Wormwood

Voices

...and the angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thundering, and lightening, and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound...

     The soldiers drank a lot of booze, although I warned them not to in case we had to fight, I needed them in the right frame of mind. We danced and made a lot of noise, most of the soldiers who never spoke to each other exchanged pleasantries, as the party ate deep into the night. Eyo told tales of his many fantasy journeys I know he never embarked on but I didn't want to spoil the thrill it gave everyone. I just watched everyone tell jokes even the kids about their recent fights and laughed about how slow and untrained their enemies were.
     At about 2:45am an earthquake hit the city; the laughter faded and the building shed a little of its stoned skin on the ground with dust everywhere, we all went outside to see the cause of it. Just then I got a call from Aso Rock that lightening had struck down some people and there was thundering everywhere. Abuja was a chaotic mass and pandemonium had sparked amongst the people that had migrated there. No sooner had I ended the call that a stray bolt of lightening ran past the middle of Mmaette and Vincent and hit the corrugated roof covering the window and bounced off hitting one of the soldiers helmet boring a hole in his skull; everyone ducked and ran inside but I and Vincent ran to pull in the bloodied soldier, the roof that the lightening struck was completely shiverelled. The soldier had his grey matter all over the place so we took his body in. That night nobody slept, the lightening kept hitting the house with tremors following; at some point we thought the house would cave in and kill us. After about an hour and half of turbulence from the elements, we began to hear voices everywhere; we all cocked our guns thinking it was fallen stars. It was as if we never even had a party, all smiles turned to gloom and lugubrious demeanors, we sat through the awkward voices that made chills run down everyone's spine. Many of the soldiers began to have stomach upsets out of fear, the kids temperatures slowly began to rise I knew it was out of fear, Eyo tried to comfort them but couldn't even hide the fact that he too was scared.