Its a short story

1. The Present
Location: Lagos Island, Lagos State
Date: January 27, 2015
Time: 1133Hrs, GMT
The day had broken clear many hours ago, the immortal sun was bright and hot, but the
breeze still managed to wash the air. A few small clouds, much like the little scoops of vanilla
ice-cream usually sold by young men on wailing bicycles, endeavoured to drift lazily across the
blanketing blue firmament above. Sometimes, the roaming clouds would desultorily travel across
the face of the sun, and the world below would enjoy a few respite of coolness before the heat
would descend once more to torment everything that slithered, crawled, walked, flew or
germinated. It was this kind of heat that usually put dealers in umbrellas and sombreros in
business. And it was under this scorching element that the strange young man was running for
his life.
He was soaked through and through with sweat as he ran; perspiration trickled into the
corner of his left eye, stinging him sharply and blurring his vision. He blotted his slick forehead
with the sleeve of his shirt and blinked furiously to wash the salt out of his eye. He was getting
tired but he must not stop running now. His life depended on how hastily he could make his
retreat. More important than his own life was the laminated document he held in his hand; this
document was more important than anything else. What was contained in the document could
herald a new era of something spectacular. And it was quite astonishing that circumstances had
subjected him to become the guardian of this secrecy. He knew of the terrible things that would
happen if the document got in the wrong hands.
He looked behind him and saw his pursuers; five men, five armed men! He increased the
speed of his retreats. He knew the men's mission; their intentions lied not only on retrieving the
document but also on ending the life of its unfortunate bearer, for the runaway man had known
too much to be left alive. The runner, however, had sworn to protect the document or die in the
act.
His pursuers were running towards him with weapons drawn; only two of the five men
held pistols, the others wielded machetes with which they were all too eager to hack him to
pieces. There was not going to be any room for negotiation or mercy if they caught him; the men
would literally eviscerate him, they would gut out his entrails and split his head into two so as to
make sure he remained undeniably dead. The bolting man tried to run faster but his legs were
giving way; exhaustion was gradually overwhelming him; he had been running all day but the
men after him seemed more determined to slaughter him than he was of protecting the damning
document. The men must not get hold of the document, he must not allow it.

2. He ran into a dirty street, tripped over an aluminum can and picked himself up again. As
he rose he thought, about hiding the document among the junks, but he shook the thought off his
mind. The trash was not safe enough; the document would be too conspicuous there. Even an
imbecile would easily find it, and the killers after him were no imbeciles; they were trained
operatives whose main jobs were finding missing things and exterminating any living obstacles
in their paths.
The pursued man cut into another street and ran with the little ounce of strength within
him. He was desperate now, looking around to hide the treasure with him, but there didn't seem
to be any safe place to conceal the document.
He looked behind his left shoulder; the pursuers were no longer running after him, they were
now walking with full confidence. They had probably suspected his exhaustion. They walked
with full swagger, as if they had all the time in the world. The street seemed deserted;
everywhere appeared silent except for the few birds who sang occasionally as they flew hither
and yon. Innocent civilians had run for cover on beholding five heavily armed men pursuing a
lone runner. The running man was momentarily afraid. He knew the time had come for him to
bid the world his farewell. He was very sad; sad not because he was soon going to join his
ancestors, of course that was inevitable in the circumstance, he was sad because the men would
finally be taking the document from him. And he found himself pitying the unfortunate living
people who would witness and experience the horror the content of the document would unleash
all across the federation. It would be a global but colossal catastrophe.
As he tried to run into a crowded street a shot rang from behind him and the bullet caught
him in the neck.
The Past
Location: Abuja, Nigeria (Ten Kilometres away from Aso Rock)
Date: October 1, 1990
Time: 2200Hrs GMT
The assemblage occurred in a remote area of precisely ten kilometres from the Rock.
From the highest floor of this magnificent cabin built only with wood, some of the builders had
insisted on catching the view of the distant rock's peak. Now this gathering was a secret meeting,
but it was not that kind of meeting with ridiculous rituals where like a dozen men screwing away
a lady were performed, or where members would place their vows as they drink from old
calabashes the blood of goats, sometimes it could be human blood. Yet this particularly club was
not one any of its members would publicly boast of belonging in.
Members of this fraternity (a group which they had come together to name themselves

3. The Common Men; and below their individual armpits, just above the ribcages of each one of
them, was the gothic tattoo of the inscription TCM; no one knew about the existence of this
gathering except, of course, the members) numbered exactly twenty. Each member came from
each state of the federation, and they usually had this meeting every quarterly. In the meetings,
they usually sat to discuss the fate of the nation and her citizens. This night, however, was not
their meeting night. But the appointed leader, TCM-13, the one from the federal capital, had
summoned the members to this sudden meeting. Upon hearing the summons, each member had
boarded the next available flight, while those who resided in neighbouring states had employed
the services of taxi-drivers to drive them to the location; they never allowed their drivers to
transport them there for no outsider must know about the existence of this sacred place. None of
their family members must know, not even their wives were allowed that knowledge. Two years
earlier, a member from Imo had made the mistake of confiding in his wife about the meeting.
The member had met with a terrible fatal accident and his whole family was thereafter wiped
out. Nobody knew about how The Common Men knew about this disloyalty, but the Imo man's
entirely lineage paid dearly for his loose tongue. And within two months, another man from the
state had replaced him.
Today, all the members had arrived before dawn. Today was a special day; this day was
the celebration of the nation's thirty years of Independence. Something spectacular was going to
happen tonight, every member knew, except only one who knew what was really going to
happen. All the members, the twenty of them, spent the early part of the night popping bottles of
champagne, laughing and cracking jokes until it was time for the meeting.
At exactly ten o'clock, the members were seated around a large rectangular table in a
similarly large but narrow hall fitted with three burglary-proof windows on either side. The men
seated here were in powerful positions, people prided to belong among the high echelons in their
respective constituencies. For added security, members were forbidden to call one another by
their names, instead, each of them was assigned a code name bearing the number of their states
when arranged alphabetically. For instance, the man from Abia bore the code name TCM-01,
while one from Lagos was TCM-13, the current leader of the group. Because of the revelation
which was soon to be explained, the members never had their meeting in any state of the
country, except here.
When all had seated, TCM-13 took his position at the far end of the large table, facing the
entrance. The man was apparently the smallest and youngest person among the twenty members,
but his position gave him an edge of authority, and no member dared look him in the eyes or
disagree with him, for any act of insubordination would warrant death. Any member from Lagos
was usually the luckiest member. The room became totally silent when the leader took his seat. It
was really great to be a leader; but sometimes, leadership could be a dangerous privilege, every
member knew that, TCM-13 knew that. Just eleven months ago, his predecessor from Lagos had

4. suffered a Caesarean fate; all the members had connived against the man for disagreeing with
them over a mere peccadillo, and in the next meeting, each of the nineteen members had come
into the hall with a knife, and they had collectively stabbed the leader to death. They had later
cremated the body, ground it to ash and scattered the dust into the air. Then they had later
replaced the leader with the current one.
TCM-13 stood up and addressed the men.
"I welcome you all to this August gathering. I will go straight to the reason why this
meeting was called. It just reached my notice that there is going to be a shift of the nation's
capital from the South-West to the North and..."
"How sure are you about this news?" TCM-6 interrupted.
The leader glared at 6 and said, "I will oblige you to allow me finish my words before
interrupting me."
"I'm sorry, sir."
"It mustn't happen again," 13 said and continued, "My sources told me that this shift shall
be taking effect by next year. I'm sure you all know what that means, don't you? Abuja will be
the country's new capital and that means new leaders shall be hence appointed from Abuja here. I
have no qualms about that; in short, it would be a welcome development since some more states
would be created and new members would automatically be initiated into the group. But before
this shift in power and the initiation of new members next year, we have to put various things in
place." He reached into the briefcase and extracted a document which he placed on the table.
Everyone stared at the document as if they were seeing it for the first time.
"This is the original and only copy of the Red Paper. The future depends on what is
printed on this document. But it remains invalid except it contains the names and signatures of
the twenty of us seated here tonight." He picked up the document and raised it up for all to see.
"As you can all see, it already contains my name and signature. My name is hereby written in the
book of history. You all know the significance of the Red Paper, you all know its singular
importance." He stopped and stared at the astonished Common Men, he could see the fear in
their eyes, the doubt, the terror. He smiled. Everyone knew what was at stake when he agreed to
become The Common Man. Now it was time for them to show their mettle.
"So, what do you say?" The leader asked, "Are you all ready to become parts of the
future? Show your identities, prove your bravery to the next generation. Come on, we are The
Common Men!"

5. TCM-13 pushed the Red Paper forward and each member, with shaky hands, wrote his
name and signed. Soon, the document contained the names and signatures of all the men in the
room. The leader collected the document and returned it to the briefcase. Then he stood up, went
to the wine bar and extracted a fresh bottle of wine and three glasses, he placed them on the table
and sat down. All the nineteen men stared at him, confused, as he uncorked the bottle and poured
the wine into the three cups. He did not drink the wine, neither did he offer to any of the men. He
stood up again and spoke:
"I have a very sad news to tell you all. An outsider knows about this group. I'm sure you
all know what that means. One of us has said what he shouldn't have; he has confessed the secret
of this group to an outsider. We have a mole in our midst; but the most unfortunate situation is
that we don't know who talked among us. We all know how dangerous for this group it is that a
non-member is aware of its existence. We have no choice but to correct this error, but there is
only one way of doing that. Just sit down and relax; there is no cause for alarm, everything is
under control."
He sat down, closed his eyes for a few seconds, opened his eyes, sighed audibly and
called aloud, "Come in."
Three hefty men, each armed with an AK-47, stepped into the hall. The time was
gradually shifting to the hour of eleven.
"Lock the door behind you and bring me the keys." TCM-13 ordered.
The men did as instructed. When the bunch of keys was handed over to the leader, the
man flung the keys out into the dark night through the window; they were all locked in the room.
TCM-13 smiled at the nineteen terrified members and said, "Because we are all forbidden
to directly take lives, I have therefore requested the help of these three gentlemen to do us the
honour. They are going to make us matyrs. I congratulate you all for not only being a part of
history but also of the future." He turned to the armed men and said, "Take the Holy
Communion."
Without any question, the killers drank the wine.
"I'm ready." TCM-13 said, spreading out his arms. The men instantly riddled his body
with series of bullets. Then they turned to the nineteen Common Men and shot them all. The
floor soon became a pool of blood and the table littered with bloody pieces of the victims’ flesh.
The corpses of the slaughtered members lay in different grotesque positions. There was no

6. survivor.
Shortly after the massacre, the killers also slumped and died. What they drank had been
poisoned. The poison was not in the wine bottle but in the glasses.
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