He would never know for sure what had caused him to freeze. Maybe his dreaming mind had looked out into the jungle and recognized the signs of danger: a glint of sunlight on steel, a fern stalk snapped and broken, the sudden peculiar silence of birds.
Whatever it was, from that moment on Abiola believed in it. So he took his fear of the old man seriously.
Abiola turned and hurried down the street, telling himself that things in Lagos were not always what they seemed. The old man could be scouting for the flesh-trade or he could be a corporate hitman, a merc recruiter, a drug runner.
Abiola did not wish to find out.
He ducked down a side street, took another turn, and ended up on Ikorodu Road.
In the late afternoon, Ikorodu was a snarl of traffic, an impossibly long line of cars and trucks so old they still ran on gas. Mixed in with the cars were darting motorcycle taxis called okadas, construction yellow danfo busses so crowded that people hung out their open doors, and the occasional caravan of trucks on their way to Victoria Island in the company of tanks and APCs.
None of them going anywhere.
A brown cloud of smog hung over the go-slow. Horns honked and men cursed. Boys no older than six worked their way between the stalled cars, hawking gum, newspapers, steamed bean cakes, sweating bottles of Gulder beer, anything that might sell to the trapped commuters.
In the chaos, no one noticed a hulking troll moving down the sidewalk.
Abiola Fashola was big even for a troll, two meters sixty-one and pushing three hundred twenty kilos, only the last ten of which were from too much Star beer. His skin was dark chocolate and a pair of ornate horns the color of bronze began at his forehead and curled around like a ram's. He wore camouflage pants from his merc days over heavy work boots. A black t-shirt revealed muscular arms that could pop a human skull like a balloon. A meter-long machete hung from his belt by a lanyard.
He also wore a simple gold cross hidden beneath his long, black beard. Abiola had great love for the baby Jesus, but he tried not to let it show.
In Lagos, universal love and brotherhood was the kind of thing that could get you killed.
As he walked down the street his vision swarmed with augmented reality objects, ghostly icons floating over reality, powered by the mesh network that blanketed the road.
Most of it was garbage, spam pop-ups offering to increase the size of certain parts of his anatomy. (Like he needed any part of himself to be bigger.)
He powered down his comlink and looked around. No sign of the mysterious old man. Maybe it'd all been in his imagination, after all.
Abiola weaved through the crazy, crowded streets of Lagos, following Ikorodu Road another couple blocks before ducking east again.
After losing the mysterious old man, Abiola almost felt good. Until he heard a cruel voice behind him say: 'If it isn't Mr. Troll,' and he remembered the errand that had brought him here in the first place. • • •
They ended up in a little bar, Abiola nursing a Star beer the street gang bought him. Abiola loved Star, but this one tasted a little off. Bottled beer went for five naira, but he couldn't help thinking this one had cost more.
Abiola raised the bottle in a gesture of respect and said, 'Thank you for the beer, Babafemi Kosoko.'
Yeah. This one had cost quite a bit more.
The bar was small, a ramshackle collection of salvaged wood over a dirt floor. It was filled with the six or seven area boys Babafemi had brought with him, all of them armed with automatic weapons and wicked looking knives.
Babafemi and Abiola sat alone at a battered table. Babafemi was young and handsome. He wore jeans, real western blue jeans, and a pale green t-shirt that proclaimed: 'I don't have an attitude problem, you're just an asshole.' The boy couldn't be older than twenty.
His given name meant, 'Beloved by his father.'
Babafemi flashed a lopsided grin, bright against his dark face. 'We've been watching you, Abiola Fashola. Trolls are rare among the Yoruba people. Especially ones who used to be mercs.'
'That part of my life is over,' said Abiola carefully.
'Yes, but you still have the skills, no? You don't have to be a merc, but you still have the skills.'
Abiola took a pull of his beer.
Babafemi was not human, not really. Oh, he was biologically human, Abiola was sure of that, but the part of human beings that made them feel for others of their kind, that held them back from terrible violence, that caused them to reach out a helping hand when none was required, that part of Babafemi was utterly missing.
Abiola hated killing, he was sick to death of killing, but he would have killed Babafemi for a quarter-naira and he would have taken the job without a second's consideration. He would've taken no joy in it, but he would have done it anyway for the same reason one puts down a rabid dog: because the world would be a better place without Babafemi in it.
Except instead of killing Babafemi, Abiola was going to end up working for him.
'The 38 Dragons have forgotten their place,' said Babafemi. 'They've been giving us trouble.'
'Isn't their place down south where Shomolu bumps up against Surulere's northeast corner?' asked Abiola. 'Maybe they're giving you trouble because they've got their backs to a killing field. If you talked with them, maybe you could work something out.'
A thin, cold smile knifed across Babafemi's young face. 'Oh, we're going to work something out. It won't involve talking, though.' The boy leaned forward. 'And the Ammits would like your help.'
An ammit was a giant crocodile. The awakened species terrorized the swamps and creeks of Lagos. It was a powerful and dangerous creature, but Abiola understood that calling yourself an ammit didn't make you an ammit.
These boys, these terrible boys played at being soldiers, played at being monsters. They called themselves tigers or crocodiles or dragons or lions, but in the end all they did was kill each other.
And whoever else happened to be in the way.
'I don't know,' said Abiola softly.
'Eighty-five naira,' said Babafemi, 'and plenty more where that's from. Every time you join us for one of our little parties.'
Abiola stared off into the distance. Eighty-five naira and a bottle of beer. How had he come to sell his soul for so little?
Babafemi leaned back in his chair, and slapped one of the young men crowding the bar on the arm. 'Or you could always become a fisherman.'
Everyone laughed at Babafemi's grand joke.
And that's really what it was about. Choices. He could go work for one of the corps, who were less decent even than the mercs they hired. Or he could eek out a meager living, just another poor maghas paying tribute to Babafemi or some other petty thug while the poverty of Shomolu drained the life out of him.
Or he could go back to carrying a rifle for anyone with the naira, go back to killing for money.
No, there weren't any other choices.
So he would be a soldier in the gang wars. And why not? He'd just be killing another Babafemi on the other side. Hadn't he told himself he was willing to do that, just a few minutes before?
Abiola cleared his throat. 'You're just going to kill the Dragons, right? We're not going to… hurt any innocents.'
Babafemi's face screwed up into an expression of faux shock. 'Innocents?' he said. 'My boys and I would never hurt innocents.' A broad smiled stretched across his handsome face. 'But let me tell you something, Abiola. Isn't no one in this world who is really innocent.'
Then Babafemi laughed out loud to show he didn't really mean it.
Even though Abiola knew he did. • • •
The western sky was on fire with the sun's death, molten orange shot through with gold, fading to dark blue and then purple. Beneath that magnificent sky the cool air of dusk carried the rotten stink of garbage and the rattle of automatic gunfire. Teenagers grunted or cried out as bullets took their lives and their bodies fell upon the mounds of refuse they sheltered behind, just one more piece of garbage for Lagos to bear.
How did I come to this place? Abiola wondered.
