Consolidati - By W. Bjorn Page 0,1

were dark, silent, their windows broken like jagged teeth, their bricks eroded. Perhaps they were even empty, but he couldn’t say for certain.

He stayed like that a long time while the others slept until finally, with a flutter, something caught his eye.

It was not what he had expected. It was only a bird.

A raven had detached from one of the many broken lampposts on the street. Sefu had not seen it perching there. The bird beat the air with a strange awkwardness, circling just below the ceiling of fog and, to his great dismay, descended immediately toward the house and landed in front of the window. Even in the foggy half-light, he could see the bird was looking up at him—directly at him. Its eyes were not the eyes of a bird. They luminesced, glowed, focused and twisted inside like the lens of a camera. He had never seen anything like it before, but he knew what it meant: almost a decade of hiding, scrounging a living in this rubbish heap of a district, eating vegetable grown in tips, standing by helplessly as friends and family vanished, all this was at an end for him. He had no idea what this bird was, except an omen. As if to confirm his suspicions, the animal fluttered and leapt toward the window and gave the glass one great thrust with its beak.

It cracked. The sound woke most of the party. The room, which had been so quiet not a second before, burst into a quiet pandemonium. Sefu was whispering to everyone to wake up, that they had been found. Nkiruka and Gus were the first on their feet and Sefu ran to his wife, who was holding back tears, and kissed her.

“Go now, my love,” he said, even as the others were arming themselves with whatever rudimentary weapons they had collected over the years.

“You kill him. For our son,” she said fiercely, and she gathered Faraji into her arms and followed Gus to the back door. Sefu breathed a silent prayer as it closed behind them. He was glad she had not looked back at him.

I will try.

The remaining eight including himself stood in the room, weapons in hand, looking at each other. Their emotions were many. Some faces looked angry, others resigned, others afraid. They looked uncertainly to him for direction. He knew they were outmatched, that their bats, knuckledusters, wooden planks, and knives were no match for whatever was about to come at them.

“Listen!” he started. “Kill their leader if you can. The pale one, the one with black veins. Watch behind you. Remember that we cannot see some of them. Get away from the windows. Act qui . . .”

The splintering of the front door cut him off. It flew off its hinges and landed on Amadi, who had been the closest. A darkly clad man walked deliberately through the gaping doorway. He wore a cowl that obscured his face and a pitch black cloak that swirled around him. The man came with a force that slowed time for Sefu, but he also brought with him something far deadlier.

A nefarious smell entered the room.

The squatters began to choke and gasp even as the man stepped into the room. The noxious perfume writhed in their lungs and their eyes bulged and watered from the pain. Sefu watched as his comrades sank to their knees, holding their throats. The man in black walked unaffected into the center of the room, close enough for any of them to touch him, and close enough for them to see his face. A ghastly white face with thin black implants that traced his veins and ran the length of his skull down to his forehead. Sefu’s lungs burned, but he stayed standing. The air threatened to paralyze him. The man in black stopped before him, watching smugly as he struggled. His expression seemed to say You have deserved this for a long time. Even as Sefu towered over the other man, he felt as if he were in the presence of a vengeful god.

In one last effort, Sefu surged toward the other and gipped his neck. His hands closed with all their strength. He lifted the other’s feet from the ground and tried to crush his windpipe. The movement would have killed a different man instantly. But the man in black remained in his hands, like a rag doll, without struggling, without so much as a kick, without any cry, eyes open and staring directly