The Nairobi sun, still hidden behind a veil of morning cloud, usually promised a day painted in familiar sounds. Vehicle horns competing with the singsong cries of street vendors, the rhythmic clip-clop of donkey carts, the easy banter of neighbors starting their day. Not this day.
This day began with a sound ripped from the throat of something unnatural. A high-pitched keen that was not vehicle, nor vendor, nor neighbor.
Kamau, only nineteen winters marking his young life, stilled his hand as he reached for the morning's first cup of chai. The sound repeated, closer now, laced with a raw agony that vibrated in his very bones.
From the direction of the small, enclosed yard came another cry. A deeper, guttural bellow that Kamau recognized with a jolt: his father's old goat, Malkia, the placid creature usually content to chew endlessly on whatever scraps were offered. But this was no contented bleat. This was a scream of pure terror.
Kamau moved, propelled by a sudden spike of dread he could not name. He pushed open the back door, the hinges protesting with a rusty groan.
The scene in the yard stopped him cold. Malkia was pressed against the far fence, her eyes wide and rolling white, a continuous, ear-splitting shriek pouring from her throat. It was a sound that should not be possible from a goat, too intense, too filled with pain.
But Malkia was not alone in her torment. From the neighboring yards, a chorus of similar cries erupted. Dogs howled, not in playful excitement or territorial challenge, but in tones of abject misery.
Cats yowled with a ferocity that made Kamau's skin crawl. Even the chickens, usually a source of gentle clucking and scratching, added to the escalating discord with shrill, panicked squawks.
The world outside his yard was erupting in a symphony of suffering. The familiar Nairobi sounds were swallowed by the overwhelming wave of animal cries.
It was as if some unseen hand had turned up the volume on the natural world's hidden anxieties, amplifying them into an unbearable roar.
He stepped into the yard, his bare feet finding the cool earth. Malkia, despite her obvious distress, seemed to notice him.
Her screaming did not lessen, but her wild eyes fixed on him, pleading, questioning. He reached out a hand towards her, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. "Malkia? What is it?" he asked, his voice barely audible above the din.
Of course, she could not answer. Only scream. He touched her rough fur, the goat trembling violently beneath his fingers.
The ground seemed to vibrate with the collective anguish of creatures unseen, unheard before this awful dawn.
Inside the small house, his parents stirred. His mother's voice, laced with alarm, called out, "Kamau? What is all that racket?"
He turned back towards the house, his face pale. "It's the animals, Mama. They're all… screaming."
His father, a man of practicality and few words, emerged, his brow furrowed in irritation. "Screaming? What foolishness are you talking about? Animals make noise. They always have." He stepped out into the yard, and the sheer volume of the sound hit him like a physical blow. His irritation vanished, replaced by a bewildered confusion.
He stood frozen for a moment, listening to the cacophony. The goat's frantic cries, the dogs' mournful howls, the cats' shrieks, now layered with the escalating chorus from further afield. From the direction of the city, a new sound began to filter through, a deeper, more resonant rumble.
"What in the world…" his father muttered, his gaze scanning the sky as if expecting to see the source of the disturbance descending from the clouds.
His mother joined them, her hand flying to her mouth in shock. "It's everywhere," she whispered, her eyes wide with fear. "I can hear it even inside the house. What is happening?"
Kamau did not know. He only felt the chilling certainty that something profoundly wrong had begun. This was not natural animal sound. This was something else, something that twisted the familiar into something horrific.
The screaming intensified. It was becoming less a collection of individual cries and more a single, unified wave of sound, an agonizing chord that pressed against eardrums and frayed nerves.
The city sounds, the vehicles, the distant trains, were completely drowned out. Only the screaming remained.
People began to emerge from their houses, drawn by the unearthly chorus. Faces etched with bewilderment and growing terror mirrored Kamau's own.
Conversations started, hushed and anxious, questions hurled into the sonic storm.
"Have you heard anything like this before?"
"What could be causing it?"
"Is it some kind of sickness?"
No one had answers. Only questions and the incessant, maddening screaming. Kamau felt a strange detachment, as if he were watching a movie of some terrible event unfolding.
Yet, the fear was real, the vibration of the sound a physical presence in his chest.
He noticed smaller creatures now joining the chorus. Birds took flight in panicked swarms, their chirps and songs replaced by frantic, piercing shrieks.
Even insects, usually silent to the human ear, seemed to be adding their unheard voices to the rising tide of sound.
The day climbed higher, the sun breaking through the clouds, casting a stark, unsettling light on the unfolding horror. The screaming did not lessen. It grew. It filled every space, every moment. It became the only reality.
News began to trickle in, carried by frantic phone calls and radio broadcasts that fought to be heard above the din.
It was not just Nairobi. It was everywhere. Reports flooded in from across Kenya, from across Africa, from across the world. Animals everywhere were screaming.
Cities ground to a halt. The streets, usually teeming with people, emptied as humans retreated indoors, seeking futile refuge from the sound. Schools closed. Markets stood deserted. The normal rhythm of life shattered, replaced by a terrified paralysis.
Kamau's father, glued to the small radio, listened with a grim expression. "They don't know what it is," he said, his voice tight with concern. "No explanation. Just… global animal distress, they are calling it." Global animal distress. A sterile, inadequate phrase to describe the planet-wide symphony of terror.
Days blurred into nights, each indistinguishable from the last. Sleep became a fractured, haunted state, constantly invaded by the screaming that permeated even the thickest walls and closed windows. Food became tasteless, a mechanical act performed to sustain a body battered by relentless noise.
The screaming changed over time. The initial raw terror seemed to give way to something else, something deeper, more profound. It became a lament, a mournful wail that spoke not just of fear, but of loss, of despair, of a fundamental shattering of something essential.
Kamau watched his parents. His father, the practical man, grew withdrawn, his usual confidence replaced by a haunted uncertainty. His mother, normally vibrant and cheerful, became pale and thin, her smiles fading into a constant, anxious frown. The world was being eaten away by sound.
He ventured out sometimes, driven by a restless need to understand, to find some answer in the echoing wasteland. The streets were eerie, almost deserted. The few people he encountered moved like ghosts, their faces drawn and weary, their conversations reduced to murmured fragments.
He saw a group gathered around a television screen outside a shop, the picture flickering with images of chaos from around the globe. Empty cities, panicked crowds, scientists and officials speaking in grave tones, offering no comfort, no solutions. Only theories, vague and unsettling. Some spoke of natural phenomena, some of unseen forces, some even whispered of divine displeasure. Meaningless words against the overwhelming reality of the screaming.
One day, he saw a dog wandering the street, its fur matted and dirty, its body thin and weak. It was still screaming, but the sound was weaker now, ragged, as if its very voice was failing. Kamau approached it slowly, cautiously.
He offered it a piece of bread he had been carrying. The dog ignored it, its eyes glazed with exhaustion, its scream continuing, a faint, desperate thread of sound in the endless tapestry of cries.
He sat down on the ground near it, feeling a strange kinship with the suffering creature. Both of them, trapped in this world of unending noise, adrift in a sea of fear. He stayed there for a long time, the dog's ragged scream a constant companion.
Then, slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the screaming began to change again. It started to… diminish. Not stop, but lessen in intensity.
Over days, weeks, the volume decreased, the unified wave of sound breaking down into individual cries again, fainter, weaker than before.
Hope, a fragile, hesitant thing, began to flicker in the hearts of humanity. Could it be ending? Could the nightmare finally be lifting? People emerged from their shelters, blinking in the sunlight, their ears still ringing, their minds still reeling, but with a cautious optimism taking root.
Kamau felt it too, a lightening of the crushing weight of despair. The world was still filled with animal cries, but they were softer now, less frantic. He went to Malkia, his father's goat. She was still alive, huddled in the corner of the yard, her eyes dull, her breathing shallow. Her scream was now a weak, pathetic whimper.
He reached out to her, stroking her worn fur. "It's getting better," he murmured, his voice rough from disuse. "It's almost over."
Malkia made a small sound, a weak rasp that might have been an acknowledgement. Or perhaps just the last dying echo of her endless scream.
Then, one morning, the screaming stopped.
Not gradually, not fading away like an echo. It simply ceased. Abruptly, completely. Silence descended upon the world. A silence so profound, so absolute, that it was almost more unsettling than the noise had been.
For days, the silence reigned. People moved in a daze, their ears still expecting the scream to return, their minds struggling to adjust to the sudden void. The world felt… empty. Hollowed out.
Kamau walked through the streets of Nairobi. The city was eerily quiet. No animal sounds at all. No dogs barking, no birds singing, no insects buzzing. Nothing. Just the rustle of wind, the murmur of human voices, the mechanical sounds of vehicles tentatively starting to move again.
He returned to his yard, to Malkia. She was still there, lying in the corner where he had last seen her. He approached her slowly, his heart heavy with a premonition he did not want to acknowledge.
He knelt beside her. Malkia was still. Completely still. Her eyes were closed. Her body was cold. She was not screaming anymore. Because she was gone. All the animals were gone. Everywhere.
The silence was not the end of the nightmare. It was the aftermath. A vast, echoing emptiness left behind by the vanished screams.
A world stripped bare, devoid of the vibrant, chaotic chorus of life that had always been taken for granted.
Kamau sat beside Malkia's lifeless body in the absolute silence, the most profound silence he had ever known. A silence that spoke of extinction, of a world irrevocably altered, a world where the screams had been replaced by a far more terrifying sound: nothing.
And in that nothingness, he understood. The screams had not been a warning. They had been a farewell.
A final, agonizing chorus sung by a world dying, leaving him, Kamau, alone in the silence, the sole witness to a devastation beyond comprehension, cursed to remember the screams that now haunted only his memory, a symphony of loss echoing in the hollow chambers of his heart, forever.