Lagoon (24 page)

She shut her eyes and felt her neck. The gill flaps were still there. “Who am I?” she whispered. Her voice was her own, albeit rough. When she opened her eyes, she was looking into Agu's. A tear was falling down his cheek. He was shaking from the strain of her weight.

“Something new,” he said.

“Something old,” Anthony said. He laughed. “Something borrowed, more than gold, something true, never sold, goddamn aliens too fuckin' bold.
Chale
, see I spit am!” Then he grinned and shouted,
“I dey Craaaaaaze!”

Adaora was so surprised that she burst out laughing, which made her cough,

“Oh my God, the man dey craze,” Agu muttered, but the corners of his mouth quivered as he fought his laughter.

“You should have plenty of new material for a new album,” Adaora told Anthony.

“Artist is artist,” he agreed.

“Agu, you can put me down now. Before you pass out. I know I'm heavy.”

Anthony put his arms beneath her and helped Agu lower her to the sea bed. Once seated, she crossed her arms over her bare chest. Her fin felt heavy and useless.

Agu sat beside her and Anthony sat across from her. For a long time, they were silent, Adaora more than aware of her strange naked mermaid body and the cold dryness of the air. Anthony thinking and thinking about all he'd discussed with the Elders when they were first pulled into the ocean, only two nights ago. And Agu looking out into the water.

“I thought it would kill me the first time it happened,” Anthony said. He'd spoken in Twi, so the others didn't understand. He switched to English. “I call it the rhythm.” He recounted the story of the day he'd discovered his power. A story that he'd never told a soul.

Agu laughed hard and clapped him on the shoulder. “Do you believe in God now?”

Anthony chuckled. “Yeah.”

The three of them burst out laughing and didn't stop for the next minute. Adaora's eyes watered and her fin slapped the damp stone. Agu rolled on the sea bed as he guffawed. And Anthony held his cramping belly. In the water outside the bubble, clouds of fish wiggled toward the surface, and a giant pink squid spiraled by. This sent them into more hysterics.

Several minutes passed and they calmed.

Then it was Agu's turn. “I have no name for it. But the first time I used it was to save a boy we called Stick Boy.” He told them about punching the other boy unconscious and how as the boy lay there, he decided to become a soldier. Then he told them about nearly killing Benson. Then he told them everything that had happened in the streets of Lagos. As he spoke, he watched Adaora's eyes grow
wider and wider, especially when he spoke of possibly killing people in the streets during the riots.

No one laughed when he finished.

Adaora knew they were expecting her to explain the origins of her powers, just as they had. But her story was different. “Okay,” she said. She looked around. They were at the bottom of the ocean in a bubble created by aliens, surrounded by sea monsters. She shut her eyes, still aware of her fin. It was drying out, and her scaled skin was starting to sting. She opened her eyes and looked at both of them. “I don't know what this is,” she said. “Mine wasn't something that kicked in when I was a girl, as it did when you were boys.” She paused, fighting the voice that told her never to speak of such taboos. The knowledge that made her feel like she was evil. The stigma that burned brightest when she thought about her husband's constant accusations of witchcraft. And the fact that after all her denials, maybe she
was
a witch. Well, she was certainly
something
.

“I was born with webbed feet and hands,” she blurted. “And my legs were joined together by flesh.” Even after everything they'd been through, she half expected them to recoil in disgust.

“That's . . . that's disgusting,” Anthony said. But he smiled as he said it.

Agu was laughing.

“My father . . . He said that if it were the old days, they would have thrown me in the bush,” Adaora continued. “He liked to remind me of that whenever my grades were too low in school. It always worked.” She sighed. “Anyway, they surgically separated my fingers, toes, and legs. Still, from the moment that my mother first took me to the ocean, I could swim. No one ever taught me. I was . . . like a fish.”

Both Agu and Anthony burst out laughing. Adaora wanted to cry, but she laughed too. “I've always loved the sea. I am fascinated by it, the smell, the creatures, its size and depth. It is no surprise
that I became a marine biologist. But that's all there is. I don't have any childhood stories about doing amazing things. All this”—she gestured to her tail—“is completely new. Two nights ago when I was fighting my husband, that's the first time anything ever happened!” She frowned. “But . . . maybe it's always been there. Beneath the surface.”

Agu nodded. “I was about to say that.”

“What are we?” Adaora asked after a moment.

“We're people,” Agu said. He looked at Anthony. “You can make a sonic boom.” To Adaora, he said, “You can create some sort of force field. I have superhuman strength. And we all walked into each other's lives just as aliens invaded Lagos.”

“Not a coincidence,” Anthony said. “
Na
the work of de universe.”

“It's the work of something,” Agu said.

Adaora shivered. “My father would have said it's the work of the gods.”

As Adaora finished speaking, she felt a terrible pressure, enough to make her ears hurt. She looked up and saw the bubble's bowl shape distorting, as though something were pressing on it. The air pressure dropped. The temperature dropped. Adaora's fin stung horribly as her sleek fish skin continued to dry and began to turn brown.

They all saw it at once.

Adaora screamed.

Anthony whimpered.

Agu began to cry.

The spider standing above them was the size of a mansion. Rough hair covered its eight endlessly long legs and bulbous body. It—
she
, Adaora instinctively knew—was looking right at them, down at them. With all eight of her intense black eyes.

“Even in the corners of palaces, spiders dwell,”
she said.
“Remember that, if you ever find yourself walking the halls of the great and powerful.”
Then she was gone.

“What the
fuck
was that?” Anthony asked.

There was a wet splashing sound behind Adaora. It was Ayodele flipping water into the bubble as she hovered outside it.
“They are ready for you. Come.”

CHAPTER 50

SECOND CONTACT

Adaora, Agu, and Anthony met with the Elders.

There were five of them.

And that is all that Adaora, Agu, and Anthony will ever remember about those thirty minutes of their lives.

CHAPTER 51

THE MAGICAL NEGRESS

Anthony and Agu had been given bubbles of air, like helmets around their heads, and they'd all swum back to where Adaora had seen the president speaking with the
Star Wars
–like creatures.

Then her memory grew hazy, and she remembered nothing until her head was breaking the surface of the water beneath the late-afternoon sun. She felt as though she had encountered something enormous—something so far beyond anything she could have imagined—and that its presence threatened to force her out of existence. Whatever had happened with the . . . spider, with the Elders—it was all too huge to contemplate.

Hawra and the president, Femi, and the two guards were on the boat when Agu, Ayodele, and Anthony emerged from the water. All but Ayodele looked shell-shocked, and none said a thing as Adaora was pulled onto the boat, naked, half fish and half human. Hawra fanned Adaora's fin, and each burst of air was like a thousand needles against her scaly flesh. But soon the scales of her fin grew transparent and began to flake away, revealing her brown human legs.

“Can you imagine?” Hawra whispered over and over as she helped Adaora pick the peeling scales from her flesh. All the men had turned their backs to give Adaora some privacy.

“I can imagine anything,” Adaora murmured.

Hawra leaned close to Adaora, smiling. “I spoke to a giant swordfish,” she whispered. “I heard its voice in my head.”

“What did it say?” Adaora asked, glad to focus on something other than removing her scales. She peeled away a large swatch. It left a patch of fishy-smelling slime on her skin.

“It spoke like a member of that group Greenpeace!”

Adaora laughed, her body aching. “Was it enormous? With spines coming out of its back?”

Hawra nodded.

“That swordfish hates us,” Adaora said.

There was an extra army uniform in a compartment on the boat. After Adaora had slipped into the garments, Hawra helped her to her feet. She was shaky. Air didn't hold her the way water did.

The president was talking on Femi's mobile phone. “Have the set ready for when we arrive,” he said. “And make sure I have a change of clothes.”

“Us too,” one of the guards added.

The president nodded. “And, and, bring two army uniforms. Pressed. Crisp. I'm not having these two guys leave my side, even while I am on camera. These guys have kept me alive, o!”

Still leaning on Hawra, Adaora stepped up to Agu, Anthony, and Ayodele. They'd been quietly discussing something, but she didn't want to know what. “Is there a plan?” she asked instead.

“We're going to Tin Can Island,” Agu said. “Trust me, it's the easiest, safest port to use to get ourselves, and the president, back to land. We need a place that's safe from the monsters.”

Tin Can Island, a mostly industrial area and one of Lagos's main cargo ports, took its name from the biscuit tins used to transport mail to and from the island by strong swimmers, who would ferry them to and from passing ships. Vessels couldn't dock at the island as it had no natural harbor or wharf—only a small creek, whose waters were far shallower than the open waters where the alien ship rested. And because of that, Agu reasoned, if there were beasts there, they wouldn't be nearly as huge as the ones in the deep.

*   *   *   *

They heard the gunshots long before they arrived at the island. A mobile phone in Femi's pocket went off. “Your phone, Mr. Presi­dent,” Femi said, frowning and handing it to the president. The president grabbed it. “What is going on?” he shouted.

He listened and frowned.

He turned to his guards with wide eyes, and then to Agu. “Ssss, sss!” he said, waving a hand at Agu. “Stop the boat! Femi, give me your camera.”

Agu brought them to a halt, as Femi handed it to the president. The president continued to hold the phone to his ear as he fumbled with the camera. “There's something—”

More gunshots rang out from the island.

“What's going on?” Adaora shouted. She squinted, barely able to make out a large group of men waiting at the dock.
Bang bang bang!
She could see a man firing. At the water. Beside the shooter, several men seemed to be trying to drag something out of the water.
No,
Adaora realized. Some
one
.

“Please,” Adaora said to the president. “Give me the camera!”

“Why?” the president asked, frowning as he continued fiddling with it. “What do you—”

“Just let me have it!” She snatched it from him and held it up to Femi. “Make it zoom in.”

When he handed it back to her, she held it up. She focused on the men. There was something in the water . . . and it was trying to drag a man under. Then two red tentacles shot out of the water. One smashed a window of the black car behind them, and the other slapped at one of the men. He fell back. Adaora could have sworn she saw blood spatter. More men began shooting into the water.

“Shit!” she screamed, nearly dropping the camera.

The president grabbed it from her just as Femi's phone buzzed.

“What is going on?” the president shouted into the phone.

“There's something in the water, attacking them,” Adaora said.

“Oh Jesu Christi,” one of the guards moaned. “Will we never get out of this infested water?”

“We will, cousin, we will,” the other guard said.

“Are you people stupid? Stay away from the water!” the president shouted into his phone. There were tears in his wild eyes.

“I think it's some sort of octopus or squid,” Adaora said.

“
Chale
, those things are smart,” Anthony said. Adaora had been thinking the same thing. Cephalopods were the smartest invertebrates on earth. One that was alien-enhanced . . . Those men didn't stand a chance.

“Ten men? You let it . . . oh my God.” The president sat down on the floor of the boat, the phone pressed to his ear. “Oh my God. Okay . . . yes, save them.”

The boat started moving. The president turned to Agu. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I'm not letting more soldiers die,” Agu said. “I'm getting us close enough for me to swim to them.”

“Why'd they station themselves right in front of the water?” the president moaned. Hawra sat beside him, her arm around his shoulder. “It got ten of them before they realized what was happening.”

“I will go, too,” Anthony said.

Adaora hesitated. Agu had super strength, Anthony had his rhythm. But she could levitate, walk on water, and protect herself with a force field. If she got into the water, would she grow her fin back?

“It will kill you both,” Ayodele said. “I will go.”

Again, she jumped into the water before anyone could protest. Agu pushed the boat faster. He had a bad feeling about what was going to happen. When no one argued, it was clear that he wasn't the only one who felt it.

Finally they were close enough that they could see what was happening perfectly. There was a body floating in the water. Some soldiers were behind a black car, firing wildly. Others were standing on the
dock at the edge of the creek, screaming and shooting. As they drew into view, some yelled at them; a few frantically waved them away.

When the boat was less than ten yards away from the island, a deep moan came from beneath the water. And then it surfaced. The monster was a bundle of slimy red tentacles, ridged with horrible black, bony spokes. The tentacle ball tumbled and rolled on the surface of the water and then parted to reveal an enormous, gaping, pink, parrotlike beak. Adaora had to tense every part of her body to keep herself from screaming. The creature's beak snapped open and shut. And then it plunged back beneath the water and disappeared.

All was silent as they stared at where the monster had been and now was not. They waited, but it didn't return. The water rippled gently, and then was still. The soldiers on land slowly stood back from the edge of the dock. The others emerged from behind the car.

Adaora leaned over the side of the boat. “What did she . . . ?”

“Ayodele!” Agu called.

The boat bumped softly against the dock, and everyone jumped off except Adaora, Anthony, and Agu. They leaned over the side, looking into the water. Femi jogged toward the soldiers, who were also watching the water. He was taking pictures as he approached, saying, “Gentlemen! Hello! Excuse me, can I ask you some questions? I am with the press. . . .”

“This way, Mr. President,” one of the soldiers said, leading the president to the black car. “Sorry about the window.”

“Don't worry about it,” the president said, clasping Hawra's hand as they walked. “We saw everything.”

“What of the others?” Hawra said, looking back.

“They're coming,” the president replied.

“No, they're not.” Hawra pulled her hand away.

Adaora knew the creature was gone. Had it eaten Ayodele and thus been satisfied? Adaora whipped around, her head pounding. Too much. Too fast.
There
she was. Ayodele was pulling herself onto the
far side of the dock, a hundred feet away. Right in front of the soldiers. Adaora felt relief flood her body. Then she saw one of the soldiers roughly grab Ayodele by the arm and yank her onto the concrete, bring his huge booted foot back, and, with all his might, kick her squarely in the side.

Adaora could hear the meaty sound of the boot smashing into Ayodele's flesh even from where she was. The man kicked Ayodele again, another man joining him. He smashed at her face with the butt of his AK-47, and Ayodele's head flew back to smack against the concrete, her nose spraying red blood. Adaora jumped off the boat. Everything went silent as all the blood rushed to Adaora's head. What was she seeing? Why was Ayodele
letting
it happen?

Anthony was already off the boat and running toward the men. Adaora ran after him, Agu behind her.

“Stop!” he shouted, waving his hands about. “STOP IT!”

But they didn't stop anything. Ayodele did not get up, nor did she do anything to protect herself. It all happened in seconds. There were five soldiers now, all dressed in green-brown-and-black fatigues with black shiny boots and dull black guns. These men rained blows on every part of Ayodele's body with their boots, the butts of their guns, their fists.

“Winch, I kill you!” a man growled as he punched Ayodele in the face.

“Kill am!” another man shrieked as he kicked.

Her white dress was splotched with spreading patches of red as they stamped on her torso, chest, legs, and arms. They crushed bone and mashed muscle and organs. One man brought his foot down squarely on her exposed neck.

Bang!
The gunshot tore open Ayodele's side.

Another man smashed his gun into her lolling head.

Anthony had stopped, yards from the chaos, swaying on his feet. Even as she ran, Adaora could feel everything around her being pulled toward Anthony.

“Anthony, don't!” Adaora shouted as she ran up behind him. “DON'T DO IT!”

“Why?” Anthony asked calmly.

“No more killing,” she said, panting. She turned to Agu behind her. He had murder on his face. “No killing! They don't know what they are doing, they don't know what she is, they are confused. . . .” She was confused, too. What was she saying? She shook her head at both Agu and Anthony. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Let me,” she said, and ran to the mob of soldiers surrounding Ayodele.

She didn't hesitate. Adaora plunged into the melee and began to shove aside the men beating Ayodele. Someone kicked at Ayodele but missed, landing on Adaora instead. Ignoring the pain, Adaora fell to her knees and threw her arms around the limp Ayodele. Then she flexed what was hers.

It felt like staticky heat bursting from her back and washing over her, and then toward the soldiers, shoving them all away. When they tried to press forward against it, the force repelled them, sending them flying back.

Adaora grasped Ayodele tightly, pressing her face to the alien woman's neck. She could feel Ayodele's warm blood seeping into her clothes. She could smell its coppery scent, mixed with sea water and urine. Ayodele was breathing in raspy gulps.

Why?
Adaora thought.
Why why why?
Why was Ayodele bleeding? Why was she not changing? Why had she allowed them to beat her? Why
had
they beaten her? She continued to hold them back, as she pressed Ayodele's broken body into her own.

“Witchcraft,” one of the men grunted.

Bang!

One of the soldiers must have fired at her. The noise was deafening, but Adaora felt no bullet. Just before the soldier could fire again, Agu ran up and punched the man so hard that he flew across the concrete, nearly tumbling into the deadly water.

Adaora brought her face close to Ayodele's. She held the alien
woman's wide gaze. So different from the woman she had seen first on the beach less than two days ago. She'd experienced so much humanity in so little time.

“I saw you first. It started with you,” Ayodele whispered. “My people sent me for a reason. I've known all along. . . .” Blood dribbled from her lips and Adaora shuddered. “Your people. They wanted to use me, kidnap me, kill me. . . .”

“I'm sorry,” Adaora said. “We're better than that.”

“The Elders sent me,” Ayodele whispered. “We are a collective. Every part of us, every tiny universe within us is conscious. I am we, I am me. . . .” She coughed up more blood.

“But why . . . ?”

“You people need help on the outside but also within,” she said. “I will go within. . . . Adaora . . . let go of me . . . cover your ears.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

“Ayodele, please.”

“You'll all be a bit . . . alien.”