Wally caught a flash of white in the foliage. Ghost, watching from the sidelines. She looked… terrified.
But then he was at the center of a maelstrom of fur, claws, and fangs, and couldn’t see anything. The remaining leopards dodged his punches and kicks. When he turned to deal with one, the other put new gouges in his rust.
He had finally caught one by the throat and was squeezing hard, when the leopard shimmered into the form of a man. The giant cat scratching at Wally’s shoulder also turned into a man. A very confused and very silly-looking man. Wally saw panic in their eyes. He dropped the first guy, who fell to the ground with both hands to his neck, and planted an iron elbow into the second fellow’s stomach. They crawled away, past their comrade whose legs Wally had crushed. He, too, had reverted to his human form.
What the heck just happened?
The gunner ran out from behind the APC. Apparently he had reloaded, because he squeezed off a volley of shots while his comrades retreated. Wally charged him, grabbed his hand, and crushed the gun into a useless ball of metal. His opponent fell to his knees, screaming like a banshee.
Wally cuffed him alongside the head, knocking him out. Silence descended over the empty road. Well, it was mostly silent, except for the sobbing.
Sobbing? Did I miss one? Wally looked around, but all the Leopard Men either were unconscious or had retreated. No, the crying came from nearby. From the roadside.
From Ghost.
“It’s okay,” said Wally. He saw how she stared at the Leopard Men. “You’re safe. They can’t hurt you now.” Her feet, he noticed, were touching the ground.
The knife handle fell from her fingers. She grabbed a fallen branch, ran across the road, and started to beat the guy sprawled at Wally’s feet. Her bawling-loud, inconsolable-evoked one of the horrors Wally and Gardener had witnessed in Nyunzu: a Leopard Man handing a syringe to a little boy, forcing him to infect another child with the virus.
“Hey, hey. Don’t do that.” Wally gently took the branch away. She fell to her knees, hitting the dead man with tiny fists.
He wrapped her in his arms and held her until she cried herself to sleep. It took a long time.
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Adesina was in the second pit Michelle searched.
At first, Michelle had thought the pit held nothing but body parts. Then she saw something moving in the corner. She started trembling. But then she made herself jump into the pit. Immediately she sank up to her waist in the decaying remains. She waded over to where the movement had been and started digging. Soon she was completely covered in the foul-smelling, rotting flesh.
But what she finally uncovered wasn’t a sweet little girl. It wasn’t even the feral child who had haunted those dreams. What she found was a hideously repulsive sluglike creature, encased in a shiny filament cocoon.
She knew it was Adesina.
Michelle tried not to think about how she didn’t want to touch Adesina now. But when she finally grabbed the thing around its middle, it was as if she’d been flipped into one of her pit dreams.
Adesina is there with her, the dream Adesina, the way she was before the wild card had changed her. Adesina can feel Michelle’s revulsion, and in turn Michelle feels Adesina’s sorrow. It staggers her for a moment.
Michelle gathered herself and carried Adesina back to the compound, cradled in her arms. Joey glared as she walked up.
“This is Adesina,” Michelle said. And then the cocoon began to pulse. A chunk of it fell off and Michelle almost dropped it. “Go get me a towel,” she said to Joey. The cocoon moved again. Michelle tried not to be grossed out, but she hated bugs and wormy things.
A few seconds later, a leg emerged from the cocoon-and then another. After that, the head started out. It was covered in a shiny, viscous fluid. Michelle thought it was nasty. Joey was thrusting a towel at her. Michelle plopped on the ground and started dabbing at Adesina’s head. Now that she had something productive to do, she could shove her gut reaction aside.
And as she patted away the fluid, she saw that Adesina’s face wasn’t an insect face at all. It was the face that Michelle knew from her dreams.
A moment later, there was a wet sound and the rest of Adesina’s body slid from the cocoon. The husk fell off Michelle’s knees and she kicked it away. She kept gently drying Adesina’s body. Adesina started shaking and wriggling. A pair of small wings unfurled from her back. She pushed herself up on her legs, wobbly at first. She was the size of a small dog. Michelle didn’t know what to do now. Part of her was still not wild about the insectyness of Adesina, but then there was that sweet face she knew so well. She was torn.
Adesina raised herself up onto her back legs and put her front legs on either side of Michelle’s face. Amazing warmth and happiness spread through Michelle. Then Adesina said, “Thank you.”
Tears began to pour down Michelle’s face and she reached out and touched Adesina’s cheek. “You’re welcome,” she replied. “I’m so sorry.
…”
Adesina kissed Michelle’s cheek. “You saved me. I held on because I knew you would find me.”
Michelle couldn’t speak. It felt like there was a golf ball in her throat from the tears. It had been so long since she’d felt… since she felt happy. She wondered if she had ever really felt happy before.
“Michelle,” Adesina said. “Michelle, now you need to go help the others, you need to go to the Red House.”
“I don’t want to leave you!” Michelle replied, alarmed. “I just found you.”
Adesina cocked her head to one side like a praying mantis. “This is the other reason why I brought you here. It wasn’t just to help me. It was to help them. I’ve been in their dreams, too. I know what has been happening to them and so do you. You must go soon. Because I’ve been in his dreams, too.”
And then Michelle saw a barrage of new images. A compound in the jungle. Children being rounded up and given shots. Then there were images of Tom Weathers killing people. Lots of people.
She didn’t need to see more. She sighed. “Of course I’ll go,” she said. Adesina removed her front legs and the wonderful warmth and happiness slid from Michelle. And she felt cold inside again.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Joey asked.
Michelle held Adesina up to Joey. “I need you to take care of her for a while. Take care of all of the children here.”
Then Michelle got up. She brushed past Joey and went to find someone who knew where the Red House was-and who would take her there.
33
Monday,
December 28
On the South Bank of the
Aruwimi River
Near Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Ghost loved peanut butter.
She sat behind Wally, on one of the long, low benches that lined the interior of the APC, silently scooping peanut butter out of a jar with her fingers. She still hadn’t spoken, but neither had she become insubstantial since letting Wally hug her. If anything, she followed him more closely than ever now.
The APC wasn’t the easiest thing Wally had ever driven. He knew how to drive a stick, and even some mining equipment, but this thing had more gears than he was used to. And it handled strangely, too. But he more or less managed to keep it on the bumpy, muddy roads leading to Bunia. They’d passed another roadblock this morning, but the soldiers and Leopard Men had waved the PPA vehicle through without a second glance.
Which suited Wally just fine. The last thing he wanted was to get into a fight while Ghost clung to his side. Also, it gave some of his wounds time to heal.
Wally chanced taking his eyes off the road long enough to glance at the booklet he’d found in the APC. It was a wire-bound booklet of laminated map pages. Together they covered the greater Bunia area, depicting topographic details, roads, power lines, garrisons, military installations, trains… everything he might have needed to make a strategic assessment of the area, if only he could read French. If only Jerusha were here.