Extra Human (On Hiatus)

Prologue: The Great African Tragedy

Fifty-five years ago, something happened. Something so unprecedented, so catastrophic, so tragic. It changed the course of African history forever.
For us, Generation M, born many decades after, this event was the origin of the world we were born into. But I believe it was more than a historical event. It was the beginning of our destiny.

The event began on the 27th of May, 1967, with the Death Rain. The African continent was bombarded by more than twelve thousand meteors over the next 72 hours. The craters ranged from a few hectares to thousands of square kilometres wide. The destruction was cataclysmic.

My maternal grandfather, Grandpa Paul, was a survivor. He was a young naval officer in Calabar, one of the cities destroyed by a meteor.  On that day he was walking by the riverside with his colleagues. The city was on edge and tensions were high. Every chatter, murmur and whisper fretted about an impending civil war or military coup. The officers were taking a walk to let off steam, joking about hilarious scenarios on the battlefield. In a moment, they were greeted with destruction on an apocalyptic scale.
Grandpa Paul said it was like a piece of the sun fell on earth. He was temporarily blinded by the bright flash of light, his ears bled to the sound of the explosion, and the shockwave sent him and the others flying into the river.
He managed to swim to shore, but it took him a few minutes to recover from the disorientation. When his blurry vision cleared, he was greeted by a hellscape. The sky was as dark as night but his surroundings were as bright as noon because everything was on fire.

My paternal grandfather, Pa Ollie, was a little luckier. He was a teenager then and his home city of Port Harcourt was spared from direct impact, but not from its consequences. He said the sky was red as if the clouds were on fire. The air burnt the lungs with every breath and ash fell like rain.

At first, they thought the old Nigerian government had somehow acquired nuclear weapons and struck locations within the rebellious eastern region, or that the cold war had turned hot and the Soviets had mistakenly attacked Nigeria, thinking it was still a British dominion. Those theories died down over the next few days as thousands of displaced persons poured into Port Harcourt from affected areas. They realised the devastation was more widespread than they had feared.

Among the displaced persons arriving in Port Harcourt on boats was Grandpa Paul. He met Pa Ollie at an IDP camp where they were both volunteering. My grandfathers became best friends.

The Death Rain was terrible. An estimated 75 million people died across Africa, as much as 12 million in Old Nigeria alone. Millions more were displaced.
Over the following weeks, UN humanitarian aid began arriving, and it seemed like the worst was over. But the suffering was just beginning.

A month after the Death Rain, the Monster War began.
The origin of monsters was controversial. Some reports said that survivors of the Death Rain, humans and animals alike, were infected by a virus that came from the meteors, and were transformed into creatures nothing like have ever been seen on earth. Other reports said these creatures came with the meteors and arose from the craters. Whatever the case, one thing was clear; these monsters destroyed everything in their path.

On the 8th of March, 1968, the Monster War came to Port Harcourt.
My grandfathers described the main monster as being over a hundred feet tall. It had the hind legs of a lizard, the torso and arms of a monkey and the head of a snake. It spat streams of acid that could melt metals and dissolve buildings. This was the infamous Spitting Monkizard. It came with an army of hundred smaller Monkizards which at thirty feet tall, were just as terrifying.

Port Harcourt fell in less than a week as the Monkizards dissolved everything in their path. Pa Ollie trembled in fear, watching helplessly as his home was dissolved, with his parents and siblings still inside.