The moment the door closed, it was as if a switch had been flipped. The roaring, monstrous world outside ceased to exist, replaced by a silence so complete it felt like a physical blanket. The air in the flat was still and stale, thick with the scent of a space that had been sealed for weeks. To Adekunle, it smelled of safety. It smelled of home. He leaned against the solid wood of the door, his entire body trembling with the violent, shuddering release of a tension he had been holding for what felt like a lifetime. They were alive. They were inside.
His first thought was for his aunt. He turned and saw her shape slumped on the floor just inside the doorway. He fumbled for the crank flashlight, its whirring sound a small, industrious noise in the vast quiet. The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating her face. It was ashen, her lips pale, her eyes closed. A fresh wave of panic seized him.
"Auntie?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
He knelt beside her, his fingers searching for a pulse on her neck. He found it, a faint, thready beat, as fast and frantic as a trapped bird's wing. She was unconscious, her body finally succumbing to the immense strain of the journey, the pain, and the raging fever.
He had to get her comfortable. He had to get the medicine into her.
The next hour was a blur of focused, desperate activity. He half-dragged, half-carried her from the entryway into the living room, his own exhaustion a distant, irrelevant noise. He settled her on the large sofa, the one his uncle always used to fall asleep on while watching football. He propped her broken leg up on a pile of cushions, his movements as gentle as he could manage. The sight of the swollen, discoloured flesh made his stomach churn. The infection was a visible, malevolent presence.
He laid out their stolen treasures on the coffee table like a priest preparing a sacred ritual. The boxes of antibiotics, the painkillers, the sterile bandages, the antiseptic wipes. He crushed one of the antibiotic pills and a paracetamol tablet into a fine powder, mixing it with a small amount of their precious bottled water to form a thin paste. Propping his aunt's head up, he carefully, gently, spooned the mixture into her mouth, stroking her throat to encourage her to swallow. It felt like a hopeless, desperate act, a tiny shield against a raging inferno, but it was all he had.
After he had done all he could for her, he finally allowed himself to stop. He sank into his uncle's armchair, the worn fabric still holding the faint scent of him. And in the silence of the room, surrounded by the ghosts of his family's life, the grief he had been holding back finally hit him. It was not a storm, but a quiet, crushing pressure, a hollowing out of his very soul.
He looked around the room, the flashlight beam his only guide. Everything was exactly as they had left it. His uncle's reading glasses sat on a side table next to a half-finished newspaper. A pair of Funke's slippers were tucked neatly under the sofa. His own university textbook was on the floor where he'd dropped it on the night of the Fall. It was a perfect, heartbreaking diorama of a life that no longer existed. This place was not just a sanctuary; it was a museum of a dead world, and he and his aunt were the last, lonely exhibits.
Tears streamed down his face, silent tracks through the grime and dust. He wept for the woman burning with fever on the sofa, for the city of ghosts outside his window, and most of all, for the strong, pragmatic, loving man who was now buried under fifteen feet of concrete and earth. He wept until there were no tears left, until there was only a vast, empty ache in his chest.
The grief, however, did not paralyze him. It sharpened him. It burned away the last of his fear, the last of his student-like hesitation, and left behind a core of cold, hard purpose. His uncle had left him a legacy—not just of tools and knowledge, but of responsibility. He was the man of the house now. The protector. And this house needed protecting.
He rose from the chair, his movements now deliberate and certain. The war was not over. The enemy was downstairs. And they would be coming.
He began to fortify their castle. First, the door. The three locks were strong, but he remembered his uncle's lessons about reinforcement. He went to the kitchen and found the heavy iron crowbar Ben kept for prying open stubborn crates. He wedged the end of it between the back of the door and the solid concrete of the hallway wall, creating a powerful, immovable brace. No one was getting through that door without taking down the entire wall with it.
Next, the windows. Their flat was on the third floor, making a direct assault difficult, but not impossible. He remembered stories of thieves in Lagos using long poles and ropes to scale apartment buildings. He couldn't barricade all the windows, but he could create an early warning system. He found his aunt's sewing kit and a small box of tiny bells she used for decorating clothes. With painstaking care, he threaded thin, dark thread across the inside of each window frame, low to the ground, and tied the tiny bells to them. It was a crude tripwire, but anyone climbing through in the dark would make a sound.
As he worked, he thought about the power in his hands. He looked at the heavy crowbar. It had taken all of his normal strength to wedge it into place. But he knew, with a terrifying certainty, that if he had truly wanted to, if he had tapped into that other strength, he could have bent the solid steel bar into a pretzel. He could have punched a hole through the concrete wall. The thought was both exhilarating and nauseating. The power was a sleeping giant inside him, and he did not know its nature. He did not know what it would cost to wake it. For now, he would rely on his uncle's methods. He would rely on cleverness and steel.
His final preparation was the most grim. He gathered their weapons. The tyre iron. The sharpened file. He went to the kitchen and found the largest, sharpest knife in his aunt's collection, its edge gleaming in the flashlight beam. He created a small arsenal on the coffee table, next to the medicines. One for him, and two for his aunt, for when she woke. He would not let them be taken undefended.
As the first, faint, sickly yellow light of the new day began to filter through the cracks in the curtains, Adekunle stood in the center of the living room, surveying his work. The door was braced. The windows were trapped. The weapons were ready. The flat was no longer just a home; it was a fortress. A castle on the third floor.
He went to the window and peered through a tiny gap in the curtains. The street below was quiet, washed clean by the night's rain. There was no sign of the new gang. But he knew they were there, in the dark belly of the building, sleeping, waiting.
He looked over at his aunt. Her breathing seemed a little easier, the colour in her cheeks less flushed. The medicine, perhaps, was beginning its slow, silent work. A flicker of hope, fragile but fierce, ignited in his chest.
He was tired, his body a single, continuous ache, his mind raw with grief. But as he stood there, watching over his last remaining family member, in the fortress his uncle's lessons had helped him build, he did not feel despair. He felt a grim, quiet resolve.
The world outside could have its demons, its silent gods, its poison sky. In here, on the third floor, he was the king. And he would defend his tiny, broken kingdom to his last, dying breath.