward.

  Rob grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. “Can’t you see what she is doing? If anything can convince these strangers that we are not dangerous, it is Yuki and Alice. They are clearly the most vulnerable members of our group. That we allow them to step forward and initiate contact must convince these strangers that we mean no harm. Plus, I guess Yuki will be the only one able to communicate with these people in case they don’t understand English, don’t you agree?”

  He was right, of course. Still, I didn’t like what was going on above half. If anything happened now I would never be able to reach either Yuki or Alice in time.

  “Calm down Lia. Nothing will happen to them, you’ll see.” Rob went on; but he never released his grip on my arm, making damn sure that I wouldn’t make a hasty move and jeopardize everything. Ah well. Maybe it was for the best. I shrugged my shoulders and took a step back, indicating to Rob that he could let go of my arm.

  “That’s a girl.” He grinned down at me.

  Uhhh! If he continued any more along these condescending lines, I would plant him a facer.

  Yuki and Alice had by now almost reached the group of strangers and my attention was captured by what was happening there next.

  Yuki stopped maybe ten metres away from the strangers and extended her arms, palms upward. As if to signal that her intentions were entirely peaceful. Alice did the same, which drew a smile from some of the strangers.

  After a short pause, a man and a woman moved forward to meat Yuki. They extended their arms to shake hands with Yuki and Alice. Then Yuki spoke to them.

  And it worked. Whatever language she was using, whatever she said to them, it worked!

  After a few minutes, she turned around and gestured for Nin, Josh and Paul to join her.

  “We remain here and observe; it’s safer that way. At least for now.” Rob decided.

  Maybe he had a point. I shot him a quick look, and to my annoyance, he winked at me. Then we all concentrated on what was going on over there.

  It looked like Yuki was introducing everyone. The man and the woman had themselves gestured toward their group that everything was okay and their people now came down the path to join the others. I guessed that they spoke Arabic, because the communication seemed to go via Yuki, and her alone. And, she was the only one of us who spoke that language. Plus, she didn’t speak any other language that might be spoken around here.

  Finally, after about five minutes of talking and gesturing, Josh turned toward us and waved for us to join them.

  We also climbed down over the rock onto the path and slowly walked to the group. It felt awkward; but also very exciting.

  By the time we finally reached them, Yuki had obviously introduced everyone. She directed a radiant smile at us, pointed at each of us and spoke our names. Then she turned and introduced the strangers.

  “These are Idris, Abdella, Tigist, Melat and Mekonnen. And these are my friends Lia, Winter and Rob.”

  Uh, it would take me a while to memorize these unfamiliar names. They were all of the same mould, average height, slender built, with honey-coloured skin, curled hair, but never as dark or curly as was the hair of Josh, Paul or Rob. They were clearly Ethiopians, or maybe Sudanese, at least one of them had distinctly different features from the others and might be Sudanese. The women wore long skirts and blouses or dresses and the man dark trousers and shirts. Only the younger men wore jeans and t-shirts. Many had big whitish cotton shawls wrapped around their shoulders. Most of the women wore their long hair tied in a bun at the base of their neck, only the girls and younger women wore it loose or had braided it intricately.

  The first two men Yuki had introduced to us, Idris and Mekonnen, were obviously their leaders. They seemed older than the others and their group-mates apparently looked to them for guidance. The other members of their group remained at a safe distance. Only we had committed ourselves entirely and had all come forward. I saw several children with the people in the background and it was only understandable that they wouldn’t thrust them right into the danger zone. After all, we still didn’t know what to make of each other.

  Right now, though, Idris was talking animatedly to Yuki. He talked for some time and eventually she interrupted him to translate.

  She turned toward us and explained. “Idris says that they are a group of twenty-one people, seven of them children. Some of them originally lived in this neighbourhood; others came from further away. They saw us coming and naturally assumed that we were part of this new, unknown enemy. He says that a bit more than two months ago planes flew over the area here. Many times. And a few hours afterwards, people started to get sick and soon died. It was utterly horrible. He, his wife and two of their children were the only ones of their village who survived; and he has no idea how all of this came about. When everything started, he took his family and came here. Apparently there are caves nearby, which have been used since time immortal as shelters. Eventually, other survivors from villages who knew about these caves and their underground water reservoirs made their way up here, too. And slowly, over the past two months, a total of seventeen other people came here. Two of their group arrived only some days ago: one, Abdella, came here from Khartoum, while the other, Degu, has travelled down here from Ethiopia. They are both actively scouting the area for survivors. Why they would do so, they haven’t yet told me.”

  Yuki turned back toward Idris and gestured for him to continue. Winter meanwhile, after a brief search of
her pockets, handed Yuki a little notebook and a pen. “You might need this. To write down the important facts for future reference.” Yuki thanked her with a smile and turned back to Idris.

  He kept talking for some minutes, then another man joined in and took over. Eventually Idris gestured toward us, his palms turned upward, as if asking a question. While all this talking went on, everyone else closely scrutinized each other. I tried to get a better look at the other members of Idris’s group. The ones who had stayed in the background. And they, too, craned their necks to get a better look at us. Alice wanted to join the other children, but Paul grabbed her by the scruff of her t-shirt and told her to stay put. When she pulled a face at that, he lifted her onto his shoulders and let her sit there, which pleased her mightily.

  Meanwhile, this talking back and forth had continued and Yuki now lifted her hand to indicate that they should stop, as she must first translate all of this.

  “Idris says that they haven’t met any strangers apart from Abdella and Degu for many weeks. Since they ran out of food about three weeks ago, they have started to scout the neighbourhood themselves a little bit. And they have begun to cultivate things. But they are afraid that planes flying over the area might detect the freshly cultivated soil and come to hunt them down. Apparently every now and then planes fly over this area. Idris says that they only learnt from Degu why that is so. Degu told them that the Nemesis have a base near Gondar in Ethiopia, a town a bit to the northeast of Lake Tana. And another one near Khartoum. And that they use airplanes to stay in touch. Degu himself is from further South in Ethiopia. He belongs to a bigger group of survivors who have decided to start to fight back. He has been sent to scout out the Nemesis bases in the North. Abdella managed to escape the horror in Khartoum, but lost all his family. He met with just one pocket of survivors on his way here. He says that these people are just barely hanging on and would in no way be able to organize themselves against, let alone actually fight the Nemesis. He travelled on toward Ethiopia, hoping to find other, bigger groups of survivors to organize the fight. Apparently he is absolutely crazy about revenge and getting back at the Nemesis. Idris and his group are originally from Ethiopia, but Abdella is Sudanese. And, now they want to know who we are. What shall I tell them? Just our names? Or also where we are coming from and heading to?”

  Yuki looked at all of us questioningly. Winter was the first to volunteer an opinion. “I am for telling them just the bare essentials for now. Who we are, where we came from and the general direction that we are heading? But don’t tell them about how we got here and what kind of things we are carrying with us. They might take us for Nemesis people.”

  “I disagree.” Rob interjected. “Tell them about how we managed to come here. And invite them to come to our cars to have a look. Maybe we can give them vital information about how they should proceed in their fight against the Nemesis. And they, on the other hand, may help us to safely navigate our way past that Nemesis base in Ethiopia. Let’s be open and trust them.”

  Winter didn’t look too happy at this. But everybody else was nodding their approval to Rob’s suggestion. Josh glanced quickly in my direction and I nodded, too. It seemed a fair course Rob suggested and I wholeheartedly agreed with it. Yuki was relieved, too, for she smiled her broadest smile when turning back toward Idris and his people.

  Then she started talking. Even without understanding what she actually said it was clear that she explained who we were and how we were connected. This took several minutes and prompted a bunch of questions by the other people.

  When she was done with this introductory explanation, Paul chipped in. “Sorry to interrupt but I am not so happy with our cars sitting in such an obvious spot. They are visible for miles around. Please ask Idris and his people whether we could not drive them somewhere else a bit less conspicuous and then continue at ease with getting to know each other.”

  Yuki turned to translate this. Idris and the man called Mekonnen immediately nodded their approval. Mekonnen stepped forward, gesturing to somebody from their other group to come over. When the man had joined him, he animatedly talked to him, then the man nodded and smiled at us.

  Paul handed Alice down to Josh, told Rob to come along with him and the four of them walked back to the cars. We saw that Mekonnen gestured toward somewhere along the road, then everyone got into the cars and they drove off, down the road and around a corner.

  While we awaited their return, I asked Yuki to inquire whether they had also seen those lights at night. Nin thought this to be a rather stupid question since we were now quite a distance further away from the possible source of those lights than when we’d seen them last night, but Yuki translated my question anyway.

  Idris shot me an odd look and waved for someone of his group to join us. When the man was here, he told him something and gestured our direction. The man looked at us curiously and then started to explain something to Yuki. The by now familiar back and forth of translation ensued.

  “This man says his name is Belachew. He is from a village closer to where we left the plane,” Yuki eventually translated. “He has only reached Idris and his group a few weeks ago. He says that those lights have been there at night for quite a while. In his village they were five who survived the first onslaught of the Pathogen. Actually he didn’t use the word pathogen but calls it the strange disease. And three of those decided to go an investigate what these lights might be. They never came back and after some days, Belachew and the other survivor, a boy, decided to go and check what had happened. He says that they proceeded ever so careful, always staying out of sight of the road, moving mostly at dusk and dawn and remaining in hiding somewhere during the day. They never betrayed their whereabouts by making a fire or using their flashlights. In this way, they slowly advanced north-west, every night checking for the lights and steadily moving closer to them. They didn’t have binoculars, so they couldn’t scout for danger far ahead. Belachew still wonders how the enemy found out about their presence. They hadn’t really come close to those lights, Belachew thinks they would still have had to walk a full day at least, if not more. One morning, they were resting in the cover of some dense bushes and a little heard of camels had settled at the edge of that little grove. Belachew and the boy meant to stay there for the day and carry on at dusk. Belachew fell asleep and the boy apparently hadn’t been content to lay low and had left the thicket. Belachew woke to the sound of voices. To his horror, he saw three men in black clothes with headscarves, which effectively hid their faces, rapidly advancing to the coppice in which they were hiding. Only then did he realize that the boy was no more at his side. The men were all carrying guns. He knew that he didn’t stand a chance against them, as he had no weapons except for his machete, and so he remained where he was, desperately trying to blend in with the vegetation and remain undetected. He heard the men talking. They were saying that the lights worked very well, drawing survivors to them as if they were insects blindly heading for any bright source of light at night. They thought this funny. Then one man pointed to the coppice saying that their detectors had sensed the presence of someone in this area. Just then, the camels at the further end of the coppice got startled by the voices of the men. Some of them stood up and snorted. There was much shuffling of feet and bodies and quite some noise. The men were annoyed and one of them accused another of not being able to handle the detector right; otherwise he would have seen the difference between camels and survivors. The other one tried to tell them that he had clearly detected somebody human, but they weren’t listening anymore. Swearing and cursing each other for all the walking they had now done all for nothing, the three men eventually left. Belachew remained where he was, desperately wondering where the boy might be and how he might make contact with him. But after some time his thoughts were disrupted by the sound of gunshots, three, and then there was silence. Despite being very thirsty and hungry, Belachew remained in the thicket until the next morning. Hoping despite the odds that the boy would return. T
hat the gunshots had not been directed at him. But the boy never showed up. Finally, with a heavy heart, Belachew decided to retrace his way and head as quickly and as far away from these lights as he could. It took him five days to get back to his village and then another ten days to reach here. Not because the distance would have been that great, but because he took precautions and moved rather slowly and hid himself at the smallest unfamiliar noise. He still wonders what those detectors, these men talked about, might actually be.”

  When Yuki had translated all this, she looked at him and Belachew nodded his head at her and said, “Eh!”

  She smiled uncertainly and then looked over to us.

  But we were just as stunned as she was. What a horrible way of luring people to certain death! Idris was about to comment something, when Mekonnen, Paul, Rob and that other man reappeared.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Paul inquired. “You all look like you have seen a ghost.”

  “And in a way we just have.” Josh replied. “Belachew here has just explained us about those lights we saw. And how narrowly he escaped from being killed when he’d gone to investigate what they were.”

  “Eh? How so?” Paul wanted to know.

  While Josh explained him and Rob what we’d just heard from Belachew, Mekonnen and the other man were animatedly talking to their people. They were gesturing a lot and seemed very excited.

  “What happened? What are Mekonnen and this man so agitated about?” I inquired.

  Rob grinned. “The man is called Serag, he speaks a little English. I guess it’s our equipment. Serag and Mekonnen got really excited when they saw what we have in our cars, especially the weapons. But also the binoculars and night vision goggles made a big impression on them. We will have to leave them some, I think. They need something to fight the Nemesis. The detectors Belachew talked about must be infrared cameras, don’t you agree. We have several, we might spare one and by giving it to them we would grant them that crucial edge they clearly need. They can’t fight the Nemesis with just a few guns.”