[b]Lake Kivu[/b]

The chatter of birds summoned the awakening morning. A clear morning sky hung over head, traced and painted with clouds glowing in luminescent fiery colors from the bright blood-red sun that rose gently over the distant mountains. Long shadows from the swaying palms, junipers, and rosewoods cast long stretching shadows across the soft red clay. Slowly pulling their cool embrace from mother-earth's raw flesh.

In the tired shade of ironwoods acres of empty pasture lay, their wooden pole fences marking square plots marked along the shallow hills as the gentle embankment of the savanna lowered to Lake Kivu's glimmering surface. Near to the river's edge near to where land met water and long raft-like piers stretched out into the water, desperately reaching for – but never reaching – the distant abandoned natural gas platforms at the lake's heart. These monoliths toppled and twisted as if by the foot steps of a giant, and thrown up as if the lake-water underneath had surged like a billowing carpet.

The village, built of mud huts lay in a controlled chaos by the lake's edge. Nursing the sleeping residents within. And as the morning sun rose so too did the great cliché come: a rooster crowed.

Within the bosom of a hut a young girl stirred. Hardly passed the age of ten. A head of wild black hair fell about in curls. And she wore a dress passed down through the ages that hugged softly her small form. She starred blankly up at the ceiling, where the tree-limb struts and beams met to hold up the inevitable ceiling of thatched grass and assorted debris. She moaned disinterested, she wanted to go back to sleep but still the morning rays of sun that shone through the cracks gave no pittance to this want. She scowled and moaned angrily as she rose up. Her skin was light, more so than the Bantu villages down the water's edge. She and her kin were refugees from the north, from the Mahgreb and the harsh glass deserts of the old Morocco. But she was of a generation now that knew not of a Morocco. 

They knew themselves and Taureg and Berber, but that was an identity long gone to them. It was left behind in the sands. Now it was only an explanation to their misplaced dialect of Arabic. And another community moved to Lake Kivu to take advantage of the abandoned villages and infrastructure that spanned the coast.

Now sitting in her stick-strung cot, where straps of leather and animal hide made a mattress she sat in the empty silence of the morning. Listening to the nothing that filled the hut. A curious thought nibbled her brain between sleepy blinks of the eyes as to why uncle and mother were not up yet. Or why father was not up with her brothers to run the goats to pasture. She wondered where the distant voices of the fishermen were that so normally echoed in the cool stillness of all mornings. But there was in their place an echoing silence that drowned all over. Only the song birds seemed to sing their frenetic morning song.

But maybe they were up already and she had overslept? That seemed like the logical conclusion as she stood up off her cot.

The hut was a one-room building, and out for any to see where the cots and beds of her entire family. All packed tightly together they formed a unity in the chaos of their placement. Their home was not a big one, and the only open space was a short wooden table they sat at for lunch and dinner at the far end of the ovular abode. A wicker mat was laid out over the dusty wooden floor.

Standing up she furrowed a brow at the mess in the room. It seemed to be much worse than it was usually for a family of ten under one roof. Of particular agitating shock were the misplaced shoes that had been strewn all about the entrance. Was someone playing a trick on her?

Her bare feet padded softly across the wicker mat as she ran to the door. The cloth curtain that otherwise hung there and helped keep the mosquitoes at bay had been completely torn from the stakes that drove it into the mud adobe walls of the huts. She would have to have a word about that to someone! She was princess after all, that's what mother told her she was.

But she'd need to find her shoes first.

“Wahid. Itnain. Thalatha.” she counted to herself, rambling through her arabic numerals as she lifted single shoes as she dug through the pile for her own. She like to count. There was a strange peace in the numbers as they escaped her lips. “Arba. Khumasah. Settah.” she continued through the next three. Her parents both had taught her to count, she and her brothers. They all knew basic arithmetic and could read the Quran. Or the one copy of the book the village shared.

“Sabaa. Thamaaneeya.” she continued. She was always told that her voice was like a bird from her mother. So she began to sing her way to ten, “Tissaa. Ashara!” she said triumphantly as she pulled up two identicle pairs of battered sneakers. The shoes had seen better years. Now they were little more than footwear strapped together by duct tape. She wasted no time getting them on.

She would have continued from Ashara, but there was no need as she went out into the morning light. And into the silence of the morning.

It was odd. She for sure would have seen someone as she stepped out onto the dust. But there was no one. Not even the goats. A stray cock strutted by, cackling contently. But there was something disturbed about the way it moved. She had met a bantu woman once who said that all animals know something is wrong. And the erratic and frightened way the rooster moved gave her great concern. It scanned like it was searching for a hawk, but the skies and trees were clear save for song birds.

It was not the silence that troubled her then, but the worried rooster that gave a sinking feeling to her stomach. Blood rushed from her face as she walked on down to the lake. Still, not seeing anyone.

She rounded about the corner of where a hut met a goat pen. The pen itself was quiet, nothing moved. They should have been taken out to pasture but she couldn't hear any bleating in the distance. 'What was wrong?' she asked herself rounding the corner, then saw it.

There was no funeral and no regard to the corpses. Only a wild frenzy that had torn them to shreds and strewn the parts far and wide. Bones lay scattered everywhere, stripped of flesh to where there was only loose strands of the tough tissue left. Broken open even, sucked dry of marrow till they were hallow as chicken bone. No part was left untouched.

Terror, horror, and a deep sorrow exploded in her gut and she fell to her knees. She splashed down in clay still moist from the blood and bile of the desecrated corpses. Among heads cracked open and emptied. Only the fingers and toes remained.

Collapsing in the ichor she screamed. Her cry was the one being stripped of life. Everything she had was burned by her sorrow. The mournful wailing came is a washing torrent with tears as even the energy of her soul escaped with all the happiness and joy. She was destroyed on the inside.

[b]Kinshasha[/b]

“A week ago, we lost the village of Wali al-Kivu.” a man said, pacing the room. In the high afternoon light of Kinshasha the high African sun beamed bright and heavy through the windows. Even curtained there was a sort of resilient strength to the light that cut through the thin fabric. Just outside the window the old pillars that marked the front-face of the old parliamentary building of the former Democratic Republic of the Congo formed silhouettes that broke the golden light into regular bars. The shadows cast lay across the table and far wall.

The office was full. A motly collection of regional representatives and corporate officers had pitched a meeting in one of the old offices of the old parliament. In truth, much of the building was unusable to them, far too big for any realistic work and the parliamentary chamber was doubly so for meetings that averaged twenty individuals and some six regulars.

The man speaking was one of them. An advisory to the Gens sans Frontiers. Broad-faced and broad shouldered he had the physique of a tired gorilla. A white man with ancestry tracing to Europe, or perhaps America. Dirty blonde hair made a mottled close-shaved crown across his scalp as mousy stubborn eyes scanned the present heads from behind the long sloping nose. “The entire settlement was killed off save for a handful. We have a young girl, approximately age ten to twelve and a handful of other kids who had sought refuge at the lake shore at the time of the attack.”

With a wave of his hand he motioned for a projector sitting at the end of the scratched table. A attending guard nodded and hit the switch at its side and it sputtered to life. The whole of the building was fueled by bio-diesel burned in generators on the roof and in the back. The image took awhile to come into view, the old machine flickering between a blank white screen and then threatening to shut off completely. But as it did it illuminated the pasty white wall with a faded, washed-out image of the scene of the village.

Strewn at is center as if disposed there was a pile of dismembered corpses.

“The attack is patterned like two others witnessed on the far-side of Lake Kivu and two-miles north of the pictured village, and another settlement called Bwosasha. There was between each a history of missing live-stock and what hunters called a 'silent forest'. The attacks are not typical of raiding activity. Yet, constitutes an event of grave concern.”

The American-or-European looked over to the end opposite of the table. To the stocky, balding black man seated there. To Joseph Zubata. If there was ever a man that was his opposite it was Zubata. He was a thin figure. His face covered in wrinkled lines. And a low brow and back-tilted face housed a pair of wide examining eyes. He slowly thumbed his thin lips as he took in the picture. Looking over at him he gave a nod of approval and motioned silently with one hand as he scratched his balding head.

“Attacks largely leave behind fingers, toes and sometimes whole hands or feet. In most cases where accessible the marrow was sucked from the bones.” he motioned again and the guard changed the image in question on screen. It was a closeup of a man's femur, but inside was hallowed and tube-like. Still, traces of pink flesh hung at the toothy broken ends, “Breaks in the bones are characteristic of a creature with strong jaws. The depth of the marrow extracted suggests a long tongue.”

“Or an exceptional skill with tools in its own right.” growled a drawling voice from mid-table. The presenter stopped mid-slide show and turned. His face quivered and he went visibly pale. Even having seen the man's face multiple times.

It wasn't an easy task to tell if the man who looked up at him through narrowed beady eyes was ever black, white, red, or yellow. But his current flesh was a gnarled bubbled white. A white suit covered his body, and a beige texan cowboy hat crowned his gnarled, naked head.

He snarled from behind twisted scarred lips as he looked up from his seat from behind a mask that covered his eyes. To keep too much sun from shining up at him he said. “Hale you're an unbelievable fucking idiot to think we can't tell what the fuck is going in.” he argued angrily. His voice was gravely like rocks being dragged across broken glass. He waved a dismissive hand at the pictures. It's a Ufiti, clear as day for fuck's sakes.”

He turned his attention to Joseph and asked: “May I, sir?”

“Go ahead.” Zubuta signaled with a low voice. The burned, gnarled man nodded and rose to his feet. Grabbing a ivory cane by his seat.

“By the degree of these attacks and the proximity of human settlement to one another it's not just any Ufiti, not what's fucking around our north-west either.” he said loud, almost shouting. He shot a glaring burning look at Hale as he limped up to the displayed slide. “I'm going to cut to it because I can sure as fuck tell we all know what it is and I can get to it faster than Hale can beat off at night, gentlemen. So let's get to it: we're looking at an exceptional fucking specimen.

“I'm not going to waste my breath reminding us all that Ufiti must eat and eat a lot. And this one that's hitting  the lake here is no different. But as surmised from the scale of the deaths and the totality of the victum range we're looking at a big cunt. And not just any royal cunt that might nip us in the ass but one I believe by seeing this is exceptional in three areas.

“First, he's exceptionally strong!” he shouted, whipping his cane against the wall so it cracked, “Not that he broke bones but because he took on an entire village. Which even for a Ufiti and all their shit isn't easy. He took on a village not once: but three times. So it's smart, it's smart and brave.

“This shitter has learned there's food in those hills and it's going to eat and eat until there's nothing left and it's going to move on. And it'll devour all the Congo has to offer before it finally turns over dead in its own shit. Now that it knows it can hit villages, it will be more than brave enough to repeat it, and to kill everyone.”

“What about the fingers though?” asked a distant young man. The burned cripple looked up at the private that had wandered in.

“You're piss stupid, you know that?” he called back, “All Ufiti don't eat the toes and fingers of their victims. There's not a lot of fat in that. Ufiti need to eat, and they need to have the fattest stuff they can find. Release one of these fuckers in old-school America and it will empty every burger joint on the block before decimating the entire city's stock of cheese steaks and still want more.”

The young private shrunk back, biting meekly at his lips and shot a look over the room. Joseph looked over at him from his chair, scowling. He left without ceremony, “Without interruption let's move on: he's new. He's new to the area probably and he might start forcing other Ufiti to move out and move on. Every alpha on the side of the country is going to be removed from their harems and they're going to be wandering out. So if we're going to be pretend to be afraid of this one, then think about what's going to happen as he tries to settle. We're going to have a lot of angry, hungry, bachelors on the move.”

With a tap he swung at the wainscoting of the wall and stepped back. “Now Hale if you want to keep pussy footing than feel free.” said the burned man, casting a long unpleasant look to the better-skinned man.

“No, that's all.” Hale excused himself, “I'm done speaking.”

“So what would you recommend, Dr. Paston?” a black attendant wondered.

“Kill it.” the burned man, Paston said, “Same as any other of the trouble wild-life. Kill it. But not with any normal team, that's for sure.” he paused for a moment, thinking, “But I do want it when the hunting team is done with it.”

“Insane!” the same attendant exclaimed. He looked to be the Bantu double of Hale. But with a deeper jungle voice, “They decay within several days, and it's at least a four days trip to Goma's ruins. It'll never make it.”

“Not if you don't cover it with butter first.” Dr. Paston explained as he leaned back into his chair.

“That's a lot of butter though.” the man responded, he wasn't believing it, “And what would it even do?”

“I've had a fair few transported fine in butter. I don't see the problem.” an annoyed Paston explained, “Zubata, sir?”

“Keep going.” the leading officer in the room motioned. It was enough for anyone.

“I've been doing some research on the Ufiti, smaller ones mind you but research all the same. There seems to be a direct correlation to the presence of carbohydrates to the speed at which it decays. While living it must eat, and somehow while dead it must have the fats – saturated, unsaturated, omega-3, whatever – has to be present in or on the body to preserve it. This I feel goes hand-in-hand with the restorative properties of the Ufiti to heal severe wounds that's anything less than losing an entire limb. So I have some ideas.”

“Which'd be?”

“That the Ufiti may be hosting some symbiotic micro-organism in its fur or in its skin that gives it persistent healing for any and all injuries. But it deducts a cost from the animal, the monster as some call it. And that is: food.

“I haven't been able to fully comprehend the magnificence of this ecosystem and I would like to see it on a exceptional specimen, and one eating so much should be saturated in this power it has.”

“That's fine and all but have you done anything to prove it?” asked Hale.

“To a point. But I'll jump at any opportunity, gentlemen.” smiled Paston. It was a hard leathery smile. It looked hardly real as his knotted flesh folded back from his teeth, “Needless on the few sampled and specimens I've received I have found traces of a microbial community in its flesh. Or something neither blood or bile. But the samples or the sample specimens I have had are so fundamentally small that during study their bodies decay before they can be fully dissected and studied.

“A bigger one – well preserved – will give me more than enough flesh to study and so I can understand what's going on.”

“What'd the benefits even be to this research? The Ufiti are a mutation that must be destroyed!” shouted the Bantu as he rose from the tample.

“Kamputa I know you're energetic but please lighten it up before you fumble all the balls like Hale.” Paston commented, nodding to the irritated man, “Should I know what's going on I believe I could make a application from the 'substance' the Ufiti use and engineer it for human use. A serum, if you will. Won't you imagine it? A serum that will accelerate the healing of our people!

“It's the sort of research trauma doctors the world over would have liked. No more stitches and cauterization.”

“Bu-” Hale leaned forward to argue.

“Stop!” Joseph Zubata shouted, cutting Hale off mid-sentence. “Enough, I've heard what I need to hear and I think the case has been made. I'll call to send a team to Lake Kivu and they can track down this Ufiti. And on the Dr. Paston's humor I will give the order that if they can: bring the monster's body back.

“I'll have to find out where to get the butter though.”

“If I can sir, then it might be a good idea to get the butter when we know how big this thing is.” Paston commented, “And a truck.”

“Right.” Zubata grumbled, he rose from his chair, rubbing his throbbing temples.

“I'd also like to deliver the briefing to this team's sergeant or lieutenant when you get the chance sir.” Paston said as he followed Zubata's movement, “I want to make sure they understand.”

“I'll make a note. And as always, thank you gentlemen.” the South African thanked, if with irritation.