Destroyers - Dave Mckay (classic literature list .TXT) 📗

then they change when I'm having fun."

Just as Moses had suspected. Jiddy was hitting them and getting turned on by it. No wonder the girls left him after a few dates! He tried reasoning with Jiddy, explaining that his own approach was more successful.

"Yeah, you can say that, Stump," Jiddy argued, "because you're famous. But I know better than you, because I've had a lot more girls."

Moses did not bother to say the obvious. There was no point in rubbing Jiddy's nose in his numerous failures. Instead, Moses resolved to look for ways to subtly influence his friend. What would often happen is that the girls Jiddy upset came to Moses for comfort. He had strict rules about not taking advantage of any of them, however. He valued Jiddy's friendship too much to do that.

 

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Chapter 21 Josephat Spotted

Chapter 21. Josephat Spotted

Moses never gave up looking for Rosy, Amy, and the children, but all of his efforts were fruitless. He had travelled to Nairobi and made enquiries there twice, once shortly after they disappeared, and again a year later. He hired a private investigator to search for them, but there were no recordsof the children in any of the schools, and the only Amy Walkers found in document searches all turned out to be someone else. Josephat, too, had not been seen, either locally or in Nairobi. It was like they had all disappeared off the face of the earth.

Locals were easily convinced thatAmy and the children had been killed, and that Josephat had fled to another country; whereas Moses was not so quick to write them off completely.

Then, two months after he turned 20, in early February, there was a report that someone matching Josephat's description had traded a box full of used postage stamps for some pain killers at a chemist shop in Kakamega. Attempts to trace where he had come from, or where he had gone afterwards led nowhere; but it was enough to convince Moses that Rosy and the others were still alive, and that they had returned to the area from Nairobi. The stamps must have been the same ones that he himself had donated to Amy when she was still living in the village. Moses made this known to others in Shinyalu, and, because it was widely believed by now that the family had been killed, this even aroused the interest of the local police, who started making enquiries of their own, both in Shinyalu and in Kakamega.

Talk of drinking blood and worshipping devils resumed, as well as theories about the children being abused, tortured, and killed. People became convinced that others in Kakamega were conspiring to hide and protect Josephat. One of the people fruitlessly interviewed by the police, lived on the road between Shinyalu and Kakamega, and so a group of boda-boda drivers decided to surround the man's house and set fire to it, as punishment for supposedly withholding information.

Moses protested weakly, stating that they did not have enough evidence to act, but their anger over-ruled. Luhya teaching is that if you kill anyone, the ghost will return to haunt you. Even burning someone's home is considered taboo; but all that was changing now. Moses felt obliged to pedal with the brigade to the man's house, but he refrained from actually starting the fire. The victim's wife and daughter escaped into a field (He himself was at work in town.), but all that they owned went up in smoke.

The simmering hatred that people felt toward Josephat for having spoken out against the new government, and against the implant, was threatening to boil over in other ways as well. It was getting harder and harder for people like Obadiah to maintain the veneer of tolerance that had been a part of the superchurch platform. There was, indeed, plenty of tolerance within the new structure, but those who teach tolerance most loudly often become themselves the most intolerant toward people outside their control. This powerful new association had equally powerful negative feelings toward dissidents. Such "incompatibility" was quickly becoming the ultimate sin.

In Shinyalu, Josephat symbolised all who dared to question the way the world was going. There was an almost utopian paradise forming on one hand, and deep insecurity on the other. Hate for Josephat became the focus that helped many to overcome their insecurities.

Then, five months after the stamps turned up in Kakamega, tragedy struck. Secretary General Xu Dangchao, the architect of the new world order, had been attacked and killed during an appearance in Jerusalem. A crazed assassin had shot him in the head and in the heart, before being killed himself. Dangchao had died on the way to hospital. The world was in shock, as people realised how much they had depended on Dangchao to turn the economy around. Now he was gone.

In the midst of the shock, Moses recalled something that Josephat had said almost exactly three years earlier. He had said that Dangchao was going to die, and that Satan was going to resurrect him. It was like the fall of America; but this time he had named Dangchao. Moses didn't care if it was Satan or not; he still wished for a miracle... something to bring back the man who had almost single-handedly made poverty a thing of the past.

Then, the next day, it did happen. News came via radio first, with further reports in the papers: Dangchao was alive. They said earlier reports had been a mistake; but over the next three years Dangchao often reminded the world of his 'miraculous resurrection' whenever there were doubts about his authority. Miracle or not, he had survived, with nothing to show for it but a patch over one eye, where a bullet had entered his skull.

There were wild celebrations organised by the new world church. They were held in the village, in Kakamega, in Nairobi, in fact, all over the world when the news of Dangchao's survival reached the masses. In the minds of everyone, Dangchao had been dead, and now he was alive. He had become a living legend... a god.

But the assassination attempt was a warning to the world. They needed to take better care of their gifted leader. The Jews had put up a new Temple in Jerusalem some three years earlier, and it had come to symbolise the new era of peace, prosperity and religious harmony that Dangchao had been so instrumental in bringing about. The Jews graciously agreed to offer use of their Temple as Dangchao's official headquarters (although there were rumours that not all Jews had been so gracious about the offer).

Some people saw deep significance in what was happening in Jerusalem, including a few of the on-going independent believers in the village; but all Moses cared about was that the world was safe... and so was its charismatic leader. He felt proud to have played his part in easing the transition from one economy to another through the advertising campaign for the microchip implant, and so he identified strongly with this new world that had grown out of the destruction of "those who had destroyed the earth".

So what, if Josephat had said that Satan would be the force to bring Dangchao back from the dead! The important thing was that he had come back, and that steps were being taken to make sure that it stayed that way.

 

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Chapter 22 Amy and the Kids

Chapter 22. Amy and the Kids

"What have you got there?" Amy asked, as Karl a neared the summit of the steep hill, hugging an armload of vegetables. The youngest member of the family, now seven years old, had been out harvesting from secret locations scattered around the Kakamega Forest.

"Sweet potatoes," she said. "Jo-Jo has some honey." Ten-year-old Jo-Jo was just coming out of the forest at the base of the hill. He waved his arm in a wide circle above his head, a signal Amy recognised immediately. She gathered her few belongings and called to Karla.

"Inside," was all that she said. Karla glanced briefly back at Jo-Jo, who was climbing the hill in earnest now, before she stepped quickly into the manmade cave. She and Amy moved quietly but unhesitantly toward the chamber that was almost fifty metres into the side of the hill. They instinctively protected their faces from the bats that they knew would be at the twenty metre mark.

Meanwhile, ten-year-old Jo-Jo had been joined half way up the fifty-metre hill by Simon, who, at 12, was the next oldest of the eight children still in Amy's care. Simon had been able to hide the pumpkin he had been carrying under a bush, so he could give Jo-Jo a hand. Together the two were able to carry the bucket of honey more quickly up the hill. Each held one end of a branch extending through the handle of the bucket. It would not do to leave the vessel out where it could be found.

Each person knew what they were to do, and they each acted without saying a word.

When Amy reached the heavy curtain at the back of the cave, which soaked up most of the light from a lantern that burned behind it, she passed the palm of her hand across her face, and 14-year-old Lucy, who had been studying some books, immediately knew that she must blow out the lantern. The pitch blackness was not a handicap to any of them, for they had each learned over the past two years how to navigate every inch of the cave in total silence and without visual assistance.

The tunnel like cave had been constructed by a mining company many years earlier and had been abandoned shortly after its construction. From the tunnel entrance one could look out over the top of the forest, and either see or hear if anyone was in the area. Because the children had been down below gathering food, they had heard something before Amy did, so she knew they all had plenty of time. There was no sense of panic.

When the two boys arrived at the darkened inner chamber, they placed the bucket of honey to the side of the opening and joined the others on a long couch constructed of boxes that were full of pamphlets.

Everything was relaxed as they waited silently for sufficient time to pass. But then they heard a noise at the mouth of the cave. It sounded like several people were entering the cave. Everyone stiffened.

But then there were three loud claps, and they each breathed a sigh of relief. Lucy struck a match and relit the lantern while the others got up and walked toward the opening.

"Jambo!" said the voice of a young woman.

"Rosy!" Karla whispered loudly as she looked up at Amy in the near darkness of the tunnel.

"Eh, Rosy," Amy responded softly, squeezing the little girl'shand. They never shouted, even when they believed the forest to be empty.

"Jambo!" Amy spoke in response to the 17-year-old.

"Look! Micah!" Karla said, as they neared Rosy. "And Jane!" Karla let go of Amy's hand and raced toward the others. Jane's 16-year-old twin brother, Gene, was there too, hidden behind 18-year-old Micah. At 17, Rosy was not the oldest, but she was the natural leader.

For more than two years the family had lived undisturbed in the cave. Tourists never came to the forest at night, nor did they carry pocket lights with them during the day. Any who reached the hill, separated from the dirt track by half a mile