Manifest

Forty-six

Anne wiped her hands with the towel she'd been biting as a gunshot went off outside. Nyakno, the girl the chief had assigned to stand guard over Anne flinched. She sat up as Anne turned in the direction of the door. They'd remained in the hut throughout the first scuffle in the clearing. The girl hadn't let Anne see what was going on, but she'd watched from the safety of Anne's hut because the chief asked her to watch Anne. It would take a lot to make the girl abandon her post, apparently.

"That wasn't a handgun," Nyakno said.

"Snipper riffle. Foreign gun," Anne agreed. "Mbono don't use those."

Nyakno ran to the door of the hut and peeped out. She drew her head back in, quickly and grabbed Anne's straps from the ground, attaching them to the sides of her jeans as Anne watched.

"What are you doing?" Anne asked.

"I'm going out there."

"What? I thought you couldn't leave because the chief said-"

"Ekpo just entered the gathering. I have to join this fight."

"If ekpo are attacking the gathering, give me something to defend myself."

"Stay in here and you'll be fine."

"I'm bleeding out, Nyakno. You've given me nothing but scarves and they can't do much more to keep me alive. At least give me a gun or something. If anyone comes in here, they won't ask questions, they'll shoot me to death."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you betrayed Abasi Isong," Nyakno removed two daggers as she crouched by the door. "Besides, you're one of them, aren't you? I doubt ekpo will kill you when they find you so stay put. Or get caught in the crossfire."

With that, she slipped out the door.

Anne crawled to the door, dragging her wounded leg on the floor as she watched a crowd of mbono rush into a crowd of ekpo coming from the opposite direction. Gunshots went off as the clashing of metal against metal caused her to cringe. This was nothing like the small altercation from a few hours earlier. That had sounded like a handful of people. This was a full out war.

Groaning, she leaned on the wall, where she lay, hoping to avoid roaming eyes or searching ekpo who came looking.

Presently, she was a prisoner to mbono because of her betrayal. But seeing as ekpo didn't know she was a prisoner; they'd see her and think she was mbono.

"Just great," she said, wrapping the scarf in her hand and bracing herself. Whoever came into the hut was going to die before they got a chance to evaluate Anne's status as friend or foe.

===

Every time someone ran by her hut, Anne flinched and tried to sink deeper into the wall. She couldn't leave so the only prayer she had was that no one would come in. The ground shook outside, piquing Anne's curiosity as to what was going on, but she couldn't, she wouldn't dare to look.

A bullet hit the wall directly opposite the door and Anne crawled away as two people tumbled into the hut. A man and a woman. The woman wrapped her legs around the man's neck, pulled his hand up and attempted to twist his neck, but the man coiled his body and rolled over, wedging himself against the big backpack he had on his back as her legs came loose and he stood. The moment he was free of her, he pointed the gun in his hand and fired as the woman, the mbono, stopped moving.

When he turned the gun on Anne, she raised her hands in surrender and closed her eyes, waiting to die.

"Anne?" the man asked.