“Hold on a minute, bubba. Who are you?” Joel asked, raising his shotgun again.
George straightened up. “I’m George Coleman. This is Victoria. The boy is Jamal and… what’s yore name, girl?”
“Selma,” Jamal said, watching his sister bury her face in Victoria’s skirt.
“We’re trying to get to Kingsville.”
“Ain’t we all,” the older man said, spitting to the side.
The older man reached over and pushed the boy’s single-shot twenty-two rifle down. The boy started to raise it again so it pointed at George, but the old man cocked his head and shook it. “No,” he said. “You and yore pa are determined to shoot someone.”
He turned to them and said, “I’m Parker Swafford; this is Joel Grayson and his son, Cannon. Sorry we scared you. Maybe you can tell us how you came to be on this old lumber road. It’s not like Joel and me see too many visitors this far off the main road.” His voice had that crusty sound with that slight vibration that comes with age.
For some reason, Jamal didn’t know why, he trusted these people, even if this Joel and the boy Cannon kept pointing their guns at them. Before George or Victoria could answer, and startling himself, Jamal started talking and once he started, the words flowed like a cathartic purge as he told about Monrovia, his parents’ death, the SUV, and the ambush. As he talked, Selma’s crying punctuated the story.
He stopped as suddenly as he had started. The adrenaline high was gone. He was exhausted. Twice in less than twenty-four hours they had escaped Lord knows what fate.
“Sounds like the same bunch that raided my place this morning,” Parker said, directing his comments to Joel, “and who nearly caught you and the family at lunch.” He looked at Jamal. “Was there a thin man leading them with his hair covered with a black turban?” He twirled a finger around the top of his head. “Couldn’t talk without screaming?”
“We weren’t there long enough to tell,” George answered. “It’s hard to see someone when you’re bent over and running for your life.”
Victoria reached down and brushed Selma’s hair with her hand.
“When they started shooting, we fought our way into the bush. We heard them chasing us through the woods, and after a couple of encounters, we think we lost them. Boy here,” George said, jerking his thumb toward Jamal, “killed one of the fanatics before we were able to lose them.”
The sound of voices from farther down the road interrupted their conversation. Someone was coming.
“Quick,” Joel said, “this way.”
They quickly followed the three up the bank on the other side, and into a small open area where the bushes and grasses had been flattened. “Something big done that,” Jamal said to himself. And it caused him to look around, searching for whatever had created the clearing and hoping it didn’t decide to come back now.
“This is where my daddy and I come to hunt,” the young lad whispered.
“Cannon, be quiet,” Joel said, placing his finger across his lip.
Jamal squatted on his haunches alongside Victoria, who held Selma close to her, his sister’s face buried in the woman’s shoulder. What kind of name is Cannon? he wondered briefly.
Jamal had a full view of the overgrown road through the bushes. Several minutes passed before two men appeared around the curve in the road. Jamal recognized them. They had been in the convoy.
George leaned forward and touched the old man on the shoulder. “They were with us when the rebels attacked.”
Parker nodded, but said nothing as he turned his attention back to the front. When the two stepped in front of the hunting blind, Parker shouted the same thing he had before. Jamal had a moment of satisfaction as one of the men raised one hand while the other threw both of his into the air. The pleasure was short-lived. One of the men appeared to be Hispanic, while the other was obviously an African-American with a light skin complexion. Africans tended to be a dark-rich chocolate black.
“They’ve got a baby,” Victoria said, seeing the small bundle in the crook of an arm. She pushed her way through the bushes into the road. The others followed.
The two men told how they had darted into the jungle when the rebels overran the SUVs.
Victoria eased the baby from the man’s arms, while the African-American youth told how the rebels had jerked the infant from its mother before killing her and throwing it by its feet into the bushes.
Victoria ran her finger along the baby’s lips. “Something’s wrong,” she said, looking at the two men.
The larger hispanic man shrugged.
“He or she’s been that way since that man in the long flowing robe threw it into the bushes. I think it hit its head on something,” the youth added.
Victoria moved the baby’s head slightly, revealing a large dark bruise on the right side. “Yeah, it may have a concussion.”
“Well, come on,” Parker said. “We need to get a move on. The wives will be waiting, and the longer we’re gone the more nervous they’re gonna be. I don’t like leaving them alone. Not the way things are.” He nodded toward the baby. “Artimecy may be able to help the little one.” Parker pointed northeast along the road. “They’re with the tractor and wagon.”
The small group walked along the old jungle road, staying to the ruts. As they walked, Parker’s continuous monologue told how rebels had surprised him and his wife around dawn. They had just sat down to eat breakfast when armed pickup trucks sped into the dirt courtyard of their farm. He and Artimecy had barely made it out the window on the far side before the rebels had torn their way through the locked kitchen door. There wasn’t much the two of them could do against all of them, plus it wasn’t as if he and Artimecy were spry chickens. The men had ransacked the house, stealing everything of value. By the time they left and he and Artimecy thought it was safe to come out of hiding, the raiders had taken everything of value, including all the canned food and all but two tins of his ’bacca.
The good news was other than stealing some valuables and taking their food, the looters hadn’t came looking for them and they were still alive. Parker discovered afterward that his truck wouldn’t crank. When he lifted the hood, he found the distributor cap had been taken and the spark-plug wires cut. What the raiders didn’t know was that Parker kept an old shotgun — the one he was carrying — and a box of shells in the back of the barn near the chicken coop. It was to protect the chickens from all these damn meat-eaters that throw their weight around the jungle at night. He and Artimecy had walked four miles to where the Graysons lived. By the time they arrived, the raiders had already attacked Joel and his family, and were gone.
Jamal listened as he walked behind Cannon, watching where he put his feet so he didn’t trip over the rough ground.
Joel took over the story. He and Mimy were in the metal barn when the first two rebel vehicles arrived. He had nearly walked out to greet them when a bad feeling made him wait in the shadows. The two had watched as the Africans, under their Arab masters, exploded from the pickups, running to the back screen door and kicking it in. He and Mimy had eased deeper into the barn and with Mimy holding his hand, the two had made a dash for the fields in the rear. Hidden by tall corn, they had run along a path that led to where their two cows were pastured and where Cannon was guarding the cows. The family had hidden in a small floodwater cave in a nearby stream bank for a couple of hours, listening for sounds of rebels searching for them. Joel had squatted under the low-hanging entrance with his gun pointed toward the creek. Around here, you never knew when a crocodile might decide to find out why humans were hanging around its home.
After a few hours when they hadn’t heard anyone searching for them, Joel had taken Cannon’s rifle and crept back to the house to discover the raiders gone. From what had happened, it looked as if these rebels were on a looting expedition and not a killing one. Unfortunately, what they didn’t steal, they destroyed — ruining the inside of the house. Even broke the furniture that had been brought from America. All the d
ishes lay shattered across the kitchen.
Joel had brought Mimy and Cannon back to the barn, leaving them there while he returned to the house. There, he had shoved a bookcase away from the wall to reveal a hidden gun rack. He had been amazed that in their destructive rage the attackers hadn’t discovered it.
By the time he left the house, Parker and Artimecy were coming up the driveway. They could not stay there with any hope of protection. Things were breaking down too quickly. They decided their only hope lay in reaching Kingsville, where Thomaston had his armory. The old logging road above the field offered the best escape route.
“Our place is only about seven miles back that way,” Joel said, pointing over his shoulder.
As he finished his story, the group turned a curve to find two women waiting beside an old rust-flecked green John Deere tractor. Hitched to the tractor was a homemade trailer. Two car tires provided the wheels. Heaped on the trailer was fresh corn, a box of canned goods the families had been able to recover, and several gallon plastic containers of water and fuel.
The older woman, who Jamal figured must be Artimecy, ran forward and took the baby from Victoria.
“What’s wrong with your child, honey?” she asked.
“Not hers, Artimecy,” Parker said, spitting to the side before he quickly told her the story.
Artimecy shook her head. “The baby is dead, Parker.” She turned to Victoria. “I’m sorry, honey, but this child is dead.”
Selma started crying again, her shoulders heaving, arms straight down by her sides, tears creating small paths down her cheeks through the dust and grime ground into her face. Victoria wrapped Selma in her arms, and the elderly Artimecy stepped forward and stroked Selma’s hair, mumbling platitudes that seemed so strange and out of place in a world gone awry.
Jamal stood to one side, his hand resting on the tail of the trailer. His eyes slowly closed and he jerked awake when his legs buckled. Around him the conversation of the grown-ups with words like “Kingsville,” “rebels,” “long way to go,” and “ammunition” broke the gray haze of his fatigue.
Later, the women fed them, giving each a sandwich. His mouth watered uncontrollably when they handed him the sandwich. The bread had dots of green mold on it, but Jamal didn’t care. It tasted so good. His stomach growled as he chewed. The gray haze retreated a bit as he chewed each bite slowly, savoring the taste.
His eyes wandered over the people he and his sister depended on for safety. As he ate, the men dug a hole and buried the baby. In the heat, keeping a dead body would have been impossible. He took another bite of the sandwich, and wondered briefly what the baby’s name was and if anyone would ever remember where it was buried. He looked at the wonderful sandwich — two bites to go. The sound of a shovel pounding the top of the grave caught his attention. Would the tigers, lions, and wild boars find it? Would they dig it up and eat it?
Jamal noticed the filth on his hands as he shoved the last bit of sandwich into his mouth. He looked at his sister, who had finished her sandwich and was sitting on the end of the trailer with her eyes shut and head across Victoria’s lap. How did Momma expect him to protect his sister when he couldn’t even protect himself?
He licked his fingers, feeling the grit of the dirt across his tongue as he tried to save a few specks of bread. He pulled himself up beside Victoria and leaned back on the rough planks of the trailer. He laid his rifle beside him, putting his arm along the barrel, and resting his hand near the trigger guard. Jamal shut his eyes, throwing his left arm across them. He vaguely heard the start of the tractor and felt the short jerk on the trailer as the group started, working their way through rebel-infected jungles toward what they prayed was safe refuge.
The rocking motion of the trailer as the wheels rolled over the uneven surface woke him hours later. He opened his eyes. Bright stars dotted a moonless night. The fresh smell of the forest rode the slight humid breeze. Something bit him, causing him to slap instinctively. When he lifted his hand, several dead mosquitoes and a patch of blood smeared his palm. Selma! Anxiously, he raised his head. His sister was curled with her legs drawn up to her chest. Her dress stuck to her. There was a tear running down the left side of the dress, from the armpit to near the waist. Parker, Artimecy, Mimy, the two men from the convoy, all of them walked silently behind the wagon. Up front, the silhouette of George and Victoria walking side by side blended with the blacks and grays of the surrounding jungle. Jamal looked for the other boy, but didn’t see him. He laid his head back on the trailer and wondered briefly where Cannon was, the question lost when sleep let loose the chasing nightmares to stampede through his dreams.
On the trailer, Jamal’s head rolled back and forth accompanied by soft moans.
“No,” Artimecy said softly, touching Victoria on the arm. “Let him sleep. He’s been through a lot, but he needs his sleep. He’ll be all right, honey.”
CHAPTER 8
Thomaston stood ramrod straight, his feet at a forty-five-degree angle. On this small knoll to the right of the front gate, he overlooked the entrance to the armory. The afternoon heat quickly dried the wet from the African shower, turning the dust that permeated the camouflage uniform into small cakes of dirt. The dank smell of sweat—an acidic urinary smell—surrounded him as it did everyone. Body odor was the least of their worries. Thomaston reached up and ran the back of his hand across his brow, wiping sweat away from his eyes. Dark wet stains beneath the arms of the camouflage shirt highlighted the effects of the heat. Sharp military creases so well defined two days ago were gone. Sergeant Major Craig Gentle stood beside him with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking slightly on the balls of his heels.
The armory was two years old, built with funds provided by their unnamed U.S. government benefactor. Six-foot-high brick walls encircled the main compound. A heavy-duty steel chain-linked fence, embedded in the center of the brick wall, rose to a height of ten feet. Swaths of razor wire spiraled along the top. Anyone foolish enough to climb the fence would face two feet of jutting razor wire, with another two feet of it on the other side.
He was a Ranger and Rangers thought of defensive perimeters, maneuverability, offensive firepower, and who they could kill. The compound was sufficient to deter the most determined bush gang, but he had doubts it would stand up to an attack by a military foe whose desire to kill Americans was so strong, they were prepared to die in the attempt. He would like them to achieve that goal of death.
He sighed.
“You got that right,” Gentle said gruffly.
The armory was never designed to withstand a military assault by trained soldiers. Thomaston had doubts as to how long they could hold out in the face of suicide squads. How much longer before Beaucoup Charlie got the radio back up and running?
A ten-ton truck slowed as it passed the two of them, entered through the gate, and circled the roundabout in front of the doors to the two-story brick headquarters building. Large windows, equally spaced, stretched from a couple of feet above the ground to a couple of feet from the next level. One thing about this construction, Thomaston thought, is they definitely intended it to be a showcase — a showcase for the Liberians and other Africans who visited Kingsville. The armory gave Kingsville a show of permanency. There was an intrinsic value in having something better built than any Liberian fort. It brought influence and prestige to the country as well as this American expatriate community.
“Craig, has everyone returned? Have we managed to move everyone inside?” Thomaston asked, turning to retired Sergeant Major Craig Gentle. Thomaston clasped his hands behind his back like Gentle. He rocked slightly back and forth on his heels. His knees bothered him if he stood or sat in one position too long.
“Most are inside,” said Gentle. “Beaucoup Charlie and his radio should be along shortly. Tawela and David Seams are helping him.”
“We need to get that set up fast and reestablish contact with Admiral Holman as soon as possible. We haven’t talked with him or his fleet in two da
ys. He may be heading south toward the port of Abidjan because when we last talked, we told him we were going to convoy into the Ivory Coast. He may be planning on picking us up there.” He looked down at Gentle. “You think our embassy bubbas and bubbettes have told them about the closed border?”
The truck doors opened. On the far side nearest the door to the building, David Seams helped Beaucoup down from the high cab.
“Looks as if Beaucoup is here, Dan,” Gentle said.
Thomaston glanced at the truck and the people before turning his attention back to the sergeant major. “How about electricity? How long can we expect the generators to last?”
“I’ll check on it, sir. We have moved most of the vehicles into the large parking area to the rear of the building. We can always drain their tanks, if need be.”
“One thing we both learned in the Army is always plan for the worst and you’ll never be disappointed. Here is what I would like for you to do….”
Thomaston rattled off a series of orders borne of experience. All the food was to be consolidated at one location. A responsible person was to be in charge of it. He wanted a water inventory conducted. Retired Master Sergeant Craig Gentle listened for a few moments. When he realized Thomaston had more than a small list of things to do, he pulled a small red notebook from his shirt pocket and began writing.
It was past five in the afternoon. Another five hours before the summer sun set. The air simmered over the dirt road that crossed a few hundred feet from the armory. August was always the month of long, hot days and sweaty nights. Thomaston was anxious. He was unused to not knowing what was happening; being without information; and being without a trained military force. All he had were these few retired military men and women mixed among this ad hoc militia Kingsville had had for its security force. A three-soldier patrol had been gone about two hours. He had sent it north toward the small city of Tapeta to check local conditions and see if certain medical supplies and drugs were available. They were also to bring back loads of toilet tissue — a commodity few think about until they need it. But wipe that butt with the wrong leaves and you’d find yourself lighting candles to the great god Toilet Tissue.
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