Oware Mosaic Read online

  “Okay,” Lamp said. “I’m starting to understand.

  “Like cold germs,” Durga said, “which we all know are present in our cells, this retcon virus is a replication of software that is present in all of our neural implants. I don’t know when or how it gets in the host but it’s there, waiting for our immune systems to be weak enough for it to become active.”

  “And what better time to attack is when the body is nearly expired, and the consciousness is being transferred?” Lamp asked.

  “Those people weren’t asleep,” I said. “They were out and about the town, trying to make the best of an oppressed life.”

  “That’s it!” Shaw said. “The virus feeds on the oppressed. When we’re stressed, the limbic system and the cortex are activated.”

  I tapped the top of my lip and thought out loud. “Elevated cortisol levels lower immune systems, triggers elements of mental illness—”

  “And decreases bodily resilience,” Shaw said.

  “Hence,” I said, “the more someone fears something, the higher the level of stress hormones are released in the brain.”

  “Frankie has found a way to infect our neural implants with a malicious virus,” Lamp said.

  Tanaka flipped the cigarette into the streets, allowing the wet ground to extinguish it. “You think it’s this Frankie person?”

  “I know it’s her,” Lamp said. “But what I don’t know is how this ties into my sister’s death?”

  I flinched and turned to her. “Do you feel that?”

  “Yes,” Lamp said. “Water. Something is wrong.” She stumbled forward and placed a hand on her head. “I’m losing consciousness.”

  13

  01010100 01100001 01110100 01110101

  I disengaged the game and opened my eyes, but there was nothing but darkness. My body was dripping wet. There was a sound that was as familiar as the crashing of beads draping over my shoulders during the initiation ceremony of Dipo. It was a something burning, and flooding around that sound was waterfall crashing into a watering hole.

  Where am I?

  Raging waters splashed into a watering hole less than a meter away from me. Something raged like the wind ripping through bed sheets hanging on Auntie Yajna’s clothesline in our backyard. The odor of oil amidst the thick smoke in the air led me to believe it was a vehicle on fire.

  How did I get here?

  Sniffing, I caught the faint scent of a human, female. There was a hint of feminine deodorant. For a few intolerable seconds, I couldn’t remember my name. My pulse thumped hard in my neck. Blinking, I sat up. My head was also on fire, pure agony. I blinked again, in desperation, reaching around my surroundings blindly.

  Am I blind?

  I grasped the earth, and let the dirt slip through my fingers. Anxiety seemed to be the only thing that was tangible. Taking slow, calming breaths, I stood, tasting human blood on my tongue. I retched, my stomach protesting in violent convulsion. The nearby flames bathed my skin in warmth. I lifted my hands and did not see them.

  Why can’t I see?

  I climbed to my feet and tripped over something. After regaining my balance, I reached down and felt for what tripped me up and realized it was a body. The person was still breathing.

  Who is this?

  Taking a cautious, still perplexed step forward, a faint noise swelled from the distance, growing louder with each passing moment. At first, it was an eerie clicking sound, similar to a door creaking or…a strange bird call, perhaps. This is my neural implant. The game construct is malfunctioning.

  The more the sound grew, the more it pierced my ears until it became unbearable. The only way to describe the sound was to say that whatever it was, it was screaming, as if in deep agony, bringing with it a sound like magazine pages flapping in the wind.

  Birds! I can see them! Birds! But…this is not real. I’m experiencing a literal virtual illusion, a conundrum to the tenth power. A waterfall? Are those birds singing? Insects buzzed over my head, and small critters crept and crackled softly over leaves. Am I in the woods?

  I wasn’t in the game anymore, I knew that. I was in real life mode. Somehow, in my mind, a world materialized. Even though I was blind. I knew it wasn’t the House of Oware game, but something else. Something quite different.

  I believed that my neural implant executed an override of my optical nerves once signals went to my brain, communicating my blindness.

  I had no idea something like that was programmed in my mind. Was it a form of neurological appeasement? A way for me to cope until my sight came back? Would it come back?

  I stood in a rainforest. The sun was bright, the sky fiery as the skin of red bananas and the trees towered like giant Maasai warriors protecting their tribe. A roaring waterfall spilled into a watering hole, and birds flew above in a v-formation. My neural receptors recognized my environment and built a virtual world based on my perceived environment. Sprinkles of light illuminated the air and filled the sky with tiny balls of fire.

  A Cape Glossy starling landing on a branch stretching over the river bed. Her shimmering feathers looked like she’d been bathing in an oil spill. She eyed me, jerking her head in curious twitching movements. Three other starlings landed, and they ranked on the tree branch like soldiers during morning inspection. One of them belted out a throaty musical call.

  What’s that?

  A swarm of bright yellow butterflies surfaced from out of the watering hole and swirled around me, sprinkling droplets of water. Suddenly, something shook my body.

  I wanted it to stop.

  My body was wet, cold. Something sent a riveting jolt throughout my body.

  I’m hungry.

  My senses were dull but the hunger inside of me ate up all forms of rational thinking. Someone spoke to me, but it was incoherent, like a muffled voice from behind a hundred walls of cotton. There was only one voice that came to me in full clarity. My own. Inside my head.

  Feed me…

  Someone shook me, and shook me, and shook me.

  Then I will feed from you…

  I reached my hand out and grabbed whatever thing it was that attacked me. It tried to resist me but was no match for my power, even in my weakened state. It was obvious what I needed, what I wanted, how my thirst drove me to an autonomous yet maniacal desire to survive. A hunger brought on by innate instincts.

  I’m hungry…so very hungry…

  There seemed to not be any scent to the thing, but as I said, my senses were dulled. Yet, I knew.

  I must feed…

  With every part of my being, I knew what I had to do; the way a chick knows when to break out of the eggshell, or a flower knows how to grow through concrete, or a salmon has no doubts that it can swim upstream. I knew that this creature would be my source of sustenance, and without thought, doubts or hesitation, my teeth found her neck.

  Its blood was warm. Delicious. Fulfilling. Satisfying. Yet, not satisfying.

  I want more…

  No, I needed more. I was high as the sky, euphoric like a thrill addict’s first ride on a rollercoaster ride that seemed to not have an end in sight. (Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Stan.)

  Where did that come from? Who is Stan?

  My lips and my tongue caught every drip, each drop that tried to flee from the wound. I meditated on the deliciousness, and dropped my head in a wonderful inebriation, until…a moaning purred from a woman.

  A woman? A human? I just fed on another human, again!

  My eyes snapped open, this time for real. It wasn’t day but rather night. At last, moonlight welcomed me back to the world of the seeing. I stiffened.

  Lamp!

  I backed away, scraping my palms on stones that protruded from the earth.

  Omigod!

  I’d fed on Lamp like I was some kind of savage beast.

  What am I? An adze? An asanbosam.

  I was an enhuman, not some kind of vampire told in folklore on the porches of an old shaman priest. I scu
rried backward on my bottom in pure horror, stopped only because of a tree.

  What have I done?

  Gasping, trying to absorb the enormity of my sins, I stared up at the waterfall, and at the mountain behind it.

  I know where we are.

  Mt. Afadjato, or Afadja as the locals called it, stood nearby. Tagbo Falls splashed into the watering hole. The village of Liati Wote was no more than a forty-minute hike from there. I’d done it several times, myself.

  Near the base of the waterfall, on level ground was a small wooden house. I scratched my head and found it odd that a cabin was there. It hadn’t been there the last time I hiked to the waterfall. The wood, even in darkness looked as if it had been new.

  Nearby, a jeep was turned on its side, and was engulfed in fire. There was a massive dent on the driver’s side of the door. A meter or so away, a man’s body lay on the ground. His arm lay limp in the river like seaweed.

  “Dad!”

  He was hurt. I scrambled to my feet and stumbled over to the jeep. The fire was intense. Scorching. There were dents in the door of the passenger’s side. I checked over his body. His head was bruised. He probably had a concussion. There didn’t seem to be any life-threatening injuries, but his ankle had blown up like a water balloon. I grabbed his hands and dragged his body by the arms, away from the jeep.

  When I backed up into a tree, I slid down it to my butt, satisfied we were far enough from the vehicle in case there was a gas explosion. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I looked down at Dad.

  He opened his eyes and said, in a weak voice, “Otsoo, we have to get to the cabin.”

  I used the tree to help me climb to my feet and ran over to Lamp. I dragged her halfway toward Dad and an explosion from the vehicle erupted. The force of it threw my body so far, the impact of hitting the ground stunned me. After, I’m not sure how long, Lamp moaned and stirred me from a deep daze. I lifted my head, thinking that the endorphins secreted from my saliva and the anesthesia Dad gave us must have given her a stronger analgesic effect that what occurred to me. Crawling to my feet, my body protested with body aches and burning pains on my arms and elbows.

  How could I have fed on a human? I can’t believe I stopped to such low—

  I stumbled over to the water and vomited. The current from the waterfall flushed the remnants of my agony toward the opposite bank. When I heaved until the point of deep cramping, I washed my mouth out with the cool water in gasps of labored breath.

  The watering hole was vast and stretched wide. Beyond that, the breathtaking tones that had been colored from the amalgam of tropical weather and the beasts who nurtured their habitat with unapologetic nightlife. There was a vast amount of vines, and fungi growing about and along the trees.

  Seeing an entire village shot down like animals, made me temporarily fall to acts of insanity.

  There is no way for anyone to prepare to experience seeing such heinous acts of death.

  Lamp seemed to be awakening and I went over to her. I crouched down for a closer look. She was perspiring. I placed my hand on her head, checking to see if she had a fever. Her hand caught mine, her other hand punched me in the throat. To be honest, I don’t know what caught me more off guard, the fact that she sucker punched me, or that she was responsive so soon after all the blood I drank from her. She was human, and I thought something like being nearly drained of blood had weakened her. I was wrong.

  The pain of being struck in the throat is by far, one of the most grueling attacks. It’s why I do it. Not only was my neck on fire. Imagine what enduring asphyxiation for a full week but not dying was like, or having a knuckleball thrust in your neck. That's what it felt like. While I gagged and rolled on the ground spitting out breathless expletives, Lamp placed a knife at my throat.

  “If I hadn’t played hundreds of hours with you in the House of Oware game,” she said, “I’d have no problem slicing your ass up and letting your rotten corpse fertilize the grounds of this of good old Mother Africa.”

  “Shh,” I said.

  “You can’t tell me to be quiet!”

  “Something’s here with us.”

  Lamp stiffened, and we both listened and scanned the woods for movement.

  I heard a twig snap from above and glanced up. High along the steep hills were about a dozen pairs of amber eyes, gleaming under the moonlight.

  “Dholes,” she said.

  Their stench was more putrid than usual. Lamp reached in her shoulder holster for her gun, but of course, found nothing. Grunt, or whomever threw her in the jeep, confiscated it.

  A large pack of dholes began running down the slopes of the mountain toward us, some of them bumping into each other and tumbling down. The radiation-mutant canines ripped hungrily into each other, others fought, nipping and howling for position.

  We backed up to where Dad was on the ground. He picked himself up and started limping.

  “We’ve got to get to the cabin,” he said.

  I went to him and helped him move faster.

  “Samora,” Dad said. “Your weapons are in the jeep!”

  “Got it!” she said, and made a dash for the torched wreckage.

  I hurried on, with Dad’s arm around my shoulder.

  “Hurry, Lamp!” I said. “Hurry!”

  I turned around and saw her trying to reach inside the jeep, but she snatched her hand back. The metal must have been lava hot. My foot hit something hard, and I tumbled forward, bringing Dad down to the ground with me. The dholes yapped and were gaining ground on us.

  “Come on,” I said, and helped him back up.

  The dholes were getting closer. It was dark and there was nowhere to go in this vast forest but that cabin. Those wild dogs would be upon us within a minute, tearing our flesh apart. Lamp found her guns and started firing at the dholes. I didn’t dare look back this time. Dad and I were only a few steps away from the front door of the cabin. He was going in and out of consciousness, and that made each step a laborious effort, but we made it. I reached for the doorknob and turned it.

  “Locked!”

  “My keys,” he said, coming to. “They’re in my pocket.”

  I reached in his pocket. Nothing. Looking back at the dholes fast approaching, I reached into his other pocket.

  “Dad!”

  I shook him.

  “Dad!”

  He lifted his head.

  “They’re not there!” I said, and glanced back at the dholes.

  “Must’ve fallen out,” he said, and dropped his head.

  One of them was standing there watching us. His paw was right where I’d tripped and beneath him, sparkled the keys under the bright moonlight.

  The other dholes slowed their approached, snarling and growling while they flanked us like soldiers coming up on their enemy.

  “It’s like they know we can’t get in,” Dad said.

  “The sneaky bastards are surrounding us,” I said, trying to kick the door in.

  “These doors are fortified,” Dad said. “No way you’re going to just kick it down.”

  There are too many of them,” Lamp said, reaching us. “No way I can shoot them all, but I did find this.”

  She pulled a long, curved machete from a shoulder scabbard, I hadn’t even noticed she had on.

  “That’s mine,” Dad said.

  “Well now, it’s mine,” I said.

  Lamp kept firing at the ones closest to us, each time making the pack bark and back up. But after a few seconds, they inched closer, their backs hunched, ears erect. Gripping the kukri knife tight in my hand, I spun around. The pack of dogs was closer. Much closer. A few of the dholes had bits of pink meaty flesh in their jowls. That dog food was prize meat from when they caught Grunt trying to divert them away from us.

  Lamp fired two more shots, and that held them at bay. There were now only five dholes left.

  “Cover me!” I said.

  “What?” Lamp said.

  “The back door! Cover me!” I said, and sprinted to th
e back of the cabin.

  The dholes didn’t chase after me.

  Where are they?

  I remembered Grunt saying that they were intelligent and learned fast. They knew that Lamp would kill them if they followed too close.

  Smart devils.

  I reached the back door and twisted the knob. The back door opened.

  I closed the door, ran through the dark cabin, hopped over the couch and unlocked the front door. “Go!” I said to Lamp.

  She ran in, carrying Dad.

  “So dizzy,” Dad said, and stumbled inside. He disappeared. Seconds later, I heard a door in the house close.

  I slammed the front door shut, but it didn’t close all the way because Dad’s boot had fallen off and was blocking it. Kicking the boot out the way, I had almost closed the door when two of dholes crashed into the door and whelped. That knocked me on my butt. I scrambled backward and climbed to my feet. The lights were off in the cabin and it was too dark to see much of anything, but I did see a wooden chair just to the side of the entrance by the window. With the knife still in each hand, I shoved the chair in their path with my free one, and jumped over the couch, stumbling into a table.

  The lamp on the table fell to the floor and shattered into pieces. The dogs yipped and growled. Two went after me, the other three chose to have Lamp as their late-night snack.

  One of them sprung at me. I stabbed him in his side. It yelped and fell to the floor with a loud thud. Another came at me and was about to bite down onto my arm, but I kneed it in her torso hard enough to knock it away. She landed on her paws and scrambled right back toward me.

  There was a wooden dining table in the middle of the floor. I ran for it, but a dhole bit into my boot, tripping me. I crashed into the table and fell to the ground. The mountain dog continued after me, its jowls snapping at my leg. I rammed my heel into its neck and shoved the machete into his head.

  When I rolled back to my feet. The other dhole that pursued me, growled. Her teeth were wet with thirst. The bottom of her torso was translucent, revealing muscles that were pinkish and sinewy.

  Three dholes had Lamp cornered. One of them was between her and a bedroom door. She pointed the gun at the closest one and pulled the trigger.