Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

Before Agu could say or do anything, one of the boys swung his machete at the soldier. Thock! The blade chopped through the soldier’s shoulder and blood spattered onto Agu’s face. The soldier screamed. Shocked and guttural. Then the scream became high-pitched and inhuman. Like glass balls whirled around in a glass jar. Agu was running before he knew he was running. Behind him he heard the Area Boys start screaming. Then there was a wet slurping sound. He didn’t look back.

Ayodele , he thought. That thing was like Ayodele . They were not helpless. They could feel pain. And they did not like it.

He ran across a street clogged with women linking arms – he didn’t hear what they were chanting, but walking in front of the linked women were three women who looked as if they’d been severely beaten. He ran through two groups of people smashing and looting. He ran through a main road congested with a go-slow so tightly packed that no one was moving and the air was nearly unbreathable. He stuck to as many alleys and side roads as he could. He did not speak to anyone. He did not fight with anyone. He did not help anyone… unless he couldn’t avoid it. Though the night was cool and the sky was clear, Lagos was broiling.

It had only been five hours since he’d seen Ayodele’s people walk out of the sea. Now, the gate in front of Adaora’s house had been torn down. The lawn looked as if it had been trampled by giants. Only the plantain tree was untouched. One of the windows in the upper part of the house was burned but no longer burning freely, embers glowing in the darkness. The street was relatively empty and littered with debris from garbage to tear gas canisters. Tear gas canisters? he thought. What had happened here since he’d left?

He knocked on the door. Adaora opened it. Without a word, he took her in his arms. If he let go, he was sure he’d fly into space.

Fisayo was back on Bar Beach, watching the thing hovering over the water. It was undulating and glowing and she could see other things in the water just below it. Large things that rolled beneath the alien lights. She had a chunk of cardboard on her lap. In her hand, she carried a permanent marker she’d found.

A cool breeze swept off the water and it felt good in her short, damaged hair. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been outside without a wig. She normally wore long wigs of straight glossy black hair, usually expensive with lace-fronts. Her scalp suffered but her pocketbook always prospered.

Her days of whoring seemed so long ago now. The world had changed. Lagos was eating itself. She took the cap off the marker. It looked new. Good. When she touched it to the cardboard she felt such a strong tingle of emotion, she knew what she was doing was right.

Slowly, she wrote. Her hand was steady. Her mind was cloudy, though she thought it was clear. She didn’t think she’d ever see her cross-dressing brother again. He would not be welcome in heaven and nor would she. Fisayo sat back and examined her work. In the moonlight and the dim beach lights, she smiled. Yes, this was perfect.

Her sign read, “Repent. Lagos will never be destroyed!”

Her pants were filthy. Her blouse was stained with blood – her own and someone else’s – and the dirt of the earth. Her hair smelled of sweat and was stiff with sand and smoke residue. Her face was dirty with streaks from her own tears. Her bare feet ached and bled. She could not remember when she’d lost her shoes.

She stood up. She would tell everyone. She had seen aliens. And she knew for a fact that they could never ever be trusted. She would fight until there was nothing left to fight for because she loved Lagos. She’d shoved her wig cap into her bra and now she brought it out. She pulled the elastic string from her wig cap and tied each end to holes she made in her sign. Then she hung the sign around her neck.

When she reached the street, which was boiling over with confused, angry, fighting, laughing, destructive, terrified, driving, walking, running Lagosians, she raised her chin and then her voice: “Repent! Everyone! The end is nigh, o! Look to your left! Look to your right! Look up! Are they your friends? Your relatives? Or are they something else? Look closely, o! Repent!”

It was past midnight and Chris was still stuck in traffic but at least everyone seemed calm. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The white man was sitting in back and Fred was looking at him with a great smile on his face. Kola sat in the passenger seat but had twisted around to look at the white man, too. He’d spoken in Yoruba-accented English and said his name was Oluwatosin. He wore a rather expensive-looking white buba and sokoto and white leather shoes tipped with gold. He certainly dressed and spoke like a Yoruba man of means. But there was more to being Yoruba than language and style of dress.

While driving, Chris had spotted the strange white man being harassed by a group of young men. He’d understood instantly that the strange white man was one of them. Chris had screeched to a stop and yelled for the man to get the hell into the car. They’d driven in silence for five minutes now and Chris didn’t know what to do. At least no one was dead. Those idiots harassing him had no idea how close they’d come to being hunks of bloody meat.

“You’re one of them , aren’t you, Mr Oluwatosin?” Kola asked.

The man nodded and caught Chris’s eye in the mirror. “I am.”

Chris took a deep breath and muttered a prayer. He considered calling Father Oke and asking for his advice. Then he remembered he was through with that fraud of a holy man. “What… what is it you people will do?” Chris asked.

“We are doing what is already happening,” Oluwatosin said.

Chris was about to ask another question when Fred asked, “Can he come with us? He can join us for dinner!”

Chris’s body clenched. He’d wanted to drop the man-thing off the first chance he got and then speed away. He still didn’t understand why he’d saved him. His actions were mad and he was endangering his children. But now his son had put him in a difficult position. Hopefully, Oluwatosin had other plans. There was always that chance.

“Would you like to come to dinner? A… a late dinner?” Chris asked.

“I would like that very much.”

Chris cringed. Shit shit shit , he thought. Fred and Kola grinned widely at each other.

Kola squealed with glee and exclaimed, “This is the happiest night of my life!”

The top right of Moziz’ “face me, I face you” apartment building was smoldering and there was a group of people outside it who seemed to be having a very wild party. Why, even Mrs Ogbu was there, waving a bottle of Guinness, laughing raucously and making lewd gestures at the slowly perishing building. She’d lived there longer than anyone, having moved there when her husband, the Minister of Education, left her and their two children for a young British white woman. Her two sons had since left and she’d become an angry, hectoring fixture ever since. She was obsessed with the Lord Jesus Christ and believed everyone else should be, too. She yelled at Moziz every time he left his apartment. When she wasn’t at one of Father Oke Ikwuemesibe’s services, she was outside her apartment, proving her devotion by bothering the other tenants.

Now she was drunk and doing a vulgar, undulating and grinding dance to some music playing from an SUV as her home burned. Moziz’ home. Moziz’ life. His online scamming was over… at least for a little while. He could always just use a cyber café later. If any of them still remain after all this wahala don pass , he’d thought to himself.