CHAPTER 24 Who Fears the Reaper

Seven.

Seven deadly sinners. None of them would die. They were like me. Long staying. But they were not like me. I wanted to be free and free the imprisoned, they wanted to be free to enslave the world. I could hunt them down, one by one. Or I could do something worse. I was beginning to see that I was meant for something deeper and bigger.

I streaked across the sky. I thought of the alien creature I’d set free that set the others free in Tower 1. Then it had streaked into the sky, off the earth, into space. It could fly like me. But it wasn’t like me. I would never leave this earth, not like that.

In warfare, there is a military strategy called “scorched earth.” It is when you destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy as you move through or pull out of their territory. Scorched earth is heartless, it’s violent, it’s merciless, and it usually involves fire. One of its methods, the strategy of destroying the civilian food supplies in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. But this is only enforceable by countries who have ratified this protocol. Only the United States and Israel have not. In this way, I am very American.

• • •

New York

I remember it well, as an old man remembers the deepest folktales that pleased him most as a child. As the brother of a Yoruba king remembers the burdensome responsibilities that he narrowly escaped. My memory is clear as the waters of the Caribbean’s most virgin beaches. My memory is so unpolluted that I can see it happening now. It is happening now. In the bright sky of New York. I burn. Wings of flame. But it is too bright for the people below to really notice me. I burn without needing fuel. My body is like a sun. I give off no smoke.

First the buildings that stand in the risen waters like rotten mangrove trees. I fly low and the water around me boils. The water-logged spoiled skyscrapers that still stand ignite as I pass. I catch glimpses of people who step out on roofs, up to open windows and up from boats. They look down, across, up at me as I pass. Then they burst into ash.

The waters below the buildings boil and steam. Water is life. I am only doing what I am made to do. Taking life. I will take it all. I am a hurricane of death and destruction. I am villain.

I fly past the drowning buildings. Swamps. The grasslands. Networked with roads and trees. I am flying faster now. This is not where I want to be. I see cars and trucks run off the road as they overheat. Some people burn. The tops of trees burst into flame. By now, there are news drones flying with me. I can see them. They remain three miles away. A safe distance from my corona of heat. I am on the side of skyscrapers, the screens of portables, computers, jelli tellis. Those who do not see me in real life, see me in hyper life. What are they saying about me on the newsfeeds? Are people downtown smart enough to flee? Or will they sit there watching me on their small and giant screens, mesmerized as if I am just a character in an action film? But then again, how can I blame them? They created me.

I cannot think straight.

Kofi’s parents and siblings were taken to Tower 1. His father had the ability to feel through metal. He was a “goldsmith,” a glorified name in Ghana for blacksmith, and this ability made him good at his job. He passed it on to Kofi’s sister and brother. They all died in Tower 1 of lead poisoning when the Big Eye tried to fuse their nerves with cybernetic limbs. That Kofi’s mother was taken to Tower 1 was all the records said about her, other than Deceased. I read about them in the Library of Congress.

The Big Eye surrounded us. I am a terrorist.

Berihun and his Ethiopian restaurant. Surviving in a strange soulless land. What would they become? What was his and his wife’s point of existing when all they were to this world was dust? Ash. Filth.

Mmuo’s nanomites should have been in me, but I’d burned them away. Would I have still been able to hear him if I hadn’t burned them away? Mmuo, my brother, I do not care what the genetics say. Mmuo is dead.

Saeed. He had died. Then he had lived. Then they took him from me. They are always taking from me. The Big Eye. This country. The superpowers. The seven men who drank HeLa’s blood and now will never die.

I slip.

All things come from the land, Ani. This was why the alien seed fell and burrowed into it. It’s best to start at the beginning. So not Allah. Not Krishna. Not God. Not Nature. Ani. Mmuo spoke of her to me. Ani is the spirit of the earth. The spirit of flesh. When I look deep into my DNA, I see that I know her story. I simply have to speak it from my heart and soul. Weave it like a spider weaves a web on a warm humid evening when the night is about to fall upon it.

Here’s how the story goes:

Thousands of years ago, when the world was nothing but sand and dry trees, Ani looked over her lands. She rubbed her dry throat. Then she made the oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. Her lands breathed and then danced. Water is life. And from the oceans, she took a deep drink and was refreshed. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll produce sunshine. Right now, I’m not in the mood.’ She turned over and slept. Behind her back, as she rested, human beings sprang from the sweetest parts of the rivers and the shallow portions of the lakes. Some of them walked out of the ocean onto the beaches.

Human beings were aggressive like the rushing rivers, forever wanting to move forward, cutting, carving, changing the lands. As much time passed, they created and used and changed and altered and spread and consumed and multiplied. They were everywhere. At the apex of their genius, one group of humans built seven mighty towers. Within these towers they performed impossible feats, and as time expanded, the towers grew to impossible heights in reputation, invention, and experience.

The exclusive human beings of this group who ran the towers had the permission of civilian human beings to do whatever it took. They all hoped their towers would be high and amazing enough to prick Ani and get her attention. They built juju-working machines. They fought and invented amongst themselves. They bent and twisted Ani’s sand, water, sky, and air. They took her creatures and changed them. They sought to make themselves just like Ani: immortal, all powerful manipulators of earth’s lands.

When Ani was rested enough to produce sunshine, she turned over and was horrified by what she saw. She reared up, tall and impossible, furious. Then she reached into the stars and pulled a sun to the land. I am that sun. I am Ani’s soldier. I do her will. Ani has asked me to wipe the slate clean.

I reappear in the middle of Times Square. I stand on the flat portion of a jagged splintered surface. The air smells of flowers and smoke, but mostly flowers. The surface below me is damp beneath my bare feet. Beside me is a small forest of wooden splinters. I kneel down and touch the flat surface, the wood.

And that’s when I feel it. Deep in my chest. It’s a small ball, hot, like the sun. It spreads out. Near my heart, shoulder, breast. I kneel there, with my eyes shut. I am on the stump of The Backbone, its fallen cleaved carcass beside me, its width reaching thirty feet above me.

I see red. Yellow. Orange. Fire.

I open my eyes in time to see the small camp of Big Eye a few hundred feet away. They had expected me, but they didn’t expect this. Except one. The woman who comes out of a small tent set up right beside the tree’s massive stump. She is short and dark-skinned, born and raised in Nigeria, craving American agency. She is beautiful and wears the black uniform of the Big Eye because she is one of their most dedicated officials. She has pursued me across the globe, found me, lost me and has now found me again. Miserable woman, she walks toward me, her gait sure; she no longer limps. Maybe both of her legs are cybernetic. She holds up a hand that is made of wires, metal, reinforced plastic. She has more in common with the Ledussee than the Big Eye. Misguided woman.

Before the other Big Eye turn around and before the woman named Bumi can reach me, all of them are engulfed in a corona. From wet living sin, bone, flesh to ash. And metal and plastic, also to ash. All things in the city are in chaos, people staring at screens, crashing cars, cowering, praying, cursing, fleeing.

I am the sun. Ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Ani has pulled me to the earth. To wipe the slate clean. This is how it happens. New York’s prodigal daughter returns home.

• • •

Not just New York. I scorch the earth. Yes, I can do that. I am that. Phoenix Okore blew across the earth. She burned the cities. Turned the oceans to steam. She was the reaper come to reap what was sown. Wherever those seven men lived. Let them die. Let everything die.

Let that which had been written all be rewritten.