Eventually, being a Nuer tribesman in a Dinka-ruled army had created a glass ceiling, and while others had continued to climb the ladder of military hierarchy, he stayed confined to his rank. Worse, when weeks earlier, a strange virus had risen the dead, their Dinka leaders had used the distraction to assert themselves fully over the other tribes in a massive power grab. People like himself, once future hopefuls in the military establishment of one of the world’s newest countries, within a few days, had found themselves relegated to the bottom of the heap. In the shortest period of time, he had seen his pension evaporate, and his state-assigned land swallowed up, 'gifted' by the upper echelons to one of their own.
But it wasn’t until they had assigned him to sit in an empty stadium with a bunch of rookies, looking at nothing but a dying land, that he had hit rock-bottom.
The young soldier, again and again, keyed the radio, but there was no response.
“Give it a rest, son. They will be snug in their barracks, drunk, and cozying up to one of their many wives. If you want to make yourself useful, take a look at what the people in the UN vehicle are doing now.”
“But they are still shooting at us, Sergeant Okot.”
“There you go. Well done, son. Now join the others downstairs.” Okot sat back and lit a cigarette; one of the last luxuries reserved for the endless nights was best enjoyed in solitude.
Down the central stairway leading from the lower stands to the plain concrete foyer, two more soldiers leaned against the recessed metal grilles of the entrance. Their shift had but started; another 5 hours of gazing into the dark for movement. Dead or living, it mattered little at this point.
They would patrol the outer perimeter in intervals and dispatch the walking corpses wandering too close for comfort. Killing had been the game they had signed up for, but doing so without ever firing a round and only finishing what a virus had brought back, given the months of gruelling training they had had to endure, seemed a lousy detail.
With the hiss of the warhead leaving the RPG somewhere above them, their spirits had lifted though, and for a while, they had climbed to the top row and watched the fire with excitement from behind the improvised radio announcer’s shack. Now they were back to ‘ground watch,’ the group’s least favourite task.
Tall silhouettes of emaciated dead stumbled around in the fiery glow that reached all the way to the outer wall of the stadium. People had been starving long before the virus took hold, so when it did, their remains were all but skin and bone. Leathery and dry, some were light enough for the wind to carry them across the football pitch, and the soldiers here and there entertained themselves by placing bets on which of their nominees would go farthest.
“What if the UN is launching an assault? It’s only four of us out here…” One of the two young soldiers peeked around the corner.
“Hah, don’t you remember Makobu?” The other soldier hocked a loogie and spat the phlegm onto the ground. “They couldn’t even save their own.”
“Makobu?”
“An entire compound of armed peacekeepers and they couldn’t prevent us from entering. We took whatever we wanted, even their lives. They could do nothing. So I don’t think they are coming here, in the middle of the night, with one vehicle, to take on the mighty SPLA!”
He laughed and bent forward to take another look at the satisfying inferno of the UN carrier amidst the flames, its occupants no doubt either dead or dying from the heat, the smoke, or whatever.
His grin froze instantly. His eyes saw the muzzle flash, but his brain no longer registered. The bullet passed clean through his head. Legs folded, and his body sagged, painting a dark red trail of blood, skin, and hair as it slid down the wall. Rounds shattered the concrete and pinged off the metal grilles.
The remaining soldier dived onto the damp floor of the foyer, where he tore at the rifle sling around his shoulder. Fumbling to free his weapon, he saw neither the shadow that slipped in along the concrete nor the glint of steel reflecting flames as Tom unsheathed his knife. The soldier’s body stiffened as the blade entered the base of his skull. Then silence returned.
Pressed against the wall of the centre stairway, Tom stood still and listened. The remote sound of Faith’s and Amadou’s suppressive fire reverberated through the corridors, but there was something else; a conversation of sorts somewhere in the stands several ranks above him.
Tom crouched and crept up the stairs until he reached the exit leading into the stands. Looking over the edge, the glow of a cigarette caught his attention. There, sitting inside the outer wall of the upper rows, silhouetted against the faint flicker of the now dying fire, sat two figures. If they were to remain with any ammunition at all back at the APC, he would need to act soon, Tom thought as he unholstered his Glock.
His eyes now almost fully adjusted to the dark, he could see the second soldier sliding another warhead into the launcher’s tube. In a moment, the RPG would be ready to launch. The soldier’s weapons still leaned against the retaining wall. Neither seemed to have taken notice of what had happened below. Tom stood up, training his sights on the soldier with the RPG.
Tom squeezed the trigger and, for a moment, thought he could see the white in the startled young man’s eyes. He barely took notice of the soldier’s body collapsing and instead immediately shifted his attention to the one still sitting in the stands. To his surprise, though, the man didn’t move. Taking another drag, he blew out a perfect ring of smoke, and his eyes met Tom’s in the brief white of the burning cigarette.
“I am unarmed.” Sergeant Okot shrugged in the dark. “You can shoot me if you wish. But I prefer you didn’t.”
Tom eased off the trigger, intrigued by the man’s demeanour.
“All we want to do is pass. We are not here to pick a fight. But we will end it if we have to.”
“You are the one pointing the gun. It looks to me like the fight has already ended.” Okot took another long drag of his cigarette.
“I am glad we understand each other.” Tom reached into his pocket and retrieved the small flare gun.
Papillon was the first to see the 12-gauge comet rising up above the stadium. Its sixteen thousand candlepower burning through the night, it descended, chasing long shadows across the landscape and the dead beneath it in a menacing display of pulsing red.
"Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire." Gautier bowed his head and began to pray.
Faith’s and Amadou’s weapons fell silent. For a brief moment, time seemed suspended inside the APC. The small band of survivors afloat in the abode of the dead, the flare’s red afterglow cast the corpses’ creeping shadows like war paint across their faces.
Then Papillon floored the accelerator.
The tires spun out, turning the closest charred corpses into black sludge before regaining grip on the tarmac below. This time there would be no swerving, no stopping. Papillon gritted his teeth, grunting with each impact as the unstoppable machine ploughed through another gaggle of corpses converging on the road. One last line-up of dead hands reached for oncoming doom. Bones crunched and insides splattered as they connected with the APC’s nose. Then they were free.
Papillon’s grip on the wheel eased, and the engine hummed as they sped into the night, the rectangular shape of the small stadium to their right soon growing to its full size. The survivors leaned back on their benches, their shaken minds and bodies appreciating the new-found smoothness of the ride. A last flicker of the dying flare as it hit the ground, and it was gone. Blackness resumed and swallowed the lumbering figures stumbling about within it. The carrier was almost at full speed when they passed the far end of the stadium grounds, and as instructed, Papillon killed the engine.
The armoured Leviathan glided along effortlessly, with nothing but the satisfying whirr of its tire treads betraying its existence to the dead’s senses probing the dark. Slowly losing momentum, it continue
d to roll along for a little while, until Papillon turned the wheel, bringing it to a quiet halt next to a concrete perimeter wall.
“Why did you stop here?” Faith whispered, her voice amplified in the still of the night around them.
Papillon pointed at a dark sign marking the compound to their left. ‘Land Mark Motel.’
“The place is locked. I don’t think anyone’s been in there for a while.”
A set of glass doors to the reception were secured by heavy security grilles. Rubbish lay strewn about in front of it. Faith smiled.
“I like your thinking.”
With curiosity, Okot’s eyes followed the arching flare, ignoring the gun Tom had still trained on him. Within seconds an excited engine roar confirmed receipt of their agreed signal. Okot stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. They listened to the APC’s roar as it passed the stands and then fell silent, its engine cut as instructed. Tom breathed a sigh of relief and lowered his weapon, watching the man in the stands for any sign of movement.
“If you worry about me reaching for this rifle, don’t.” Okot tapped his foot on the butt of the AK47 at his feet. “The cause I used to fight for is dead. More dead even than those bodies walking around out there.”
“What will you do?” Tom couldn’t help but feel empathy for the man.
He himself had fought for causes he had never believed in and which, in retrospect, had been against everything he had ever stood for. But he had had the luxury of honorary discharge when the time came. A privilege denied to the old man now sitting in the stands of this abandoned stadium besieged by the dead.
“I will sit and wait for the sun to rise.” Okot shrugged, casting a saddened look at the body of the young soldier near him. “And then I will do the necessary.”
For a moment, Tom contemplated the words. The defeat in the old man’s voice left little room for speculation. In another life, he wouldn’t have hesitated to finish the job for him, but that time had passed. For once, the living would have to stop the killing or lose the war altogether.
“Good luck.” Tom struggled for anything to say at all as he backed away and began taking the steps back down towards the foyer.
“What is your name?” Okot’s voice called out, but Tom had already made the turn into the stairway.
Stepping over the two corpses in the entrance, he slipped into the night like a fleeting memento melting into the black before mirroring the outline of the sloping drainage ditch along the road.
There were fewer dead now. They had mostly disbanded. Dispersed due to a lack of stimulus, only a few staggering gaggles remained. Some fused together by the heat, yet others bound by an inexplicable attraction. He slipped past them, the speed of his movement barely alerting their charred senses. Within minutes the outline of the APC appeared. Like a sleeping bulldog, it stood, solid, quietly resolute.
Checking his immediate surroundings for movement, Tom tapped the rear hatch with his pistol grip, and almost immediately, Gautier’s excited face appeared in the small window.
“So you have finally decided to join us?” Amadou grinned as Gautier opened the hatch long enough for Tom to jump in.
“Yes, well, the Hilton was full.” Tom winked at him and joined Papillon in the front.
“Looks like this one isn’t, though.” Papillon pointed at the Motel’s entrance. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a bed. Maybe even a shower.”
Tom nodded. Papillon had a point. The blend of smells and sleeping habits of the group crammed into the stifling metal confines of the APC had become something of a bad running joke among them. None of them had had a good night’s sleep in a long time, even before the events at Lake Albert.
“Amadou, you’re up.”
Tom didn’t have to ask twice. The Congolese’s lanky frame snaked through the hatch and, in one motion, shifted across the narrow gap between the carrier and the motel’s perimeter wall. With the agility of a cat, his shadow danced along the top until it disappeared from sight behind the large sign mounted above the entrance.
There was a small thud as he dropped down on the other side, followed by a shuffle. Tom thought he heard a moan emanating from behind the wall, but then silence returned so quickly, he could not be certain.
“Ready for check-in?”
The survivors jumped as Amadou reappeared out of nowhere, poking his head into the cabin from above. They followed his lead, Papillon carrying a sleeping David in his giant arms, while Faith helped Gautier across and into the courtyard on the other side. A lone corpse, still wearing a housekeeper’s uniform, lay sprawled across the cobbled red bricks. A black pool of viscous liquid oozed from beneath its head.
“There are sleeping quarters in a wing across from here.” Amadou pointed ahead, then at the corpse in front of them. “But I must warn you, housekeeping is off duty.”
The single-story extension contained a row of six immaculate rooms, each pristine with a large double bed and en suite. Completely untouched, as if freshly prepared in anticipation of new arrivals, bath towels folded into the shape of little swans rested upon crisp linen, and welcome cards adorned large pillows propped up against hand-carved headboards. Whoever owned the place, had shut shop and left before the crisis hit; the compound’s unassuming exterior kept deliberately low key, unattractive, even, to looters and the dead alike.
‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’ Tom smiled to himself, feeling his weight sinking into the linen and the soft mattress beneath.
It was going on midnight, and they would need to be up at first light if they were to stand a chance to compete with what would surely be chaos at the only international airport in-country. Few words were spoken as they divided up the rooms. Amadou, now self-deputed watchman, dragged a mattress out into the roofed walkway outside from where he could oversee the rest of the compound’s interior. For a few minutes, he sat there, enjoying the cooler night air as it permeated his sweat-soaked clothes. Listening to the occasional shuffle from the outside, he finally relaxed a little, enjoying the brief moment of relative safety.
Soon, the hypnotic song of the wee hours of the morning - rhythmic snoring, the orchestra of crickets, and the rustle of dried leaves – undulated irresistibly within the courtyard walls and carried him, too, away into comatose slumber.
✽✽✽
“Wakey-wakey, sleeping beauty.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” Amadou blinked as he tried to focus.
Papillon’s large frame above him all but blocked the first rays of daylight displacing the long shadows across the courtyard. He checked his watch. 6.15 am.
“Yeah, neither was I,” the big man joked, helping Amadou to his feet. “No need to wake the others yet. I figure we have a look around and get transport ready.”
Using the thick branches of a tree nearby, they climbed back up onto the wall, the large sign above the entrance keeping them well out of view. In the first glimpses of daylight, they could see the road they had travelled and the fiery carnage of the night before. Like blackened pieces of twisted driftwood, corpses littered the landscape in the distance.
A black crater where the RPG had struck still smouldered. The acrid smell of smoke and burnt hair lingered in the air. Closer to them, the road remained largely clear of the dead, with but a few corpses shambling off into town in pursuit of something unseen. A breeze caught the lone South Sudanese flag hanging limply from a pole above the stadium. For a moment, it rippled, then rose and whipped, tearing at its tether in a futile attempt at freedom. Then, just as suddenly as it had sprung to life, it drooped again, weary and exhausted.
“Even the flag has given up.” Papillon, having observed the brief moment, refocused his attention on the APC.
The previous night’s events had left their mark on the vehicle. Singed and bloody, the colour of its exterior bore little resemblance to what had once been a brilliant white paint job. Soot, intestines, and dried black grime covered most of its nose. Charcoal handprints and smears adorned its sides like m
orbid cave paintings of an ancient tribe. A blend of ash and morning dew had covered its roof in a grimy grey coat. Brass casings lay scattered across it, the faint acridity of gunpowder mixing with the sickly sweet odour of death. Amadou pinched his nose.
“You never get used to it.” Papillon grimaced.
They jumped across, struggling to steady their feet on the slippery surface. While Amadou slid down the side to inspect the APC’s undercarriage, Papillon dropped into the cabin and quickly conducted a count of the remaining ammunition.
It was a routine neither of them had discussed or consciously decided upon. It was simply what they had done since the start of their odyssey. And while Amadou had frequently lamented the gruesome assignment of clearing the undercarriage of whatever mangled dead accumulated on any given day, he at the same time relished the fact that his lanky frame and agility made him indispensable to the task.
The clanking of cups echoing from somewhere behind the wall announced the return of life to the compound’s interior. Faith, having rummaged around in the small restaurant at the rear of the main entrance, returned with a handful of mugs and a steaming kettle.
“Gas bottles are still half full.” She winked, putting the tray down on one of the weathered wooden tables dotted about the courtyard.
Amadou and Papillon returned and, along with the others, eagerly went for the mugs of hot brown liquid.
“I think you better wash up first.” Faith turned up her nose.
“Occupational hazard.” Amadou grinned, straightening his slime-covered jacket.
“Might as well take advantage of a shower and clean towels.” Tom stepped out from his room, still drying his hair.
Faith handed him a coffee and then turned to David.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere Page 28