Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

Ayodele looked out at the people. Kola was directly in front of her with the camera and so it seemed that when Ayodele looked at the crowd before her, she looked out at all the people watching on large and small screens in Lagos. The expression on Ayodele’s face was serious, almost threatening. Intense.

“So, what will you do?” Ayodele asked.

Her captivated audience was completely silent.

Then… BOOM!

Bar Beach was deserted. There were now barricades preventing anyone from coming onto it. A minute after the second great sound eruption, military men and police who’d been guarding the place had dropped or pocketed their mobile phones and run off. The noise was huge. It was bigger and richer than the one from the previous night. All the car and building windows in a one-mile radius shattered; birds, insects and bats fell to the ground, dogs barked, cats hid, lizards scurried, several forms of bacteria died and others germinated. The noise this time was so profound that many of the weaker multi-cellular organisms in parts of the ocean closest to the source were obliterated.

Only Private Agu sat on the beach, yards from the water, sopping wet. The cut on his forehead had begun bleeding again but the swelling on his face had gone down… some. The sea cow had left him about a fifth of a mile from the beach. As he’d started swimming to safety, a rip current nearly dragged him back out to sea to his death. Thankfully he knew to swim parallel to it and managed to make it to shore.

He’d crawled out of the water and turned to see if the sea cow was anywhere in sight. It was gone. It probably hadn’t even witnessed his brief struggle in the water. And that was when he’d heard the sonic boom. It knocked him off his feet, and he fell, face-first, into the sand where he lay for a long moment, his ears ringing. He didn’t cover them. He didn’t wipe the blood from his face. He forgot for the moment about finding his way back to Adaora’s house to find them: Adaora, Anthony and the possibly evil Ayodele. Instead he just sat there. For nearly twenty minutes, he sat there.

Gradually, he realized something was happening. He squinted at the sea. At first all he could see were tiny weaving lights against the darkening sky. Then he became aware that he was no longer alone on the beach. There were people with mobile phones and torches. He could hear voices raised in excitement.

A crash came from the street behind him, but his attention was drawn to something that was lying on the beach, huge and black against the city lights. Was it another monster? He’d seen plenty in the sea as the manatee had brought him to shore. But if it was, why would these people be here? It was black and nearly the size of a bus, and there was a crowd around it.

“A whale?” he whispered, squinting harder. It didn’t help. He got up and stumbled toward the huge lump but then his legs collapsed and he sat down hard on the sand.

There was a man running from the lump up the beach. He changed course and ran to Agu, a grin on his face. He was carrying a big whitish chunk in his arms. “Na from street you come?” he asked.

“No,” Agu said.

The man laughed. “You look like say na from de street you come. Anyway, sha , no wahala . People dey craze. Na only God fit provide. E get big fish for there wey from water come. De fish face be like autobus, but e get plenty meat for body.”

“What… ?”

“Go get your own before other people take am finish, o!” the man said. He took off with his meat before Agu could say more. Agu felt as if the world had turned upside down. Everything seemed dreamlike. He looked toward the street where the flames of a burning building lit up the area. He saw and heard people milling about vigorously in the streets and cars and trucks beeping as they tried to get through. It looked like a riot. Yet here were these people carving up what could only be a whale. Even in the midst of such chaos, people were still people. Still hungry and hoping to take advantage of a good situation.

As he sat he saw shapes in the water, illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun, moving toward the land. They grew, rising out of the waves, coalescing into recognizable shapes. Human shapes. They were people, hundreds of people, walking straight out of the ocean onto Bar Beach. First they were wet. Then they were dry. At least, that was how it looked to Agu in the waning light. Some passed by only a few steps from him. Others walked further up and down the beach. Several walked out of the water mere feet from the dead whale. The Lagosians were so preoccupied with securing their share of the bounty that they never looked twice at the space people walking out of the sea.

Some of them were dressed in various types of traditional garb, some in military attire, some in police uniforms, others in westernized civilian clothes. Most of them were African, a small few Asian, one white. All were completely dry and Agu could smell roses and seaweed as they drifted past him. All of them could pass for Lagosians.

They walked up the beach as an enormous object, all shifting oily black spires and spirals and brown and yellow lights, rose out of the water. It swallowed up the darkening horizon with its girth.

Only then did the people carving up the whale pause to look up. Then they took their meat and got out of that place as quickly as possible.

For a tarantula, he is not very big. He lost a leg battling a pepsis wasp five years ago. But he is healthy. He lives well. This patch of forest is good for him – full of plump, slow-moving and juicy prey, and rich dark places to catch them.

Nevertheless, the tarantula believes that life is best lived by embracing the changes that come his way. So he gently places a leg on the cool pavement; the leg beside the space of the one he lost. This leg is the most sensitive, always has been. With it, he can feel the soul of the great spider artist of the land, she who weaves all things into existence.

There is no vibration on the road. No approaching human vehicles. But he knows that when they come, they come fast and hard. He has crossed this highway many times. And always in the late evening when the surface is cool. Like now.

Still, each crossing has been a close call. First he would feel the vibrations, and then a vehicle would appear on the horizon. He’d scramble for the other side, wondering if it was finally time to be reborn. But he had always made it and gone on to experience the meaty bloody bounty of the new patch of forest.

Today it is time to seek fresh pastures again. Something dynamic has happened. Last night, he felt a vibration so intense it made his entire body shudder with pleasure. Then hours ago, he felt an even more intense vibration, down to the finest hairs on his body, the spinners in his abdomen, the bottoms of each of his feet. The vibration was glorious. It was a call for change.

Now, he will answer that call.

The moment his sensitive leg touches the pavement, he starts running. Strangely, losing a leg has made him faster and more agile. This has always been to his advantage in capturing food and mating. Despite the physical pain, the blow to his identity that the loss of the leg caused, he knows that that wasp did him a favor.

He is only a third of the way across the road when the rumbling comes. The vibration. But not the delicious vibration of last night, or of hours ago. This one is average, expected, uninspiring. A human vehicle. The tarantula scrambles faster, certain that he will make it across. Certain of his extraordinary speed.

Crunch .