Dusk bled into true night with an alarming swiftness, as if the sun, having witnessed the day's horrors, had fled below the horizon without a backward glance. The oppressive heat of the afternoon finally began to recede, replaced by a cooler, more menacing air. The distant sounds of chaos were changing, the random screams and crashes coalescing into something more rhythmic and sinister: the roar of triumphant mobs, the crackle of fires, and long, terrible stretches of silence that were somehow worse than the noise.
Adekunle and his uncle remained pressed into the shadows of the building across from their own, a position that offered concealment at the cost of a clear view. Ben peered around the corner, his eyes narrowed, studying the four men who had laid claim to his home. They had built a small fire in a rusted metal drum near the gate, its flickering orange light casting their shadows long and monstrous against the compound wall. They were drinking, passing a bottle between them, their voices low and confident. They were not afraid. They were kings of this small, concrete castle.
"We cannot go through the front," Ben stated the obvious, his voice a low whisper that barely carried to Adekunle's ears. "Even if we fought them… even if we won… the noise would bring every scavenger in a ten-block radius down on us."
Adekunle nodded, his throat tight. He watched one of the men laugh, a short, ugly bark of a sound. These were not the desperate, snatch-and-grab looters from the main road. These men had a plan. They were settling in. The thought of Aunt Funke, somewhere in that building at the mercy of these… predators, sent a fresh wave of cold dread through him.
"The back wall," Ben said, pulling back from the corner. His face was a grim mask in the gloom. "It is high, but not impossible. The wall that faces the old mechanic's yard."
Adekunle knew the one. It was a high cinderblock wall, at least ten feet, but it was in the alley behind their building, shrouded in perpetual shadow even during the day.
"There is broken glass on top of it, Uncle."
"I know," Ben replied, a flicker of something—pride, maybe, at his own forethought—in his eyes. "I put it there myself, five years ago. But I know the spot where the mortar is weak, where a man can get a foothold. And I left a section near the big mango tree clear of glass, for the day the boys needed to retrieve their football." He looked at Adekunle. "I never thought I would be the one using it to break into my own home."
The plan was terrifyingly simple and impossibly complex. They would have to circle the entire block, moving through streets as dangerous as the one they had just fled, to reach the alley. They would have to scale the wall without making a sound, then cross the compound's yard to the back entrance of their stairwell.
"We wait," Ben whispered, his eyes fixed on the distant fire. "We wait until the bottle is empty. Until they are lazy. Drunk. The later it gets, the better our chances."
The waiting was a unique form of torture. Adekunle's body, pumped full of adrenaline for hours, now began to ache with the comedown. His muscles trembled with exhaustion. He leaned against the rough wall, the steel file in his hand now feeling impossibly heavy. His mind, unmoored from the immediate task of survival, began to drift. He thought of his aunt, of her loud, infectious laugh, of the way she would always slip him a few extra naira when his uncle wasn't looking. He tried to force the image of the men by the fire from his mind, but it kept superimposing itself over his memories of her.
An hour passed. Then another. The moon, a pale, sickly crescent, rose in the sky, offering little light. The sounds of the city had quieted further. The chaos was becoming localized, pockets of violence flaring up and dying down. The four men were louder now, their laughter echoing in the unnatural quiet of the street. They had started a second bottle.
"Now," Ben breathed, his body tensing. "It is time."
They moved. They didn't retrace their steps but slipped deeper into the residential backstreets, a labyrinth of unlit, narrow lanes. Every rustle of a plastic bag in the wind, every scurrying rat, was a potential threat. Adekunle felt his senses sharpen to a razor's edge. He was aware of everything: the loose gravel under his feet, the smell of night-blooming jasmine from a neglected garden, the distant cry of a baby that was abruptly silenced. It was as if the world's volume had been turned down, allowing him to hear the smaller, more terrifying sounds with perfect clarity.
They reached the back alley. It was as dark as a tomb, a narrow canyon between the high walls of the compounds. The air was stagnant, thick with the smell of stale garbage and engine oil from the abandoned mechanic's yard next door.
"Here," Ben whispered, running his hand along the rough cinderblocks of their compound wall. He stopped near the base of a large mango tree whose branches overhung the wall. "The footholds are here. I go first. I will help you from the top."
Ben moved with a quiet, efficient grace that surprised Adekunle. He found the almost invisible footholds in the mortar, his thick fingers hooking over the top of the wall. He grunted with effort, his muscles straining, and hauled himself up. He lay flat on top of the wall for a moment, catching his breath, before turning to peer down at Adekunle.
"Give me the bag," he commanded. Adekunle slipped the backpack off and passed it up. Ben took it, then reached down with a hand. "Now, come."
Adekunle's climb was less graceful. His feet scraped against the blocks, the sound deafeningly loud in the silence. He felt a moment of sheer panic as his hand slipped, his nails scratching uselessly at the rough surface. But Ben's grip was like iron. He grabbed Adekunle's wrist and pulled, his strength immense. Adekunle scrambled the rest of the way, collapsing onto the top of the wall next to his uncle, his heart hammering against his ribs.
From their perch, they could see into their own compound. The yard was empty, a rectangle of packed dirt and sparse grass, bathed in the faint, ghostly light of the moon. They could see the glow of the fire from the front, but the men were out of sight.
"The back door to our block should be unlocked," Ben whispered, his lips close to Adekunle's ear. "Old Mama Bose on the ground floor, she always props it open for the cat. We go straight for it. No hesitation."
They slid down the other side of the wall, landing with soft thuds on the familiar dirt of the compound. They were in. They were exposed. They crouched for a moment in the deep shadow of the wall, listening. The only sounds were the crickets and the low murmur of the men's voices from the front.
Suddenly, one of the voices grew louder. Footsteps crunched on the gravel path that led around the side of the building.
Ben grabbed Adekunle's arm and pulled him down, flat against the ground, behind a large, empty water tank. They held their breath, trying to will themselves invisible.
One of the men appeared at the corner of the building, his silhouette framed by the fireglow from the front. He was unzipping his trousers, his back to them, preparing to relieve himself against the wall. Adekunle's heart stopped. They were less than twenty feet away. If he turned his head, if he so much as glanced in their direction, he would see them.
The man finished, shaking himself off. He stood there for a long moment, staring up at the moon, his posture relaxed. Adekunle could see the pipe he held in his other hand, a length of rusted metal that would crush a skull with a single blow. He felt the file in his own hand, cold and slick with his sweat. If the man saw them, could he use it? Could he drive that point into human flesh? The thought made him feel dizzy.
The man finally grunted, turned, and walked back toward the front of the building, disappearing around the corner.
Adekunle and Ben didn't move for a full minute. The silence the man left behind was heavier than before.
"Go," Ben breathed, and they broke from cover, sprinting across the open yard. Their feet made almost no sound on the packed earth. They reached the back door to their stairwell. As Ben had predicted, it was propped open with a small stone.
They slipped inside, into the pitch-black of the staircase. They were finally inside the building. Ben pulled the door closed behind them, removing the stone. The click of the latch settling into place was the most reassuring sound Adekunle had ever heard.
They ascended the three flights of stairs like specters, their hands trailing along the cool concrete walls, their feet silent on the worn steps. The air here was still and stale, smelling of home. On the second-floor landing, they heard a faint sound from behind one of the doors—a woman weeping softly. They didn't stop.
They reached their own front door on the third floor. It was unscratched, the multiple locks still intact. It hadn't been breached. A small measure of relief. Ben fumbled for his keys, the metallic jingle shockingly loud. He found the right one, and with agonizing slowness, he turned the locks. One. Two. Three.
The door swung inward on a sea of perfect, familiar darkness. They stepped inside, and Ben closed and locked it behind them. They were home. They were safe.
For a moment, they just stood there in the entryway of the flat, two shadows in the gloom, listening to the frantic beating of their own hearts.
"Funke?" Ben called out, his voice a strained, hopeful whisper into the darkness. "Funke, are you here?"
Silence.
Then, from the back of the flat, from the direction of the master bedroom, came a faint, unmistakable sound.
A floorboard creaked.
Someone was in the apartment with them.