CHAPTER VII

It was six-thirty in the evening, vehicles were still at a standstill, and Slade began to worry about how long it would take before he got to his destination. He wondered how far he would have gone if, four hours earlier, he had trekked instead. He laughed at the thought of that.

He wasn't even bothered about not making it to the event he wanted to go to. The event was minutes away from being over. He was only disturbed by the fact that it was getting dark.

He took another brief look at his clothes. He had done this several times and told himself that they weren't too rough each time he did it. He didn't believe it.

All hopes of straightening his clothes had been dashed since power had not been supplied to his house, which meant his resolution of always looking neat, and sound would have to begin on his second day in school.

Slade took his thoughts back in time to some hours earlier that day.

“…Come on, boy, it's getting late.”

Slade wasn’t a deep sleeper, but he had barely slept four hours and was so tired that he didn’t wake up when his alarm sounded.

“You’re going to be late!” he heard his dad say again.

“Okay, Dad, thanks,” he replied, his eyes barely open and pretending he was about to get up. He heard the sound of his dad’s receding footsteps and immediately sank back into his bed but didn't go back to sleep.

He thought of things he ought to take to school and items that were not needed, so he could carry as light a load as possible when he realised... “I had a dream!” Slade said to himself in amazement.

Not that Slade never dreamt, but he never remembered most of them, not even the slightest detail. That made him wonder if he did dream or if he just imagined that he did.

"I took alcohol and was going to follow a girl home," he said, smiling. "Way more interesting things in my dreams than in real life."

He was glad he remembered the dream even though he deemed dreams pointless. Unlike in the movies, Slade thought, dreams don’t tell what will happen in the future. An A to my brain for imagination, though, Slade smiled, she's beautiful, and I would give a lot for this one to come true…

At nine o’clock, Slade wondered if the power supplier would save his blushes. “Just one cloth,” Slade said to himself, “I’ll sort the rest out in school.”

Slade had his bath and dressed up, not before asking his brother, then his mum if the clothes were very rough. They both used the word “okay” to describe the state of the clothes, but Slade wasn’t convinced.

Slade left the house without eating that morning. It was a Saturday, and his parents and brother thoroughly cleaned the house, which Slade was exempted from since he had to prepare for school. His mum had begun preparing food, but Slade told her he could not wait for the food. He said goodbyes to his family, with his mum telling him to focus on his studies and avoid distractions.

“Call me when you get there,” was the last thing his mother said to him. Slade smiled, knowing that he wouldn't call her as usual.

He was right, but in a way he never thought about.

At eleven twenty-three that morning, Slade was at the garage where he boarded the vehicle he found himself in. It took about an hour and thirty minutes for the vehicle to be filled with passengers before their journey began.

Slade looked at the watch on his left arm, “six forty-five,” he said to himself but didn’t stop looking at it. He began to wonder where all the qualities for which he had coveted the watch when he saw it with his dad for the first time had gone.

With something himself and his brother termed “transference”, he had ensured that the watch had become his within days of his dad getting it. He wondered how many of his current possessions he had gotten that way from his dad. He didn’t delude himself by thinking he did all that without his dad's indulgence. One of his ways to show he loves us, Slade thought.

Towards the right end of the road, he saw a billboard displaying an ad paid for by a telecommunication company-the only thriving telecommunication company owned by a citizen of Nonce in the country.

It was a very popular company but mainly for the wrong reasons.

Asides from the fact that to purchase a data plan, they had to pay more-or get fewer data bundles for the same price as other telecommunication companies charged-than what was charged by other companies, the service they provided both for calling and browsing was terrible.

At the end of the ad, the slogan “Rule Your World” was displayed.

“Yeah,” Slade said, chuckling. “No shit!”

The fact that the company knew they had terrible service in many areas, but they’ve done shit about it for years, was something that pissed Slade off about big companies in his country. And once again, the problem could be traced right back to the government since they got what they wanted-bribes-from those companies, and in return, they did whatever it was they wanted.

“We’re so fucked!” He said with no hint of a smile on his face.

Again, Slade became conscious of his rough clothes. He decided to compare what he put on to what others put on to see if he was better off than they were. It turned out to be a bad decision.

Slade sat in the vehicle’s front seat with the driver, the only other person in front.

In Nonce, many drivers wore clothes that made it hard for people to tell at once if they were dirty or just stained, and most times, they were rough.

Slade would have found little solace in the fact that the driver had a worse appearance, but when he looked, he wondered how unlucky he was to have him as his driver.

He had seen the driver numerous times during the couple of hours they spent together in the vehicle, but when he took a closer look at his clothing, he was impressed. The driver wore a blue shirt and black trousers; both looked clean and ironed. He also had his hair combed! It wasn’t how Slade would have ever imagined a driver.

“As a driver,” Slade remembered his dad telling him, “you have to consider yourself the only sane person on the road. Other drivers are mad!” That was his dad’s way of telling him to be extremely careful whenever he drove.

Slade wondered if the good looks of his driver translated into good driving. He had not seen any reckless driving from him to think otherwise.

Slade thought there should be an award for people in Nonce who drove almost daily and still made it to the end of the year. He also believed that if there were a book named “Multiple Ways to Die,” driving in Nonce would find its way there.

He thought that there was a lot wrong with driving in Nonce. Aside from the problem of bad roads, the police were not interested in upholding the law. This was slightly ironic because they were always found on the road. Slade could hardly remember when he travelled and did not find a cop on the road. What were they doing if they were not upholding the law? Slade knew the answer to that.

Drivers beat traffic lights and broke other traffic laws whenever they felt like it. Why? They knew they could get away with it.

How could this be pinned on the government? Easy! Cops in Nonce were underpaid. They received one of the poorest salaries on the continent!

Slade found his distinction between the government and the police funny since the police were a part of the government. But when he compared the standard of living of cops to that of most government officials, the relationship between them could be seen through that of a warrior and his shield. The shield protects the warrior from all sorts of missiles directed at him, but what does it get for all its troubles? Maybe a good polishing. The only difference here was that cops did not even get good polishing; they got peanuts for all their efforts-not that many of them actually put in much effort when it came to doing their jobs. And government officials? They were far from being warriors!

Chickens would be a better description, Slade thought.

Knowing this, it was easy for Slade, as it should be, for you to find out why cops were always on the road if they were not interested in upholding the law.

Drivers knew about the predicament of cops; they also understood “moneyshakes” would absolve them of all penalties they were supposed to face.

Slade knew his country had a long way to go if its present state would ever change for good. His parents used to tell him about how good things were when they were younger. He pictured it easily but didn’t see how it could be replicated or bettered.

Slade could hear the startup sounds of some vehicles before them. Almost all drivers had powered down their vehicles’ engines since there was no movement. Slade guessed that vehicles were beginning to move, and it would seem the driver also thought the same since he also powered up his vehicle. About thirty seconds later, Slade was in a moving vehicle, and his only hope was that the movement would not be impeded until he got to his destination.

After twenty minutes of continuous movement, it seemed to Slade that he might get what he wished.

Ahead, he saw an exit by the driver’s side of the highway. The highway was divided in two by vehicles that moved in the same direction as his and by those that looked to exit that side of the highway to the other side.

Vehicles that wanted out Slade’s side of the highway stuck to a lane beside the exit while other vehicles passed them by. Of course, some drivers decided they were in too much of a hurry to stay on that side of the road and wait their turn to exit. They took other lanes and were now trying to force their way through the exit before vehicles that got there before then. “Typical!” Slade said to himself.

Slade could clearly see the exit; it was clogged up due to the number of vehicles trying to exit simultaneously. Scenes like that were typical in Nonce, and he had seen a lot of them for him to be surprised. “Why do people do what they do?” He knew that wasn’t an easy question to answer.

Many people, including his dad, had told him it was nearly impossible to obey the country’s laws since she was in a terrible state. “That could only happen if the country improves,” Slade’s dad once said. Slade thought otherwise. He thought people doing the right thing always, even when they could be ridiculed for it, and when doing the wrong thing was not going to be punished, would go a long way in making the country better.

Slade looked away from the scene. He was at least glad then and had high hopes that he would reach his destination in about an hour.

He was wrong.

Slade saw smoke rise from the vehicle’s bonnet a few minutes later. The driver saw it, too, and manoeuvred the vehicle towards Slade’s end of the road to park.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse! Slade thought.

The driver ignored the questions of passengers who asked what the problem was as he moved out of the vehicle and towards the bonnet.

The driver returned to tell them some minutes later that the engine’s fan belt was bad, and that the vehicle would not be able to move further until it was repaired. He then told the passengers to leave the vehicle; he would hail other public transport vehicles and fix some passengers. This would only be possible if those vehicles had dropped off some of their passengers on the way.

“Fantastic!” Slade said to himself.

It was almost 7 O’clock, and it was dark. There were no functioning streetlights on the highway, and the only source of light came from the vehicles that drove by.

The passengers were about to exit the vehicle when five people in masks surrounded them. Slade and the driver were already outside the vehicle and were ordered to get back in it.

Robbers! Slade thought.

One of the robbers approached the driver, took all the money he had on him, and stayed with him. One opened the door to the passenger's seat, while another opened the door to Slade’s. The passengers, with guns pointed at them, were then told to pass along the bags, purses, and money they had with them and that no one would get hurt if they obeyed. They all seemed to do this as quickly as they could, except Slade, who stared at the robber before him as though he had not heard the instruction.

Slade thought it was a funny scene. He knew things could happen in Nonce, but this? In the middle of a highway? Surely people would intervene, but hopes of that happening dwindled quickly as the first few vehicles that passed them by seemed to increase their velocities as soon as they noticed the scene.

My laptop! My phone! Slade thought, basically, my life! I should be able to do something about this!

Slade had some delusions that led to that final thought process. Whenever he watched movies or read books, he felt he could do the things that were done in them, even without practice.

It was too bad for Slade because some things done in movies could not be replicated in reality.

Slade had never touched a gun in all his years on the planet. He had never fired one but thought that was the easy part. He thought the hard part was getting the gun from his assailant’s hands.

Slade turned a deaf ear to the voices of other passengers telling him to “Just do what they say.”

The robber before him told Slade he would get what he wanted, even if it meant pulling it off his dead body. Slade, calm and collected, was preparing to lunge at the robber in front of him when the robber, by the other passengers, shot his gun into the air. That seemed to bring clarity to Slade.

Slade had never heard a gunshot sound that close, and for the first time that evening, he was terrified. He reluctantly handed out his bag to the robber, who snatched it from his hands and dropped it into their sack. Four of the robbers made to leave and called out to the fifth, who was still looking at Slade. Slade imagined he was pissed at him.

He had no idea how much.

The fifth robber was walking away from the vehicle to join the other four when he stopped, turned around, and walked toward Slade. With his gun pointed at Slade, and an irate look, which Slade saw only because of the light that came from other vehicles passing by, he said, “You fucked with the wrong person.”

Slade had never seen a bullet, not even the one shot into the air earlier by one of the robbers, and he was never going to see one. As the robber pulled his trigger, Slade only saw a flash. He heard screams too.