Jack wants her to leave, but believes her to be essential, therefore he swallows the bile in the back of his throat and forces himself to smile. Smiles are cheap, and he has peddled them for years. He partakes of the glass of water, savours the cold fluid going down his throat, and closes his eyes for a few seconds, needing the peace.
Femi does all her work standing up, on her phone, looking fabulous. He muses that she is different from his wife in that she lacks humanity. She could be a living doll, or a perfect statue, whereas Hannah is warm, with softer edges. Jack knows he can never love a person this ruthless, this calculating. Which is okay, because she would never prefer a person like him. Actually, it’s unclear if she even prefers anybody.
“Mr. Mayor.”
He opens his eyes and she is standing right in front of him, one hand on the desk.
“She’s on her way, and she has the Sutcliffe woman.”
“We need her because…?”
“Alyssa or Aminat?”
“Either. Both. Just tell me.”
“I already did, Mr. Mayor, try to keep up. We need Aminat to control Kaaro when he comes in. We need Kaaro to get the alien onside. And we need Alyssa to force the alien if that becomes necessary.”
Jack points to some papers to his left. “The British High Commission has something to say about Alyssa Sutcliffe. Her husband is kicking up dust and they want assurances. Why should the alien give a fuck about her?”
“Because she is, I believe, the first of—”
Dahun barges in, right hand full of semiautomatic, face grim. At first Jack wonders if the man has taken money from the president and is here to kill, but Dahun’s gaze is directed to Femi and she backs away from him, although her face shows no fear.
“Who is this Kaaro guy? You tell me now, or I swear to Ogun, I will fill you with metal.”
“I already told you who he is.”
“You said he was retired.”
“He is.”
“You said he was a coward.”
“He is.”
“You said he was harmless.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I’d tell you what to do to render him harmless.”
“Skin-tight rubber suits, oxygen tanks, antifungal cream.”
“Yes. He can’t access any of his abilities that way.”
“Then why are my men dead?”
Femi for the first time is speechless. “I… he’s… how many—”
“All of them. All of them are dead, you fucking idiot. What did you do? What kind of mistake is this? I have to call their spouses and children. I have to promise the families that they died for something. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I don’t understand. Kaaro doesn’t use deadly force. He can cause pain, but… and he shouldn’t have been able to get through the defences.”
“He didn’t.”
“Then who—”
Dahun conjures a plasma video, the mission record from the cam of one of the men.
“Those are reanimates,” says Jack.
“I know,” says Dahun.
“I don’t understand. Why are they attacking the men?”
“Because your guy—your retired, coward, harmless guy?—he controls them.”
“Impossible.”
An alarm goes off.
Jack has never seen this many reanimates in one place, not when they first appeared in ’55, not after any of the yearly Openings since then, not even when he visited the sequestered ones in the prison. And yet, he is meant to believe the evidence of his own eyes: that the entire grounds of his mansion are full of reanimates, that they have surrounded the building and that, though they die at the extra defences Dahun has put up, they keep coming with that steady sacrifice, that stoic expression, that eternal indifference.
They have two feeds, one satellite and a second rotating feed from drones, both generated from plasma fields on Jack’s desk. They only had a few minutes of the satellite picture, but played on a loop it shows tiny figures gathering outside the gates and walls, sparse at first, then dense, increasing at an alarming speed. The drone feed on the right shows the current time, first from straight up, then from drones flying the perimeter.
From far out it looks like a protest, a million-man, million-woman march, with seething crowds all facing the gate, hammering on it, or just standing still, waiting. Budding off from the main mass at the gate are two arms making their way around the walls in each direction, but also trying to scale the barriers. From above it looks like the crowd is trying to hug the mansion. When the drones get closer the feed shows that when a turret or sniper kills one of the reanimates, the others lift the body out of the way and immediately someone from behind fills the gap. They shove against the gate in numbers, and they clamber over each other.
A few dozen make it through the barriers and the fusillade of rifle fire, but so far the flame-throwers have been able to stop them from getting into the building, but fuel supplies are not infinite. Bodies are piling up and forming their own barrier.
Another thing Jack observes is that even when shot, they continue unless their head is completely destroyed.
More of them arrive from every direction, a trickle, but constant.
“Dahun’s right,” says Jack. “You have miscalculated, big time.”
Femi cannot seem to come up with anything to say, which is just as well, because who knows how the tension in the room will break?
“Can we keep them at bay?” asks Jack.
“I don’t know.” Dahun holsters the weapon he came in with and strokes his chin.
“That’s not the answer I pay you to give me.”
“Hey, I’m doing my job. I’m fortifying the city with the bulk of my forces and the ragamuffins that form the Rosewater army. Defending this place wasn’t in the script.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m working on it.” Dahun leaves.
Blood and ordure start to accumulate and new reanimates skid and slip on the remnants of the old. Jack can hear gunfire now, and the odd crackle of electromagnetic protective shields shorting out. With every reanimate that dies, Jack thinks Hannah is going to kill him. He and his wife are going to argue over this, no matter what the outcome. “Die” may not be the right word for destroyed reanimates, but it’s one Hannah likes.
Some little shit called Adeoye Alao has brought a civil case against Jack, arguing that the government of Rosewater is now null and void. Jack suspends the courts till after the war. Dahun has heard rumblings of protests. The local and national press are clamouring for interviews.
This is worse than the Chamber of Commerce meetings. But you have to deal with mundane shit as a leader.
If you live to lead.
A reanimate runs into the barrier and dies from a bullet to the brain.
Femi tries to get Kaaro on the phone. She does not appear to be having a good time.
What day is it? God, he’s tired. He really just wants sleep, just a few hours, or days. All the same to me. He lets his eyes close, no intention of sleeping, but he has to rest…
“We need one,” says Femi.
Jack wakes with a start. “What do you mean?”
“We need one of the reanimates. He may be able to perceive life through them, through each and every one. If I can just talk to him.”
“Talk to him? You already fucked up.”
“Suck my labia.” She switches to another camera. The most activity is among the reanimates closest to the mansion. The rest seem to be on standby, shifting from one foot to the other. Jack notices that some are lying on the ground, unconscious or dead.
Dahun’s voice booms over the alarm. “Close your eyes, flash-bang, flash-bang, in three, two, one.”
The detonation is successful in disorienting the reanimates, and is followed by Dahun’s men, a flame-thrower unit covered by heavy guns. There are no screams, just twisted, blackened corpses. The advantage does not last as several waves of reanimates crawl over the burned ones and overwhelm the fighting men. Heads explode, and bodies are thrown back with bullet impact, but there are always more reanimates. Always more.
“Breach,” says Dahun over the PA. “We have a breach. Go to defensive protocols. We have a breach.”
Femi’s pistol appears in her hand like a magician’s trick. Jack doesn’t even bother asking how she got it back. “See if you can capture one alive,” she says into her phone.
Outside quadcopters fire rounds into the crowd from different directions. Jack can imagine the PR nightmare already, and this isn’t even part of the war.
The national press will flay me alive.
Jack isn’t worried that there are reanimates in the building. His office isn’t vulnerable to them. He sees that Femi has disrobed and is rubbing hand cream on herself.
“Are you completely insane?” asks Jack.
She hands him a tube. “It’s antifungal, Mr. Mayor. I don’t have time to explain, but this is why it’s part of the security protocols. Believe me when I tell you this has to go all over your body.”
Jack does as she says, hating the smell and wondering how many showers it will take to get this off. He doesn’t have time to check the constituents of the formulation. He finds her staring at his body, though she quickly looks away.
Dahun comes back on the intercom. “I have one alive. Well, kind of alive. Where do you want him?”
“I’ll come to you,” says Femi. “Tell me where.”
“Your old cell.”
Jack goes with her, although his bodyguards are unhappy about this.
As they walk down the corridor of orisa, two reanimates run towards them. The statues come alive and the robots inside obstruct the reanimates and restrain them. The pair go limp, all violent intentions leached from them. As Jack and his people walk by, Femi shoots each reanimate in the head.
The captured reanimate is held with four plastic ties and covered by Dahun’s machine gun and baleful glare. It’s in a bloody school uniform, male, and muddy, as if it has been exhumed, like a murder victim. It strains against the bonds until Jack and Femi come in, then it stops and smiles.
“Mrs. Alaagomeji,” it says. Its voice sounds like air bubbled through ditch water, and its breath smells that way too.
“I thought you liked to call me ‘Femi.’” You don’t work for me any more, remember?”
“And there’s that invertebrate Jack Jacques. Just stay right where you are, Mr. Mayor. I’ve heard dying can be a pleasurable experience towards the end. Euphoria and visions, and the like.”
“Why would you want to kill me?” says Jack. “I don’t know you.”
“We’ve met, actually, but only one time, and I don’t expect you to remember. Femi, unless you sent those soldiers to kill me, I have no quarrel with you. I’ll let you leave.”
“You killed my men, you abomination,” says Dahun. He fires a burst into the thing’s left foot, obliterating it.
“Stand the fuck down!” Femi is surprisingly effective and Dahun retreats. “Kaaro, can you see what I’m holding?”
“Looks like an old-style phone.”
“It’s a remote. If you look up at the sky wherever you’re hiding, or use your proxies, I don’t care, you’ll see a helicopter circling the grounds. Can you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you see inside it?”
“No.”
“Then use your abilities, reach inside. Anything seem familiar to you?”
“—”
Femi smiles. “Aminat’s in there.”
“And what if that’s true?”
“If you don’t cease and desist I’m going to blow the helicopter up. You have three seconds.”
“Oh, Femi, if Aminat’s up there I’m going to—”
“One.”
“Seriously—”
“Two.”
“Get your—”
“Three.”
“Stop!”
The reanimate goes limp and the eyes lose focus.
Dahun receives some radio reports. “They’ve stopped all purposeful activities. Some are wandering away. Should we detain them?”
“Why? They’re empty of reason. The one we want is Kaaro, and I guarantee he’s on his way here.” She speaks into the phone. “Land the chopper and come straight up with both of your charges. Have your weapons out and be prepared to fight.”
“This is the first thing you’ve done all day that impresses me,” says Jack.
“Stay tuned,” she says. “Aimasiko lo n’damu eda.”
“Where are you going?” asks Dahun.
“To the helipad,” says Femi.
“There’s still movement out there.”
“Is it organised? Showing singleness of purpose?”
“No, but—”
“Thanks for your concern. I’m going.”
Jack moves to follow her, but Dahun blocks him. “No, Mr. Mayor. You’re not doing that.”
Before he can respond, Lora comes in. “Sir, Nigeria is spraying rapid defoliants in the south and south-east. Twenty-four, forty-eight hours, our farms and forests will be denuded. They’re trying to starve us out.”
I would really like to catch a break right now.
That thing Femi said, aimasiko lo n’damu eda—“the problem with people is not knowing what time it is.” Do I know what time it is?
“Food stores will hold?” asks Jack.
“Maybe a year? Eighteen months on the outside, unless the alien can recover from this. That hole is still in the dome, sir, partially repaired. More worrying is that it’s not like the Opening. Nobody outside the dome is getting healed.”
On the plasma monitor Femi approaches the helicopter, which has now set down. She leads two women, one black, one white, back to the mansion. The reanimates appear uninterested in them.
“According to our spy master, one of those ladies is the key to solving our problem.”
“Oh, so we can all go home, then,” said Lora.
“Don’t make jokes.”
“I wasn’t, sir. I actually want to go home.”
Jack doesn’t know what Lora does at home. After he lobbied for her citizenship, celebrated when she got it, and gave her formal working hours with bonuses and overtime, he has kept firmly out of her personal life. He does know she lives alone, seems to like akpala and highlife music, and uses the gym, an activity that is superfluous, but Jack recognises that he started her on the fitness path. She is also able to self-modify, to rewrite her own code, a feature that Jack was warned against, but still approved.
At times, though, she used “going home” as a euphemism for needing maintenance.
“Want or need, Lora?” Jack asks.
“Want.”
“Can it wait?”
“For now.”
“Thank you. I need you here.”
“What you need is a miracle, sir,” says Dahun. “I have news.”
What now?