Page 28 of Soul on Fire
One more night. He’d be gone in the morning, processed out, sent elsewhere. He just had to survive until then, not lose his mind in the cacophony of people pressing in on him on every side, until even his thoughts were too loud in his skull.
So he walked, praying as he moved, quieting his mind as the camp finally settled. He passed fires and families, men arguing about when the rebels would strike and women reassuring their children they were safe in the camp.
He walked on, one foot in front of the other.
And then he saw them. Shadows moving out of sight, on the hill at the hospital where he’d been treated for the machete wound he’d put to his arm to prove he’d escaped the rebels. The doctor had smiled at him, called him lucky.
He’d wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill all of them. He always had, ever since he was a teenager in Nigeria. He’d slowly realized as he grew up, there was somethingdifferentabout him. He played differently. He thought differently. He didn’t fear like the other boys feared. What he wanted, he took. What he didn’t want, he discarded, whether it was a thing or an animal or a person. He was someone other people learned to run from.
Something was missing when he’d been put together. He hadn’t been able to find his heart, not in thirty years of searching. All he could find was the bottomless scream he carried with him wherever he went, an emptiness, a pit inside himself that ached to be filled. But nothing could fill it and nothing could satisfy his cravings, the hunger that built inside him until he had to tear it out, or tear into another person’s flesh. Take their life to put inside his own.
Then he’d met Idrissa, and he’d found a way to satisfy his needs.
It was only later when the pieces lined up in his twisted mind. He was meant to kill. He was meant to murder; it was how he was made. He was born this way, born without a soul, and he would turn the whole world to ash.
But not if those men found him.
He knew who they were: soldiers. Not Africans. Not the Congolese military, that was for sure. By this time of night, the Congolese soldiers were drunk. Not Rwandan soldiers, either. No, men who moved like that only came from one place: the Great Satan.
They were American. They moved like the owned the world, arrogance dripping from their every move, their every action. He’d seen them in North Africa, in Libya, in Mali, and in Nigeria. All the same, always looking down at the rest of the world.
If the Americans were here, that meant they—somehow—knew.
It was the woman! She must have come here! She must have told someone!
He backed away, pushing through tangled pathways and the darkness and past the crowded lines of tents and people huddling near their dying fires. Faster, until he was at the edge of the camp, all alone in the blackness, and he could pull out his cell phone. He dialed.
Idrissa answered but said nothing. He waited.
“There is a problem. Americans are here. They are talking to the doctor who processed me into the camp.”
“They cannot find you.” Idrissa’s voice was a growl and a warning, all in one.
“Then I will need your help.”
* * *
Chapter Twelve
UN Refugee Camp outside Sake
The Congo
Ikolo ledElliot and his men around the north side of the camp, closest to the forest where the ADF rebels were holding position. Elliot could feel their presence: ghosts waiting in the darkness. The forest sucked in what little light there was, hid the stars and the moon. His skin prickled, and a feeling like a hundred spiders’ feet danced down his spine and slid beneath his body armor.
He had his team spread behind him, single file and keeping in the brush. When they came to Majambu’s sector, they’d form up, recon the situation, and sweep in silently, come in from all sides. At this hour, Majambu was—hopefully—asleep.
Ikolo was right, though. The camp was huge.
He stayed with Ikolo, walking in the shadows as the doctor guided them on a path away from the camp. He could still see the tents of plastic sheeting and bamboo, and in some places, mudbrick laid over the plastic to make the tent more permanent and livable. The insides were still smaller than Elliot’s truck bed back home, but for the families the tents housed, it was safe, and that was something no one in the camp had felt in a long time. The camp seemed to go forever, as far as Elliot could see. All the fires had died, save for a few burning feces, but they were few and far away. Elliot and Ikolo moved in starlight. “Tell me about this place,” he asked softly.
“It is grim here, but at least they are alive. They came here to survive, and sometimes I wonder if what we’re giving them is worth their sacrifice. Walking for days through the jungle with nothing to eat, fleeing everything and everyone they know, and they come to this?”
“What’s the infrastructure like?”
“The UN runs the camp. Everyone is registered when they arrive. The UN provides each person with a ration card, a blanket, a bucket for water, and a plot to live in with material to make a tent. It’s a place to call home.”
“What about food?”
