1000 Men Have Been Killed Today[4]

PART 4 OF 5

PREVIOUSLY…

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Elizabeth’s POV

The ambulance doors burst open, slamming into the metal sides with a sound that seemed to split the air in two.

Something exploded outward.

A body, one of the paramedics, crashed hard onto the asphalt, folding in on itself before rolling to a stop near the security booth. The angle of his neck was wrong. His arm twitched once, then didn’t move again.

“Oh my God…” I whispered, the words barely forming through the shock clogging my throat.

For a heartbeat, the security guards froze, their instincts dulled by disbelief, and that second of hesitation cost them.

With a spray of blood and green-veined fury, Linda flew out of the ambulance, slamming into the nearest guard and knocking him backward so hard his head cracked against the side of the booth.

Another guard lunged, club raised, but Linda was already upon her prey.

I watched in horror as she yanked a pair of scissors from her pocket and drove it into the man’s eye.

Once.

Twice.

Again and again.

Each thrust made a sound like someone plunging a knife into soaked fruit.

The man convulsed, gargling blood, a strangled cry bubbling up from a place no human voice should reach.

There was blood everywhere. On the van doors. On her arms. On her face.

There was so much of it. Too much.

The security men struck her repeatedly, their batons landing with dull thuds that should have brought her down and she didn’t even flinch. She just kept stabbing until his body stopped jerking, until the red had soaked into the gravel beneath him.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.

Linda stared down at the corpse for a moment, her bloodshot eyes unreadable before slowly lifting her blood-slicked face to the others who now circled her in trembling uncertainty.

“Madam, drop that knife now!”, one of them—young, maybe twenty—shouted. His voice cracked halfway through, but he stood his ground, waving his club with shaking hands. The others, emboldened by his move, started moving closer to her.

Linda tilted her head toward him and I could have sworn I saw the faintest smile curving her lips.

Then everything blurred.

A flash of silver. A gasp. And the young man was suddenly on the ground, clutching his throat, blood spilling through his fingers in thick spurts.

His eyes were wide in fear, mouth working to form words that never came.

Screams erupted. Chaos swallowed the air. My staff fled in every direction, shouting, running, crying.

But it was all muffled, like hearing the world through water.

The edges of my vision swam. Colors bled into one another. Red, gray, the white glare of the fluorescent lights smearing across the scene. The sharp smell of blood, metal, and antiseptic burned my nostrils, but even that felt unreal, like breathing through cloth.

I slid down the wall slowly, my legs refusing to hold me, the cold tiles biting through the fabric of my trousers. My back hit the plaster, and I just stayed there, pressed against it as if I could vanish into it, as if the solid wall might absorb me.

My ears rang. The sounds that did reach me: the crack of bone, the strangled sobs of someone praying under their breath, the scrape of boots on tile, arrived disjointed, delayed, as if the air itself had thickened.

Somewhere in the blur, someone shouted my name, but it came from far away, from another world. I didn’t turn. Couldn’t.

Someone was shaking me.

“Liz! Snap out of it!”

Tomi. Her face swam into focus, her eyes wide with terror, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

Behind her, the office was in ruins: laptops smashed on the floor, papers drifting through the air like torn feathers, a printer gutted and bleeding ink across the tiles.

The screaming was louder now. Staff were stampeding for the exits.

I saw Basit limping toward the emergency door, Femi’s arm hooked under his shoulders for support.

Wasn’t Basit supposed to be taking Femi to the clinic…?

“Liz!” Tomi grabbed my arm again. “We have to leave! Linda’s coming up now!”

Half her words didn’t register, but I stumbled to my feet, leaning on her as we pushed toward the exit.

Then the office door slammed. Hard.

My heart stopped. The second slam rattled the glass. The third one made the hinges groan.

I looked at Tomi. The color had drained completely from her face.

“Move! Move!” Tomi yelled, pushing people forward. The narrow exit became a bottleneck of panic. Femi was ahead, supporting Basit, who could barely walk.

“Femi, hurry up!” Tomi cried.

The door buckled under another impact. People were shoving at the narrow exit, screaming, tripping over one another. The sound of panicked breathing filled the room.

“I’m trying! Calm down!” he snapped, but his voice shook.

The final blow ripped the door off its hinges.

And there she was.

Linda stepped into the office, her hair matted with blood, her eyes gleaming under the fluorescent light. She looked like something pulled straight from a nightmare—and yet, part of me still saw her. My colleague. My friend.

Something inside me broke loose. Before I even understood what I was doing, I was walking toward her.

“Liz, what are you doing?!” Tomi’s voice cracked behind me, but I couldn’t stop.

Linda’s gaze met mine. For a moment, everything slowed. I saw something flicker behind her bloodshot eyes.

Recognition.

The Linda who used to bring orange-flavored chocolates to the office, the one who stayed late just to laugh with us, the Linda I know was in there, buried under the madness.

“Linda,” I said softly, my hands trembling. “Please. This isn’t you.”

She blinked, her breathing faltering.

“Listen, honey,” I continued taking another step, tears burning my eyes, “we’ll get you help, okay? We’ll take you to the hospital. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Her shoulders loosened. Her grip on the scissors weakened.

For a moment, I could see a change. I thought I was reaching her.

I took another step. I could feel the others holding their breath behind me.

Then Femi’s voice broke the fragile silence. “Get away from her, Madam Liz!”

It all shattered.

Linda’s face hardened instantly. Her head turned toward him in slow motion that made my stomach twist.

“Linda, no—!”

But she was already moving.

A knife flashed and in one clean motion, she drove it straight into Femi’s forehead.

He froze, eyes wide, disbelief etched into every line of his face, blood dripping from the wound. Then he crumpled.

My scream ripped through the chaos, tearing at my throat.

Tomi’s followed, trapped under Femi’s body, covered in blood. Basit stumbled backward, limping away, muttering something between prayers and panic.

He didn’t make it far.

Linda stalked after him, savoring every step, her knife catching the light. I turned away before she struck, but I couldn’t unhear the sound that followed. His scream didn’t just echo; it lodged inside my skull.

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I don’t remember leaving the building.

All I know is that one moment I was surrounded by screams, and the next I was in my car, the seatbelt across my chest, my hands shaking so hard I could barely hold my keys.

I had no memory of when I sat down, or how the blood on my wrist had dried to a rusted brown.

But the images refused to leave.

Every time I blinked, I saw the office again. The faces of my staff, the men who’d tried to fight, to reason, to run.

All of them gone.

My phone was buzzing in the car—forty-three missed calls from Joshua.

The street outside was too quiet. Too still.

Smoke rose from somewhere down the road, staining the sky gray. Sirens wailed in the distance. A window shattered somewhere nearby.

I turned the key in the ignition, the engine caught, and the radio came alive mid-sentence.

“We are receiving multiple reports across the state,” the broadcaster said, voice trembling. “Earlier today, a bus leaving Ikorodu was attacked violently by the women onboard. All male passengers have been killed.”

My grip tightened on the steering wheel.

“Unconfirmed reports from Ogudu… a school… all male staff and students dead. Estimated death toll over five hundred.”

“Soldiers have been mobilized from Dodan Barracks. Please, stay indoors. Do not leave your homes…”

I turned it off. I couldn’t listen anymore.

My hands held the steering wheel, but they didn’t feel like mine. They moved when I told them to, but the connection between thought and motion was frayed. Each turn of the wheel came a few seconds too late, as if I were piloting myself from a few feet outside my body.

When I pulled onto Ozumba Mbadiwe, the city I knew was gone.

Smoke filled the skyline. Cars sped by in blind panic, some colliding, others abandoned mid-road or burning. Shadows darted between them, screaming shapes that might have been people. Their mouths opened wide, but the sounds came half a second too late, the world out of sync.

A child ran past clutching something—maybe a doll, maybe a severed arm. I blinked, and she was gone.

Sirens blared from every direction, overlapping in a wail that sounded almost human.

At some point, I realized I was crying. Silent tears, sliding down my cheeks, caught in the corner of my mouth. I didn’t remember starting.

I passed overturned danfos, flames flickering through shattered windows. One van held six bodies inside, charred beyond recognition.

Bodies lined the road. Men, all of them. Faces frozen in horror. I gagged, pressing my sleeve to my mouth, but even that motion felt disconnected, like watching someone else do it.

A horn blared. White light flooded the windshield.

The car swerved. My vision snapped back just in time to correct it, the steering wheel jerking under my trembling grip.

It was fine. I was fine.

But the world kept slipping, sounds arriving from the wrong places. Sometimes the road looked endless, sometimes it folded in on itself, looping back toward the office. I thought I saw Linda once, standing in the street ahead, eyes glowing red. I blinked, and it was just a traffic light.

By the time I reached my estate, the number of dead I’d seen in a single day was more than anyone should see in a lifetime.

Joshua was already outside, pacing, his face pale and drawn.

The moment he saw my car, his face cracked open with relief. He ran to me before I even stopped fully, yanked the door open, and pulled me into his arms.

“You stupid, stubborn fool,” he muttered against my hair, his voice breaking. “I told you it wasn’t safe out there.”

He kissed me, desperately, and for the first time all day, I felt something close to safety.

“I told you it wasn’t safe,” he murmured between breaths. “I told you.”

That was when I finally broke. I collapsed into his arms. And I cried. The loud, messy, broken sobs that had been trapped inside me since the first scream.

NEXT…