She grabbed her mouse. She was long overdue for a lunch break. She was going to sign out of the bank’s software and grab something to calm the demons that were beginning a carnival in her stomach. Just as she clicked the “Sign Out” button on the menu by the left of her computer screen, the shrill scream from the contract cleaner stopped her hands. Joan glanced up just in time to hear the words every banker dreaded.
“Everybody lie down,” coarse and sounding like gravels rubbing against each other, “Anybody moves and I smoke that person!”
All her thoughts of food were forgotten instantly. She moved quickly, backing away from the counter to create enough room to lie down. Her legs tangled with the cords of the computer and her money-counter but she paid no heed. The cold floor didn’t register in her mind either, or the fact that her heartbeat could be heard in her ears. From the corner of her eye, she saw her colleagues complying. She could see the training at their orientation taking effect. They were instructed on exact compliance in cases of armed robbery. No arguments. No complaints. No thinking. Perfect compliance was the word.
“You,” the voice was saying, “go over there and join the others!”
The sounds of someone’s footsteps approached the area where she was prostrate. It was Sunday, the security guard. Another contract staffer.
Thoughts were tumbling over her now thoroughly frightened mind. It was more fear than anything she’d ever experienced. She perfectly remembered laughing at Fola’s retelling of a similar incident at their branch. She immediately repented as the thought occurred to her that this was happening to her because of how hard she laughed when Fola confessed to peeing in fear. She believed that had she not visited the loo half an hour earlier, she would have embarrassed herself already.
Somewhere behind her, someone was crying. She didn’t need to look to know it was Gift. It took nothing to bring Gift to tears. Joy and pain equally. And fright? Definitely. Joan had enough of her wits about her to hear Isaac praying. He was often portrayed as a pastor around the office. He was casting and binding demons. For all their sakes, Joan prayed that these bandits didn’t hear him and get angry at being so referred.
If they heard, they showed no signs. The sounds of commands that that coarse voice was issuing had become slightly muffled. Joan guessed they’d moved into the Bulk Room. This was an easy guess. There’d been a lot of bulk payments and the cash was yet to be moved. Also, the voices were oozing from the left side of the banking hall right where the Bulk Room was situated.
The sound of someone being slapped interfered with her thoughts. Her heart skipped several beats at once. It drew a quite audible “Jesus Christ” from Isaac. She’d felt the slapped as if she’d been the recipient herself and half expected to hear someone wailing having received such a clanger. But the only sounds that came to her were Gift’s soft sobs and Isaac’s prayers. Then, also, the clear rustle of those nylon bags used for catering huge sums of cash.
Suddenly, a phone rang, its ringtone breaking through the partial silence of the situation like an unwanted protestation. It took Gift’s poking of her leg for Joan to realise it was her ringtone. Her eyes widened in multiplied fright. She ransacked through the maze of her purse, her hands fidgeting wildly. She prayed for time to get to her phone and silence it. The moment she held it, with her finger on the button that would cut the call, she looked up and came face to face with the business end of a double-barrel.
A more ominous voice than the one she’d been hearing since the episode began issued forth from the head behind the big nozzle, “Na who you just call?”
Honestly, if there was any moisture left inside her bladder, this would’ve been the perfect time for it to make a glorious and warm exit from her body.
There are no words to prepare one’s mind for the experience of dread. Pure, undiluted fear. No orientation, no previous experience does that. None. She was impaled by fear. It utterly immobilized her that the words for any sort of response failed to take shape in her mind. She didn’t even know how tightly she was holding the phone until the crook forced it from her involuntarily stiff fingers. Gift would later tell her how pale she’d looked facing the perp that day.
“Wetin bi your password?” was the next thing she heard as he thumbed through her two-week old Samsung Galaxy S5.
Joan was still finding words difficult to come by. She blinked and shook her head to remember. Nothing came.
The now irritated criminal mistook her head-shaking for obstinate refusal and maliciously approached her, evil intent written all over his contorted, angry mien. His free hand was raised to inflict some physical violence on her when his three co-travellers emerged from the Bulk Room.
“Padlock!” shouted the one voice she recognised now as the leader, “Hold it!”
Scruffy-Voice – now to be known as “Padlock” – hanged his hand mid-air for a few seconds and dropped it with a noisy hiss. He pocketed the phone and turned around to face the one who had issued the order. “She dey make phone call, naim I wan dial her ear small.”
Joan was still in a defensive posture based solely on reflex, half turned away from the impending doom of the intended attack with both arms raised to protect her face. Hearing footsteps closing on her position, she riverted her eyes downwards and dropped her arms. She mouthed a silent prayer that they’d leave having coveted four full bags she could see beside the legs of the other two standing next to the bank’s exit.
Booted feet stopped right in front of her. She was beginning to wonder if this was the end and God was just delaying so that she could sufficiently prepare herself for the afterlife.
“Did you really make a phone call?” There was an almost perceptible milk of human kindness in the voice she heard. In fact, if answering yes would jell with the kindness of the one who spoke to leave her alone, she’d have just said yes. But she was still unable to control her trembling.
“DID YOU?” It was a scream this time. It was so sudden, she jerked in fright. Even Gift sucked in her breath.
“Look at me!” said the voice. She felt a hand under her chin, pulling her face upwards.
Unexpectedly, she saw herself looking at Steve.She felt her stomach drop.
“Oh shit!” Steve exclaimed as recognition registered. “Oh shit!” he repeated, turning around and striking the butt of his gun on the counter next to her, causing a spark.
Now, Joan knew for sure, she was done for. It was one of the reasons they were trained never to look at faces during such encounters. Steve used to be their neighbour before she moved to the State capital for her internship. There was no way he was going to let her go. She knew way too much about him.
The look on his face confirmed it. “Padlock,” he called. As Padlock turned to him, Steve sealed her fate with the words, “Smoke her!”
Her restraint, her faith, her strength broke. Tears avalanched down her cheeks. She cried. Kneeling down impulsively, she begged for life. But Steve was already turning away and Padlock was raising his gun hand. It was all happening in a blur but for her, time had slowed down. Perhaps, that was how it happened when the end of one’s life came. She closed her eyes and in a fraction of a second, she wished she’d had time to be more loving to her loved ones who would be the most pained at losing her. Her eyes burned with hot tears.
So, this was it?
She waited for the gunshot, the burst of hot air, the pain, the emptying of blood, the last breath. Squeezing her eyes, holding her breath. She waited. And waited. But nothing.
After a while, she heard the shuffling of feet and opened her eyes. Different people, customer and staff alike, were beginning to gradually regain their composure. Some could be seen still in prayer, thanksgiving supposedly. They were checking themselves and hugging one another with tears and gratitude.
She looked at herself, felt her body and looked around herself. Was this the afterlife? It was not as she conceived it at all. Then, she saw Gift being carried away to an ambulance in front of the bank. It belonged to the hospital two blocks away from the bank on the same street. Isaac sat, staring blankly at the space in front of him.
No. This was definitely not the afterlife.
Then, just as they cleared the banking hall of all customers, she saw the Branch Manager enter the bank. There was something about him that did not add up. And it took nothing for her to notice that he was not alone. He’d come in with no one else but Steve. Not in handcuffs nor beaten black, blue and other colour-blocking hues but smiling. And clapping.
“Very good, very good,” the Branch Manager was saying, “that was really well performed.” He was smiling at all their confounded looks. “We’re taking care of Gift,” he announced somewhat more seriously, “but I’m impressed at all your professional responses in a difficult situation.”
He turned to Steve to finish the speech.
Wearing a big grin, Steve said, “It was just a drill.”
Joan could only shake her head. With clenched teeth.
