The Dead Feast at Dawn

When Abuja falls to the undead, survivors face horror, guilt, and the hunger of the living

Word Count: 2499



Mornings in Abuja always smelled like exhaust, dust, and impatience. Cars stretched across the expressway like metallic snakes, horns crying in frustration, vendors slapping windshields with sachet water and gala. The sun had barely risen, but its heat already sat heavy, pressing on every face stuck in traffic.
Aisha balanced her cooler of Zobo on her head, moving between cars. The sweat on her forehead gleaming under the red light, she had no idea the world was about to end.
Senator Ibrahim Bello tapped his fingers against the dashboard inside a black Prado. He was late for a security meeting at the National Assembly. “These drivers no get sense!” he barked. His aide, Kunle, murmured something about patience, but the Senator was too busy scrolling through a message that made his hand freeze, a video from his cousin at the National Hospital.
Bodies.
Moving ones.
Not the kind of movement that meant recovery, but the jerky, twitching horror of something pretending to be alive.
The camera fell, and screams flooded the phone speaker.
“Na prank abi?” Kunle whispered, watching over his shoulder.
The Senator didn’t answer. His mouth had gone dry. “Tell them to lock that place down,” he said finally. “Right now.”
Meanwhile, across town in Wuse 2, journalist David Okafor was trying to upload a story that wouldn’t get him arrested. He’d just finished a piece on missing medical shipments when the power blinked out — again. “NEPA, una go kill person one day,” he muttered, reaching for his phone hotspot. The data refused to connect. His neighbor, Ifeoma, a nurse at National Hospital, had left him a dozen missed calls.
When he finally called back, she answered with a voice he barely recognized, shaking, breathless.
“David… they’re eating people.”
“What?”
“I said they’re eating people! The patients… something happened in the emergency ward… it’s spreading.”
The call dropped.
Outside, something heavy slammed against his compound gate.
David stepped to the window. A man was staggering across the road, half-naked, covered in blood. He dragged one leg, but his head twitched like he listened to invisible whispers. Another man ran toward him, shouting. “Oga, you dey okay?!”
The bloody man turned and bit into the other’s neck like bread.
David froze.
Screams erupted down the street.
Phones began to ring across the city.

By noon, Abuja was already a war zone.
At the National Hospital, Ifeoma was barricaded inside the pharmacy with two interns and a corpse that wouldn’t stay still. Every sound outside; footsteps, groans, metallic bangs, made her fingers tighten around the surgical scalpel she held.
“I swear, this thing no be ordinary disease,” one intern muttered, sweating through his scrubs.
Ifeoma’s voice was low. “It's an infection. Airborne maybe. Or blood-borne. I don’t know. But it spreads too fast.”
From the corridor came a scream that split the air like glass.
Then silence.
Then dragging.
One of the interns began to cry quietly.
When the door handle turned, Ifeoma whispered, “Don’t move.”
A single hand reached through the gap, skin gray, nails cracked, veins blackened like burnt wire. It clawed at the door, desperate, mindless.
Ifeoma drove the scalpel through the wrist. The creature didn’t flinch, it just kept pushing until the wrist snapped and the rest of it crashed against the door with a guttural snarl.
The interns screamed.
“Help me push!” she shouted.
They shoved a metal shelf against the entrance as the undead thing slammed repeatedly, its teeth gnashing through the small opening.
In that chaos, Ifeoma remembered the video she had sent David and realized she might have doomed him, too.

In Asokoro, the army base was in chaos. Orders came faster than anyone could process: secure Aso Rock, protect the Senate, maintain calm. Soldiers loaded rifles with trembling hands. Rumors ran wild that it was terrorism, that it was biological warfare, that it was judgment day.
Private Musa Bello checked his weapon three times. He’d been stationed in Abuja only six months, but nothing had prepared him for this. When his commanding officer barked orders to move, he swallowed his fear and followed.
Their first stop: the National Assembly.
As the trucks roared down the expressway, the city unfurled around them like a nightmare — overturned cars, bleeding civilians, fire blooming in the distance.
Musa’s partner muttered a prayer under his breath. “This Abuja don spoil finish.”
Ahead, a convoy of senators was trying to force its way through the chaos. A woman ran into the road waving her arms, screaming for help. She was covered in blood, someone else’s, maybe her own.
The lead driver hesitated for a second too long.
She jumped onto the windshield.
And bit through the glass.
The soldiers opened fire.
Bullets tore through her chest, but she didn’t fall, not until her head exploded under a final shot.
The senator in the rear car vomited into his lap.
Musa whispered, “Allah ya kiyaye.”
The officer turned to him, eyes complicated. “Don’t pray, soldier. Shoot.”

By nightfall, electricity failed. The radio died next. Abuja became a dark heart pulsing with screams.
David was holed up in his apartment with a baseball bat and a half-dead power bank. Every few minutes, he thought he heard footsteps on the stairs. He’d already pushed his couch against the door. The smell of blood was everywhere.
He rechecked his messages. Ifeoma hadn’t replied.
On Twitter, the last thing he saw before the network crashed was a video, shot from above the Central Mosque, showing hundreds of people running, falling, rising again, biting, and spreading.
#AbujaInfection was trending before the servers went silent.
In the dark, David whispered to himself, “I have to get out.”

Senator Bello sat inside a locked meeting room at the Presidential Villa, watching soldiers argue. The President hadn’t appeared. Rumors said he’d been airlifted to Minna. Others claimed he was dead.
“What about the borders?” Bello demanded.
“Closed, sir.”
“Lagos?”
“Gone quiet.”
The senator’s phone buzzed again, his wife, calling from Maitama. He answered.
“Amira, where are you?”
Her voice came through sobbing. “They broke into the estate. People are changing — it’s not human, Ibrahim. Please, where are you?”
“I’m coming, just stay inside—”
The line cut.
Outside, a soldier screamed. Gunfire erupted in the hallway. The lights flickered.
And the heavy, wet sound of chewing came from somewhere in the darkness.

By midnight, Abuja was burning.
The National Mosque glowed orange against the night as fire devoured its courtyard.
Aisha, the zobo seller, crawled beneath an overturned keke, clutching her bruised leg. She’d watched her cousin get pulled apart in front of her. Her blood had dried on her arms.
A soldier stumbled past, moaning, dragging his rifle. His face was pale, eyes wide, mouth bubbling with dark foam.
Aisha whispered, “Baba God, no let am see me.”
But he turned.
And smiled.


Aisha’s whisper barely left her lips before the soldier lunged. His movements were wrong, jerky, spasmodic, but fast. She rolled from beneath the keke, her cooler of zobo scattering across the dirt. The sound drew three more figures from the shadows, each staggering, each dripping black saliva that sizzled when it hit the ground.
She limped toward the petrol station across the road, her slippers gone, one leg bleeding. A gunshot cracked behind her. The soldier’s head exploded, and David stood by a half-burned car, holding a pistol with both shaking hands.
“Aisha!” he shouted, disbelief cutting through fear. “From Jabi bridge, abi?”
She nodded, trembling. “You… you dey shoot people now?”
“They’re not people anymore,” he said quietly. “Come on. We can’t stay here.”
They ran.

Across town, Ifeoma had made it out of the hospital. The interns didn’t. She hadn’t looked back after the door finally gave way. Blood and bone littered the corridors; the smell clung to her lungs. Outside, the street was chaotic; ambulances burning, infected nurses gnawing on the wounded, and the sky pulsing red from distant fires.
She found a police van by the gate, keys still in the ignition, a half-dead officer twitching inside.
“Sorry,” she whispered, pushing him out.
The van roared to life. She drove toward the city center, swerving around bodies and abandoned cars. Her radio crackled faintly, military frequencies, half-sentences swallowed by static.
“…containment failed… repeat… evacuation point—”
The rest dissolved in noise.
She gripped the wheel tighter. “Evacuation point, where?”
Then she saw the headlights, and a group ran toward her from the dark, waving: two men and one woman.
She hit the brakes.
David slammed his hand on the hood. “Drive! They’re coming!”
The infected followed, sprinting now, a dozen of them, eyes hollow, mouths opening wider than possible. Ifeoma floored it. The van screeched, throwing one creature beneath the tires. It crunched like wet wood.
Aisha sobbed in the back seat. “What’s happening to Abuja?”
David answered, his voice hollow. “Abuja’s gone.”

At Aso Rock, Senator Bello was learning that power meant nothing when your guards started eating each other. He’d managed to grab a pistol from one of the officers, but the corridors were slick with blood. The President’s office was empty. His security detail was gone.
He found Kunle’s body outside the conference room, missing a face.
Bello stumbled backward, shaking. “This… this cannot be real.”
It was real enough when something growled from behind. He turned just in time to fire. The bullet tore through a soldier’s skull, splattering the marble with gore.
When he stepped over the body, he saw the name tag: Musa Bello.
He froze; he had the same surname. The soldier was young, maybe from the North, too. His eyes were still open, glassy, and reflecting the flicker of firelight.
Senator Bello sank to his knees, muttering verses under his breath.
From the window, he could see the city, flames rising from Wuse to Nyanya. The streets of the powerful had become tombs.

At dawn, Ifeoma’s van rolled past Area 1, the roads littered with corpses, and radio silence. There were no soldiers, no government.
David stared out the window. “I heard they sealed the airport.”
“Even if they didn’t,” she said, “no pilot’s staying in this madness.”
“What about the military base? Kubwa?”
Aisha shook her head. “Dem say zombies reach there since night. My cousin call from Dutse, she say soldiers run leave gun.”
Silence filled the van. The only sound was the thudding of infected palms against the sides as they drove through narrow streets.
David spoke again, softer. “There’s an evacuation point at Zuma Rock. I saw it online before the net died.”
“Zuma Rock?” Ifeoma repeated. “That’s madness.”
He met her eyes. “So, is staying here.”

They didn’t speak again for the next hour. The van crawled past checkpoints, churches, and mosques turned to refugee camps. People waved frantically for help, but Ifeoma couldn’t stop, she’d seen what happened when you showed mercy.
At one junction, a little girl ran into the road, crying. “Aunty, please!”
Aisha reached for the door handle. “Stop the car!”
David grabbed her wrist. “You open that door, we all die.”
Tears streaked her face. “But she’s just—”
The girl convulsed suddenly, her mouth opening wide, and from her throat came that familiar, monstrous growl.
Aisha screamed.
The van sped on.

At Kubwa bridge, they hit a blockade: burned-out tankers, dead soldiers, blackened smoke. David stepped out, scanning the area. “We can walk the rest.”
“No,” Ifeoma said. “We’ll be exposed.”
“Staying in this tin can make us target practice.”
They argued quietly at first, then with fury. Fear was peeling away their civility.
Aisha broke the silence. “Una two fit shout later. But look.”
In the distance, hundreds of figures were crossing the bridge; not running, not walking, but moving in perfect, terrifying rhythm. Their eyes gleamed like coal in the sunlight.
“Jesus Christ,” David breathed.
They weren’t survivors.
The crowd was infected.
Ifeoma reversed the van so fast the tires screamed. The bridge collapsed seconds later, bodies tumbling into the river like a single monstrous wave.

By evening, they reached the outskirts near Suleja, the air stank of smoke and death.
David was limping, bleeding from a graze. Aisha carried a rusted machete she’d found by the roadside. Ifeoma’s hands shook from exhaustion.
They spotted movement ahead: tents, military trucks, people with guns.
“Evacuation point,” David whispered. “We made it.”
They approached cautiously. A man in fatigues stepped forward. “Stay where you are!”
“We’re not infected!” Ifeoma shouted. “We came from the city!”
The man’s eyes darted over them. “Anyone bitten?”
“No.”
He nodded once. “Welcome to Camp Zuma.”
Inside, there were maybe two hundred people, survivors from across states. Soldiers, civilians, children, pastors. The air hummed with grief and disbelief. Someone was singing softly, a broken hymn.
Senator Bello sat near the center fire, his once-white kaftan stained with blood. He was muttering to himself. When he saw David, his eyes widened.
“You,” he said hoarsely. “You’re that journalist. You wrote about the hospital shipments.”
David frowned. “You knew? You knew something was coming?”
The senator hesitated, then nodded slowly. “The shipments weren’t for vaccines. They were prototypes. Military testing gone wrong. I told them not to—”
He didn’t finish.
Gunfire erupted outside the camp.
Screams followed.
The infected had arrived.

The soldiers formed a perimeter, firing in all directions. The undead crashed through the barricades like floodwater. People scattered, crying, praying, and shooting wildly.
Aisha swung her machete at one, hitting bone. Ifeoma pulled a child out of the way, blood splattering her scrubs. David tried to drag the senator toward a truck, but the old man stumbled, clutching his chest.
“I can’t…” Bello gasped. “Tell them… it was never meant to spread.”
He fell.
The infection found him before the mercy of death did.
David turned away as soldiers threw Molotovs into the advancing horde. Flames swallowed the night, illuminating the giant face of Zuma Rock — watching, indifferent.
Ifeoma shouted, “We have to go!”
They ran through the smoke toward the highway, the sound of screaming blending with gunfire and firestorms. The sky glowed red, the horizon crawling with shadows.
The world was silent when they finally stopped, breathless, miles away. There were no soldiers, no sirens, only the distant hum of fire devouring what was left of civilization.
Aisha whispered, “Where we go now?”
David looked at the burning city behind them. “Anywhere but here.”
Then, from the treeline, a figure emerged, limping and twitching. Its eyes were gone, and its sockets were black with rot. It opened its mouth, and the sound was neither human nor animal.
Ifeoma raised her weapon, hands trembling. “David…”
He aimed his gun.
Click.
Empty.
The creature stumbled closer.
Aisha gripped her machete tighter.
And from the darkness behind it, dozens more appeared — silent, swaying, their bodies catching the faint glow of firelight.
Abuja was gone. Nigeria was dying. The living were outnumbered.
David whispered the only prayer he knew.
“God, if you're still watching… don’t let us return.”
Then the horde moved, and the night swallowed them whole.