Over the next few weeks, Moses found that, despite all of his previous successes in filtering out the negatives, what Jiddy had done to Dinah rarely left his mind. He knew that his friend was just one of mil ions who had let themselves become corrupted by whatever was happening to the world; but living with Jiddy and doing business with him day after day was a constant reminder of where the world was heading. He was repulsed by this young man who had always been his best friend; but at the same time, he could not express his true feelings to Jiddy or to anyone else, because Jiddy knew things about him that could get him killed.
People were now reporting anyone whom they suspected of being sympathetic with the aliens. For Moses, of course, the aliens and Josephat were virtually the same, and so he was innocent of feeling sympathy for them. But he had a sister and an elderly friend who were still almost certainly implicated in the movement.
The issue of Rosy's involvement had been raised in an angry crowd scene that erupted when Moses went to pick up his mail at the post office a few months earlier. He had not yet turned 22. Jiddy had been with him at the time, and had assured people that Moses had never had any contact with Rosy, from the day that she and the others had disappeared. "And Stump doesn't want to have any contact with her, either!" he had shouted.
That wasn't true at all, but it had been necessary for Jiddy to put it that way in order to save Moses' neck.
Others had been taken to Kakamega on as little evidence, and executed by guillotine at the soccer field there. Moses did not regard these deaths in the same way that he did Dinah's, because these people were more than likely guilty.
A few were borderline, like himself if he ever got caught, but it was all part of global peacekeeping, and he supported the belief that the occasional innocent victim was a necessary inconvenience for the overall security of the system.
Another unimaginable disaster occurred shortly after the Friday night incident with Jiddy, which temporarily distracted Moses from the depressing thoughts he had been having about the world situation. The disaster changed the thinking of many others as well.
The two aliens were reportedly angry that their followers were being executed, and so they had predicted various plagues. News reports said that all their predictions had failed, and there was no reason for anyone in Shinyalu to believe otherwise. Except for one thing: The aliens apparently continued to roam free, untouched by the authorities. Surely they must have had paranormal powers to have avoided capture for so long!
Five days before it hit, news broke that the aliens had predicted a collision between Earth and an asteroid. Scientists confirmed that there was an asteroid due to pass within millions of miles of Earth, but that the chances of it actual y hitting were infinitely small .
Millions did like Moses and checked the aliens' web site 'just to be sure'.
According to the aliens, their other predictions had, in fact, occurred, but there was no way for Shinyalu residents to confirm that one way or another. When the first meteorite shower actually did strike, it was just as the aliens had said it would be.
The whole top half of Africa, much of Europe, and all of the Middle East were affected by the cloud of meteors that preceded the big one. There were craters everywhere, forest fires all over Kenya and neighbouring countries, and something in the meteorites that made the water, including Lake Victoria and the Nile, highly radioactive. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, both through the fires and through the massive hail storms that followed the widespread burning.
But the greatest loss of life came when the asteroid itself hit somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. It caused a shock that could be felt around the world.
Huge tsunamis wiped out whole cities along the coasts of West Africa, Western Europe, and the East Coast of North and South America. All life on many islands in the Carribean was totally destroyed.
Then there was a second wave of meteorites which showered on much of Russia and Asia, with a similar loss of lives.
Several meteorites landed in maize fields and vineyards around Shinyalu, but damage was greater in the Kakamega forest, where fires spread through the vegetation, leaving a blackened scar. Giant hailstones some of them weighing up to a kilogram each resulted from the intense heat forcing them high up into the atmosphere. They killed hundreds of people in the area between Shinyalu and Kakamega alone when they finally fell . In major cities, the loss of lives was far greater.
"They've got to be stopped. Why doesn't Dangchao do something about it?"
Moses complained as he and Jiddy surveyed the damage to their new house.
The roof was totally destroyed, and even one wall had been knocked over from the force of the storm.
Normally Jiddy would have cautioned him about his disloyalty, but this time even Jiddy was feeling less than thrilled with how Dangchao had dealt with the aliens.
But when Dangchao did increase his efforts to stop the aliens, Moses and Jiddy were amongst those who started wishing that he had not. In the months following the asteroid, when the world should have been pouring all of its efforts into rebuilding, on a par with the unity they had shown in response to the fall of America, Dangchao was, instead, ordering all available government personnel to increase the executions, even torturing people, in an effort to get them to provide names of others who were involved in the alien movement.
The population was becoming increasingly aware that innocent people were being killed now, to appease Dangchao's rage, and to compensate for the death and destruction which had cast a pal over the whole earth. Morale which had been riding so high just a few months earlier was now at an all time low.
Both of the vehicles that Moses had been using for his matatu runs had been badly damaged, although they were still driveable. He could hardly charge top fares for the service he was providing now. The road, too, had been badly damaged by the storm. Most people had little money for luxuries anymore anyway, as crops had been ruined, buildings had been destroyed, and workers who had not been killed by the hail were now in danger of being executed as traitors, whether they really were traitors or not.
Good business sense, picked up from Amy seven or eight years earlier, pulled Moses through once again. He still had all the funds that he had saved up for the planned Nairobi run, and he could use them to find a way around the situation now. The answer came in undercutting his opposition. More people were returning to using bodabodas, and that was forcing other matatu drivers out of work; but Moses had enough money to hold out even if he had to run at a loss for a year or more. He had been the first to raise fares and now he was the first to drop them, forcing other matatu drivers to give up and leave their customers to him.
There was suffering everywhere, and so many deaths that it was difficult for the survivors to keep up with burying them. But through it all , Moses still had enough income to take care of himself, which was the bottom line in his philosophy about life.
He lost contact with Kyme, maybe because Kyme had closed his phone account, but he still shared his thoughts with Ray, in London. Ray helped him to maintain a positive focus by urging him to count his blessings, and look on the bright side. Ray talked about God too, but it was easy for Moses to just substitute his own strong will where Ray mentioned God, and the advice still worked. The human spirit could be so amazingly resilient!