Adekunle woke to a world of soft, muted light and the gentle, rhythmic whisper of a needle passing through cloth. For a disorienting moment, he didn't know where he was. The air smelled of dust and old cotton, not the stale, recycled air of their flat. He pushed himself up, his body a map of deep aches and protesting muscles, and saw his aunt.
She was sitting propped against a large bolt of deep blue brocade, her injured leg stretched out before her. The morning's jaundiced light, filtering through the grimy front window of the tailor's shop, illuminated her face, making her look like a figure in an old painting. She had a needle and thread in her hands—taken from one of the sewing machines—and she was meticulously stitching a tear in his shirt, which she must have taken from his backpack while he slept. Her movements were slow and precise, her brow furrowed in concentration. It was an act of such profound, quiet normalcy that it felt like the most radical form of defiance imaginable.
"You're awake," she said, not looking up from her work. "You slept for ten hours. You looked like a dead man."
"I felt like one," he admitted, his voice a rough croak. He looked around the workshop. In the daylight, it was less a place of ghosts and more a place of sad, quiet beauty. The silent sewing machines, the colourful spools of thread, the headless mannequins draped in half-finished dreams—they were all artifacts of a lost civilization, a world where people had the time and peace to care about the beauty of a well-cut seam.
He saw the water containers and the red toolbox neatly arranged against a wall. She had been busy. She had not just been mending his shirt; she had been mending their world, imposing a small pocket of order on the overwhelming chaos.
"How is your leg?" he asked, crawling over to her.
"It hurts," she said simply, biting the thread with her teeth. "But the pain is a clean pain now. The fire is gone." She looked at him, her eyes clear and sharp. "The medicine is working. You saved my life, Kunle."
He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. The memory of the previous night's violence was a raw, fresh wound. "I did what I had to."
"You did more than that," she insisted gently. "You became the storm. And now the storm is over, and we are still here." She held out his shirt to him. The tear was gone, replaced by a neat, almost invisible line of stitches. "Even broken things can be mended. It is good to remember that."
He took the shirt, the message in her gesture clear. He was not broken beyond repair. He was just wounded.
They spent the morning in their new, temporary home. It was a kingdom of threads and silent machines. While his aunt rested, Adekunle took on the role of quartermaster and engineer. He explored the shop thoroughly, taking inventory of their new assets. He found a small, back room that had been the tailor's office. It contained a desk, a chair, and, most miraculously, a small stash of bottled water and canned food the tailor must have kept for his lunches. It wasn't much—six bottles of water, a few tins of beans, and some salt crackers—but it was a treasure, an extension of their lifeline.
His most important discovery was in a small closet. It was a wheelchair. Old, manual, and with one slightly wobbly wheel, but functional. The sight of it made his heart leap. This changed everything. His aunt was no longer an anchor. She was no longer a burden to be carried. With this chair, she could be mobile. They could travel. The possibility of a future beyond the next few days, which had been a distant, abstract idea, suddenly became a tangible reality.
He brought the chair out, his face beaming with a genuine smile for the first time in what felt like a year. Funke's eyes lit up when she saw it. She ran her hand over its worn vinyl armrest, a look of profound relief on her face.
"Your uncle Ben always used to say," she said, her voice thick with emotion, "'God gives you the problem, but He also scatters the pieces of the solution nearby. You just have to have the eyes to see them.'"
With the immediate crises of thirst and immobility solved, a new, more difficult question settled over them: What next? They couldn't stay here forever. The tailor's shop, while safer than the street, was on the ground floor. It was vulnerable. They were living on borrowed time.
They sat together in the dusty light of the showroom, the silent mannequins their only audience, and they held their first council of war.
"We need a long-term plan," Funke began, her voice taking on the strategic tone of a general. "We have food and water for a few weeks, maybe a month if we are careful. But what happens then? We cannot live our lives running from one hiding place to the next."
"We need a fortress," Adekunle said, the word tasting familiar. He thought of their flat, of the castle he had tried to build. "Somewhere high up. Defensible. With a sustainable source of water, like the roof tank."
"But not that building," Funke said, a shadow passing over her face. "It is… tainted now. And Jago's men will not be the last to try and claim it."
She was right. The city was a chessboard of warring factions, and their old home was a strategic location. It would always be a target. They needed to find a new home, a place that was not just defensible, but overlooked. A place no one would think to look for.
"The university," Adekunle said, the idea coming to him in a flash of inspiration. "The campus at Akoka."
Funke looked at him, her brow furrowed. "Why there?"
"It's a ghost town within a ghost town," he explained, his mind racing as he pictured the familiar layout. "When the Fall happened, the students would have all gone home. It would have emptied out faster than anywhere else. It's huge, full of hundreds of buildings to hide in. And it's walled. The entire campus is a fortified compound." He began to pace, the energy of the idea making him restless. "And the resources… think of it, Auntie. The science labs will have medical supplies, chemicals. The kitchens in the halls of residence will have non-perishable food stores. The libraries will have books, knowledge. And water… the campus has its own deep-well borehole and massive water towers."
It was a perfect solution. An entire, self-contained, defensible city, likely abandoned and overlooked by the gangs who would be focused on the commercial centers and residential high-rises.
"But getting there…" Funke said, her voice laced with doubt. "It must be five, maybe six kilometers from here. Through the city."
"We have the chair," he countered, his confidence growing. "We can travel. We'll move at night. We'll stick to the backstreets. It will be dangerous, but it's a plan. It's a destination. It's a chance at a real future, not just… surviving until the next meal."
They sat in silence, the sheer, audacious scale of the plan hanging in the air between them. It was a journey into the unknown, a pilgrimage to a potential promised land. It was the most dangerous thing they could possibly attempt. And it was the only thing that made sense.
"Okay," Funke said finally, a fierce light in her eyes. "Okay, Kunle. We go to the university. We build a new home."
The decision was made. The listlessness of the past few weeks was gone, replaced by a sharp, clear sense of purpose. They were no longer just refugees. They were pioneers.
They spent the rest of the day preparing. Adekunle worked on the wheelchair, using tools from his uncle's box to tighten the wobbly wheel and oil the bearings. Funke, meanwhile, took on the role of seamstress for the apocalypse. Using the vibrant, durable ankara fabrics from the workshop, she began to sew. She reinforced their backpacks, patched their torn clothes, and began fashioning a series of clever pouches and harnesses that could be attached to the wheelchair, allowing them to carry more water and supplies.
As he watched her work, her needle flashing in the dim light, a profound sense of peace settled over Adekunle. The world outside was a ruin, a hellscape of monsters and broken gods. But in this small, dusty room, there was purpose. There was ingenuity. There was the quiet, stubborn, beautiful act of creation. They were not just surviving. They were building.
He looked down at his own hands, the hands that could bend steel and shatter concrete. He thought of the power sleeping inside him. His aunt was right. A tool was useless without a purpose. And now, for the first time, he had one. It was not just to protect, not just to destroy. It was to build. To carry them to a new place, a new home, a new world. His world. Their world. The kingdom of the survivors.