Dust coated Lagos in a film the color of dried blood. It wasn't harm from the harmattan, the wind that usually carried desert grit.
This was finer, paler, clinging to everything like a shroud. It settled on Mama Ebele's yam stand, the usually vibrant purple skin dulled beneath the oppressive layer. It muted the shouts of hawkers, the rumble of molues, even the endless thrum of the city felt muffled, distant.
Nkemdi brushed it off the counter with a weary sigh. Twenty-nine years spent navigating the chaotic energy of Lagos, and now this, a creeping stillness that was far more unnerving than any market brawl.
The yam harvest had been poor, everyone knew that, but then the rice disappeared. Then the beans. Now, even cassava, usually plentiful, was scarce.
"Mama Ebele, you hear anything new?" Nkemdi asked, her voice raspy from the dust. She traced patterns on the wooden counter, a nervous habit from childhood, now amplified by a fear she couldn't quite name.
Mama Ebele, her face etched with more lines than usual, just shook her head. Her once booming laughter, a staple of the market, had been reduced to a thin, tired sound. "Hearsay only, child. Whispers of bad harvests elsewhere. Some say the earth is tired."
The idea was foolish, superstitious, yet it resonated with the strange, unsettling quiet that had descended.
The sun, usually a blazing, relentless force, seemed muted, veiled behind the pervasive dust. Even the colors of the market, usually a riot, felt washed out, muted, as if leached of their vitality.
Days turned into weeks, and the scarcity deepened. The market, once overflowing with produce, became skeletal.
Stands stood empty, covered in the unsettling dust. Faces, once animated by commerce and banter, grew gaunt, shadowed. The usual easy laughter was gone, replaced by a brittle anxiety.
Nkemdi's small food stall, usually doing brisk business selling stew and fufu, was struggling. Prices were sky-high, ingredients near impossible to procure.
Customers were dwindling, their pockets as empty as the market stalls. She stretched the little food she had, watering down stews, making smaller portions, but it was a losing fight.
One evening, huddled in the dwindling light of her kerosene lamp, Nkemdi listened to the radio. Static crackled, interspersed with strained announcements from various global capitals. Crop failures.
Supply chain disruptions. Unprecedented shortages. The words were official, detached, but the underlying panic was unmistakable, a tremor in the announcer's voice.
A neighbour, Papa Ikenna, a retired teacher, stopped by her stall the next morning, his usual cheerful greeting replaced by a worried frown. "Have you heard about Europe?" he asked, his voice low. "They are saying riots. Empty shelves everywhere."
Nkemdi nodded, her stomach twisting. She had heard snippets, fragments of news from the bustling internet cafes before they too started to shut down, electricity becoming erratic.
The scale was widening, spreading like a stain. It wasn't just Nigeria. It wasn't just Africa.
"This is not natural, Nkemdi," Papa Ikenna murmured, his brow furrowed. "Something is terribly wrong." He spoke of locust plagues, of freak weather, but his voice lacked conviction, as if reciting excuses he himself did not believe.
The dust persisted, an unwelcome constant. It coated the corrugated iron roofs, seeped into cracks in the walls, even infiltrated the tightly sealed jars in Nkemdi's stall. It was everywhere, a silent, suffocating presence, mirroring the creeping hunger that gnawed at everyone's bellies.
A rumour, thin as smoke, started to circulate. Trucks, heavily guarded, seen leaving the ports at night. Heading inland, away from the cities, towards the vast, sparsely populated north. For what? For whom? Speculation bred suspicion, and suspicion, fear.
Nkemdi, driven by a growing unease, decided to venture beyond the market. She walked towards the wealthier parts of Lagos, areas usually shielded from the harsh realities of scarcity.
She expected to see less hardship, perhaps some semblance of normalcy.
What she found instead was a different kind of desolation. Streets were eerily quiet, the usual traffic absent. Luxury shops, usually gleaming showcases of excess, were shuttered, their windows dark. Mansions stood behind high walls, silent, imposing, like fortresses holding secrets.
She saw a small group of people gathered outside a large gated compound. Their clothes were finer than hers, but their faces bore the same drawn, anxious look as those in the market. They whispered amongst themselves, their voices tight with frustration.
"Did you try calling again?" one woman asked, her voice brittle.
A man sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. "No answer. The lines are dead. Again."
Nkemdi edged closer, drawn by their distress. "Excuse me," she began hesitantly, "what is happening?"
The woman turned, her eyes sharp with a mixture of fear and resentment. "They're not letting anyone in," she said, gesturing towards the gates. "They have food. We know they do. But they won't share."
"Who?" Nkemdi inquired, a cold dread seeping into her bones.
The man scoffed, a bitter, derisive sound. "Him. The landlord of half this city. Chief Maduka. He built a bunker under his house, they say. Stocked it for years. For some nonsense apocalypse."
The word hung in the dusty, still afternoon. Apocalypse. It sounded theatrical, ridiculous, yet in the context of the vanished food, the global silence, the oppressive dust, it took on a chilling resonance.
Nkemdi's mind raced. The trucks. The empty shops. The walled compounds. It started to coalesce, to make a terrible, horrifying sense. Could it be true? Could one man, or a handful of men like him, have engineered this?
Driven by a desperate need for answers, Nkemdi decided to take a risk. She remembered a young man, a market trader named Ifeanyi, who boasted of working as groundskeeper at Chief Maduka's compound before being let go. He was always eager to share gossip, to impress. Perhaps he knew something.
Ifeanyi was still in the market, thinner, his usual swagger diminished, replaced by a haunted look. He listened to Nkemdi's questions, his eyes darting nervously around the near-empty market square.
"Chief Maduka?" he repeated, his voice barely a murmur. "They said he was… preparing. For trouble coming. Years ago, he started building."
"Building what?" Nkemdi pressed, her heart pounding against her ribs.
Ifeanyi swallowed hard. "Underground. Big place. They brought in trucks, for months. Food, water, everything. Said it was… for when the world ends."
"Did you see food?" Nkemdi asked, her voice tight.
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the dust swirling at their feet. "Mountains of it. Canned things, sacks of grains, everything you can imagine. More than enough for a city."
The revelation hit Nkemdi like a physical blow. The gnawing hunger in her stomach intensified, twisting into a cold, nauseating knot of despair and fury.
The food wasn't gone. It was hidden. Hoarded. While the world starved, one man was feasting, secure in his underground palace.
"Why?" she whispered, the word barely audible above the market's somber hush. "Why would he do this?"
Ifeanyi shrugged, his face a mask of numb resignation. "Said it was… wisdom. To be ready. Said the rest of us… were foolish. For not preparing."
Foolish. That word echoed in Nkemdi's mind, a cruel mockery of their trust in the world, in the system, in the basic goodness of humanity.
They had been foolish to believe that food would always be there, that markets would always be full, that people would share.
Nkemdi returned to her stall, the dust seeming heavier now, clinging to her skin, choking her breath. Mama Ebele looked at her, her eyes filled with a question Nkemdi couldn't answer, not yet.
Days bled into each other, marked only by the deepening hunger and the relentless dust. The radio fell silent, electricity gone for good.
Lagos, once vibrant, throbbed with a slow, agonizing decay. People wandered the streets like shadows, their eyes hollow, their movements sluggish.
Nkemdi saw desperation bloom in the market. Arguments erupted over scraps of food, friendships fractured under the strain of hunger. She saw children with bloated bellies, their cries weak, fading. She saw death become commonplace, another shadow in the dust-filled streets.
One evening, Mama Ebele approached Nkemdi, her face grim. "Child," she said, her voice strained, "I have heard… they are going north. To find food. Some are leaving."
Nkemdi knew what 'going north' meant. A desperate trek into the unknown, into the harsh, unforgiving landscape beyond Lagos, chasing whispers and rumours of untouched farms, of hidden caches. It was likely a fool's errand, a journey into death, but staying meant slow starvation.
"Are you going, Mama?" Nkemdi asked, her voice heavy with dread.
Mama Ebele nodded slowly, tears welling in her aged eyes. "I have nothing left here, child. No food, no customers, no hope."
Nkemdi watched as Mama Ebele, once a pillar of the market, joined the slow exodus north, her steps faltering, her back bent under the burden of years and despair. Many others followed, a ragged stream of humanity swallowed by the dusty horizon.
Nkemdi stayed. She couldn't bring herself to leave, not yet. A stubborn defiance, a spark of anger, kept her rooted to her stall, to the ghost of the market. She refused to simply vanish into the dust, to become another statistic in this manufactured apocalypse.
One night, under a sky choked with dust and devoid of stars, Nkemdi made a decision. She gathered the few tools she had left – a rusted knife, a heavy pestle, a small empty water container. She set off towards Chief Maduka's compound, her heart a cold, hard stone in her chest.
The compound was even more imposing in the darkness, the high walls looming against the pale, dusty sky. No lights shone from within, but a low hum, the sound of generators, throbbed beneath the oppressive silence. Guards, shadowy figures armed with rifles, patrolled the perimeter.
Nkemdi was no warrior, no rebel. She was just a hungry woman, fueled by desperation and rage. She knew it was foolish, likely suicidal, but she had to see it, to know for certain. She had to confront the source of their suffering.
Using shadows and the sparse vegetation, Nkemdi crept closer to the wall. She found a section where the wall was slightly lower, overgrown with thick vines. With a surge of adrenaline, she began to climb, her hands raw against the rough stone, the dust stinging her eyes.
Reaching the top, she peered into the compound. It was a world apart, a stark, sickening contrast to the dying city outside. Lush gardens glowed under hidden lights. Water sprinklers hissed, a wasteful extravagance in a city parched dry. From a distance, music drifted, soft, decadent, the sound of revelry in a tomb.
And then she saw it. The bunker entrance, a reinforced steel door set into the hillside, discreetly hidden amongst the foliage. Guards stood posted there, their figures solid, unwavering. The hum of generators was louder here, a constant, mocking drone.
Nkemdi knew she couldn't get past the guards, couldn't force her way into the bunker. But she could see it. She had confirmation. The food was there. The man was there. Living in comfort, surrounded by abundance, while her city, her people, withered and died.
A wave of despair, heavier than the dust, crashed over her. It wasn't just about food anymore. It was about the sheer, monstrous injustice of it all. It was about the casual cruelty, the utter indifference to human suffering.
Slowly, Nkemdi climbed back down, her body numb, her spirit broken. She walked back to the market, the dust swirling around her like a funeral shroud. Mama Ebele was gone.
Papa Ikenna was gone. Soon, everyone would be gone, swallowed by hunger and dust, while Chief Maduka feasted in his underground kingdom.
Reaching her stall, Nkemdi sank to the ground, the dust cold against her skin. She closed her eyes, the image of the lush compound, the humming bunker door, seared into her mind.
The world hadn't ended. It had just been… rearranged. For some to live, others had to perish. It was a brutal calculation, a chilling equation.
As the first rays of the dust-filtered dawn touched the market, casting long, skeletal shadows, Nkemdi did not move.
She stayed there, amidst the empty stalls and the pervasive dust, a solitary figure in a city slowly fading away. The hunger gnawed at her, a constant, painful reminder.
But it was not just physical hunger anymore. It was a hunger for justice, for meaning, for a world that wasn't this cruel, this broken.
And that hunger, she knew, would never be satisfied. Her unique sadness was not just starvation, it was the knowledge that humanity itself had become a hoarder of hope, leaving her, and countless others, utterly bereft in the dust-choked silence.