Destroyers by Dave Mckay (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

The two young men had no answers. They went to Kisumu, where the station master checked his records and found that he had, indeed, sold tickets for Amy and eight children on the train to Nairobi that same day. No one named Josephat was on the records, and no one matching that description had been seen at the station that day or any other in recent memory.

Despite the lack of evidence, Moses and Jiddy were still convinced that Josephat was involved. Moses reported them missing, but the police could see nothing sinister in a local selling up and moving to Nairobi; so they paid Moses little heed.

But for the next two years, he and Jiddy never stopped talking it up around the village. The fact that Josephat never returned during that time was enough to convince most people that the boys were probably right. But nothing could be done without more evidence.

Had Amy and Rosy been willing victims, or were they under a spell? For his part, Moses was convinced Josephat had been using traditional magic on all of them and had been doing so for quite some time. He believed that it had led to them being lured away, possibly to their deaths.

"They would never have left without telling me," he argued repeatedly.

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Chapter 19. Unity

If Moses had ever thought that he could keep his reason for going to London secret, he soon learned otherwise. In a matter of weeks posters started to appear around the village and all over Kakamega with his face on them and the slogan "no more apprehensions" written across it... in English and in Luhya. Those few locals who had televisions were soon spreading the word about Moses' acting abilities too. Everyone loved him, and they told him so. His business picked up dramatically; everyone wanted to be seen with the poster boy.

The campaign was working for the banks too, because people all over Western Kenya started queueing to get implants. A monthly mobile clinic visited villages to inject microchips under the skin of the right hand on all those who wished to be a part of the new economy. Newspapers reported similar happenings all over the world.

Incentives were making the transition even easier. Scanners were free to any business that qualified now, and even the churches were being enticed with offers that were just too good to refuse.

Quakers, Pentecostals, and traditional churches were being lured into linking up with Catholics, who were themselves making concessions in order to get the premiums that were being offered by the government in conjunction with a restructured ecumenical super-church.

There had been whispered debates over whether the churches would install scanners, after claims had circulated about the implant being the devil's mark. But the government sidestepped that by promising to eliminate the need for offerings altogether for all who became a part of the new super-church. Any group joining up would be funded at a rate that far exceeded what they were getting through their meager offering plates each Sunday. Funding would be paid electronically into church accounts by the government. Of course most attenders were getting implants anyway, because they needed them to do business; but church subsidies kept the issue from becoming a source of debate on Sunday mornings.

"It's three or four times what we ever got from Friends in America," one young Quaker enthused to the others at the boda-boda stand one morning. Quakers in Kenya had previously relied on their wealthier counterparts in America; consequently, after the fall of America, they had been suffering financially. Now all that was changing. "I'm sure the Lord is using this to bless us," said the young Quaker-turned-super church man. "There is so much good we can do with this money."

"What about tribal practices? Will they stop us from doing our old family customs?" asked another.

"The church never stopped us from doing circumcisions or other practices, not even before," boasted a driver from a zealous Catholic family. "And there are meetings during the week now where you can believe anything you like. It'll be so easy in this new church."

"What about you,Moses? What's your religion?"asked the Quaker driver.

"Me, I don't have a religion," he said. "Just do good and think positive; that's my religion. But I'm happy for you guys."

Talk then turned to General Secretary Xu Dangchao. There was praise from all of them for the charismatic leader. In less than four years he had turned the greatest holocaust in history into a booming success for those who had survived. World peace, prosperity, and religious unity; they had it all. It was like heaven on earth.

Maybe there was a little truth in what Josephat said, Moses thought to himself. "Those who destroyed the earth" had, themselves, been destroyed, and the rest of the world was reaping great benefits as a result. Too bad that Josephat (and Amy, and Rosy) couldn't see that what Dangchao was building was closer to the paradise that they must have been hoping for, than anything that they had now... if, in fact, they were even alive.

The trouble, he thought, was that Josephat had been a fanatic. He had to believe he was right about everything. Josephat had refused to co-operate with other believers, who were uniting under this new enlightened church. His stubbornness had led to insanity. Breakaway groups like his always seemed to turn into cults, with sick beliefs and sicker practices. Each time Moses thought of Rosy, Amy, and Josephat, his anger grew.

As the stories had spread, people came to believe that Amy and the children had been brain washed, hypnotised, and then enticed away to some secret hideaway, where, if they were still alive, they were almost certainly carrying out satanic rituals and suffering a fate worse than death. Most believed that the orphan family never reached Nairobi on that fateful train trip, before Josephat succeeded in having his way with them.

Over the next two years, while unity spread through churches, through banks, and through governments, there was a subtle growth in suspicion about anyone who refused to be a part of this new movement. Moses had been asked countless times to join the new churchhimself, but he had always refused, saying that he had no need of such stuff. The simple fact that he hung onto his independence made many people feel that he was against what they were doing. He had to repeatedly defend their right to believe as they did, in order to reassure them.

It seemed like Moses was only able to get away with maintaining ths position because he was in a class of his own, as the worldwide poster boy for the identity system that was uniting the planet. His celebrity status gave him confidence enough to carry on without religious affiliation, even if it did not make him independent in other ways.

There were others like himself, who claimed to believe in nothing, but the counter-argument was always that there was room for those sort of people in the new world church too. Such people usually joined in the end, just for the feeling of acceptance that it gave them. But more than a few joined out of fear that they would suffer by not being a visible supporter of the new movement.

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Chapter 20. Becoming a Man

In those first heady days of fame and financial success, Moses found himself the center of attention for a lot of attractive females in the village. Although promiscuity was rampant amongst local youth, Moses had, until he was 18, avoided any sexual relationships for two main reasons. One was his total dedication to becoming successful. Women represented a distraction from his long-term goals of financial independence.

But the other reason was probably more significant, and that was that he had never been circumcised. The loss of his parents had come at a time when most boys his age were beng circumcised to prove their manhood. This lapse on his part had gone completely unnoticed. But a sexual relationship would give a woman information that, if spread around, could lead to him being forcibly circumcised in accordance with local custom. He did not want that. Even married men were, at times, dragged into the bloody ritual if people learned that they had been overlooked in previous years.

Who could say how long his hormonal needs would have held out against his fear of adult circumcision? Nevertheless, Moses had found some comfort in the fact that during this time of greater unity, there had also developed a greater tolerance for non-circumcised males.

When he was nearly 19, Jiddy talked him into sleeping with Atamba, a local woman in her mid twenties who worked in the local bar. Jiddy was the only other person on earth who knew Moses' secret about being uncircumcised, and he had faithfully kept it.

"She won't tell anyone," Jiddy promised. "Atamba knows lots of secrets... about me and about a lot of other guys in the village, but she never tells anything. And hey, Stump, she doesn't cost much either."

The time was past when Moses would need to reckon with tribal elders, even if his secret did leak out, thanks to the new religious liberalism. So Moses let Jiddy introduce him to this woman, and he lost his virginity on the floor of Atamba's hut on the opposite side of the village to where he lived, very late one night after the bar closed. Not feeling right about paying for such a favour, he gave her two kilograms of sugar "as a gift" instead, and she seemed happy with that.

"Now you're a man," Jiddy had said the next morning, after Moses timidly let him know that he had "done it". "What do you think, Stump? Was it good?"

"It was okay," he said sheepishly, "but I was worried about someone finding us. Do all the girls do it?"

"Most, if you're nice to them," Jiddy promised. He was pretending to be more expert than he really was, although he had enjoyed the company of three or four local women in the five years that had passed since his first encounter at the age of 16.

The experience had opened Moses' eyes to what he had been missing, and so after that, he frequently obliged various women who threw themselves at him because of his fame. But he always practiced safe sex (unlike some others in the village), and he did not let it interfere with his greater desire to succeed financially.

Jiddy benefited from his friendship with Moses, often inheriting a friend of someone whom Moses was bringing back to the house. He did not have the same dedication to his job that Moses had, so he was not worried about taking time off work during the day to engage in sex.

Girls lost interest in Jiddy much more quickly than they did with Moses, but the younger man was always able to use his fame to find Jiddy a new playmate.

"Be nice to them. You said it yourself," Moses lectured one night after seeing his friend's latest girlfriend storm out of the house as he was cycling up to it. "What do you do to make them so mad? She looked like she had been hit."

"They don't know what they want," Jiddy grizzled. "Even they like it rough too sometimes, but