dust, through the whimpers and squeaks of the animals.
‘We take their T-cells out, genetically modify them with CRISPR, and put them back in.’ The jargon tasted metallic in his mouth. ‘They don’t die, but I can see it in their skin, off-target symptoms from disabling the cells, black spots and patches from the mutagenesis. This is just what happens when we test it on animals. How could we use it on people?’
Jacob had turned away. Joseph stepped back into the lab. He grabbed a pen, signed the loan contract, and pushed it towards Jacob. Jacob’s head was down, his hands on the money in his lap. He looked up.
‘We shouldn’t talk about your father.’
‘He’s gone anyway.’
‘It happened a long time ago.’
‘And your—?’
Jacob snatched the contract closer and signed, too. He stood, gingerly hitching his jeans up.
Over the two years since the funeral, Joseph had come to hate his father: a feeling which had clarity and could accommodate the admiration he’d once felt for him. Dr Lionel Banda had still left him this legacy, though: a trail of coded messages leading to a cure. Joseph had started with the truth – he and Musadabwe had tested only animals so far. But the rest was a lie. Joseph knew human trials would have to come eventually. He felt sorry for the Lusaka Patient and the other women like her. But to say sorry to her son would be tantamount to a confession, and Joseph would not face that until the study was done.
* * *
Musadabwe is shutting the lab down. He told me to stop the experiments. I guess he reached an impasse with Ling – ‘that Chinese trickster has robbed us!’ – and the results from our lab are just going to be absorbed in the experiments at Huazhong. Our tiny data set will be lost in the midst of the discovery! Musadabwe has licked his wounds already. He says that he’ll shift his focus back to treating Virus patients. That he can’t stem the uneven tide of research, but he won’t let these ‘women of the night’ succumb like dogs. He’ll keep the clinic open as long as he can.
* * *
Joseph shuffled through the dark, carrying a bag of lab equipment over his shoulder. He had paid for it – he might as well keep it. It dangled down his back and bumped as he walked unsteadily towards the woodyard. He was high and delirious with fatigue from packing up the lab. He glanced back at the clinic, a last goodbye, and tripped. His bag flew and landed with a soft crunch. He fell slowly and heavily, tumbling down piecemeal, buttocks, then torso, then head.
All of a sudden Jacob was above him, looking down at him. On an impulse, Joseph grabbed at Jacob’s ankle. He lifted it and tripped him and Jacob fell too, cut down. Which came first? Jacob’s nails abrading his cheek? Or the quick punches to his chest? Jacob’s eyes were wide, his teeth gritted. His face floated above as if Joseph had exhaled him: mocking and grinning and drunk. Joseph pressed his fist hard against Jacob’s chest, his other hand around his wrist. Jacob wrapped his fingers around Joseph’s, their hands a clutch of flesh and bone, sweat and skin. Laughter burst from his chest. The moon watched over them, a perfect circle.
* * *
God sat at the base of the mopane tree, looking out. It was night. He would have to tell his grandson sooner or later. But for now he sat and watched Jacob and Joseph wrestle like children, wasted on beer or mbanji or both. The black boy looked silver, the yellow boy gold in the moonlight. RIP Beds & Coffins was otherwise empty but for a few new commissions – a bed, a coffin, a stool – standing like giant chess pieces, mired in curving shadows: a soundless, motionless standoff.
We’re still right here, niggling near, nipping and nibbling in. You say we’re vampires – bamunyama – because of our thirst for your blood. But we’re more akin to the walking dead, a stunned dumb nation, a Zombia.
The concept of the zombie was born in the Kongo, then travelled to the New World on slave ships: nzambi (a god) or zumbi (a fetish) – either way, a thing beyond the living. Revived from the dead by a witch, a bokor, the zombie’s a slave with no will. It can be sent to do labour or to murder a neighbour. An