Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Chinma had lived without anybody's help. What did he owe to any of them now? He had earned this monkey money. He wasn't the one who made the monkeys sick. And what if he had come down the tree and said to Ire, "I don't think we should take these monkeys, they sneeze and bite"? Ire would have laughed at him and called him a baby, and then if he still wouldn't bring them down, Ire would have beaten him until he did go up and get them. Chinma had not been given any choices, except one—to be careful not to let the papa monkey bite him. He would be dead now like Ire if he had. So all that was in Chinma's power, all that had ever been in his power, was to save his own life as best he could.

He was about to come down from the tree when three trucks came roaring into the village. This never happened—who did they know who was rich enough to own three trucks? Men leaped out of the trucks with automatic weapons and started firing. These were not warnings—they aimed at people and shot them down. They fired into the houses and huts at hip level.

Chinma's family and fellow villagers ran screaming toward the forest, but the bullets followed them. They spared no one—not the babies, and not the women, not even to rape them as Chinma had heard such raiders always did.

There was nothing Chinma could do to help. He could only cling to his branch and hope that they didn't look up. A glance would not reveal him if he held very still, but there were not so many leaves between Chinma and the ground that if they actually searched the treetops they would fail to see him.

But they did not look up. Why would they? There were only birds and monkeys in the trees, not boys—why would there be a boy in the trees?

Only when the shooting stopped did Chinma remember the little camera in his pocket, the one the scientist had given him. When he was sick no one had found it because no one took care of him or even came near him.

Chinma knew that the camera ran on batteries.That's why he had never taken a picture with it—for fear that the batteries would run down before he could get to a computer. But now he would take pictures so people could see what these robbers had done to his village.

So from the tree he took three pictures, of three bodies he could see lying on the ground. Two of the pictures also had robbers in them. And then one of them came to the others dangling one of Chinma's baby nephews by the ankles. Chinma couldn't see which one it was, but it had to either be Ire's youngest or little Iko, Ire's sister's son, because they were the only babies that had lived through the plague. The baby was crying.

The ruffians laughed, except for one who seemed to be in charge, because he started yelling at them in Hausa. Chinma only knew a little Hausa, and only because it was the language of the northern Muslims who ruled Nigeria. But he understood enough to know that some of what he said was: "Do you want to get sick? Do you want to die? I told you not to touch anybody! This

is the place where the sneezing sickness started!"

So all of this death had come to the village because of Chinma, after all. Everything began with his catching those sick monkeys. But he hadn't chosen them, had he? He couldn't help that he got sneezed on—how could he know the monkey would do that? He didn't make it happen, he was the second victim, after Ire.

And why would these men come here to kill everybody when the disease had already swept through the whole tribe? Everyone knew that once you caught a sickness from another person, if you lived through it you couldn't catch it again. This was the one place in all of Nigeria where it was certain you could not catch the monkey sickness. Yet they had come here and killed them all. Ignorant, stupid robbers. Why was it their business anyway?

The man in charge was still yelling, and the other men were still gathered around the baby, when more trucks arrived. Only this time it wasn't robbers. This time it was the army.

For a moment Chinma expected the soldiers to start shooting, to kill these robbers and punish them for having wiped out the village. But instead, the soldiers walked through the village checking to make sure everyone was dead. Now and then there was a gunshot.

The boss of the soldiers walked to about ten paces away from the boss of the robbers and demanded, "Did any get away?"

The thieves all shook their heads vehemently.

The soldier boss pointed with his weapon at the baby, which was now lying on the ground, still crying softly. "Why is that alive? Who touched it?"

The robber who had carried the baby tentatively raised his hand.

"Pick it up!" shouted the soldier boss.

The robber picked up the baby. Nobody was laughing now.

"Toss it up, high in the air!" shouted the soldier boss.

It was as if the robber was trying to toss the baby to Chinma, it came straight toward him.

The soldier boss raised his weapon and fired a long burst. Because of the angle from where the soldier boss was, the bullets cut through the leaves about twenty feet from Chinma, but still he flinched. He didn't know if he got a picture or not, but he had pushed the button as soon as the firing started, and maybe he pushed it more than once. He was so scared his hands trembled, and because of that he almost lost his hold on the branch, and then he almost dropped the camera, and then he made a noise, a loud gasp.

But they didn't hear him, because the robbers were laughing and saying, "Good shot! Good shooting!" some in English and some in Yoruba, but none of them in Hausa.

When he was done with firing, the soldier boss yelled again, but in English now, to be sure they all understood him. "Did you find anybody else and keep them alive? Did anybody get away? Tell the truth!"

The robbers all swore that they had killed everybody, the villagers were all dead, nobody got away. Chinma got the insane idea of screaming at them that they were not as smart as they thought, he had gotten away. But he held his tongue.

The soldier chief walked away, and as he did, he replaced the clip on his weapon. The robbers started heading back toward their trucks. Then the soldier boss turned around again and started firing, but this time at the robbers. Since the robbers were all armed, some of them tried to defend themselves. But there were other soldiers already in place to cut them down from the sides.

Many of the bullets hit the trunk of the tree Chinma was clinging to, and he felt the sharp vibrations all the way up to his high branches.

When all the robbers were dead, the soldier boss called one of his men—in Hausa that Chinma could not understand at all—but the order he gave became clear when the man fired a flamethrower at the corpses of the robbers. The flames kept coming out and coming out, and the burning bodies stank and the smoke came right up to where Chinma was and it was all he could do not to cough at the smoke and the stink.

He was also afraid that the tree would catch on fire, forcing him to climb down and die, but there had been plenty of rain and the wood did not burn. The flamethrower soldier moved away and then set fire to every building in the village and every body lying on the ground.