VILLAGE MAN
OUTSIDE ACCRA, GHANA
Reilly Carroll's second day in Africa started much the same way his first had; someone banging on the door, bidding him to greet the new day, far too early. The night before he had lain awake for what seemed like forever in the stifling heat and the crushing darkness, the dream about what happened in Los Angeles on that night four months ago playing over and over again.
Last night, he had slept like a baby. The rude awakening visited upon him by the man known only as The Ghanaian had jerked him awake in what must have a REM cycle; he was still desperately tired, and was struggling to keep his eyes open.
The four poster bed on which he had slept wasn't particularly comfortable, and the statue of the Virgin Mary, as well as the African tribal masks hanging on the faded floral wallpaper had made for an eerie sleeping experience.
When he trudged into the mansion's kitchen after an unsatisfying, lukewarm shower, he smelt the sizzling bacon and a whiff of what could only have been orange juice, and he was properly awake in an instant. One word rumbled through his sleep-addled mind; food.
He found The Ghanaian standing over the stove, cracking eggs into a saucepan.
At the long, oak table, Grace Scott and their host, Priscilla Adei-Cardwell were talking, and Reilly got an air of fear coming off his friend.
Reilly pulled out a chair, and sat down. Cardwell slid a clean glass over to him, and he picked up the pitcher of orange juice, pouring a good measure. He downed it in two gulps. Then he poured himself another.
"Good morning," he said to Grace, after knocking back this second glass.
"Good morning," Grace said, flashing him a smile.
"I'm glad you're already dressed, Mister Carroll," Cardwell said, cutting through their brief conversation. "I was hoping to leave before eight this morning. We have quite some driving to do."
"Where?" Reilly asked, glancing at The Ghanaian.
"We're heading east, to Lake Volta. There's a place there, with a Carrier of the Gene. I thought you'd like to meet him."
REILLY, GRACE & CARDWELL
SHORE OF LAKE VOLTA, GHANA
Hours had passed since a breakfast taken in silence; the four had taken Reilly and Grace's rented Jeep, as Cardwell had lamented hers was damaged. The Ghanaian was driving, a gun the exact twin of Reilly's at his side. Cardwell sat in the passenger's seat, watching the Ghanaian scenery pass them by, softly humming a tune.
Reilly and Grace sat in the back; neither of them had spoken since their brief greeting that morning. They sat in silence, Reilly calibrating the small device he had inherited from Greenland that enabled instantaneous testing of a suspected Carrier's blood determining within a few seconds whether or not they possessed the potential to manifest abilities. Grace merely stared out the window, and Reilly got the impression she was thinking long and hard about something.
To be honest, he was too.
Chambers, like Grace had been an empathic telepath, capable of detecting and manipulating emotions and thoughts, and like Grace had had grandiose dreams of saving the world. Chambers, Reilly had gathered, had determined that normal humanity, people without abilities, were not worth saving, however. The question was, would Grace develop the same attitude?
Would the old platitude hold true, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Though Grace did have absolute power, she had enough.
They'd seen firsthand what Chambers had been capable of, and Grace had had a taste of the extent of her own ability in the three months since. They'd seen the disadvantages, too; first in Boston, then in Tokyo, when a kick start of Grace's ability saw her suddenly detect the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of people at once; both times, it had almost killed her.
If Grace got a true taste of her ultimate potential, would she be able to resist?
Reilly liked to hope that she would, but the truth was he didn't know. He didn't even know how he would handle an ability like that, or how he would take on such huge power, and its resultant responsibility.
In the days that Cardwell, Greenland and Chambers first met in a Parisian street café, it must have seem so simple. There was a credible threat to world peace and stability, represented by the twin spectres of the United States and the Soviet Union. The agents the expected destruction were ICBMs and multi-megaton nuclear warheads.
Now, it wasn't so simple.
Humanity was facing so many threats, from so many fronts that there was no real way to stop it.
Reilly had hoped, when he started four months earlier, that this journey would be one of scientific discovery, not of philosophical questing.
He set aside the testing device, confident in its operation, and reached for the laptop, riding on the stained seat beside him. He picked it up, set it on his knees, and powered it up. After the usual flourish, Vista started working, and Reilly waited as it connected the global network maintained by no less than twelve Greenland Corporation satellites orbiting the Earth.
Grace shifted towards him, and he glanced at her, getting the impression she was about to speak. She seemed to decide better of it, turning back towards the window.
They'd each been given separate rooms the night before, and had had no chance to communicate away from their hosts, even though, Reilly knew, Grace had the ability to project her thoughts into his mind and read the responses. Reilly guessed she had just wanted to be alone with her thoughts for a little while, especially after Cardwell's somewhat ominous warning the night before.
"Are you alright?" he asked her in a hushed voice.
"Yeah," she said off-handedly, still staring out the window as the countryside passed them by. Still, Reilly could tell that she was not.
"Are you sure?"
In response, her voice echoes through his mind. I'm fine, okay? Don't push it.
Reilly looked away from her, and down at the computer as it finally connected. He thought, a little huffily, Fine.
He immediately set about checking his emails; he was amazed at the amount of junk his account had picked up in the three days since he had checked it. Updates from Brendan, in L.A., bulletins from the Berkeley students association, emails from friends he hadn't seem in four months, and then, his heart jumped, one from Alex Chapman.
She had been a waitress in Alabama when Reilly met her, but now she was a full time student, on her way to becoming a nurse. She was a Carrier, who had manifested; she had the ability of rapid cellular regeneration; she could heal almost any injury instantaneously.
He'd spent a night with her, way back when, and had visited her for a few weeks. They'd become close, close enough for him to ask if she wanted to join him on the world tour.
She'd turned him down, though she had expressed her true, deep regret, just as she had when he'd asked if she'd like to come with him on his cross-continental search for those gifted with abilities. Then, like now, she'd had commitments, and her ability did not exempt her from them.
Reilly opened the email, and read it quickly. She just said hello, and caught him up on the current details of her life; that she'd found a new job, that she'd come first in her class and, most significantly, that she missed him.
He composed a quick response, writing about the journey to Ghana, the day he had spent there, and where he was intending to go next. A message from Brendan had instructed him to go to Mumbai; he'd happily agreed. He wished her luck with her upcoming exams and in the new job, and sent the email on its way.
He turned off the laptop, after writing a few more replies, and placed it back on the seat beside him.
They'd been driving for hours, and it was the first time he had bothered to actually look at what was out the window. It was glorious; rolling green hills, thickly growing forests, small, well-ordered towns. It wasn't the Africa depicted on television; it was alive, teeming. Truly beautiful.
Ghana was, really, a nice county, not at all what Reilly had expected. Though he hadn't seen much, he was afraid any more would ruin the experience for him.
The sun was high above, nearly at its zenith, when they finally reached Lake Volta, no words passing between any of them; the only sounds were the rumbling of the wheels over the gravel and the occasional sound of someone drinking from a canteen.
The sight of the lake took Reilly and Grace's collective breath away. It stretched between two mountain ranges, the water deep blue and shimmering in the sunlight. Water lapped at the expansive, grassy shores. The Jeep moved down the side of the mountain, towards the lake, and, Reilly saw a small village.
The lake stretched to the north and south as far as the eye could see. It was the world's largest reservoir in the world, eight thousand five hundred square kilometres in size, more than 520 kilometres long.
"Wow," Grace breathed, and Reilly heard the wonder in her voice.
"Incredible," Cardwell said from the front. "Isn't it?"
Grace narrowed her eyes, and watched the woman sitting in front of her as The Ghanaian concentrated on manoeuvring the Jeep down the steep, rocky roads.
Cardwell went on, "But absolutely nothing compared with the true extent of our potential..." Reilly expected her to say something about individuals with abilities, but she surprised him by finishing with "...as human beings."
He felt relief radiate off of Grace as well.
They settled back, and continued the drive to the village in silence, finally coming down the sides of the mountain onto a long, sweeping plain of golden grasses swaying in the gentle breeze. The village was a collection of twenty or thirty single-story wooden bungalows and one massive shed that stood on the waterfront, surrounded by a small brood of fishing boats and tiny sailing craft. It has hard to tell from a distance if any of the boats were equipped with motors, though Reilly would have been surprised if they had.
The Jeep cut across a dusty track that led straight through the middle of town.
As they passed the first bungalow, Grace's hand shot out, clamping around Reilly's right knee.
"What is it?" he asked, wincing as she squeezed tighter.
"There's no one here," she whispered. "The town's empty."
"Close," The Ghanaian said, his voice booming through the vehicle. "There is one man still living here."
"Living?" Reilly groaned, choking back an ominous feeling rising within him.
Grace's hand tightened again. "Oh my God."
Reilly looked over his friend's shoulder, and, in the ground-level door of one of the bungalows was a body, as though it had simply keeled over while trying to leave the house. He had to fight to keep himself vomiting; Grace wasn't so lucky.
"Pull over!" he shouted, and The Ghanaian complied. Grace wrenched the door open, just before she exploded, pouring sick over the dusty ground. She fell to her hands and knees, wheezing and dry-retching.
Reilly leapt to her side, holding her as she coughed and gagged on bile, trying to keep her steady. "What's wrong?" he asked, his voice getting panicked. "Breathe... breathe. What happened?"
Grace finally recovered enough to speak. "The Ghanaian was right. There's one left. He's so... full of darkness. There's so much sadness and..."
She could say no more; she simply collapsed into tears in Reilly's arms, sobbing pitifully as tears streamed down her face. He held her to him, and rocked back and forth. But the damage had been done; she'd actively sought out the survivor, and had seen his mind first-hand; every twisted, dark emotion. It affected her deeply, and had only happened once before; immediately after the rooftop showdown in Los Angeles.
At length, she recovered, and, as she was still shaky on her knees, Reilly helped her up, and back to the car. Cardwell was waiting, a canteen in hand. She offered it to Grace, who downed it in a few gulps.
"Are you okay?" Cardwell asked, seeming genuinely concerned.
Grace nodded. "Where's The Ghanaian?"
"He's gone to find our host," Cardwell answered. "I would have asked you to, but I think it's safer to keep you away from his mind."
"And the body?" Reilly asked. "Is it safe to be here?"
"You are never safe when meeting one of us for the first time," Cardwell said, glancing at the body, It was a few days old, and the flies were starting to gather. "I believe that that body may be the evidence of our host's ability."
"Are you serious?" Reilly spat. He looked at the body, swarming with insects. He caught a glimpse of the dead person's dark skin, and saw what looked like crusty white sores. "It looks like the plague..."
"Perhaps it is," Cardwell shrugged.
Grace looked as disgusted as Reilly felt.
"If you think about it, it's not that surprising." Cardwell shrugged. "Consider that these powers are genetic mutations. There are advantageous mutations, such as the ability to fly, or to read minds. It makes stands to reason that there are some less-than-desirable mutations. Such as, say, the ability to carry and spread a deadly virus. A plague, as has seemed to have happened here."
The Ghanaian reappeared then, coming around the car. "I've found him. He's in the town's cemetery."
Cardwell nodded. "Come on, let's go."
The four set off into the ghost town, to meet the man that had wrought this devastation with the plague he carried within.
They found him at the edge of town, kneeling beside one of dozens of freshly dug graves. The tears started flowing down Grace's cheeks once again, and she shook with small sobs. Reilly looped his arm over her shoulder, pulling her to him.
"Good day," Cardwell said in English.
The man leapt to his feet, brandishing a shovel, his clothes torn and dirty, his face marked with tear tracks. He barked something in an incomprehensible indigenous language, that Reilly recognised as Dagaare.
Cardwell barked something back.
They held a brief conversation, none of which Reilly understood. The Ghanaian appeared Reilly and whispered to him to hand over the testing device that would determine whether or not the man was a Carrier. Reilly handed it over, and the Ghanaian rejoined the conversation. Finally, The Ghanaian and the Dagaare-speaking, wild-looking village man walked away together, and Cardwell turned back to Reilly and Grace.
"We're waiting in his house," Cardwell said, "while they talk."
She sounded somewhat bitter.
"Come on," Cardwell said, setting off towards one of the bungalows. "I'd like to talk about Mumbai."
Reilly and Grace shared glances.
The three of them reached a comfortable-looking, three-room bungalow. Cardwell opened the front door, ushering them into the small, yet cosy, living room of the bungalow. They took three of the four chairs around the rickety table.
They talked about what Reilly and Grace were planning on doing next. Reilly hadn't yet had a chance to tell Grace about the message he'd gotten from Brendan that morning, ordering him to Mumbai, though Cardwell had found out independently; she still maintained regular email contact with Brendan, as she had with Greenland before him. In the end, they'd agreed to spend one more night at Cardwell's mansion, and in the morning fly out from Accra.
All four of them; Cardwell, Grace, Reilly and The Ghanaian.
Cardwell explained that the village man was unconvinced as to their intentions, and she'd had The Ghanaian take him for a walk to calm him down.
At length, they returned, The Ghanaian standing in a corner, the village man taking a seat across from Reilly and Grace, beside Cardwell. He turned to Cardwell, and said something in Dagaare. Cardwell translated it for Reilly and Grace "He says he has ready to tell us his story."
"By the way," The Ghanaian added, placing the testing device on the table in front of Reilly. "He is positive for the Gene."
Reilly nodded, and slid the device back towards himself, slipping it into his pocket. He looked back at Cardwell and nodded.
And, with Cardwell translating, Reilly and Grace listened to the man tell his story.
"It started after night of hard drinking. The next morning, he could barely remember what had caused it. Someone had said something, about someone. And he got angry. He'd finished his beer, and gone home. He didn't have to work the next morning, so he came home late. His wife was up and knitting, listening to the radio when he got home.
"He kissed her, and she wished him a goodnight. He had placed his hands on her cheeks, and then he had slumped into his bed, and drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep.
"The next morning, he woke up with a hangover. His wife barely woke up." It was here the man started crying, and Cardwell placed a hand on his shoulder. Reilly and Grace could barely move. They knew what was coming next; the death of the entire village. He went on.
"Her skin had lost its sheen during the night; she was flushed, dripping with cold sweat. She could barely open her eyes or speak, let alone get out of bed." Cardwell translated. "He ran to the doctor's hut, and then they ran back. The doctor was white, an Englishman doing charity work here, who spoke their language. When they got back, his wife was unconscious, and barely breathing. She fought the illness for two weeks, while it ravaged her body. Finally, the doctor told him that he could do nothing. She died that night. He went to see the doctor the next morning, consumed with rage."
The man's fists clenched, and Reilly and Grace moved backwards in their seats instinctively. The man ignored them, fresh tears streaking down his face.
"He had felt the anger, actually felt it, bubbling up like black liquid..." Cardwell paused, looking for a better word. "Like tar, bubbling up through his skin; it never came out, but he felt as though it had. He grabbed the doctor's hand, and he felt the darkness leave him for a little while. As soon as he left it came back. The doctor died three days later."
Reilly and Grace traded shocked glances. Grace's eyes were red from crying.
"And the sickness spread. Everyone who went to visit the doctor that first day, before he became ill, got sick. It started with sweating, then aching, then the inability to keep food down. Then the boils came; they were white on the outside, and became black, dried-blood encrusted sores in their centre, before becoming white in the centre just before death," Cardwell closed her eyes, as the man buried his face into his hands.
"All who came into contact contracted the disease." Cardwell said, struggling to translate as the man spoke into his hands, his muffled voice barely reaching her. "People fled the village, and the authorities never came to help. It took almost four months, but, eventually, most of them were gone. The rest were dead or dying. Except for him and the priest."
The man who had watched his wife die, who had experienced the blackness of rage and grief fester as though beneath his skin, had been the only healthy young man left in his village, Reilly realised. No wonder he looked so gaunt, so worn.
"The priest was old, but so far unaffected by the disease. He's never touched the priest, and they'd barely been around one another except for Sunday services. They made rounds every morning, feeding the ill, keeping them comfortable, as more and more died, and more and more became weaker and weaker. At first, the village had buried the dead. Then the undertaker and his family had gotten sick. So the rest of the village buried them, and tried to keep burying as their number diminished, until there was no one left to bury any more."
Grace's jaw hung open, and she reached for the man's hand. He jerked the massive, calloused limb away from her, and kept talking, Cardwell translating. "All they could do was care for the dying, hoping that at least some of them would pull through. None of them ever did. When the village elder died, the rest of the village gave up hope. They'd cared for him with loving devotion, they'd prayed for him into the small hours of the morning, but still he had succumbed to the sickness."
The man paused, lifting a cup of water to his parched lips. Then he continued, Cardwell still translating. "Only the priest and the man were left now, to care to the dozens of dying, and to try and bury the dead. The priest gave the villagers their Last Rites when they asked for them, and even when they didn't. Then, the priest got sick."
"No," Grace whispered, and her hand clasped Reilly's. He could barely believe what he was hearing, He'd had no idea how dark the dark side of these abilities could be. Dozens dead, all because of one man's ability,
Cardwell kept going, translating as the man spoke, "He held on for a month; he saw the village crumble as one healthy man tried to keep it going. In the end, as fewer and fewer remained, and knowing his own time was near, the priest held one last confessional; only he could attend. He blamed himself now, and told the priest so. The priest took his hand, and said he could feel the darkness. The priest told him it wasn't his fault. He died in the confessional box, after giving one order for penance. To bury the dead."
The man stopped speaking, and stood. He turned towards his bungalow's door, and barked back something.
"And now I have to finish," Cardwell translated as he disappeared through the door.
"And we will help him," The Ghanaian said, his voice deep. "We will help him find forgiveness from his Lord."
It was then Reilly noticed the crucifix around The Ghanaian's neck.
He looked at Grace. Through tear-filled eyes, she nodded.
It took hours; digging, dragging, lowering, filling, placing a whitewashed wooden cross at the head of the grave, with the person's name carved into the wood. Grace did the carving, while Cardwell did the filling. Reilly and the man ultimately responsible for the death that lay around them did the digging. The Ghanaian dragged six bodies at a time, and Reilly finally realised his ability; enhanced strength, like the deceased Jake Nicholson.
In the end, they were covered in dirt, and the sun had almost disappeared over the horizon; the sky was painted in gold and dusty pink by the time they returned to the man's bungalow.
They went through the motions, Reilly instructing Cardwell to invite the man for treatment and voluntary containment in Los Angeles until a permanent solution could be found, a way for him to control his power.
He declined. Too many had died, he said.
He thanked them for their help, never once speaking English, never once saying his name. Cardwell told them all to leave, saying that she would meet them at the car. Reilly and Grace needed no further pushing; they were tired, exhausted, physically and emotionally spent.
They'd buried at least thirty people that day.
As The Ghanaian reluctantly left, Cardwell sat down at the man's rickety table, directly across from him. She reached into her pocket, and removed a shining, silver gun, the exact duplicate of Reilly's and The Ghanaian's.
The village man eyed it suspiciously. He looked up at Cardwell.
"That gun has one bullet in it," Cardwell explained, in the language he had used all day. "Once I leave, you can decide what to do with it."
The man didn't speak until Cardwell was almost out the door. "Suicide is a sin."
"If, after everything you've been through, the Lord doesn't let you into heaven, then he wasn't worth worshipping in the first place." Cardwell turned back to him, tears sliding down her cheeks. "Rest in peace."
She disappeared, leaving the man staring at the gun.
Cardwell had wiped away the tears when she got back to the car. Reilly Carroll and Grace Scott were already in the back seat, the former with his arms around the latter.
The Ghanaian, her faithful bodyguard, stood waiting outside the driver's side door, arms crossed. "Are you ready?" he asked her.
"I am," Cardwell answered. "This is over."
Then, from the depths of the village, came a single gunshot, resounding through the rapidly descending night.
"What was that?" The Ghanaian barked.
"A man's freedom," Cardwell shrugged. "Come on, let's get out of here."