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Life went on for many people as it had for centuries. In some villages he was met with great hospitality and offered food, drink, and shelter, even when the people had little for themselves.
    There were hot spots, places where old tribal grievances were stirring up, just as there had been before the aliens came. Some borders were virtually unmanned, others were heavily guarded, and a few seemed to have shifted. On the way he heard a great deal of rumor and few facts. Nairobi had been destroyed, and Kinshasa, of that he could be fairly certain. The rest he took with a grain of salt.
    At the end of a week, home was close enough he could almost smell it. The last of his journey took him through a mosaic of woodland and savanna. It was well into the wet season, and the enormous sky was always changing. Rain and wind bent the tall grass in long waves, like a restless pale green sea. Golden spears of sunlight struck through the charcoal hearts of the clouds. Come early afternoon, a double rainbow arced across the heavens. In the far distance, amongst the storm clouds clinging to the horizon, he thought he made out a peculiarly regular shape, almost like a vast, shallow dome. He thought that it might be the smoke of a massive grass fire, obscured by the clouds and distance.
    On the downside, when the rains let up he plowed through swarms of mosquitos and gnats so thick that he and the bike were thoroughly, unpleasantly coated in spattered bug.
    He realized how unconsciously claustrophobic he’d felt in England, how constrained. He had never known until now what a claim this place had on him, that his blood and bones were the rainwater and bedrock of this country. Even his name, his beloved name. He was beginning to understand his father’s obsession with it.
    Umbutu was this place as much as it was a word.
    He rolled into a village he knew, where he hoped to learn something of current events. He found it savaged and abandoned, most of its few structures burned to the ground. The wet char of it had a sharp smell of lye. He didn’t see any bodies, thankfully.
    He pressed on as the deep of the sky darkened. The tall grass and isolated trees rustled in a hot, inconstant breeze, and he smelled something else, another burnt scent, but this one more industrial, somehow, as if a chemical plant had exploded or a load of polyester slacks had been set aflame.
    As the sky shifted from gray to gunmetal, he saw lights in the distance. It was hard to tell, but he thought they might be automobile headlamps. Then something big moved in the grass off to his right. He couldn’t tell what sort of animal he had disturbed, but it probably wasn’t good. He pushed forward on the throttle, glancing back, trying to get a better look, but all he saw was a shadow—following him, and at terrific speed.
    Something was off to his left as well, and he abruptly realized he was being driven. By what? Wild dogs? Hyenas? He bore down on the gas, but they began closing in, whatever they were. The light from his lamp picked out one ahead of him, and with a sudden chill as from fever he saw a mass of tentacles writhing about, like a nest of snakes all striking toward him at once.
    “
Merde
,” he yelped.
    Then there was a flash of light and something struck the front wheel of the bike. With an awful rush the vehicle flipped end-over-end. He heard a sort of demented chattering, felt bubbles of nightmare forming in his brain. Then he bounced on the hard-packed savanna dirt.
    Hurting in every bone and muscle, Dikembe scrambled to his feet in time to see it stoop over him. He had seen a few images. He hadn’t expected them to be so big. Tentacles reached for him and he backpedaled, balling his fists. The noise in his head grew louder, more insistent.
    Suddenly something went hurtling past him from behind. It rolled between the weird, bent-the-wrong-way legs of the monster and then sprang up at its back, the shadow of a giant. The scene was instantly flooded with