Unlid the Fury

UNLID THE FURY A NOVEL BY KENECHUKWU OBI 1 CHAPTER 1 PROLOGUE: THE V1B6F3 VICIOUS ATTACK Their act had been perfected, a product of three experts on a deadly mission—a deadly pathogen now prowled around the world, a product that was more than just a mere pathogen. It was not a virus or a bacterium. Neither was it a fungus. You can be sure that one thing was ingrained in its DNA. And, there was nothing else except complete annihilation. A very virulent strain, cultured after a long time of painstaking work backed with steely resolve never to admit failure. It was cultured to ravage, cultured to conquer. “God is great! God is great!” These were the chants that rented the atmosphere as they left the mouths that produced them. There were smiles all over the three faces that were there, very wide smiles. Everyone took off their white lab coats immediately after the deed had been done, and busy hands were seen no more in the laboratory. A sense of having accomplished the mission hung everywhere like grape branches heavy with lots of fruit. The men embraced one another so tightly that they seemed like lovers who hadn’t seen each other for a very long time. “God is great!” said one of them again, as he roared in thunderous laughter, threw his hands up, and jumped up and down as if he was an elementary school boy whose father had just returned from work with his favorite cookie biscuit. “The enemy ought to have known that no one messes with us and gets away with it,” another added. “That is right!” said one of them, “Strike at the heart of the enemy once you can! God is great!” 2 “God is great! God is great! God is great!” The three now began to chant. No one was happier than them. The depth of joy that they experienced was just unreachable. It is funny how joy can mean a lot of things to lots of people. The element of surprise will never be in a hurry to cease to exist in this world. No one can disprove the fact that change is the only constant thing in our world and have any degree of success doing that. Surprise has this enduring character of change. It sneaks in on us and often leaves us wondering how we never saw it coming. But, it wouldn’t be what it is if we saw it coming. Its soul and essence would be dead once it becomes easy to predict the time of its arrival. Its joy always overflows whenever it takes us unaware. It knocks at our doors at its times of choosing, to continue to let us know that we cannot always be always aware of all things, or to make it abundantly clear to us that when we think that we are in control of all things, we are not. That when we think that we are secure, we are most certainly not. Surprise makes us know that when we think that our enemy is completely shut out, we could be wrong. It comes to us uninvited. It walks into our lives and our world without its footsteps being heard. It can jolt us up from our sleep and awaken us to the harsh reality of danger if it chooses to do so. What can it not do without our knowledge of it? There is nothing you can cite as an example. We cannot know if, when, and how it will choose to strike. Otherwise, its name will no longer be what it is. The best way to take your target by surprise is to make sure that it does not see you coming. And that was exactly what the brains behind the V1B6F3 pathogen did to ensure that any trace of smile faded off from all the faces in the world. This became the case from the United States to the United Kingdom, from Canada to Germany, from France to Russia, from China to Australia. The whole world began to feel the heat. World leaders were feeling the pinch. Globally, ordinary people were worse off. The Food 3 and Agricultural Organization and, indeed, the whole of the United Nations had lost their sleep. Agriculture ministers from every single sovereign nation in planet Earth were running about like a bunch of big rats in garbage cans, coming together, huddling up in cozy conference rooms, and brainstorming, just to conceive and adopt the best of the variety of ideas on the way forward. However, this was to no avail, as the conferences always ended with the delegates working away without a workable idea. The best plant pathologists and researchers of the world were caught in their slumber. The whole world was looking up to them to come up with a quick solution when they could not even figure out a single one. Their professional qualifications and all their groundbreaking feats had been awesome until now. However, the V1B6F3 had proved invincible and had rubbished them all. It had left these men of science wandering around the best equipped labs available throughout the world, only to appear lost and generally confused, not being able to distinguish their left from their right. The V1B6F3 made them run around these labs with creases as thick as the Great Wall of China, well-manifested on their terror-stricken faces. Large beads of sweat were trickling off their bodies, which together emitted a stench as pungent as a garbage pile. The whole picture was that of a gathering of professionals who suddenly had become childish amateurs in their established trade. One would capture it aptly by saying that all of them looked like kindergarten children who were in pathology labs for the very first time. “I must confess that I have never seen anything like this before.” “You are right! I have never seen this throughout my practice.” “Where could this have come from?” “This thing has defied all my attempts to identify it.” “Is it a microbe?” 4 “Do you think I know?” This virgin situation had struck, and had compelled them to sound deflated, awful, and ridiculous. “But you’ve always known the answers.” “I can guess that you now know better. I used to believe that you are very smart. What has happened of late?” “Now you know you have believed wrongly. Don’t ever take such a dangerous risk again.” “I will be sure not to, that is if the world survives this invasion.” “Yes, I understand you outright. No life, no research, no pathology…” “And no science.” “My Nobel prize award is in tatters. I wouldn’t have accepted it if I had known that this stalemate would come over to defeat me.” “Oh…Professor…Why are you talking like this? Have you forgotten that not knowing what will come up next is common in this practice?” “Please pardon me for forgetting it so soon.” “This thing spreads at an alarming speed.” “I cannot say whether it is a virus or a bacterium or a fungus, even with all my knowledge…” “Resignation is calling me now.” 5 “This is serious! How then are we supposed to find a remedy?” “You had better ask someone who should know.” “And who would that be if not us?” “Anyway forward? You have one?” “I am empty.” “That is it! Empty! We are all empty.” “Hey! Let anyone amongst us who is not empty and has the way forward speak!” The whole laboratory suddenly assumed the silence of a graveyard. If any of the pathologists or other sound minds of science that were there had dropped any pin to the ground at this time, it would have been heard loud and clear like the blast of a bomb. The V1B6F3 showed no mercy whatsoever as it unleashed the widespread c*****e it was genetically engineered to deliver. It was furious. It went about its business just like California wild fires, without an atom of any respect or regard for any of its targets. It made sure that ugly sights were left behind in its destructive trail wherever it visited. Farmers all over the world were being rendered absolutely helpless by its brazen attack. They could do nothing other than moping like wretched imbeciles as their livelihoods got swept away. All they could see were their labor, talent, touch, and expertise, that used to put big smiles on their faces, infuse dignity in their character, and got them laughing to their banks, being nothing but a big disaster. There were dark-brown spots on leaves and stems of growing plants which eventually got them to dry up. Some plants had been afflicted with stunted growth in their vines. There were reduced branch formations in trees which quickly caused leaves to be unusually small. Distorted 6 leaves with significantly reduced sizes, wilting and eventual death of young stems and leaves, very weak stems prone to breakage by a slight breeze because of the cankers created on them had also become commonplace. Blighting of leaves, gums issuing from stems that finally became dead, lesions on leaves that substantially reduced surfaces available for photosynthesis to occur, and lesions on roots affected all the crops. Tuber crops were afflicted with cracks, soft, dry and spongy rot. Withered leaves were everywhere. Maize cobs were reduced to galls that were nothing but a bunch of spores. Many leaves carried brown spots with yellow streaks on them as well. It was really horrible! One thing that was not lacking was the presence of seed-borne spores that attacked and killed young seedlings. Yellow leaves flourished and were very busy falling off. Totally mottled, stunted, and scorched plants were among many more of the things that turned out to be uncountable. They were just ubiquitous. Counting them would amount to an attempt to count the number of stars in the sky with frail n***d eyes that were heavily infected with glaucoma. It, therefore, came as no surprise at all to have gaunt-looking wild, domestic, and farm animals roaming about endlessly with fast-diminishing hopes of finding what used to be readily available food. There were mews, brays, bleats, and lots of other sounds that go synonymous with animals. The only thing different was that this time, they were fueled by hard-biting hunger. How would they find life in planet Earth to be interesting when the V1B6F3 had made grass so scarce for the herbivorous ones amongst them? And, with the herbivorous animals finding it increasingly hard to scoop out any blade of grass, the carnivorous ones became faced with big threats to their existence. In this situation, who would then dare to ask dairy cows why their udders had gone dry without any drop of milk? If there was no grazing, there would be no milk for sure. I am sure that any farmer that would even attempt to harbor such a question within the 7 confines of his mind must be seen by the cows as a selfish fool that only deserved a hard knock of their hooves on his groin. So, animals started eating up other animals whom they would not have eaten if all had been well. It became common to see big cats, like lions or cheetahs, in pursuit of small rats or lizards, thereby making the small wild cats starve so badly. It was that bad. Even animal carcasses became very rare soon, and so the vultures felt the heat as well. Prices of the very scarce food crops rose so fast and aimed for the sky. And, only a psychiatric hospital patient, whose case was beyond the ability of medical science to comprehend, would attempt to announce that there was abundance of animal protein. The dream of an automobile world completely driven by bio-fuel was shrinking fast, now hanging by a loose thread that was thinner than the legs of a mosquito. Hunger and starvation were flexing their big biceps with reckless abandon. And, therefore, the human race had no other choice than to drift to the track of extinction at the lightning speed of Formula One cars. 8 CHAPTER 2