Chapter 32 – Echoes of the Dead
The silence on the streets outside UNILAG was heavier than any gunfire. It was the silence of a world that had already died.
Neon signs flickered weakly, buzzing over shops that would never reopen. A few streetlamps sputtered, spilling pale halos across cracked asphalt. The wind carried smells of smoke, rot, and something metallic—blood baked into the gutters. Posters fluttered on walls, edges curled and brittle: campaign slogans for men who were now nothing but corpses, exam notices for students who would never return.
The survivors moved in a tight cluster behind Dele, their shoes scraping softly. Every breath seemed too loud. Every heartbeat seemed to echo.
"Dele… are you sure this road is safe?" a boy whispered, voice breaking.
Dele did not answer. His eyes swept the street the way a hawk surveyed a field. He saw the shadows between kiosks, the alleys where bodies slumped, the faint dragging marks on the ground. He counted them in silence, mapping their meaning, weighing what might emerge.
A corpse twitched.
The group froze. One of the girls muttered quickly in Igbo, "Chineke, biko…" God, please.
The corpse's head jerked toward them.
The silence shattered.
It screeched—an unholy, guttural sound—and from the alleys, from the shops, from the broken windows, shadows poured. Dozens. Then more. Rotting flesh, bone-splintered jaws, blood-black eyes. The air itself seemed to shake with their hunger.
"Yàgbà o!" one man screamed in Yoruba. Scatter!
Panic exploded. Gunshots barked, wild and frantic. A soldier fumbled with his rifle, hands slick with sweat. A student swung a broken chair leg like a club. Another fell screaming as teeth tore into his shoulder.
Dele moved like the chaos was nothing but background noise. His blade—a scavenged cutlass honed to a near-perfect edge—flashed in the flickering light. One zombie's skull split in two, black ichor spraying across the asphalt. Another lunged; Dele stepped sideways, precise, his mana-infused muscles snapping into motion, and the cutlass carved through its spine.
He fought without wasted effort. Every movement was measured. Every strike was deliberate.
Others flailed.
A girl shrieked in Hausa, "Kada ku bar ni! Don't leave me!" as hands dragged her down. The stench of ruptured bowels hit the air as her body was ripped open.
Dele didn't look back.
His mind was already analyzing: the zombies moved faster than they should have—mana saturation had begun altering their muscles. The infection was spreading in unpredictable waves. Good. Chaos was predictable; only he had the knowledge to shape it.
"Fall in!" he barked, his voice cutting through screams. It wasn't a plea; it was a command. The kind men obeyed without thinking.
Three soldiers snapped into line by instinct. Survivors staggered toward him, clinging to the center of gravity his presence created.
A wall of bodies surged at them.
Dele raised his hand. Mana rippled, faint but sharp, the way only he knew how to wield it in this era. He stepped forward, his cutlass an arc of silver death, cleaving through two skulls in a single motion. His boots crushed bone and rot.
Behind him, a boy wept openly, swinging a pipe, sobbing, "Mummy… mummy…" as he beat at the dead.
"Hold the line!" Dele roared. His voice was fire.
Gunfire steadied. The soldier who fumbled now aimed true, mowing down three zombies in a burst. A girl screamed but still drove a sharpened rod through a creature's eye. Fear became rage. Rage became survival.
The street was a furnace.
Blood ran into the gutters. Rotting hands clawed at walls, windows, doorframes. A bus shuddered as zombies hammered on its sides from within, until glass shattered and they poured out like maggots from a carcass.
Dele's cutlass shattered at last against a jawbone too thick. He didn't flinch—he pivoted, snatched the rifle from the nearest soldier, and with a cold economy of motion, gunned down six in quick succession.
Click. Empty.
He tossed the rifle aside. Drew a knife. Stepped forward again.
He was drenched in gore now, face splattered, breath steady. His heart did not race. His pulse did not falter. The battlefield was his element.
By the time the last of the horde dropped, twitching in its own bile, the survivors were trembling wrecks.
Some collapsed to their knees. Some vomited in the street. A boy rocked back and forth, whispering in Yoruba, "Mo ti ku… mo ti ku…" I am already dead.
Dele stood, chest rising slowly, eyes sharp. He wiped his blade on a corpse's rags.
The silence returned. But it wasn't the silence of safety. It was heavier now, steeped in blood and the echo of screams.
Dele looked around, calculating. They had lost six. The rest were broken, fragile, malleable. Perfect.
He raised his voice, calm but iron.
"This city is gone. These streets belong to the dead. If you want to live, you follow me. You obey. You fight when I say fight. You rest when I say rest. Disobey…"
He let the words hang. His eyes flicked to the twitching body of one of their own, half-eaten, blood still dripping.
"Disobey, and you join them."
No one argued. Not a soul.
The wind carried another sound now—low, distant, but unmistakable. More echoes of the dead, shambling, searching.
Dele turned north, toward the heart of Lagos.
"Move."
And they moved. Not because they believed. Not because they trusted. But because fear had already welded their will to his.
The echoes followed.
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