Virus (10 page)

He tightened his grip refusing to
give her any leeway. Her struggles became less violent a few
seconds later. Soon she was kissing him as hard he was kissing her.
Their clothes came off in a thrice and they were sprawled on the
floor coupling like two sex starved animals.

‘Hoo boy! Na wa!’ Collins couldn’t
help thinking as he thrust into her. ‘Upon all her shakara*
(posing) na for floor everything end.’ He thought nothing more for
the next thirty minutes.

Wole was in shock struggling to
catch his breath. Chike was dead! How could that be? His eyes
brimmed with unshed tears. For some strange reason they refused to
spill. So consumed by his shocked and somewhat morbid thoughts, he
became unaware of anything around him. The wind, the sun, or even
the scurrying of tiny creatures in the bushes on either side of the
path he walked on.

It was Tunrayo’s swaying arm
catching him a glancing blow on his wrist that made him realize she
was still walking beside him. Unlike him, however she sobbed loudly
talking at the same time.

“Omale Oshii* (Stupid son of a
thief), Oda(fool), Osiwin Aiye__ I warned him. I really warned him,
but the fool was too dumb to listen. Why would he not listen?” She
cried in despair.

From her tone, Wole got the sense
that it was a rhetorical question. She was not expecting an answer,
which considering the circumstances, suited him just fine. He would
not know what to say even if she expected a reply.

The principal summoned the students
just before closing time and told them the bad news. As a way of
mourning his death, the school was closed down for the day much to
Tunrayo’s and Wole’s relief.

They separated at the tee-junction
beyond the path in the forest. No words were exchanged. There was
nothing to say. As he walked towards his house the sounds of
Tunrayo’s loud sobs slowly receded until it disappeared all
together.

Baba Adora the old cobbler sat at
his usual spot under the teak tree beside the sunflower bakery. The
delicious scent of freshly baked bread hung in the air, but Wole
was too distraught to care.

Baba Adora’s wise and somewhat sad
looking eyes were fixed on Wole as he approached. A strange thrill
of irritation rippled through him. He hoped the old man did not
take it upon himself to start sharing his usual anecdotes and words
of wisdom, because he was so not in the mood.

Shock went through him as soon as he
thought this. He never thought about anyone with such bristling
impatience before, especially someone like Baba Adora. ‘Guess its
not everyday one of your best friends dies.’ A soft voice in his
subconscious said. He sighed.

An overwhelming sense of sadness
filled him and the tears brimming in his eyes spilt down his
cheeks. A second later, he was sobbing as if his heart would break.
There was a sound on the periphery of his consciousness. Low,
sounding as if it was coming from a place far away. For a few
moments, he felt the sound was in his head. It took him fifteen
seconds to realize the sound was not in his head.

“Why do you cry my child?” Baba
Adora asked looking very troubled. A heavy silence followed,
followed broken only by Wole’s loud sobs. The silence stretched on
for so long that Baba Adora felt he was not going to get a
response. Wole eventually opened his mouth, and when he did the
words came rushing out.

Baba Adora listened intently without
interrupting him once. When he was done a fear greater than
anything he had ever felt surged into his heart. Wole grew still
looking at the myriad of terrified expressions zipping across the
old man’s face. His face was now the color of ash and he looked as
if he was on the verge of collapse.

“Baba Adora__” He said taking two
steps forward. “Are you alright? You look sick. Do I run and get
help?”

The word ‘help’ seemed to get
through to him and he snapped out of his panic induced
haze.

“No son__ there is no need ___ I
will be fine.”

“Was it something I said that scared
you so much?”

Another long pause
followed.

“Its not important son ___ go home
now while you still can.”

Wole’s eyes widened at his strange
choice of words, but he said no more and hurried home.

Chapter
Seventeen

Taiwo Betiku stood two feet in front
of the door of the hospital’s mortuary watching as two of his men
examined the lock. As expected, it was intact. The lock over the
refrigerated compartment where Chike’s body had been stored too was
intact. There was no sign of forced entry anywhere. So where in the
world had the boy’s body disappeared? A frown hardened his face.
There was more to this puzzle than met the eye.

“No sign of forced entry sir__” One
of his men said turning to face him.

The frown on his face grew harder.
Was the man retarded? Of course he could see there was no forced
entry. Did the goat think he was blind?

Quelling the urge to give him a
stinging retort, he took a deep breath and nodded. Several moments
of silence ensured.

Taiwo stood still, his heavyset body
stiff and rigid. He always assumed that position whenever he was
deep in thought as he was now. The three other men in the room
moved restlessly. He knew what that meant of course. The dim wits
were waiting for instructions from him. A sigh left his lips. He
was loath to do what he was about to do, but he could see no other
way around it.

“Are the men that were working in
the mortuary that night still outside?”

“Yes sir.” The bulky sergeant on the
left growled snapping to attention.

He nodded with a grim look on his
face. “Ok arrest them all. A couple of days in prison should loosen
their tongues somewhat.”

“Do you want us to apply pressure?”
The broad sergeant asked. He had a cruel smile on his
face.

The frown on Taiwo’s face deepened.
He knew what apply pressure meant. To put it simply, it meant
torture. That was a term Taiwo was not overly fond of, he was not
averse to using threats and other forms of psychological wrangling,
but he drew the line at torture.

His sergeant on the other hand
seemed to get off on it. There had been many unconfirmed reports
that he had been quite brutal with a few suspects in the past.
Investigations into those reports had yielded nothing of course.
Police officers tend to stick together when one of them got into
trouble. All it needed was for one officer on the scene to
corroborate the victim’s assertions.

No one did however. All of the
officers stated that the sergeant’s action had been strictly
professional with no bias or violence whatsoever. A look of disgust
crept into his eyes as he thought this. Some of his colleague’s
reports on him bordered on him described as some sort of
misunderstood saint.

“No pressure Sergeant Diran! If I
hear any of you strayed from my explicit instructions by even an
iota, you best get prepared for six weeks suspension without pay.
IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”

The faces of all the men present
grew grim at the D.P.O’s harsh words. They all hurried out of the
cold room without another word. Sighing Taiwo hurried after
them.

That night

Dr Makinde trudged towards his front
door. He lived in a three bedroom brown bungalow built on the edge
of town. It had no fence. He and his wife Victoria had not been
able to raise the funds to build a concrete fence around the
property.

The fence was the last thing on his
mind however. He felt sick. Sweat poured down his skin in rivers.
His clothes were soaked through, as if someone had dumped a bucket
of water over his head. That however was not his biggest concern,
not by a long shot. His arm was almost three times its normal size
and it leaked a pus like substance. Bright light lit the inside of
the house and he could hear noise coming from the television.
Victoria was still up.

He fumbled with the lock for what
seemed like an eternity before he finally got the door open.
Victoria turned on her seated position on a plush leather couch.
She was a buxom beauty with hazel eyes and full pouty lips, which
broadened with a smile when she saw him.

Her smile disappeared the instant
she noticed the sick look on his face and the ashen color of his
skin.

“Darling what is wrong with you?”
She gasped leaping off the sofa and racing to his side. He pushed
past her without responding and staggered to their
bedroom.

“OH MY GOD!!!” She wailed. That
puzzled him for a bit until he realized she had just spotted his
arm. He had the sleeve rolled up to the elbow, so his swollen arm
was now in full view.

Glancing at it as he stumbled to the
room, he was shocked to discover that his arm was now a reddish
brown color and very knobbly looking, with tiny holes through which
a white pus like fluid seeped out.

He began to heave as he approached
the bedroom door. He made it as far as the door of the bathroom
before throwing up violently. A thick darkness loomed around him as
soon as he was done. The last sound he heard was his wife’s
frightened cries before he passed out.

Morning

Tunrayo and Wole walked to school in
silence. Their greetings had been quiet and rather perfunctory.
From the shadows under her eyes, Wole could see she had not gotten
much sleep. It occurred to him that he probably did not look any
better.

He spent most of the night tossing
and turning. He cried quite a bit too. Chike had been a stubborn
goat sometimes but he had had a good heart. He wondered how his
parent’s were coping with his loss.

His eyes closed as he considered it.
They opened a couple of seconds later as he came to the decision
that he would not dwell on it. Getting through the days ahead would
be hard enough without fixating on something he could nothing
about.

The tall wrought iron gates of the
school loomed ahead. The sight of them filled their hearts with
dread. Their eyes moved inexplicably to the teak tree on the left
side of the dusty road. The incidents of the day of Chike’s attack
flashed before their eyes in Technicolor and they both shivered as
they realized that Eze could have attacked anyone of
them.

It could easily have been him or
Tunrayo lying dead now. Wole sighed and walked through the gate
with Tunrayo following slowly.

Victoria was beside herself with
terror as she watched half a dozen doctors and nurses racing around
her husband’s bed. There were three needles stuck into the veins of
his arms feeding him medicines intravenously. He was breathing when
she dragged him into the hospital in the early hours of the
morning. Now he gasped for breath.

That fact was horrifying in itself
but what was even more horrifying was the blue, black and reddish
color of his skin. In addition, several orifices had opened along
both sides of his abdomen, and they opened and closed like the
gills of a fish every couple of seconds. The most horrible part of
that was, each time they did, greenish pus seeped out.

The doctors were thumping hard on
his chest. His heart had just stopped. Big hot tears poured out of
her eyes. He was gone. Deep within her, she knew no amount of chest
pumping would revive him. Her husband was DEAD!

She retreated into the corner of the
room as the doctors battled to revive him. Sinking down into a
crumpled heap on the thinly carpeted floor, she continued to sob.
Her greatest wish now was that her own heart would stop beating.
With Makinde gone, she had no reason to continue living.

A horrendous itching on her left
wrist caused her to pause. She examined her wrist closely. Her
first thought was that something on the carpet bit her. But she was
wrong. A crescent shaped set of marks marred the milky brown color
of her skin. The skin was broken around the edges of each mark, and
out of the holes seeped a little blood.

Her tears came down faster when she
saw it. She had almost forgotten about the marks. In his delirious
struggles last night, Makinde had bitten her. Seeing the bite mark
only made it more real to her that Makinde was dead. Her cries grew
even more intense as she buried her face into the
carpet.

Chapter
Eighteen

The school day seemed to fly by in
Wole’s mind. He remembered little of what he was taught and even
when people spoke to him; it always seemed as if their voices were
coming from far away.

Mercifully, most people stayed out
of his way and for that, he was very grateful. They all seemed to
sense he needed space and no one intruded on his private moments.
The sound of the closing bell was a big weight off his neck. He
raced out of the class like a shot from a gun, tearing through the
school gates like a cannon bolt. He drew to a screeching halt three
feet in front of the gate shocked to see Tunrayo standing a few
meters in front of him.

“I couldn’t wait for classes to be
over__” She cried hanging her head.

“Me too__” He murmured.

They both hung their heads in
silence for a minute before the sound of several hundred thumping
feet roused them from their reverie. The other students were coming
out.