THE SON OF ELI

CHAPTER 10: THE NEW WORLD

That thing buried inside the Sinaki Plateau, the thing they called The Purple Visitor, might have felt pretty happy with itself. It was burrowed inside the crater and covered with that impenetrable purple cloud, comfortably waiting for energizing fuel. The hordes of evil soldiers he had released on earth caused their havoc, killing humans and sending them as energy to the alien inside the crater.

Eventually, all systems broke down completely everywhere on earth.

The humans who were selected to cause anarchy eventually became known as the Red Circles. Seemingly indestructible, they ruled the earth, and soon had human stooges and lieutenants working for them out of sheer terror.

The bodies that came out of the sea were mostly rotten and covered with green moss, and they became known as the Searots, because they were dead, rotten corpses from the sea.

The ones that came out of the burial grounds and the earth became known as the Tombers. Quirky names that just sprung up and became global handles. The Searots, Tombers and Red Circles were not at peace with each other though and attacked each other whenever their paths crossed.

Finally, the beasts of prey were also in the fray. These beasts had escaped the jungles and broken the laws of nature, and were now occupying the remains of the cites with just one rule of engagement: kill humans! They were foraging and wailing constantly on the prowl, killing machines that could not be stopped!

Vicious cats, scary reptiles, maddened birds, and poisonous crawlies were on the prowl, springing out of crevices, spaces, hiding places, tearing humans apart with palpable wrath.

The first wave was horrible.

Humans across the globe died in millions, their liquefied remains sailing across the sky to that thing inside the crater, healing it and giving it more strength as it hibernated.

So, yes, it might have been pretty pleased with itself. It had succeeded in destroying the existing world order, murdered millions of innocent humans just for energy, and it waited for its meter to fill up and then wake up.

It was a done deal, seemingly.

But, it did not foresee one thing: the in-built resistance of humans, that pocket of the soul that worked on resolve and filled the heart with hope, and sometimes caused even the worst of cowards to stand up, take a stand, and fight back!

The purple thing did not foresee that single fact: humans would always find ways to survive!

So, it was back to basics. Friends banded together to form small parcels of survivors. Total strangers came together to hunker down. In abandoned buildings, in the forests, in vans, in open space, in caves, everywhere habitable, they made homes and took stands. They laid traps, made crude weapons, foraged for food, adapted to the harsh conditions, and tried to stay alive!

It was a time that brought out the worst in humans and saw some of them committing the most heinous of actions. And it was also a period that brought out the good in others, so that they sacrificed for their kind, and shared with others, most often total strangers, freely!

It was the new world order, and there was only one law: survival!

Nobody knew where help would come from, or if it ever would. Nobody knew if there would be an end to the Searots and the Tombers. They wondered if the Red Circles would be rendered powerless and the threats they represented taken away. They wondered if the beasts would return to the wild, and leave them alone.

But nobody knew, for sure.

However, they had one thing which the Purple Visitor did not know about: hope.

No matter the adversity, no matter the harshness of the terrain, human beings would find a way to survive and thrive on nothing but the concept of hope, that one day - no matter how long - things would change. That was the character of humans, and that was something which could never be taken away from them.

In their weakness and helplessness, they held on tenaciously and made the quest of the alien as hard as they could.

Time passed, the deaths continued, the chaos intensified.

The thing in the crater progressively got strong and deadlier.

Time crawled, and the hope dimmed as the deaths increased.

Day after day, month after slow month, years!

The world continued to disintegrate, albeit at a slower pace.

And after eighteen years, it seemed the Purple Visitor was finally getting the energy load it required. Although the human survivors did not see it, that thing began to move slowly inside the crater.

It was almost time for it to wake up, and do with the earth as it pleased!

***

The Indian Ocean dragged the glass globule that had the son of Eli out to sea!

It was of great interest to the deadly sharks who attacked it mercilessly, trying to crunch down on it and gobble up the little tiny tot lying inside the diffusion of liquids.

Dr Victor Biko's strange incubator held, though, and did not break. That genius of a man had discovered a new glass material that made the incubator as hard as rock and super-resistant to attack.

A particularly savage megalodon – resurrected by the purple light – fought with that glass globule for close to half an hour, crunching down time and again, and managed to c***k the glass a bit. Eventually, it swallowed the glass globule whole.

This massive shark moved through the Indian Ocean and attacked the survivors of a sinking ship near the coast of Madagascar, killing twelve people on board. It eventually vomited the glass globule near the southern tip of Madagascar, amazingly.

The incubator was, once again, dragged into the Indian Ocean for several days until it got lodged in a cove on the South African shoreline.

It stayed within the cove for two years. Finally, a massive storm drew it out and carried it into the Atlantic Ocean. The waters took it far to sea for several months, and then it was caught by the lines of a fishing trawler belonging to a brave fisherman from Angola who had ventured into the sea to catch fish for his starving neighbours.

When he returned to shore, he was mauled to death by a crazed lion, and so the glass globule remained in his nets for two years more. It remained comparatively safe because the seashore was abandoned for many years after the apocalypse.

The incubator finally fell from the nets and was washed out to sea again.

The human being inside that globule now looked like a young boy, although he remained still, as if in death, still submerged in the mixture of strange fluids which Sali Kem had released into the globule in a moment of maddened wrath.

The Atlantic Ocean eventually took the glass globule to the shores of West Africa. It bobbed gracefully on top of the sea as it travelled serenely down the coastal fronts of West Africa until a big, tidal wave picked it up and dragged it to the coastal front of Beach Road, a suburb of the big Ghanaian city called Takoradi. There were a lot of jagged brown rocks on this coastal line, and a particularly nasty wave tossed the glass globule high over the rocks and dropped it into a V-shaped crevice containing seawater and the corpse of a man wearing army fatigues.

It was a secured place that never filled with seawater, protected by the rocks, and so the glass globule remained for many years.

The son of King Eli – dead or alive – remained inside that globule until his eighteenth birthday, if he had been born, or cracked out of that strange incubator.

***

Perhaps, what pained Jo the most was the fact that she had risked her life to save Anita the first time she saw her. Ironically, Mike had been strongly against it and had tried to stop her from saving the poor girl.

That had been a year ago.

Josephine Annan – Jo to all that knew her – was forty years old. She had been a twenty-two-year-old medical student when the Meltdown happened. That was what they called it now, the Meltdown. Not the apocalypse, or the destruction, or the disaster, or anything as horrible as those names, no. Nothing had really melted down, in the real sense of the word, but Meltdown it had come to be referred to, and it had stayed.

The only reason she had been alive was that she had been outside with her boyfriend, Pat, discussing the horrible things that were happening. When the tidal tsunami hit, she had lost her parents, her brother, and her little sister.

The world had changed after that, but she had remained with Pat, who had also lost his senior brother. In the craziness that happened afterwards, they had moved from their town, Apowa, on foot, seeking protection and shelter, running from death at every corner. Finally, just when it seemed there was no hope and they were going to be killed by a ferocious, maddened lion, a huge fuel truck had roared down the street and smashed into the lion just as it leapt high for Pat's throat.

The passenger door had opened, and a little man in a doctor's tunic had beckoned to them. They had joined him in the truck, and eventually, he had brought them to the abandoned Sports Complex at Beach Road where he had a small community.

The facility had eight buildings that had served diverse purposes to the sports complex. The buildings were surrounded by a golf course on the beach, and so the land was big enough for new members to pitch tents or build huts.

The man who had saved them was called John. He would not give any other name, and so they all called him Dr John. He had saved others, about twenty people then, and managed to keep them safe within the compound. Luckily, the Sports Complex had fenced off its property with twelve-foot metal fencing around the huge perimeter, and this kept out the Tombers, Searots and the beasts. The main gate was secured and fortified, and so security was relatively guaranteed.

It had not been so hard at first because the Complex – as it was popularly known – had a sick bay with beds and a stack of medicines. Their canteen had a good stock of canned and tinned food, and bags of rice, legumes, and cereals.

Dr John had made Jo his assistant because of her background as a medical student and started teaching her the fine craft of a medical doctor. She and Pat had been given a room, and shortly afterwards they got married. Jo had wanted so much to start a family even though Pat had been against it. He had felt the danger was too active for them to bring innocent children into the world. However, she had not been able to get pregnant.

Pat, who had been a soldier, had been the head of the Utility Team.

Dr John had put in place teams to make sure life at the centre, at least, had some semblance of order. He and Jo were the Medical Team. There were Kitchen, Store, and even Cleaning Teams.

The Utility Team basically went out in search of food, water, medicine and any other item that the community would meet.

Eight years after their marriage, Pat had gone out in search of a young man on his team who had gone to the beach and had not shown up.

Pat never returned.

Jo had been inconsolable and had retreated into her shell. Consumed by grief, she had thrown herself into doing more than she was allocated to, just to fill her hours and keep her mind from dwelling on her loss.

Mike Mensah had been Pat's assistant. A tall, muscular, and handsome man, he had been Jo's friend through her ordeal. Five years after Pat's disappearance – that was what Jo preferred to see it, disappearance – Mike had told her in his calm way how much he was in love with her.

Jo had been afraid because she had still been holding on to hopes that Pat might return. Mike had been gentle but persistent, and finally, Jo had allowed him to get close to her.

They had been married for four years, happily, she chose to believe when Anita came on the scene.

The day they had found Anita had been an eventful day. Jo had gone with Mike and the Utility Team in search of medicine at the abandoned government hospital nearby. They used an armoured truck on such expeditions. Mike had not wanted her along, but she had insisted. They needed specific medicines for a young girl, Nancy, who had been brought in recently and suffering from severe malnutrition and shock.

Jo had felt she was best placed to select medicines quickly instead of the usual way of giving the list to the team.

They had been attacked by a horde of Searots and had to leave quickly. On the way back to the Complex, they had come across Anita.

A pack of hyenas had been chasing her and her senior sister, Amanda. They had seen Amanda on the ground screaming and unable to run, her right leg oozing blood as the hyenas leapt on her. There had been no way to help her.

A minute after passing her, they saw the young woman running on the road and pursued by two of the hyenas. Her face had been frantic as the armoured truck zoomed near.

"Stop!" Jo had said desperately. "Let's take her!"

"No, Jo, no!" Mike had said frantically. "This is a horde zone! It is near the zoo. Horrible beasts, Tombers, Searots! We can't stop, not now. You can't save them all!"

The young girl's frantic eyes had shot straight into Jo's heart.

"Please, stop! Don't leave her like this!"

"Jo, get a grip on yourself!" Mike said harshly. "It is not pleasant, I know. But these situations are risky! Sometimes we need to make the hard choices!"

So, Jo simply threw open the back door of the truck and began to jump.

"Jo, Jesus!" Mike cried in alarm. "Stop the truck, Stan! Goddamn it, Jo!"

Jo jumped down when the truck slowed down because she had seen the young lady tripping and crashing on the hot street as the hyenas bore down on her. They were huge, dirty, and mean! Saliva dropped off their jaws in sticky, frothy messes! On their foreheads blazed three blood-red concentric circles!

As one of the beasts bore down on the helpless girl, the other peeled away and bounded towards Jo with evil in its eyes. Jo's heart quailed inside, but Mike was suddenly beside her and raising his AK-47 assault rifle. He fired directly into the concentric circles, and the hyena's head exploded in a shower of blood!

As it fell, Jo dashed past it, grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled hard so that the hyena's lunge missed the girl's foot by an inch. One of the team had also joined them, and he joined Mike to shoot at the hyena. However, its head was down, and they missed the circles. The bullets thudded into its body and threw it back, but it jackknifed back up and growled at them.

"Come, hurry!" Jo said urgently as she put an arm around the young girl's waist. Mike and Ebo kept firing as Jo retreated, and then other hands reached down from the truck to help them up. A moment later, Mike and Ebo jumped in and closed the door just as the hyena leapt and crashed against the back of the truck.

Stan gunned the engine, and they were on their way.

The young girl sat on the floor of the truck shivering with terror and shock. Her hands were bunched under her chin as she stared unseeingly at them.

"The woman on the ground, the one the animals were… the one they killed," Mike said carefully. "Did you know her?"

And the girl nodded.

"She's… she was my elder sister, Amanda!"

She broke down suddenly and began to weep.

Jo got down and put her arm around her.

Mike noticed there was blood on the girl's right hand, and he wet a face towel and leaned forward to clean her hand.

That was when they discovered that she had a knife in her bloodied hand.

***

Back at the camp, after she took a bath and ate, she introduced herself as Anita. Her story had been horrible. They had been inside a camp and had been there for over a year. Their camp had been overrun by a horde of Tombers, and she had fled with her sister, Amanda. They had survived two days on their own until the pack of hyenas attacked them.

Jo had felt so much pity for Anita, and gone out of her way to make the girl comfortable and welcomed to the complex. She had allowed her to move into their apartment.

After she married Mike, Dr John had given them a bigger two-roomed house with bathroom facilities. Jo had allowed Anita to move in with them because the girl had been so traumatized, although Mike had not been too enthused about it.

"Mike, she has lost everybody dear to her!" Jo cried, agitated that Mike was taking such a hard stance against the poor girl. "She needs all the love she can get!"

"We can't trust her, Jo!" Mike said earnestly. "You remember the knife in her hand when we found her?"

Jo nodded.

"What about it?"

Mike rubbed his brow like he always did when he was agitated.

"Well, her sister was lying on the ground with a bleeding leg, and few metres away we found Anita!"

"So?" Jo asked coldly.

Mike grabbed her by the upper arms and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"Amanda was not walking or running when we found her because her tendon was cut!" he said harshly. "I think Anita inflicted that wound on her own sister to make the hyenas pounce on Amanda, and that gave Anita enough time to flee!"

"Mike!" Jo cried, horrified. "How could you be so mean? How could you think such evil for her?"

"Jo, all I'm saying is that I can't trust her!" Mike said urgently. "There are a lot of places she could stay, families she could be with. But don't bring her in with us! I don't trust her!"

She put a hand on his cheek tenderly.

"Darling, please don't let us fight over this, please!" she said earnestly. "I feel it within me to do this for her. Let's see what happens, Mike. If you still feel this way after a month, I'll let her leave our home."

He had reluctantly agreed. Anita had been good and helpful, though, and gradually Mike's resentment had abated. Little Nancy, the eight-year-old girl who needed urgent medical attention, had also pulled through, and Jo had brought her home to stay with them and to be part of a family.

***

Part of a family…

It was funny, really, looking at it that way because, in a way, what had happened was Anita being a part of the family, wasn't it?

Jo found out what was going on the day she turned forty. The previous night, they had had to perform surgery on Mrs Tilly to remove a nasty growth of the fibroid. She had needed blood transfusion afterwards, but they had not had her blood type in the banks. Dr John had suggested they wait till the morning and then test some of the newcomers to see if they could find her blood type.

Mrs Tilly was fifty and had lost her husband and only son in the Meltdown. She had been with them for six months now, a quiet, solemn, pretty elderly woman who always managed to make Dr John laugh.

It was no secret that he had grown very fond of Mrs Tilly, and would do anything for her. Jo woke up early that day and slipped out of bed to avoid disturbing Mike.

She crept to the bathroom and quickly took a cold bath. Back in the bedroom, Mike was still sleeping so she left him a note that she was going to check on Mrs Tilly and prepare for a hectic day, so she would see him in the afternoon.

She went to the kitchen to prepare toast bread for their breakfast. The Utility Team had brought some mouldy bread the other day, and the best way to eat them was by toasting.

Nancy was now in school because Dr John had instituted an educational programme for the children, to at least teach them general-knowledge things from books they had managed to find. The Education Team was headed by a nice woman called Deborah Arhin.

Anita had expressed interest in helping out, so she was now a part of the teaching staff. It was a Friday, and they would be going to school, but both Nancy and Anita were still asleep because it was still around four in the morning.

It was when Jo was picking up her bag from the chair she always kept it on, that she saw the small card propped against it.

Nancy had made a pink birthday card for her with drawings of happy faces and a skeletal child obviously kissing an older woman's cheek.

She had written the words in her scrawly handwriting.

Hapi Befday, Momi

Jo's hands began to shake as he looked at the card. She was so touched by the gesture and the good thoughts behind it. The little girl had not forgotten and had gone to great lengths to make the card.

That was one thing Mike was so bad at; he usually did not remember birthdays and had to be reminded on three occasions that it was her birthday. Jo was sure he might have forgotten this one too.

She looked over at the bed where Nancy was sleeping peacefully behind the big bulk of Anita. Jo wiped tears from her eyes and murmured.

"Thank you, my love."

She held the card against her heart for a moment, and then she slipped it into her bag. One of the men in the Carpentry Team was good at frames, and she made a mental note to see him later in the day to frame the card for her.

She left hurriedly on her bike.

She was almost at the infirmary when it occurred to her that she had left her Bible at home. Jo had not been an overly-religious woman prior to the Meltdown. She doubted if she had even believed in God, but the pastor in charge of the Soul Team, Ralph Serto, had given her a small Bible after Pat died.

Her aching heart had forced her to devour the little red Bible as she sought for relief and a way out of the darkness. She had been intrigued by the contents of the Bible, and slowly it became a part of her. She could now recite verses off-head and had even started to preach sometimes at the Soul Meetings on Sunday evenings.

Sometimes, when she felt extremely down and desolate, reading the verses calmed her down.

So, without hesitation, she wheeled her bike around and went back home, through the door, and straight to her bedroom where she found Anita and Mike naked on the bed.

Anita was sitting on Mike's face, grinding her pert little arse almost savagely on his face, moaning in a guttural, bass voice as she moved her waist like pistons. Mike's d**k was in the air, and it was slick with her lubrication and still oozing fluids. It was evident that she had given him good pleasure and was now taking hers.

Jo stood in the doorway just staring, sure she was going mad and that in a moment, the vision would clear, and Mike would turn sleepily towards her and smile his wonderful, loving smile.

But he was not going to give her any loving smile because, quite suddenly, a gush of liquid poured out of Anita and inundated Mike's face.

And, right at that moment, an irrational thought flitted across Jo's mind, and it was followed closely by a fury she did not think herself capable of feeling.

And he's been kissing me with those lips and that f*****g tongue all this while?

She remembered how Mike had warned her about Anita, and how he had suspected she had cut through her own sister's tendons so that she could escape death!

Jo died inside.

She walked slowly around the bed, and Anita's head turned as she stared at her. The girl's expression rapidly changed from passion-inflamed to horror in a macabre fashion that left her pretty little face ugly. Mike turned his face, almost in slow-up fashion, and looked at Jo with a soundless scream on his face. His face covered with Anita's squirt, and that was the image that would forever remain etched in Jo's mind, the image that made it impossible for her to forgive Mike. For as long as she lived, she would always see that face of his covered with the juice flows of Anita, and she would never see him with clean lips again.

Jo let out a great sob as she worked the gold ring off her finger and dropped it on the little bedside drawer, then she picked her Bible and walked out of the bedroom without another look at them.

Thankfully, Nancy was still sleeping.

Jo got on her bike and began riding.

She did not ride towards the infirmary again.

She took the path that led to the beach.