truck, her toes dangling just inches from the ground. She still clutched the knife handle, though Wally had destroyed the knife.
He hoped the driver wouldn’t see her. Getting this ride was the first break he’d had in two days, and he needed the rest. Cripes, did he ever need the rest.
The smaller villages, like this one, had no electricity. No radios. No telephones. He’d eventually figured that out after a long session of intercultural charades; the villagers had spent a lot of time staring at the clanking metal man and his strange gestures. They didn’t run from him, though. If anything, he had the sense they knew what he was doing, and secretly approved of his mission. Maybe they’d heard about the Nyunzu lab, and the barge. They seemed to think he was pretty okay. Especially after he pantomimed fighting a Leopard Man. They’d loved that. Hence the ride.
He didn’t know how far this fella planned to take him-certainly not all the way to Bunia-but every mile Wally didn’t have to walk was a small blessing.
Wally scrubbed until there was nothing left of the S.O. S pad but a handful of fuzz. His feet looked a lot better, and he’d buffed out some of the worst pits in his arms, legs, and torso. The spots he couldn’t reach, those were what worried him the most. He dozed off
…
… and woke when the truck skidded to a halt. Wally slammed his forehead on the cab of the truck, cracking the rear window. “Ouch. Hey, sorry about your truck, guy.”
But the driver had already jumped out, and was running back down the road. Great. Wally stood, expecting to find Ghost floating in the middle of the road.
She wasn’t. But the road was blocked with an armored personnel carrier and three leopards (two spotted, one black). A fourth Leopard Man stood atop the carrier, in human form, behind a machine gun.
Rats. He should have expected this. The PPA knew where he was; he’d seen a helicopter earlier in the day. By now, they probably had all the roads to Bunia blocked off.
The machine-gunner raked the truck. A line of holes perforated the hood. The windshield shattered. Rounds pingpingpinged across Wally’s chest. He made a mental note to try to make sure the Committee found the driver somehow and got him a new truck. “You guys again. Don’t you leopard folks ever learn?”
He vaulted over the cab. The leopards reared back. Wally hit the ground hard, sending up a spray of mud that drenched the cats. They hissed, shaking their heads to clear their eyes.
Wally took advantage of the momentary distraction to close with the APC, rendering the machine gun useless. The gunner couldn’t aim at him as long as he stood next to the vehicle. Wally placed a hand on the armor, ready to disintegrate the whole thing, but then he thought better of it. Why not drive to Bunia in a PPA vehicle?
The leopards surrounded him, one in front and one each to his left and right. The gunner pulled his sidearm. He emptied a magazine on Wally’s head, arms, and shoulders. It hurt. A lot. Rivulets of blood trickled down his body, from a dozen different spots.
“Okay, now you’re asking for it, pal.” Wally gave the APC a violent shove. It tipped up on one set of wheels, just short of flipping over, before landing back upright with a ground-shaking crash. The gunner fell off.
The leopards chose that moment to pounce. One landed on his back, the others raked his arms. Wally jumped and fell backward, body-slamming the leopard on his back. They landed with a splash, a crack, and a yelp.
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.
