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

one, as he used to say it. Surely, what had once been seen as only an American sin was now present in his own heart and in the hearts of others in his village.

Death by shotgun blast to the head was almost too good an end to a life that had only taken from others and rarely given anything in return. Others might not have been so harsh in their thoughts about him; Moses knew that many people liked him. Nevertheless, in his heart he knew that even his good nature was always carefully calculated to secure favours for himself... never too obvious in his manipulations of others, always maintaining that air of humility and good nature that worked so well to win friends and influence people.

He remembered a night when he had told Rosy that being nice to people was a way to get others to be nice to you. In her innocence, she had asked, "But what about God? Don't you try to be nice to people for him?"

How can I do something for someone I've never met?

Moses thought once again, as tears of self-pity flowed.

With that final thought in mind, he pushed his left big toe slowly away from his body. As he did, the string on the trigger moved, ever so slowly, sliding down toward the end of the curved trigger. Just as the gun erupted, he had seen it slip entirely off the trigger. A sudden movement to stop it from slipping was too late; but the gun exploded anyway, not hitting him full in the face as he had intended, but taking off the top of his head nevertheless.

Everything turned black, and stayed that way for a very long time. He was conscious of the blackness, but that was all. He was falling through it, bracing for an impact that never came. There was no way of telling how long the falling sensation lasted, or what brought it to an end, but at some stage, he found himself walking through a blackened, burned out forest, ovewhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness. All around him was a sense of death, like he was surrounded by the spirits of others who had, like him, died without hope, in the depths of despair.

Out of the smoke that hovered over the scene came an image of a face so ugly, and so evil that it sent shivers down his spine. If this was death, then death had definitely not proven to be the escape that he had longed for. He felt trapped in an eternity of hopeless depression, so intense that he could only groan pitifully. His groan was met by the groans of others out there in the darkness of the forest, others who appeared to also be trapped in this same horrible place.

His groans turned into a prayer, as he begged for release. He hated himself for never having broken down like this while still alive. He had never been desperate enough to even try talking to the God he did not know. It had been too easy to just brush such thoughts aside. And now it was too late. Surely, this was hell, and he was going to be trapped here forever, regretting the spiritual indifference that had characterised so much of the life he had once known.

But then Moses heard other voices. The voices of people talking to one another. He was in the air now, looking down on a group of people in green robes gathered around a table. The darkness receded, and he was able to see clearly the features of someone lying face-up on the table. It was himself. These were doctors, and they were fitting a metal plate to his head. There was a gaping hole where his forehead should have been. The front of his brain was missing. The metal plate was being riveted to those edges of his skull that had survived the shotgun blast.

He prayed more fervently than ever now, begging God to give him another chance, to let him live, to show him what he must do, to make his life count for something more than selfish success.

And then all was darkness once again.

 

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Chapter 28 An Invitation

Chapter 28. An Invitation

Mr. Barasa had rushed home to retrieve a forgotten briefcase, and was just pulling into the driveway when the gun went off. All of Moses' forehead was missing, and bits of his brain were splattered against the back wall of the house. The situation looked hopeless; but there was very little bleeding. Barasa gathered the young man in his arms, placed him in the back of the four-wheel-drive, and sped off to the local hospital.

Normally, the staff would not have even bothered to treat such an obviously fatal wound. But they recognised Moses as the face of the new economic system, and so, after putting him on a drip and giving him two liters of blood, they sent staff to accompany him on a one and a half hour ride to the Aga Khan Hospital, in Kisumu, on the shores of LakeVictoria. Shortly before the ambulance reached the hospital, Moses went into cardiac arrest. A doctor travelling in the back of the vehicle administered CPR until the hospital was able to get his heart started again through electro-convulsive shock.

Surgeons from Nairobi were already in the air, by the time the ambulance pulled into the Aga Khan. Surgery started late that night and continued until early the next morning. In the mean time, however, someone had leaked the story to the media, noting who it was that had received the injury. By the time plates had been fashioned and were being placed over the gaping hole, the following day, there was a small army of reporters in the hospital foyer, representing newspapers and TV stations from around the world.

The fact that Moses had been brought back to life, and that doctors were saying that he would survive the horrific "accident" was a feel-good story that the world desperately needed to hear. So much had gone wrong for Dangchao's new world order, in such a short period of time, that people needed something to rekindle hope in his failing system. Word quickly reached the Secretary General, in Jerusalem.

"It'll be some time before we know how complete his recovery will be," the head surgeon announced at a press conference, held shortly after surgery was completed. "You must remember that he has lost a large portion of his brain, and so we cannot expect too much."

Levi Xu Dangchao was watching the report on a big flat-screen TV in his throne room in Jerusalem.

"Bring him here. Bring him to me. He and I can fight this thing together," he declared. No doubt Dangchao was thinking of his own miraculous recovery after what everyone had believed was a fatal head wound. But it was not to be so dramatic for Moses.

A report came back from medical experts in Kenya:

"It will be months, before Mr. Chikati will be able to fly," the report said. "Most of the frontal lobe has been blown away. If he is able to talk at all, we expect it to be little more than a slur."

Dangchao made it clear that he wanted regular updates on Moses Chikati's progress. He still wanted the young man to be brought to Jerusalem eventually, but, in the meantime, he decided to take a trip to Kenya himself.

Dangchao arrived at the hospital a week later to be told by the medical superintendent, "Moses has surprised us all by starting to talk; but because the accident has destroyed much of the frontal lobe, his ability to feel or express emotions is virtually non-existent."

The tall, handsome world leader nodded to indicate that he had heard, but he still insisted on being allowed to visit Moses, who felt neither joy nor contempt on seeing the Secretary General enter his room. There was no need for an introduction, as the handsome leader's picture was displayed everywhere. Barely a person on earth would not have recognised him.

"I am here because I like you," Dangchao announced. "You have no family, and I have no family; so I will be your family. You can come to live with me." Dangchao smiled broadly, confident that the young man sitting up in the bed would be thrilled at his offer.

"I need no family," Moses mumbled with some difficulty. "I am twenty-four years old." He was not trying to be disrespectful. It was just that these were the facts as he perceived them.

Dangchao's eyebrows lifted as he contemplated the total lack of interest in himself... a reception that could easily have cost a person their life in any other setting.

"You think about it," Dangchao said magnanimously as he handed him a business card with his email address on it. "When you decide, I will send someone to accompany you. Everything will be provided, and everything will be first class. You will like it, I am sure."

Moses stared back blankly, through drooping eyelids.

 

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Chapter 29 The End of Josephat

Chapter 29. The End of Josephat

Although very few words passed through his lips, and no hint of emotion could be seen in his eyes, from the time that Moses regained consciousness there were many thoughts going through his mind. He could remember everything clearly, including the experience he had had during the hours when his life had hung in the balance, but it was like it had all happened to someone else. Moses puzzled over everything, but felt nothing. No remorse. No anger. No excitement. Nothing.

The man who essentially ruled the world had invited him to become part of his family. That much he understood. But he had no thoughts, neither positive nor negative about it. If it happened, it happened.

He remembered the horrors of human sacrifice that had led him to contemplate suicide in the first place, but took note that he no longer felt revulsion about it. His indifference to all of this now was quite possibly evidence that he had lost his soul as a result of the shotgun blast, but he felt neither panic nor remorse about that either.

One thing did intrigue him, however, and that was the deep feelings he remembered having while unconscious. They had led him to pray more earnestly than he had ever prayed before, if, indeed, he ever had prayed before. That experience had taken place during his encounter with death, at a time when he had already lost the front part of his brain. So how was it possible for him to have felt such deep emotion at that time? Was it only a dream... a memory of what emotions had felt like before the accident? That was not possible, because he had truly never experienced such intense sadness in his entire life, not when his mother was killed, not when he lost his arm, nor even when Rosy left.

He returned to Shinyalu, where, apart from weekly check-ups at the Aga Khan, he was soon back driving the matatu, doing budgets, and caring for himself. Everything moved more slowly for him now. He had no desire to increase the business, and when customers complained that his driving was too slow, it had no effect on him. The relationship with Jiddy was much the same, because it had already deteriorated to almost nothing before the suicide attempt. Jiddy knew better than to express his feelings when around Moses, and Moses wasn't interested if