Adekunle woke with a jolt, his body convinced he was falling. For a disorienting second, he was back on top of the compound wall, the rough cinderblocks scraping his hands, the long drop to the dark yard waiting below. He gasped, his heart kicking into a frantic rhythm before the reality of his surroundings settled in. He was on the floor of the living room, a thin wrapper tucked under his head for a pillow. The pale, grey light of dawn was filtering through the windows, illuminating a room that looked both perfectly familiar and terrifyingly alien.
The air was still and heavy. Across the room, his uncle sat in an armchair, the tyre iron resting against his legs. Ben hadn't slept. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, fixed on the front door as if he could hold it shut with the force of his will alone. From the bedroom, the sound of Aunt Funke's pained, shallow breathing was a constant, fragile rhythm in the silence.
The adrenaline of yesterday had been burned away, leaving behind a deep, aching exhaustion and the gnawing pangs of hunger. The world had ended yesterday. Today, life—or some grim version of it—had to go on.
Adekunle pushed himself into a sitting position, his muscles screaming in protest. Every part of him ached from the unaccustomed tension and the hard floor. He looked at his uncle, the old man's face a mask of iron resolve, and knew what had to be done. Without a word, he stood and went to the kitchen.
The first law of their new prison was resource management. He gathered everything onto the kitchen table: the five bottles of water from the shop, the seven more they had in the flat's emergency store, the tins of sardines, two bags of garri, a half-empty box of cabin biscuits, a few onions, and a lonely-looking tin of powdered milk. It was a pathetic hoard against the indefinite future.
Ben joined him a moment later, his movements stiff. He surveyed the collection on the table, his face grim. "This will not last long," he stated, his voice a rough rasp.
"We have to ration it," Adekunle said, his own voice sounding more certain than he felt. He was no longer just the student, the nephew. The dynamic had shifted. He was part of the command structure now.
Aunt Funke's voice called from the bedroom, weak but clear. "The water in the big pot. For soaking the beans."
Adekunle and Ben exchanged a look and hurried to the large pot Funke always kept on the floor. It was half-full of clean water, intended for soaking beans for the next day's cooking. It was another ten litres, at least. A treasure. Funke, even from her sickbed, was a provider.
They spent the next hour establishing the laws of their new reality. Water was the most precious commodity. Two caps from a water bottle per person for brushing teeth. Half a cup for washing. One cup for drinking, three times a day. Food was to be eaten cold; the risk of smoke or smells from the gas cooker was too great. Their world had shrunk to these simple, brutal mathematics of survival.
As Ben tended to Funke, changing her bandage and helping her sip some water, Adekunle took on his new role: the watchman. He moved a chair to the living room window that overlooked the front of the compound, positioning it so he could see the yard without being easily seen from below. The curtains were drawn, leaving only a tiny crack to peer through. This small rectangle of vision was now his entire world.
The four men were still there. They had survived the night, too. The fire in the drum had been reduced to smouldering embers, a thin plume of grey smoke rising into the morning air. One of them was asleep on a stained mattress they must have dragged from one of the ground-floor flats. The other three were sitting, talking, sharing a packet of biscuits. One of them, a thickset man with a shaved head, Adekunle recognized. His name was Ikenna. He ran an illegal betting shop a few streets away. He'd always had a swagger, a casual cruelty in his eyes. Now, that cruelty had found its purpose. He was the leader.
Adekunle watched them with a detached, analytical focus. He studied their movements, their interactions. They weren't a panicked mob. They were a pack. Ikenna was the alpha, the other two his lieutenants. The sleeping one was the omega, the one who took the last of the food and was sent to do the menial tasks. They had created a society on the ashes of the old one, its only laws being strength and fear.
The wider world beyond their compound gate was eerily quiet. The fires from the night before had mostly burned out, leaving dark smudges against the sky. The streets were largely empty, save for the occasional furtive figure darting from one shadow to the next. The initial wave of chaotic looting seemed to have passed. Now, Adekunle suspected, the survivors were fortifying their positions, just as these men had. The city was breaking apart into a thousand tiny, warring kingdoms. Their block of flats was Ikenna's kingdom.
Hours crept by. The sun climbed higher, and the heat began to build. The silence in the flat was heavy, broken only by Funke's occasional moan of pain or Ben's low, comforting murmurs. Adekunle's stomach ached with hunger, but he ignored it, his focus entirely on the scene below.
Around noon, a new event broke the monotony. A family—a man, a woman, and a young girl—appeared at the broken gate. They were carrying bags, their faces etched with desperation. They looked up at the block of flats, their eyes filled with a desperate hope. A sanctuary.
Ikenna and his men were on their feet in an instant, their lethargy vanishing. They formed a line, blocking the entrance, their makeshift weapons held ready. The father of the family tried to reason with them, his hands held up in a gesture of peace.
"We live here," Adekunle heard his faint, pleading voice. "Flat 2B. Please, we just need to get to our home."
Ikenna laughed, the sound carrying clearly up to Adekunle's window. "Not your home anymore, oga. It is our home now. Turn around and walk away."
"But my daughter… she is sick. We have medicine upstairs…"
"I said, walk away!" Ikenna roared.
The father hesitated, his gaze torn between the hostile men and his weeping daughter. It was a fatal hesitation. One of Ikenna's men lunged forward and shoved the man hard, sending him staggering back. The mother screamed and pulled her daughter close.
It was over in seconds. The family, realizing they stood no chance, turned and fled, their hope dissolving into panicked terror. Ikenna and his men watched them go, laughing, triumphant. They had defended their territory.
Adekunle pulled back from the window, his heart pounding. He felt sick. He had just witnessed the new law of the land, enforced with brutal simplicity. The building did not belong to those who had paid for it, but to those strong enough to hold it. He felt a surge of pure, unadulterated hatred for Ikenna, a feeling so intense it surprised him. It was a hot, clean emotion in the midst of his fear and confusion.
He looked over at his uncle, who had seen the whole thing from his own post at the other side of the window. Ben's face was stone. He simply nodded, a silent acknowledgement of the lesson they had just learned. There would be no reasoning with the men below. There would be no appeal to their shared humanity. That currency was no longer valid.
He returned to his vigil, but his perspective had changed. He was no longer just an observer, a philosopher studying a new, savage society. He was a prisoner studying his jailers. He was looking for a weakness. He was looking for a way out. The hatred had given him something new. It had given him focus. The world may have ended, but the war for the third floor had just begun.