THE SON OF ELI 2: LIKE A GOD

CHAPTER 1: SHORELINE

The sea would bring him to his home.

The son of King Eli knew that.

His home, the Kingdom of Eli, was an island that was almost parallel with Madagascar, although relatively bigger. He was in Ghana now, and with every known means of road and air transport broken down, the sea offered his only means of getting to the island.

So he stayed close to the shoreline with the hope that he would find a canoe, maybe a boat even, and move faster. Sometimes he ran, sometimes he walked, and sometimes he jumped high into the sky.

Jumping made him travel faster as he could cover vast distances in one leap. It exhilarated him, filled him with unbridled joy to jump so high into the sky, spread his arms, and land several kilometres from his starting point. Once, he jumped from a jutting rock and went so high that he found him staring at a hawk above the clouds, and laughed when he saw the flash of horror in the eyes of the powerful bird as it squawked with terror and veered sharply away from him.

"Keep calm, my friend," Eli said as he began to descend. "I mean you no harm."

One other thing Eli realized about himself was the fact that he could go many days without feeling hungry or weak. He was never tired and could keep moving for several days. Sometimes, out of curiosity, he would go a bit inland to examine things that caught his fancy, but he generally stayed close to the shoreline. His sight and sense of hearing were extremely developed, and he could see things at far distances with clarity.

And, as the days wore on, as he made his laborious journey, he began to develop an intense hatred for the Tombers, Searots, Red Circles and beasts of prey that had rendered humanity to tattered and hunted scavengers. And whenever he saw a horde, he stopped and got rid of them. One less of these accursed fiends meant a little freedom and respite for a human somewhere.

He lost track of time after a while, but that was alright. As long as he kept moving along the coast, he would eventually get home. He took a detour farther inland when he spotted high coconut trees on the grassy plains along the shoreline. The sun was high, and he suddenly felt dehydrated and a bit weak.

Coconuts had become one of his best delicacies when he was at the sports complex, so when he looked into the trees and saw them filled with the sweet tropical fruits, he jumped up the first tree, found a stout place to sit, and deftly plucked one of the fruits. He peeled it with his fingers and poked a finger into one of the soft spots on the nut. He upended it and drank thirstily.

He drank several of the sweet, rich coconut juices before he began cracking them and eating the delicious insides.

He belched loudly, wiped his fingers on the fronds, and was about to jump down from the tree when the screams reached his ears. He stiffened and craned his neck, peering through the palm fronds, and he saw them almost immediately.

The people that had screamed were on the seashore.

He saw three tired and bedraggled humans running weakly on the shore. One of them fell often, and it took a long time for him to get up again each time. He was gesticulating towards the other two, and it was evident that he was urging them to move away, to leave him.

The other two were women, and they were weeping, screaming even, and refusing to leave the man behind.

And, pursuing them and approaching rapidly, was a horde of about twenty Searots.

The man stumbled and fell again flat on his face, and that was when Eli noticed something on the man's back: it was a clear, distinct colour!

Red!

The man was hurt, and he was bleeding!

The two women held each other and screamed!

The man gestured frantically to them to flee and save their lives, but they stayed. They watched helplessly as the growling, snarling, rotting Searots bore down on the man!

The Searot in the lead was a huge, bearded man. His body was a putrid green mess, but he was still wearing the once-white tattered clothes of a captain.

Thick, messy gooey dripped from his lips as he bent and grabbed the man's right ankle and opened his mouth wide to bite. The man screamed and struggled helplessly as he watched that horrible mouth descending on his foot.

The rage roared within Eli, and without hesitation, he jumped from the coconut tree, arced through the air, and dropped behind the Searot captain.

And there he stood, a tall, huge, muscled, dressed in his black jeans, black hoodie, black boots, a mysteriously magnificent embodiment of manhood and charisma. The two women huddled on the beach stared at him like he was a ghost.

He smashed a blow into the temple of the Searot, and the captain's head exploded in a messy shower of green brain matter. The body stayed upright for a moment, still gripping the man's leg, then it keeled sideways and crashed down on the beach.

The man, whimpering and almost delirious with horror, scrambled frantically to the two women and held them tightly, but his eyes never strayed from the stranger who had just saved him.

The other Searots were hurrying towards Eli, and he growled softly in his throat and moved towards them, stopping only briefly to pick up a large piece of rough-hewn brown rock on the beach.

"We must leave!" the man cried desperately as his breathing quietened a bit. "We must go now!"

"He saved you, Pa!" said the younger woman, her beautiful face appalled. "We can't leave him like that! We need to help him if we can!"

The older woman shook her head numbly as she stared with a mixture of terror and fascination at the young man facing the Searots with a piece of rock.

"He fears them not!" she whispered with awe. "And his strength and skill are unimaginable! Surely, he might be a god!"

"We need to go!" the man said desperately. "He could mean a danger to us! Mayhaps, he saved us for reasons that might not be honourable!"

"I doubt that very much, my love," the older woman said. "He fights them with fury and disgust! Whoever he is, we need him, at least until we leave this accursed beach!"

The son of Eli Kem moved through the Searots with sizzling fury. He moved with precision and speed, smashing their brains out with heavy swings of the rock in his hand as he moved away from their deadly fingers and teeth.

They fell around him, one by one, bursting into flames as he smashed them with relentless fury, his feet moving lightly on the seashore with graceful, fluid movements.

He lost count of them as the rage took over, but finally, his foot shot out into the right thigh of the last one, snapping the leg off and causing the Searot to crash down on its stump, snarling with fury and slashing at Eli with its deadly hands.

Eli crashed the rock into his face, and the Searot slammed down hard on his back. Eli took a step forward and threw the brown rock into the head of the monster, breaking the skull of the Searot and spilling out its brains. The Searot squirmed for a moment before exploding into purple flames.

Eli stood there breathing hard for a moment until the fury, and sizzling emotions quietened down, then he turned slowly and stared at the three people he had just saved.