Insomnia

22: Sanoja

Katanga, May 2125

Each passing day seemed to bring a fresh horror.

One morning we awoke to a blanket of locusts, swarming over us in their search for food; according to some bite marks on my ankle, some thought they had found it. There was even less vegetation for us to eat this far south, and these scavenging armies were the reason why. We feared humans fighting for survival, but it might well be insects which starved us to death, before turning on our bodies as the only food source left. We spotted them cleaning the corpse of a bird that afternoon. Perhaps, like us, it had slept on the ground. Perhaps it had landed to prey on the massed arthropods, but bitten off more than it could chew.

We fared slightly better. Aunt Kanti roasted locust for dinner that night: a vital source of protein, if not the most delicious meal. I'd once remembered her, as well as her husband, as refusing to eat the meat of animals. There was no room for that now. It was either eat what was at hand, or feel your starving gut consume your own insides. I had once loved animals, but I loved my family more. I would eat any wild creature, I considered. But not human. Thought of the village woman and her cannibalism still made me writhe in disgust, but I wondered if it was only a matter of time. When it is consume or die, we may have no more scruples than the locusts. Every creature is omnivorous, I mused. They just aren't desperate enough. We found rats, too, and lived off them for the rest of the week.

Another morning brought storms, like I had never seen before. A little rain came to cure our drought, but it was followed by harsh, biting winds, and lightning to spark the dry ground alight. It felt like an attack from above. The freak weather continued for another four nights, leaving us afraid to travel far from shelter until the morning it stopped. I could no longer name the days, as if it mattered which planet or god was currently failing to watch over us; I just told their beginning and end from the rise and fall of the sun.

The morning the storms stopped, it failed to rise at all. The sky remained dark for what must have been days, though I had no real way of measuring the time, as if the world had ceased to turn. The winds had fallen still, but the darkness still made travel unsafe. We walked cautiously south, wondering if the sun would ever rise again; the adults tried to explain the eerie blackness as the result of some dust cloud or eclipse, but I had a hard time convincing Mira things were fine. She had never liked the dark, and this shade had us all on edge. Until the light came back, after what seemed like an age, her hand did not leave my own.

Soon we found water, in the form of a shallow lake. With normal weather returning, it was tempting to believe that these horrors were over. The worst, though, was yet to come.

Uncle Asim began that morning complaining of a bruising on his upper arm, and within a day his armpit had swollen in a large and painful blister. The sores quickly spread to his neck, his right thigh, and aunt Kanti's left. Soon my father insisted we sit some distance apart, but in a few days he had joined his brother. The swellings were clearly contagious, with symptoms slightly delayed. Was it something we ate? Kanti mentioned the word plague, washing in the lake to kill any biting insects, but the growth continued to consume her leg. Mira and I did not go near them after that.

Whilst fetching water for our bottles, to be thrown towards the wounded, we came across some visitors to the lakeside. I pulled Mira back into the bushes, watching. The group of men varied in colour, from light tan to darkest brown, but all seemed threatening. They had to be military: most were well-armed with axes and machetes, and a smaller man appeared to be their leader. Most interestingly to us, they seemed healthy, and well-fed. They had food. Looking at their ranks, they certainly had safety. I was almost tempted to fall at their feet, offering my service for what we needed most. They may have medicine.