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| Art by DrFaustusAU/DeviantArt. |
By Scott Weller
Warning: this story contains adult themes....
It was going to be our final take-down. The ultimate retirement pay-off for me and my crew. Instead, it turned out to be a nightmare beyond any of our imaginings…
No, it was beyond even those!
Ziggy had gotten the secret information from his London contact ten hours earlier. I’d never personally met Ziggy, but speaking to him across the radio waves, and knowing of his gloriously self-promoted reputation, he was a wise-guy Jamaican Raasta enjoying the unique information gathering hold he had on so many corruptible white businessmen, always seemingly on tap to him, ready with their loose lips flowing excitedly and their money wallets parted to enjoy his ever-ready, unlimited sources of cocaine and big women at his ‘disposal’ throughout the seedy depths of South London. Businessmen, seemingly so benevolent to humanity with their knighthoods and captains of industry badges, dipping in and out of all kinds of ‘special interests’ beyond the law, and all for Ziggy to resultantly procure, exploit and profit from.
Knowledge, information, secrets. Those were the prizes to be obtained from those rich pigs living in their big homes, what with their trophy walls, their elitist country-club wives, horse riding mistresses and cherished public school-sent daughters. And if one of those shady Brits ever tried to go wrong on us, we knew how to keep ‘em in line. So... Ziggy got the one, “the big one”, as he called it. This latest cargo boat we’d ‘intercept’ was going to be “easy” - Hah! Easy? Ziggy had never been in a fire fight in his life! - with the right kind of team. And that was me and my crew.
Word was that a major British technological company was making a massive and unique one-of-a kind ‘drop-off’ (so he called it), an emergency shipment off the books whose course would be borderline close to Somali territory. None of our other local modern-day pirate competitors had been aware of this special voyage thanks to a unique and so far unbroken coding system. And Ziggy’s once impeachable source? A legendary former ‘Mister Clean’-type who’d taken years to succumb to his personality and spell-binding offers.
The cargo was priceless beyond words - revolutionary tech that was going to change the world forever, apparently. A consignment being sent on a necessary secret voyage to a remote machine-built factory destination somewhere in Delhi. Tech that was just about to be unveiled and surely worth a queen’s ransom – literally - if they could hi-jack it in what tight interception time they had left. Then there was the additional win/win of the boat’s fifteen crew members as potential hostage bonus bootie. The information was indeed very late from Ziggy, but I was ready, so was Reachy and the others, what with our years of experience at last-minute recces and boarding take-overs, operating from speed boats that streaked fast on the heavy waves. We were the best, and we knew it.
As the dusk slowly but surely crept up on us, I hugged and kissed my beloved wife Xori, now tending to the stove and its rich cooking whilst I enjoyably paid heed to my enthused, oh-so-bright boy Abi’s final schoolbook reading homework. Dinner time, I watched him eat his supper with all too rapid eagerness, then lifted his ultimately tired frame gently towards the small but fantasy-packed bedroom that was his domain, kissing his forehead with tenderness then tucking him in between the sheets. Such times with family, no matter how seemingly mundane to others, should be savoured as this modern world engulfs us, even here in the dilapidated realms of Somalia. As the night finally arrived, my wife knew what had to be done, what I had to do for them, and tenderly reached up from her small height to kiss me back, wishing me luck and safety, putting the gold symbol of Allah once more around my neck, as she has always traditionally done these last few years, for that extra bit of good luck that brought her hope for both her husband’s safety and in bringing back an eventual good term’s profit.
My ‘crew’ of twelve men were leisurely heading their own separate ways through the suburbs of Baydhabo, towards my out of the way lock-up garage, waving hello and paying happy tribute to old friends and occasional neighbours along the route, within a night that was cooler but no less sweat-inducing than the daytime sun rays permanently soaking us. What lie ahead was just another job to them, always risky for sure, but I and they were ready to do what was needed. It had been a while since we’d last met and collected our winnings via the capture negotiators, but the friendships between us would endure, as was the need to enjoy good lifestyles to which we’d become regularly accustomed to, for as long as possible. The hugs we gave each other were genuine and potent, our bonds of comradeship, battle and perseverance ever cemented. The capture plan was analysed and gone through with precision, the maps and information we had received about the transport’s captain and crew absorbed - these were top seamen we were going against, headed by an efficient captain with at least twenty years experience behind him. A fire fight was inevitable, some lives lost. But as Ziggy said, “Asa, my man, you’ll never be poor again!”
As our two grumpy old vans with their spitting exhausts made the port and the awaiting bright blue sea beyond, we split up and boarded our speed-adapted power boats that were now fiercely bumping up, down and about on the restless sea. Mine was the black paint-lined Star Garden, whilst Reachy’s was the colourful Eternity of Paradise, whose front was littered with colourful drawings of smiling children’s faces. Perhaps we should have seen the trouble ahead by the way the waves were so fiercely crashing that fateful evening, but we paid no heed, early on listening to the local airwaves loudly, shouting out with camaraderie and humour to each other, of which Reachy, the only non-Somali in our group (Kenyan, and proud of it!), was giving us all a triumphant fist in the air gesture to celebrate our approaching victory, as the immersive white foam-tipped waves enveloped the insides of our boats. Soon after we were preparing ourselves and our weapons with haste and fervour whilst heading into the now full darkness…
Three hours had passed. We had camouflaged ourselves as best we could, slowing down as we reached the approaching interception point. The moon was full out above us as its silver light illuminated the waters, almost reaching out to grab us as our destination emerged ominously, slowly, from the misty horizon. Our boats soon kicked in to gear, the anticipation of conflict kicking into me and my crews’ adrenalin like never before…
–
“Assad, this consignment had better have been worth all this...”
Liban’s words rang in my ears as I looked towards my old friend, his piercing eyes striking out at me like glowing daggers from a face covered in blood, sweat and the ash debris of close contact grenade explosions. His hand was nervously ticking on his machine pistol grip as its gun nozzle continued mildly smoking residue. The look of anger, tragedy and fatigue from him made me uneasy. The first strains in our successful partnership and close friendship were starting to show….
The boarding battle had been brutal, and though nothing more than fifteen minutes duration, it had felt like a lifetime of wrought carnage. Yes, brutal beyond words- the worst we’d ever partaken in. The Eternity of Paradise had done its job as the attacking decoy, running parallel in and out against the port side of the moving transport whilst we in the Star Garden had used grappling hooks to board the ship’s stern, abandoning our boat in the process with no time lost. The boat’s crew had been fully prepared for battle- a small but efficient force of black-helmeted, black-fatigued guards, truly efficient with their weapons. The small explosives we had brought for such an eventuality had managed to make a difference in taking such opposition out, but seven of my comrades - men, friends, I had known for the better part of ten years - now left behind a bittersweet legacy to their soon grieving widows, dying not just in the continuous hail of bullets lighting up the sky aboard ship like small pockets of starfire, but also in desperate measures close-quarters combat. Several of our enemy combatants, European titans in grey/white fatigues, showed great physical strength like nothing we’d ever seen, one literally bashing in the head of my friend Tahill and throwing him into the sea before the desperate and agile-limbed Maike, nearly eight-foot tall in his Diadoras, and now dying from a well-placed gunshot to the chest, found the final courage to leap onto Tahill’s former opponent’s back and topple both of them fast into the harsh cold, ever-drowning waves.
The last three members of the boat’s crew had joined their industrious captain, who, amongst the chaos of conflict around them, was providing retreat covering fire to the security of their bridge. Once again, explosives had been needed to tear open the firm security door to the ship’s most important area, from which the last remnants of the crew, ignoring my screaming ultimatums, and against our wishes, ended up dead from Reachy’s penetration blast. A waste of life, and a valuable resource for hostage money gone. Reachy and I witnessed the bloody corpses strewn on the floor of the sealed-in bridge. For a few brief moments it looked as if the captain might survive as I tried to aid his recovery – he looked at me with hatred in his near-extinguished eyes whilst also giving me an eerie, bloodied mouth smile - a knowing smile that momentarily disturbed me before he eventually died.
There was no way that the captain hadn’t sent some kind of distress message to the outside world, to wherever his mystery superiors were, once the first signs of battle had resolutely sounded. The bridge itself was one of the most sophisticated we’d ever seen, clearly adapted from within its original confines, its many operational controls certainly beyond my understanding. Thankfully, surviving comrade Yuusuf, wearing his regular witch-doctor-esque poky trilby hat with green feather adorning ribbon, wiping more blood from his hands on to his splattered Somali flag tribute blue-white gilet, quickly began rummaging within its deep-lined pockets, littered with a veritable ton of tools and electronics gizmos. Yuusuf had a clear grasp of the ship’s operation and mechanics, blessed with an incredible learning ability and near photographic memory for research that took him way above his current sustained image of a seemingly lowly farmer back home. He soon found a way to change the vessel’s course and lay-in new co-ordinates that would take it to a port of our choosing…
The spoils of war were now firmly ours. As I, Reachy and young comrade Jimmi descended the clanging metal steps to the hold, our early examinations of the stored containers were to prove disappointing and spirit-breaking, to say the least. Transistor radios, that was what the first three small containers were full of, the kind of cheaply made devices that would fetch very little on the open market amidst so much other all too similar competition. An odd item to find as a priority delivery… Perhaps someone had added them last-minute to the cargo as a side earner?
Thankfully, our other discovery of fifty large containers looked much more promising. If only we could get into them. Stored height-wise along the hold walls, these cigar-shaped objects, each at least ten to twelve-feet high, were formidable and too heavy to lift without proper transport equipment. And their seemed to be no outside access to them as far as we could see. However, our most recent recruit to the enterprise of sea acquisition, Jimmi, full of residual energy from our prior conflict, was not one to give up on his dream of being rich, soon finding an acetylene torch on an upper level which he was soon swiftly using in a slow-burning attempt to get one of these clearly 'special' containers opened, before reaching the safety of port and the interference of others. Jimmi wanted some spoils of war for himself now rather than later. And after what we’d been through, I didn’t blame him.
For an hour or so, all seemed to be going as planned with our captured vessel- the bodies of the crew had been thrown overboard, our injuries tended to and our weapons cleaned and checked. Though my efficient Garden of Stars was gone (no problem, I’d soon get an even bigger, better boat to spend out my retirement days!) we still had Reachy’s Eternity of Paradise towed alongside. It looked like Ziggy was right about everything after all, and our route to base clear so far, via our use of the bridge radar. And yet there was a feeling, an unnatural aura around us, that all was not as it should be. Instincts we should have listened to as we explored within the steel frame of this immense and unsettling ghost ship.
It was far too still- we were used to hearing occasional squealing rats scurrying about but there didn’t seem to be any here, and even the pipes and general mechanics of this large, busy boat seemed more subdued than any we’d ever boarded before. As Reachy and I went to the main crew area and opened up the food and drink, we additionally enjoyed the national football playing live on a pretty good colour TV. Reachy took a tray down to the hold for the fervent with activity Jimmi, who was now brandishing two acetylene torches against the container he was working hard to penetrate, and whose combined sparks were now flying and dancing around his safety visor face as further visible sweat from his endeavours resultantly trickled down his neck and T-shirt. Jimmi shouted his thanks for the refreshments and told Reachy he was pretty sure he’d found some kind of secret opening control firmly buried in the metal. The torches should ultimately do the trick. Jimmi’s happy anticipation was palpable whilst briefly stopping to raise his frothy Heineken can towards Reachy in happy celebration, his wide grin showing truly gleaming teeth.
As a softly whispering Liban kept watch above deck, walking the mile constantly around the ship, trigger finger ready for any sign of potential trouble, Reachy was back with me as I relaxed on a good springy orange sofa that I knew I’d be bringing back home with me. Perhaps the TV, too. It would be at least two hours or so before we reached our safe docking port, take the cargo and destroy the vessel, whose immense scrap weight value might hopefully make up for the loss of the hostages. Suddenly, the picture signal seemed to go just as Cameroon were making a goal to a fever-pitched crowd. As we groaned at our televisual misfortune, the lights soon followed into darkness – not just here but across other areas of the ship. Yuusuf was calling me on my walkie-talkie, his voice worried, near frantic, shouting at me to get to the bridge as soon as possible. On my arrival there, sweat pouring from my forehead, my tall gangly frame having worked its way in and around obstructive interior piping, Yuusuf was frantically rushing about checking instruments of all kinds and across all areas of the bridge. Somehow we’d lost control of the ship- some kind of auto navigation had kicked-in that he hadn’t been able to override, and which had happened simultaneously to the lighting problems.
The controls were locked, and the terminals seemed co-ordinated with an unusual large metallic cigar-like device located at the far side of the bridge, about five foot tall, featured with a circular set of swinging dials and controls moving in clockwise then anti-clockwise rotation above what looked like a singular large eye that, whilst previously inert, we’d never noticed before wen inert, and which was now making a set of pitched noises quickly followed by an unusual power building humming/ crackling sound. It was some kind of computer with a life all its own, talking to itself, or beyond to its masters, relaying commands via the rotational section, uttering a language that neither I nor Yuusuf could understand. Desperation kicked in for me – we couldn’t lose this cargo. I unstrapped the machine gun from across my shoulder and fired wildly at the device, hoping to cripple it or take its main functioning switches out. The hail of bullets had no effect on the machine’s bizarre sound symphony, and still had no effect as Yuusuf joined in with his own barrage. Unnervingly, we could feel the ship slowly moving back to its original destination, wherever that was. As we pulled more levers from other instruments and tried to work out our next actions, a cry of terror like none I’d ever heard before suddenly echo-resonated through the ship. As I walkie-talkie’d my colleagues, a second cry came via the cluttered harshness of its return radio signal, simultaneously echoing, then cut-off with some kind of vicious chopping sound and what in the background could be heard as an unusual rhythmic heartbeat-esque electronic hum, almost like some kind of musical notes, which was building in pitch. As I warned Liban to stay above deck and keep ready, Reachy was rushing out from the crew quarters to join me, bringing some extra firepower as we realized that the noise could only be coming from the hold. From Jimmi!
Having rushed our separate ways down the clanging metal stairs to our destination, a panicked and puzzled Reachy, wearing a double bandoleer of bullets and grenades, appeared from the near darkness at the opposite end of the tight and claustrophobic corridor. Our breathing was collectively hard and fast, anticipating trouble from an unknown foe. We’d hoped that this was someone who’d hidden in the depths of the ship whilst we boarded. Someone made of flesh and blood that we could anticipate, fight against, take our revenge on for the slaughter of Jimmi. But such thoughts and actions were not to be as we fatefully rushed into the hold.
It was like a man, a silver man, immense in height, and muscular. And yet this was no man, chilling mine and Reachy’s shocked souls to the core with its deathly visage, as it examined the bloodied, broken corpse of Jimmi, holding one of his dead arms up above the body then swiftly letting it slap lifelessly downwards. Jimmi’s young face, once a picture of life and joy, was now bruised and blood-soaked, observed by the silver face of death whose murderous touch had quickly ended his life - a being fully revealed as it gleamed like a beacon in the near darkness of the hold around us. Nearly eight-foot tall, walking on two freakishly long legs, whose arms and legs were coiled with some kind of tubing fused to small golf-ball like devices. And the face, the face was composed of pure horror- an emotionless death mask, with two massive head phones attached to unusual side tubings. To cap off the macabre sight: two rounded eye sockets which seemed to have some kind of tear indentations- for sure a kind of sick joke conceived by the Reaper of ancient mythology when it built these ‘things’. Yes, things. Reachy looked towards me as we realised where the creature had ultimately come from. With the cruel and shocking realisation, he opened fire at the mechanical toy horror with his Russian-made machine gun. But like the electronic instruments attacked on the bridge, there was seemingly no effect. Behind the silver ‘man’ emerged from the now open container, a second container propped up nearby was making its own unnerving, building in pitch operational noises, its right side swinging back to reveal within it a strange kind of fabric cocoon covered in electrodes and wires, from which a second silver creature quickly tore open its surrounding fabric like an obscene baby breaking out of its inert mother’s belly. It now began to emerge fully from the container. Looking exactly like the other, they both surveyed us and our potential next steps, clearly taking some kind of directive orders.
We had survived one intense battle and now this, against two of many foes clearly not from our world. Beyond our imaginations. Totally alien. Once again, our thirst for survival kicked-in, our adrenaline high as Reachy and me fired anew at our opponents, my friend reloading with continuous cover firing as we began our backwards retreat from the hold, our ears aching from the heightened noise of echoing gunfire. Resultantly, I threw one still activated acetylene torch at the now clambering front silver monster, hitting the unusual bulky electronic device, now lit up, attached around its chest. The monster took a fraction-of-a-second bewildered step back briefly from the attack, as the other silver giant now appeared next to him, sharing strange radio signals chatter to its deadly companion. Then the pair unleashed some kind of heat waves from their chest units towards us. Narrowly avoiding the combined death ray’s scorching effect (most of the energy having absorbed into a nearby bulkhead), the injured Reachy had managed to drop down and grab the second lighted acetylene torch to throw at them (which was soon casually tossed aside) whilst I fell backwards, painfully, out of the hatch door, onto the metal grated floor. As Reachy also threw himself outside, I grabbed some grenades from my own bandoleer and threw them into the hold as the nightmare creatures walked out of the darkness towards the exit. As the grenades detonated, time was brought for Reachy and me to clang the heavy rusted metal door shut and lock its surrounding secure bolts. Reachy’s shoulder wound looked bad, his faded t-shirt’s fabric having melted into his black skin, which now looked like dried leaves and was starting to bleed rapidly from nasty-looking open cracks down his bare right arm. Tearing some of my own favourite Hawaiian shirt off, I wrapped it and tightened it bandage-like over Reachy’s wound as best I could as we rushed up the still clanging stairs back to the top deck. That door wouldn’t hold long from the creatures, and there were at least two other exits at other points of the hold they could access, as I recalled from our early look at the ship’s blueprints. Those things were talking to one another- there’s no way they wouldn’t know the ways-out to get us.
For some reason our walkie-talkies were now dead with static, cutting us off further from reality as we continued our escape from this death ship. Reachy grabbed more prior dumped weaponry as we headed past the crew quarters, whilst I rushed ahead upwards, panting, sweating, more desperate than I’d ever been in my entire life. I grabbed Yuusuf, literally throttling him out of the bridge and brutally pushing him upwards to the main deck, and the chance to get Liban and climb down to the speedboat. As we rushed, Yuusuf, his thought processes on overload in the shocking excitement, theorized that the containers in the hold were likely impregnable until they reached their destination for access, but when the bridge computers realized the course had been interrupted, some kind of emergency measures must have gone into effect, a sound key recognition system that released those silver things as a kind of security force. Poor Jimmi… Even worse for the rest of us, though, was the necessary assumption that, whoever these creatures ‘belonged’ to, they’d be arriving to find out what was going on sooner rather than later...
We were caught in a nightmare scenario that was unceasing, the last shreds of darkness were upon us as we reached the main deck – the waters beneath us were angrier than ever, as if reaching out to us like crazed monsters themselves, bellowing screams of both hatred and warning. As Reachy, Yuusuf and I tried to get our breaths, we saw Liban at the vessel’s starboard side, sharply waving to us as he came forward, edgy and with machine pistol readiness. His face had a confused yet nonetheless belligerent look to it, but he was unaware of the sudden movements not too far behind him - two silver shapes emergent from below deck, quickly assessing their new outdoor surroundings.
“Behind you!”
Liban made a quick ninety-degree turn and almost got his weapon off against the new enemy, his face quickly a picture of shock and bewilderment. Too late to fully adjust to their presence, the silver creature’s heat weapons once more emanated from their chests and Liban, surrounded by an unusual aura, was instantly fried, collapsing to the floor dead as his machine gun shot its bullets wildly astray into the empty night sky. As Liban’s body stilled into death, the once quiet air was now interrupted with a distant but building sound - a helicopter had suddenly appeared, like a small bird gaining size as it speeded towards our destination.
Ducking down from more enemy attack, me, Yuusuf and Reachy gave assault fire, but the best we could do was delay rather than defeat our opponents. We knew we’d be slaughtered if we tried to climb the steel ladder back down to the parallel Eternity of Paradise braving the moving, challenging environment underneath its frame. There was only one way to get off this boat and that was to literally throw ourselves overboard. Yuusuf didn’t want to do it but he had no choice once I’d fiercely pushed him into the sea, whilst the silver creatures slowly gained ground. I was providing covering fire and had thrown the last of my grenades, one of which now seemed to have fallen one of the creatures, the grenade literally exploding against the left side of its tear-eyed face and sending it backwards with the sounds of metal hitting metal. But the other devil once more released its death ray, from which Reachy took the resultant brunt of the blow, his face and chest searing with pain. My friend was gone in moments, that bright aura of confidence and brotherhood about him ceased, but not before I kissed his forehead and hugged him tightly, so as to send him on to his well deserved final path to Paradise...
The helicopter was nearing the ship - a few more minutes before it landed. I could briefly see more black-clad helmeted figures within its glass oval frontage- like the ones we’d fought earlier. At least four. And now more silver giants had arrived from the hold, like the other two briefly surveying their new surroundings almost innocently. It was now or never, as I ditched my out of juice weapon, kissed my wife’s Allah chain, and leapt off the freighter, happy to die in the water, rather than suffer at the hands of those emotionless, murderous machines above. As the cold waves hit my body with all the force of several shot gun blasts, I finally emerged proper to the surface, desperately trying to make my body awaken from the shock of impact, and move my bruised, desperate frame to reach the speedboat. Yuusuf had managed to pull himself aboard Eternity and was reaching wildly out to me, but the short distance between us seemed insurmountable, my hands and arms struggling against the omnipresent crashing waves swaying back and forth and around me like whirlpools, and whose resultant spray was further hitting me in the face, my ability to concentrate diminished. I was fitter than I’d ever been, but the cold was attacking me relentlessly, winning in its battle to fatigue me, to kill me. I reached out to Yuusuf and finally he got me. But it was to no avail for either of us as the Eternity became an instant yellow/orange fireball that swiftly consumed Yuusuf within it, his death face caught swiftly unawares alongside the happy faces of the painted smiling children adorning the once boat. All this whilst I looked on helplessly, still drowning. The subsequent explosive fire wave and its searing heat impacted outwards but missed my face by seconds as the water again swallowed me below. I managed to break the foam for gasping air seconds later, for what looked like being one last time.
I was barely able to see from the salt water regularly stinging my eyes but I’d regardless never forget the terrifying sight that did catch my field of vision - the boat heading off, its main deck now adorned by a line group of these silver creatures, who, behind the deck railings, had destroyed the Eternity with some kind of flame thrower-like weaponry. The cold emotionless visages collectively looked as one downwards, trying to find me – a sight to chill the blood - as I remained caught in the dissipating watery hell of the speedboat detonation. The now parked helicopter quickly released its small team of soldiers onto the top deck, now heading to the creatures incredulously unopposed, two of whom bore some kind of heavy technological device between them, whilst the cargo boat disappeared slowly back into the night, from which I could see little more. Then... it was gone, as if had never even been there in the first place.
It looked as if I would soon be following my own unique, doom laden path too, quickly overpowered, devoured, by the antagonistic cold watery depths around me…
Going…
Going…
–
It was a close-run thing, but Allah ultimately decided not to let me die that day, after all. Xori’s lucky charm clung to me and I had somehow clung to it in the waters. The waves finally calmed as the dawn’s brilliant rays of heat and light started to bare down on me as I was partially released from its powerful hold towards the approaching surface. The near calm current was sending me towards familiar territories, where I’d amazingly be found by a resolutely chugging-away fishing boat, its rear smoke polluting the blue sky beauty around me, and whose small three-man crew were out for the first catches of the day. Though shocked by the sight of my near dead body bobbing in the sea, they were nonetheless quick to respond to my plight, dragging my weakened frame out of the salty seas, bringing me fresh water, wrapping me in a thin blanket, and attempting to open my mouth to fruit, and even some rum, to keep me awake and alive. As we reached shore and the boat stumped against the water-battled sand, my body was gently hauled up and placed onto the comforting hot white sandy surface, the concerned boatmen now crying out for a local doctor whilst women and children rushed forward to help. Further young men in the background raced from the beach into the township. I saw the bright sky through fluttering, exhausted eyes. I saw silhouettes of people looking at me, faces unknown, puzzled yet wanting to help. But I was fading out, voices raised in panic as it was happening, the camera iris lens of my life slowing going to black. I briefly thought I saw Reachy, that warm smile back on his face, his hand outstretched with a thumbs-up. Reunited once more for the final journey?
When I finally re-awakened, I had found my still exhausted frame encapsulated within the clean sheets of a low bed, one of many amongst a large open area of a small run-down hospital, filled with patients young and old in various states of treatment. There were no silver monsters. I was back amongst the living. But only just back…
Despite the clearly aged building I was now residing in, there was a general sense of maintained order to the facility, what with the smell of purifying heavy disinfectant and soap hanging in the air. The hospital was located on the outskirts of Puntlan, of which a young-ish, spectacled doctor of serious frown and even more serious duty of care was intent on exploring my status and seeing to my recovery, checking my forehead, and the accompanying drip that was slowly pumping its medicinal goodness into my body. It was a close-run thing, he said, concentrating further on his work whilst checking my wrist pulse- the exhaustion I had suffered, the heavy salt in my body. My family had been told of my arrival and had been driven to see me by neighbours, but I’d ultimately been asleep for two days. Made aware of my recovery, the Doctor had thought it best if there was no excitement that may bring about stress and exertion when I fully awoke. Xori and Abi had then stayed overnight at a cousin’s, but we’d be reunited at home soon.
Having read the medical report, the doctor eyed me suspiciously, soon telling me of my early delirium mutterings, and asking me how I’d found myself in such a terrible predicament. The memories came back swiftly as he light-checked my eyes- the boarding, the battle, the bloody corpse of Jimmi, the drowning waves trapping me, and those silver faces looking remorselessly down at my watery hell, awaiting my demise with coldly anticipated ruthlessness. Such horrors could not be spoken of. I said that me and my lads had had a boating accident, an unexpected collision, and that was all that I could remember- the rest of my memory being too hazy to recall. The truth was, I didn’t want to remember any of it – be it real, imaginary, or both. I had taken too near a step to meeting death itself from those silver monsters! The doctor (whose name I still can’t recall) looked back at me with glaring eyes- he knew what my ‘living’ was, one of too many people partaking in an all too dangerous industry, but ultimately proved non-judgemental, prepared to release me from hospital three days later, a decision of which I was truly grateful.
-
The hot sun was comfortably resilient upon my return home to Baydhabo, the door to our small house invitingly open, from which my wife and child soon came running to me, hugging, kissing me with relief and excitement – it was the greatest feeling in the world from them, the likes of which neither money nor power could truly replace. A ‘WELCOME HOME!’ banner had been colourfully placed in the front room as I collected myself and my emotions. Re-acquainting with my surroundings, the sound of a battered orange metal teapot whistled amidst the smell of fresh lunch cooking. My boy held me tight, tighter than ever before, and looked up at me like I was a giant, quietly making me promise that I’d never leave him again. Xori looked at me with similar concerned eyes. I told him I would never leave him, leave them, again, and they were blessedly relieved. My days at sea were truly over as far as ‘work’ was concerned- never again would I chance the good fortune Allah had given me after that fateful voyage of ‘enterprise.’ It would be difficult coping, what with the continued poverty we were caught in, as well as the increasing dangers of a potential civil war looming within the country, but somehow I know that we would get through it all as a loving and protective family. I pulled my good luck charm from my shirt and showed it to Xori. “You and Allah were there, in my heart,” I said as she kissed me once more and went back to the kitchen. I picked up my son and held him high, higher than ever with pride and love. Supporting him under one arm, my other reached into my shorts pocket. “Here, I have a gift you, Abi.” He smiled excitedly at me as I pulled out the only thing retrievable from our so called “big score”. It was one of those pocket transistor radios I’d liberated from the small boxes on the boat. A perfect little gift for my boy, as I put him down and he started fiddling with it, his efforts soon attracting the local radio station as it blurted out the voice of an over enthused DJ. As I helped him fiddle further with its receiving signal, Abi ran to tell mum about his new toy, as well as help her lay the kitchen table.
Holding the transistor to the front room light, preparing to join my family at table, ready to begin a new chapter of my life, one far away from my violent past, I couldn’t help but notice the markings located at the back of the device, showcasing the company manufacturer’s name logo...
International Electromatics
THE END
This story is dedicated to the creators of the Cybermen - Dr. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, and the writer of the story to which this tale is a prequel, The Invasion: Derrick Sherwin.
