Welcome to Lagos. Chibundu Onuzo
were skittish in the back of the van, knees knocking, starting at every sound in the bush. They all wore charms, amulets, and talismans strung around their necks to ward off evil. Their battalion had been cursed so many times. After each execution, the victim’s mother or sister, or aunt or grandmother or wife, would call on native deities to devour them, half-fish, half-man gods to swallow them up. The land was against them, the water, the air, conspiring to smother and drown and bury them alive.
At any moment they could be ambushed. There was no tarred road, just this narrow path with the bush pressing close, leaves and branches swishing against the bodies of the vans. A hundred men in total snaked quietly to the village, the line of vans rolling forward slowly, headlights dimmed with strips of dark paper. At night, the Delta was as it had been centuries ago, black and seething with spirits.
The moon appeared, a full white disk spilling light on the thatched mud huts and squat concrete bungalows that lined the village entrance. The colonel was in the first van. He was always first in an attack. Chike’s men said bullets bent when they touched Colonel Benatari, that metal bounced off skin made impenetrable by juju. He saw the colonel now, walking into the village with his indestructible body, a compact black shape with a line of soldiers following him. They flung petrol on every roof they passed, quick and efficient in their movements.
The first hut bloomed into flame, and the next and the next, a garden of orange flowers. Was it the heat that drew the villagers from their huts or the smell of smoke? Village men were dashing into houses and rescuing the bric-a-brac of their lives, boxes, chairs, clothes bundled and dumped by the feet of their families. Women were carrying babies and smacking children that strayed too far from the family group. Chike and his platoon stood by their vans, watching this scene and waiting for their orders.
“When you hear the gunfire on that side, start shooting. Between us, these murderers will be destroyed.”
The voice belonged to Major Waziri, a thin, pallid man with a loud voice.
“And what if we refuse?” Chike asked.
“Who said that? Anyone who refuses will be shot.”
The villagers’ panic was giving way to common sense. Some were still blindly surging into their homes and emerging with items that would be useless without a roof over their heads: bedsteads and pots and kerosene stoves. But most were organizing themselves into firefighting units. Buckets of water appeared, thrown wildly and then with precision on the largest part of the flames. The humid air was on their side. One house was doused and another, then another. The women joined in. Even the children. They were winning when Colonel Benatari opened fire.
Chike had seen it enough times, civilians, at the sound of gunfire, dispersing like light spreading from a source. Mothers forgot children, husbands left wives, the old were pushed down and trampled.
“Fire!” Major Waziri said.
For a moment, there was silence. Only Colonel Benatari and his contingent were shooting. This is a mutiny, Chike thought. Unplanned and unconcerted, they had all decided to revolt. Then the first gun stuttered into life and the others found their voice.
“Let’s go now before we take part in this,” Chike said.
The men of his platoon turned when he spoke, fingers relaxing from triggers. Chike did not know the words that would make them drop their guns. Perhaps if he had led them, really led them instead of only giving orders, they would have followed him.
“Oya make we go,” Yẹmi said, “I don tire for this their army.”
THE TWO SOLDIERS WALKED through the night with Chike leading. They would make their way to Yenagoa, the closest city, and from there find a bus to Port Harcourt or Benin or perhaps even Lagos. Even now, Benatari might already be searching for them. In theory, they should be given a chance to defend their refusal to carry out the colonel’s order. In theory.
They still carried their guns, another crime to add to their desertion, but it would have been too dangerous to wander through this bush unarmed. Morning was already starting to show. Without hesitating, any party of militants that came upon them would kill them.
“Remove your shirt,” Chike said to Yẹmi. They could do nothing about their trousers, which announced their occupation, camouflaging nothing.
“I wan’ rest,” Yẹmi said.
“We stop when we reach the main road.”
“I never drink water. I no fit.”
Chike eyed Yẹmi but his former subordinate did not drop his gaze.
“At ease,” he said, just before Yẹmi flopped to the ground. The semblance of command must remain until they reached Yenagoa. After that, they could go their separate ways. For now, two were better than one.
DAWN CRACKED OVER THE forest. The sun rose slowly, an orange yolk floating into an albumen sky. He was hungry. Beside him, Yẹmi was starting to doze when the young man with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder walked into view and began to urinate, his back turned to them. Chike left Yẹmi and crept up to the man, who had squatted to defecate.
“I am officer of the Nigerian Army. You are under arrest. Hand over your gun. Do not turn. I said do not turn. Throw your gun on the ground and stand up with your hands behind your head.”
“How do I know you have a gun?”
“I should shoot?”
“My people are close.”
“So are mine.”
“Chike.” The man stiffened at the sound of Yẹmi’s voice and dropped his gun on the ground.
“Stand up. Slowly.”
“Can I pull up my trousers?”
There was a foreign tang to his speech, something in his diction striving to be American.
“He fit take us to the road,” Yẹmi said.
“We’re trying to get to the main road.”
“I wanna see you first.”
“You can turn. Slowly.”
It was a boy, not a man, just leaving his teenage years. His eyes were deeply planted in his face, giving him a starved look, but the rest of his features were regular. A furrow ran along the middle of his forehead, a crevice that deepened when he looked beyond and saw no signs of a Nigerian army.
“If I refuse?”
“We go shoot you. You think say we be soldier for nothing?”
To the best of Chike’s knowledge, Yẹmi had never shot a living thing, but his bravura was convincing.
“If you lead us into a trap, we will still kill you before your friends get to us,” Chike said, adding his own threat.
“No, no. I was going to the road myself anyway.”
“Your name?” Chike asked as the militant led them into the undergrowth, his gun a few inches from the boy’s spine.
“Fineboy.”
“Na which kind name be that?”
“Na my mama give me,” Fineboy said, for the first time dropping his accent and sliding into pidgin.
CHIKE HAD GROWN ACCUSTOMED to the back of their hostage’s head, his thin neck, the pulpy scar behind his ear, the scattering of razor bumps on his otherwise smooth hairline, clipped within the last few days, in a militant camp no less. Perhaps, as well as a barber, the militants had cinemas