She stopped, turned back and went a last time into her parents’ bedroom and took one of her mother’s black curly-haired wigs to cover her bald scalp. It didn’t fit her small head, but she wore it anyway, imagining it to be more like a hat she hid beneath.
“I am like Hermes,” she said aloud as she stepped onto the quiet road, just to hear her voice. Hermes was a god of travel. Maybe she could find the box that her father sold away. The box that was taken from her and if it had not been taken, none of this would have happened. It was mine, she thought. And it was all she had left of home.
She nodded to herself as she walked, back straight, stride true. “I will find you. Wherever you are.”
CHAPTER 5
THE ROAD
“Inshallah,” she said to herself, over and over as she walked along the main road.
The same road where she’d been hit. The bodies, including her brother’s, were still there. However, there was not a bit of traffic on the usually busy street. She ran alongside the road, not daring to look toward her brother’s corpse. Not daring to look at any of the faces. The swarms of flies were so thick that she wouldn’t have seen much if she’d looked, anyway.
Up the road, she passed three cars that had rolled into the bushes. Each was a nest of flies and rotting corpses. Other than these, there were no other vehicles. Eventually, after she’d walked for a half hour, she came to a roadblock in the distance. There were at least three soldiers in forest green fatigues standing at it. She hid in the grasses on the roadside and crept closer.
They stood in front of two thick slabs of yellow-striped concrete dragged into the road. Their military vehicles were parked on the side. And there was a white man with them who was wearing all black with a badge on the right side of his chest she couldn’t quite see, like a secret police officer in one of the Hollywood movies. The white man’s uniform was long-sleeved and it was hot and humid, but he seemed comfortable. She stepped into the shadow of the trees and grasses and snuck by. She was a small girl who’d spent all her life climbing the family shea tree. So she was fast, silent and comfortable amongst plant-life. Plus, they probably didn’t expect to see any survivors, especially a little girl.
Once past the roadblock, she made a turn onto another road and she walked for two hours. And by the evening, the world opened up to her. She was outside Wulugu, in the town of Nabori. People. Homes. Markets. Cars and trucks. She spent that first night, however, in a cluster of trees beside the busy road. Exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep almost the moment she rested her head against the tree. The loud gasp of someone feet away woke her. “Ghost! Spirit!” a man whispered. He turned and stumbled off.
She froze, listening with every part of her body because it was too dark to see him clearly. He was moving away. Nearly gone. She breathed a sigh of relief, her whole body shaking with the rush of adrenaline. She was many yards into the small forest beside the road. How did he see me? she wondered. Then she realized it. She was glowing, faintly green-yellow, but just enough to look like a forest spirit in the darkness. She couldn’t see very well around her, but she was sure she was surrounded by dead mosquitoes and other biting insects. Maybe this was why she was glowing, because her body was being assaulted by their bites and it was protecting itself. She quickly rubbed fresh shea butter on her arms, legs and torso and grabbed her things.
Just after sunrise, as she walked alongside the road, a man driving a truck stopped beside her. She kept walking, pretending she did not see him. She was holding the wooden body of her broken Sankofa bird and she squeezed it, praying the man would just go away.
“Do you need a ride?” he asked.
Sankofa pressed her chin to her chest and kept walking.
“Hello?” the man said from his truck. “I am safe. I have three daughters about your age. It’s not right for you to be walking here.”
She kept walking, but he didn’t go away. “I will call the police,” he said, holding up his mobile phone.
“No!” she said, looking up. “No police, sir.”
“Then where are you going?” he asked, grinning. He wore a long white kaftan and there were prayer beads hanging from his rearview mirror. “What’s your name?”
She looked at her feet and shook her head. She muttered the first name to come to mind. “My name’s… Sankofa. I’m going to the… next town.” Please don’t ask me the name of it, she frantically thought.
“Get in. I will drive you,” he said. “I know a woman there who can offer you a bed to sleep in for however long you need. I’ll even program my truck in front of you and have it drive itself, so you know exactly where I’m taking you.”
She hesitated. The name “Sankofa” was echoing in her mind, filling empty confused crevices. She liked it. She put her brother’s broken bird into her pocket and stepped toward his truck. She didn’t trust the man, but she didn’t want him to call the police, either. The thought of her dead parents, dead brother, dead town pulled at her. Maybe she did want him to call the police… so they could arrest and punish her for what she’d done. But she also wanted to flee, to escape, to keep going so she could right all the wrongs by finding the box. Yes, she thought, if she found the box maybe everyone would… wake up. “Ok,” she said. “Just into town, though.”
However, the moment Sankofa touched the truck’s door, something happened. She felt nothing. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. The truck just stopped working. One moment its idling engine was chugging away, the next, it was not. There was no sigh, as it stopped. No exhalation of exhaust or steam. No electric spark. The truck simply was no longer running. There were no vehicles passing on the road at that moment, so the silence was profound.
“What did you do?” the man asked.
She stepped back as he climbed in and tried to start his truck. Nothing happened. Not even a vehicular gasp. The truck was simply dead.
“What’d you do?” he shouted again, as he turned the key and nothing happened. “Are you some kind of witch?” He tried again. Nothing.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said, stepping away.
The rest happened fast. She sensed the change in the man, from kind and helpful to furious. Swift like the weather. She turned and ran. She was fast, but this man was faster and she didn’t get far before he’d grabbed her satchel. He yanked at it and she fell to the ground. “What did you do to my truck?” he shouted. “I was only trying to help you! My truck is my livelihood!” He slapped her hard across the face, his eyes wide and red.
The hot, raw sting registered in her brain and her body flooded with terror and panic. She stumbled backwards, holding her face. She remembered sneaking across the grass, as she stared at the roadblock. Leaving Wulugu. Seeing her mother’s fly-riddled body. Her dead brother who’d just been alive beside her on the road. Then she was thrust forward and she glimpsed death, destruction, heat, violence and more terror. Then she was back staring into the bewildered eyes of a man who was about to slap her again.
The green light that burst from her was wilder and denser than what had happened in Wulugu, but it didn’t travel beyond the man and his truck. She glanced at this for only a moment, then she pressed herself to the ground. The second blow from the man didn’t come. There was no sound and only moments passed. She heard a vehicle zoom by on the road. When the vehicle didn’t stop, she opened her eyes. She was in the shade of the dead truck, her satchel still on her shoulder. When she looked at where the man had been, all that was left was what might have been a jawbone. The top or bottom, she did not know. But it still carried all the teeth. She screeched and got to her feet. Sankofa ran.