Twenty Two: In the Shadow now

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Where no hope is left, is left no fear.

–John Milton

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2033 Congo River Valley

After the celebratory dinner, Dingane initiated Mwamba officially into the cultic army. Taking a hot knife from out of the dying coals beneath the massive kettle, he made Mwamba kneel before him. From his pocket he withdrew a small leather pouch, and tipping it on its side slightly, he emptied a small amount of a white powder bearing a slight blue tint and reeking of fungus onto the tip of the blade, which crackled and sizzled on the red hot metal. Slipping the pouch back into his pocket, he stuck his left pointer finger into his mouth and nipped it with his teeth so that a tiny puncture wound began to seep out blood. Squeezing his bleeding finger, he let three drops fall onto the hot end of the blade, sizzling and hissing as it mixed with the powdery compound.

“Open your mouth, boy, and prepare to touch the depths of Hell on earth.” Mwamba offered his open mouth, and in one sinisterly precise movement Dingane flipped the blade over and slapped the solution onto the tip of Mwamba’s tongue. Stifling his screams as best he could lest he offer his suffering up to the ancient creature, Mwamba acutely felt as taste buds were soldered and the thick smell of burning flesh seeped up his nasal cavity. Only a moment of the most intense pain occurred as the boiling liquid was quickly absorbed into the open flesh of his wounded tongue, and seeped speedily into his blood stream. Quickly the effects of the drug took hold of his adolescent mind; quickly the pain drifted away and was instead replaced with the darkest sort of fear.

Dingane slowly and triumphantly removed the heated knife blade from the youth’s mouth, slipping the blade back into the coals where it had been taken from. “The compound that I just sent screaming into your body is a homegrown herb of my own devising. It is similar to opium and can be similarly refined into a variety of tasty products, but the special blend that I just gave you is infused with hallucinatory algae that we also grow here on the plantation…” Dingane’s words trailed off into a world of dark swirling colors. Mwamba managed to keep his balance, but he stumbled out of the tent and clutched to the warm aluminum of a nearby shack. Dingane’s laughter was deep and biting, and Mwamba felt the sudden urge to flee.

“No one will stop you, boy, go, experience your first walk with the Shadow…” Permission given, Mwamba began his tumultuous journey towards the tree line, leaving a raving band of idiots behind him caterwauling and laughing at his expense.

The jungle was coming alive with the sounds of the night, and in the distance a gorilla rumbled while various birds and monkeys called. Despite the fact that the sun had finished its lazy course through the sky and retired for the night, Mwamba could detect everything perfectly, in fact, he could sense wherever there was life… it was as though there were burning orbs throughout the jungle, some larger, some smaller. Trees were a different shade than animals, insects seemed to be like a teeming river whereas mammals and avians were warm glows. The entire jungle was alive, everywhere there was life, teeming, gnawing, growing, dying, eating, sleeping; wherever Mwamba turned his eyes he could see the pulse of life. Then he looked down, looked at his hands and feet, and there was nothing. Beneath his fingers he could see the pulse of his blood, but while the forest fauna and flora glowed with life, the color inside himself seemed diminished, like a candle flame flickering against a stiff wind, liable to go out at any moment.

Mwamba screamed, and tore at his face with broken fingernails.

The jungle screamed back, haunting melodies rife with the call of the wild.

Blood seeped from Mwamba’s face and he tore at his chest, ripping the thin cloth shirt from his torso and burying his fingernails deep within his flesh. Looking down, the blood contained a flicker of light, but it was extinguished as soon as it bled from his body. Turning his face towards the sky, towards the haunting glow of the half moon, Mwamba screamed from deep within his soul, a roar that at last silenced the calls of the vast wilderness surrounding him.

The jungle went silent.

Mwamba kept screaming.

Twenty One: Hopes and Wishes

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The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

–Mark Twain

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2052 Old Germany

The two guards in the office were the easiest of the kills, as one of them was at his desk watching internet porn, while the other was playing a video game on his terminal. The gamer had kept open one of the monitors on his multi-screen system for a view of the security grid work of the compound, watching it out of the corners of his eyes in case of emergency, but for the most part they stuck to themselves and did whatever they wanted with their time, so long as one of them made the station check-ins every ten minutes. The two guards would switch off hours, alternating so the other one didn’t have to do anything for the hour.

Of course, whenever there was a shift change they just signed the sheet without actually checking in, a mistake that proved fatal in this case. Mwamba simply hit them both with poisonous darts from his blowgun, thus of the guards, their deaths were the least painful, as they were the least culpable in the sense that they knew nothing beyond the four walls of the internet, and were the least concerned with the world around them. They managed the horrors of the world by gladly accepting the opiate of mass communication entertainment. Zombies at best, perverts at worst, they were not the ones that the Reckoners had come for; they were just bumps on the road to their real goal.

Mwamba looked at the screen of the grid network, pushing the body of the guard onto the floor and sliding into his chair. Using the holographic keypad and touch interface, he highlighted one particular room in the house and opened a smaller pane with a live camera feed from the room. The black and white image was speckled with static due to aging electronics, but the feed was constant: the target was in bed, deep asleep. Closing the video panel, Mwamba opened another interface control where he ordered the security master computer to override the presets for the locks throughout the mansion, and then ordered all the locks undone throughout the house while locking everything in the bedroom. Next, Mwamba overrode the locking codes and replaced them with his own so that they could get into the bedroom when they needed. Finally, before shutting the system down, passwords irrevocably altered, he disabled all communications transmissions. Although this would eventually alert the division command of the problem, it would go undetected until morning, and in the meantime prevent the General from sending any distress calls in case he were to wake and find himself locked in. Hopefully, he wouldn’t even notice them enter.

Mwamba and Wayland hadn’t survived this long on hopes and wishes.

Twenty: Last Supper

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He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

–Benjamin Franklin

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2033 Congo River Valley

“Now, boy, you choose one of two fates,” a bowl of the oily soup was set in front of him, “to choose the first you must feed with the rest of us. I know the swill looks inedible,” a stiff grunt from the bloated cook, “but it is much worse than mere poor cuisine, in this stew is your entire village, and I mean this in both the metaphorical and literal sense of the term.” Mwamba began to retch, but he choked back his gags and gave them nothing.

“You remember your dear grandmother only a few hours ago being butchered? Well, a few more of your tribal kin are in this stew, and with the mighty bounty we secured from your village my army will feed for the rest of the week.

“So, in order to accept the first fate, you will eat as my men eat, eat from the blood and flesh of your own people.”

Mwamba interrupted Dingane suddenly, “just tell me what I have to do to kill you, monster.” The steely reserve of the mere child took Dingane off guard while also reinforcing that this was indeed the person who would inherit his power. He would still have to work, and suffer, for it.

“If you eat of this stew then you will take your first step to becoming one of us, you will live as one of us, suffer as one of us, hunt as one of us. I will make you feel the limits of human suffering, as well as teach you how to inflict that suffering on others. If you choose not to eat it, then I will have to…” His voice trailed off as the juice from the soup trailed down Mwamba’s chin. He had made his choice, made it so eagerly, this was certainly the one, he had finally found his ultimate student, and enemy.

Eightteen: Silent Night. . .

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Angelina had gotten a couple of hours of sleep, but nightmares kept her from any real rest. Finally she decided to make her rounds and check on the children. The night was cold and damp, the old house moaned as the bitter winter winds beat against its artificial shell. The first room was dark and warm from the rusty radiator in the corner, and all six of the children were in their beds, one was moaning slightly from a dream, but it didn’t seem that there was any need to wake the child, Lisa, who was probably just playing catch or tag or the like in her sleep. The second bedroom, although smaller, was also safe and sound, and the three children who shared it were all quietly tucked in, although Arnie noticed Angelina’s presence and began to whine slightly as she entered. After stroking his head for a moment he went back to sleep, and seemed content enough in his dream world to be left alone again. Only one more room to go, Angelina told herself, and it sounds pretty quiet, hopefully he’s actually getting some sleep… hopefully.

Seventeen: Tightening the Noose

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2052 Old Germany

The house was close, Mwamba could feel their target, his life-force was strong; it would not be an easy objective. The compound was set on about 40 acres of land on a hill at the edge of the city, giving the position a natural vantage point over the countryside around it. The air was thick and the darkness heavy, giving the Reckoners the advantage they needed to avoid detection as they crawled up the hillside. There was no light coming from the city save for the bursts of punctuated gunfire in the distance, and the steady drum of artillery miles away to the north, faintly lighting the horizon with the warm glow of their explosions.

The first gate had posed little challenge to the two executioners, as there was only a mere squad of six guns waiting for them there. The men were good, they knew what they were doing, well paid killers. On the other hand, the Reckoners killed for something other than money, and they would not be stopped so easily.

No one in the camp even knew that the guards at the gate were dead. Mwamba and Wayland had waited in the darkness outside the gate for nearly six hours listening to the chatter on the intercoms, and had discerned from all the banter exactly when the guards would be changed and when station check-ins were to occur. The guards that were dead were fresh on their shift, a seeming disadvantage since they would be awake and fresh for the fight. However, the shift change meant that there wouldn’t be a station check for at least thirty minutes to an hour, since the shift wouldn’t need to be checked on so soon after a change. They would be fresh and awake, why would they need to be checked on? It was an unwritten rule, one that the guards had adopted out of laziness rather than discipline. Nothing ever happened this far outside of town, the battle was way to the north and except for the very irregular attack on the perimeter, usually just peasant rioter rabble, there was little to fear that six armed men couldn’t easily take care of.

That unwritten rule meant two things, first that the Reckoners had at least thirty minutes before the dead men would be noticed, and second that thirty minutes was more than enough time for the Reckoners to kill every living person in the camp.

The blueprints of the fortified mansion were invoked from the back of Mwamba’s mind as he silently led the way between infantry stations. Each station, five in total, held a six man squad. The gate was the only station that was really on its toes, the station that mattered, since its distress signal was supposed to alert all other stations to trouble. It took almost no effort for the Reckoners to burst in to each station, kicking in the metal doors on the back of the bunker, always left unlocked due to idleness or disrepair, and to kill everyone inside within thirty seconds. Six minutes had passed since the guards at the gate were dispatched, and already the entire platoon was dead except for the three squads currently off rotation sleeping in the barracks, and the pair of guards sitting in the house manning the radio and internet uplink equipment. Of the three squads in the barracks, one was showering since they had just been relieved from gate duty, one was playing poker, one member of which was in the bathroom when Bludgeon snapped his neck, and the final was off rotation and sound asleep. Mwamba and Wayland had no problem murdering unarmed and even unconscious men, because they knew what kind of men these were, and the monster who they worked for.

Sixteen: Mwamba's Inaugural Feast

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Let them hate, so long as they fear.

-Accius

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“Now, boy, you have heard enough to know with what you are being faced with. Come, we shall have some supper, yes?”

The statement, although sounding like a question, was much more imperative than Mwamba sensed, but he knew enough not to disturb the will of Dingane. The two of them walked through the open door and out into the sunlight of the early evening, vicious smoke arose from the camp as dozens of fires were being started. In the distance a group of soldiers had gathered around a bonfire in a field and were obviously drunk and having loud merriments.

Fingers loosely coiled around Mwamba’s neck, Dingane led him to a large tented structure in the midst of the makeshift buildings. In the center of the tent was the obese butcher that Mwamba had seen from the window, and in front the of monstrous man was a huge cast iron kettle, spherical, about a meter wide, set upon a bed of hot coals. Steam arose from the stew and made the air thick with the smell of harsh spices and sickly flavors. About thirty or forty soldiers were scattered throughout the giant mess hall among a couple dozen tables and benches. The beastly chef stirred the giant kettle with a long carved wooden spoon, about the size of a shovel. After a few moments, he scooped out some of the contents and slapped it into a bucket at his feet.

Dingane forced Mwamba to a table near to the cook, and called out to the surrounding crowds, “Everyone, it is time for this young man to choose whether he accepts my challenge or whether we feast on his flesh!” Although the old man had only spoken in whispers before, the true depths of the power of his voice now echoed out, and the entire camp went silent for but a moment.

Fifteen: The Tale of Dingane

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2033 Congo River Valley

“So, boy, what do you know about your grandmother?” Dingane slid across the room, coming to rest in an old arm chair whose wood had been partially eaten by worms. At one time the chair had likely cast an air of regality, but now it was a twisted and warped version of its former self, complete with ranting lunatic.

“You think me crazy, yes?”

Mwamba was startled by the old man’s keen responses, although it was too subtle to be sure, he felt as though his mind were open to the old man in a sinister way. Dingane sighed deeply and looked up at the ceiling, the veins in his neck bulging with age and hypertension. Given the chance, Mwamba tensed his muscles, ready to run out the door to freedom.

Still looking up at the sagging wood of the ceiling, “Don’t even think about trying to escape, the fact remains that the camp has over a hundred armed men at my beck, you have no idea where you are, and you have no chance of successfully navigating yourself out of the jungle, despite your well trained skills learned from your grandmother. Yes, I know of your training, of the power of the ancestors, of the choice to refine that power into something that heals or harms, yes I know of it too well.

“You see, your grandmother and I are not that different in one sense, and that is because we both start with the same basic formula, the only difference lies in our personal choices. Your grandmother chose to serve Life, I chose Death. Each is a noble calling in its own right, but so too are the two companions equally foes, constantly struggling against one another. The same principles that your grandmother learned, and in turn taught to you, have been handed down in our people for thousands of years.”

Our people?

The old man paused a moment, searching out Mwamba’s eyes with piercing intensity. “Yes, boy, we are related in the broadest sense of the term, but of course, I am part of a generation long dead, whereas you are the newest addition to our line.

“Our people were once a proud and successful race, having carved out our existence amongst the harsh jungle; we were a small but prosperous nation, living off of the abundant resources of the deep jungle while also being afforded natural protection against aggressors. For centuries our people, the Upemba, lived in harmony with nature, and it was precisely that harmony that kept us safe from outsiders. I changed all of that.”

Mwamba felt as though he had once again entered a hallucinatory dream-like state where the realities of the world were bent and altered at the whim of horrors like the withered figure before him. Dingane smiled a gap toothed grin that tore at Mwamba like the talons of a vulture rending the flesh from the dead.

When Dingane spoke again, he spoke in the secret tongue that Mwamba’s grandmother had taught to him as a child, another aspect that both confirmed the link with Dingane while concurrently disgusting Mwamba that this creature could utter something that he considered so sacred.

“Yes, boy, I too know the ancient language, dead and forgotten by the world. It is only a fossil on your lips, something resurrected by old witches and youthful protégés, but I knew a time when our tongue was spoken by an entire nation, a tribe of proud and powerful people. Lost now it is, lost to the winds of history, but we can speak it here, now, in the long shadows cast across the face of the planet by the pride-born horrors of mankind’s darkest hours. Come and listen, boy, listen to the inheritance that you have been given, so that you too may make your choice…”

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“I was once a great prince of the Luba Empire, beloved by the people I ruled; I was my mother’s favorite, although I was not the eldest and therefore had no claim to the throne. This was not a problem at first, when I was but a boy, what did power mean to me then? Nothing, all I cared for were the pleasures of my childhood, and the pleasures of the flesh afforded to those of royal blood. Who knows what fate would have befallen our people had I lived my life differently, or had I never been born? But that is not for us to wonder about, the course of history has been set, and I shall pay my debts when the chill of death finally consumes even I.

“You see, at birth I was chosen among my people to study the magical arts in order to join the ranks of the Mbudye, the “men of memory,” those who learned to harness the power of the ancestors, a great honor indeed, and one that was never bestowed lightly. However, I know now that I was not entirely prepared for such a responsibility, for my path would soon stray.

“I too was raised as you have been, given the secrets of how to refine the powers of nature, how to make poisons or cures from the same plants, how to manipulate the elements and pierce the minds of men. I was taught the tremendous responsibility of such power, of the threat and lure of the darkness, hungry and lurking just beneath the fabric of existence. The high sorcerer of our court, Kelile, watched my progress avidly, awaiting the day that I would ascend to replace him as High Mbudye and take my place beside my brother, Mamello, who was destined for the throne.

“I suppose since your grandmother was never able to finish your training that you were never taught to fear the Shadow arts and their followers, no?” Mwamba shook his head slightly, “I figured as much, you were not ready for such a warning anyway, it would have had no effect before this day, for you would not have understood the power of the Shadow or its lure before now.

“When I was a small child I had heard tales of wicked sorcerers, damned and consumed by the Shadow arts, who lived deep in the jungle, deeper than any Upemba dared to venture. These damned priests preyed on the living and were rumored to take any who went too deep into the jungle as their slaves. Although as a child I believed these stories to be true, I became petulant as an adolescent and despite the further warnings of my teachers I decided to find out whether it was true for myself.

“At this point in my life I had become quite proficient, and was told quite often that I was the most promising student in generations to take up the priestly arts, but all that any of this did was to pave the way for my fall with the precious mortar of pride. Deep into the jungle I wandered, further into the darkness than I had ever gone before, entire days passed, and with each passing night I felt the lure of the Shadow draw me further onward, towards what I knew not. It was he who called me; he who had been calling me all along, it was Tumalogo, the immortal wizard, the ruler of the dark, and inheritor of the legacy of the Shadow.

“When I first encountered Tumalogo it was in battle, as I had come so far in order to demonstrate my power to my people by returning with the head of the evil creature. I was young and naïve, thinking that my scant power could possibly overcome one as ancient and powerful as he. Yet fate would not have me die that day, as Tumalogo had been calling me the entire time, and it was he who had whispered in my ear at night that I should prove myself by hunting him, it was he who had stroked my ego and provoked my journey, he had been waiting for me. The further that I strayed into the jungle, the more powerful he became, as I was too far from the source of my strength, and he was in his own element.

“As the stories had said, he was a monstrous being, unlike any person I had ever laid eyes on. His skin was pale and ashen, having the look of the grave on it, while his features were sharp and predatory. Of course it would not be for many years that I would discover the full history and heritage of my new master, but that is a tale best reserved for another time, if you live long enough to hear it. Despite my best efforts, his power was immense and I stood no chance of rivaling him.

“Kneeling before him, the angry sounds of the jungle around me, bleeding and begging for my life, I came to the sudden recognition of my own mortality. This man held my life in his hands, he could have ended my existence then and there, but he didn’t. Instead of killing me, he incapacitated me and took me with him back to his lair deep in the jungle. It was there that I learned the true meaning of suffering, and also where I learned that the agony of life can be worse even than the sweet embrace of death. But death was kept from me, and Tumalogo crafted my spirit to his own will, showing me

the extremes that pain had to offer, as well as giving me the ability to bend the suffering of others to my own use.

“Most importantly, Tumalogo taught me to hate, first him, and then all life other than my own. I learned the most powerful secret: the extension of my own life by means of the pain and suffering of others. I became a harbinger of doom, at first I was chained in the depths of his torture chambers, kept company only by my own screams, but as I was crafted into the powerful being you see before you now, I was gradually allowed out.

“By this point my life before Tumalogo grew faint and distant, hazy as though it were a dream and not lived experience, I learned to scorn the privilege of my royal father, and my brother became a target for my hateful jealousy. As absolute disdain for the living became ingrained deeper and deeper in my psyche, I was released at night to stalk the living and make them my victims.

“I distinctly remember my first… she must have been only about fourteen years old, showing small lumps beneath her tunic, barely a woman yet. She was down at the river’s edge fetching a pale of water for her sickly mother who had taken ill with a fever. I could smell the stench of death lingering about their house, and I could tell that her efforts were being wasted. Of course, I had only a fraction of the power which I now possess, and so I approached her from behind, knocking her out with a rock that I found nearby. It took all that I had to get her back to Tumalogo, and gleefully I entered the ancient tomb that he dwelled in, displaying my victim proudly, my first prize. When she regained consciousness I was not sure what to do, and had it not been for Tumalogo to remind me of my duty I might have faltered and let her escape. Like the adolescent that I was, I clumsily tortured her, often rendering her unconscious from the pain, but with the careful tutoring of my monstrous mentor, I began to unlock the terrible suffering of her most tightly guarded inner secrets, and her soul opened its precious flower to me, and I gladly drank of its nectar.

“She was only the first of many victims, and with each one I unlocked new ways to twist their spirits and squeeze from them the most distilled suffering as a grape is pressed and fermented into wine. Gradually entire years passed by, and my life as a royal prince was eventually all but forgotten by me as I became drank from the splendid suffering of my victims.

“Yet while I might have forgotten my previous life, they did not forget me. While I was being taught the arts of the Shadow deep in the darkest heart of the jungle, my family continued to search for me. As time passed, they grew disheartened, believing me to have fallen victim to the primal jungle, but little did they know that I was becoming one of the creatures of the night about which they whispered guarded warnings. No one had any idea of my true fate; no one, that is, except for Kelile, my old mentor and the only one powerful enough to still detect a trace of my life lingering in the distance darkness.

“While everyone else gave up hope, even going so far as to have a tomb erected for me in the hall of our ancestors, he could feel that I was still alive. Of course, he could also sense that my life force had been significantly altered, and greatly empowered by something dark and wicked. The prayers that he raised to the ancestors were intended to ease my suffering through the embrace of death; sadly, the ancestors chose to ignore his petitions and instead allowed me to return to my people a monster clothed as a prince.

“Eventually Tumalogo shared with me why he had chosen me, and hadn’t sucked my spirit dry like he taught me to do on so many of our victims. He had another purpose for me entirely, one that I readily accepted when it was shared with me.

“Tumalogo had not only taught me to hate him in order to make me stronger, he taught me to hate him so that I could complete my training. If I succeeded, my final act before succeeding him as the dark ruler of the jungle was to be his murder at my hands. I remember the exact night that he shared this with me, I had brought him another victim, and after we began torturing the unfortunate fellow he chained me up, as he was oft to do, and whipped me until my blood flowed freely from my scarred and torn back.

“Looking me square in the eyes, he asked ‘Do you hate me?’, I told him that I hated him more than anything on this whole planet, and he told me that was good, that I needed to harness that hatred, that it would make me strong, and give me the strength to finish my training.

“I demanded that he tell me what he meant, and between the lashes of the barbed whip, he hissed at me that if I wanted to become as powerful as he, I would have to destroy him.

“You see, the mere mortal death of one as powerful as he would squander the immense resources of power locked within his soul. Some Servants have even been known to be able to exit their bodies and inhabit the mortal coil of some unfortunate victim, although greatly weakened, the monster would live on.

“The death that Tumalogo quested me toward was the death of his soul.

“Immortality takes its toll, boy, and although we live on when all others die around us, eventually we tire from the sport of the living and choose to ascend to our rightful place among the dead. However, we are also bound to this planet by the very power that we have drawn from others, and this power prevents us from dying. Thus, for a Servant of the Shadow to be fully destroyed, his soul must become vulnerable so that another might absorb that energy.

“That, he told me, was why he had chosen me, to succeed him in every aspect of the word. He had grown tired, withered by the constant struggle, but he knew that he needed someone to completely destroy him if he were to move on from this world, and so he had chosen me, he felt my power as I was raised as a Mbudye, and as I said before it was he who lured me to him as a fly to the web. But rather than simply drinking of me, he weaved and twisted me into a likeness of himself; he had taken the fly and made it a spider.

“But, he warned me, I will not simply let you kill me, you must conquer me as we conquer our victims, you must face me in the darkest depths of suffering and show me how you have conquered my very existence. At that moment you will know all that I know, and absorb the wisdom from a million lifetimes. That is, if you succeed.

“You see, boy, one bound to the Shadow never commits suicide, nor does he simply allow his enemy to conquer him, this would squander the vast power that he has accumulated. For the victory to be true, it must be a real battle, and so the prize that he dangled before my nose had a powerful string attached to it, and that was the ancient beast before me.

“At first I had no idea how long it would take to overcome him, and I imagine that he did not think me stupid enough to try so quickly, much less to succeed.

Fourteen: They Never Had a Chance

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2052 Old Germany

“This is a restricted zone… all non-Durenberger personnel are prohibited from inhabiting this area. Come out with your hands up and you will not be harmed.” The loud speaker on the tank squalled as the microphone clicked off. Gears in the great mechanical monster whined as the turret rotated to face the building that Mwamba and Wayland were in. A half dozen infantry scattered into the surrounding area, taking up firing positions ready for a firefight. Everyone waited, the Syndicate militia waited to see if the two soldiers would emerge from the building or not, the Reckoners waited to see if they would have to kill the entire squad or not.

A shell was loaded into the chamber of the tank, Mwamba heard it click into place and a firing pin set behind it. At his feet, the communicators from the dead soldiers squawked with tinny voices calling for status reports, reports that would never be answered, nor reissued.

Bludgeon came from an unexpected angle: above. Descending on the great metal behemoth like a mythic angel from the heavens, he hit the turret feet first, just hard enough to make an audible thud, but not hard enough for anyone to realize what just happened. Rolling off the top in one motion, it appeared at first that he had simply jumped onto the roof of the artillery turret and harmlessly rolled off, but Mwamba knew better.

Silence ducked around the corner to protect himself from the blast.

The tank crew never knew what hit them. The incendiary device that Wayland had carefully placed on the hatch went off. Only slightly larger than a football, the explosive was essentially an 8-inch diameter metal pipe, shut off at one end, and approximately ten inches long. The side that was not closed off by metal was encased with only a soft layer of stretched industrial plastic. Inside the device is a cocktail of high end explosives, and incendiary agents like magnesium, all of which is tightly wrapped in a thin sheet of copper. When ignited, the compound burns at about 2200 degrees Fahrenheit and will melt straight through a meter of solid reinforced steel plating like a warm knife cuts through butter. When attached to a vehicle like the tank that Bludgeon had doomed, the compound ignites any explosive rounds it comes into contact, causing the ammunition to discharge inside the confined space.

The device detonated, the tank shook violently, and suddenly a fireball of death came roaring out of the barrel of the mounted gun. The third floor of the structure disintegrated and the very foundation gave way from the sudden surge of stress. Mwamba darted through the doorway, cutting through a soldier who was just around the corner but had been trying to hide from the explosion. His throat exploded and shot an arc of blood that caught the late afternoon light and sparkled for a brief moment.

Across the street, Bludgeon rolled onto his feet and grappled with a soldier standing a few feet away from the smoking death box, and within two seconds time disarmed the man and snapped his neck like a chicken. The soldier’s squad mate swiveled around, assault rifle barking out a line of bullets arcing menacingly towards Wayland.

Bludgeon rolled to the side, bullets following close behind, but before the soldier could readjust his aim enough, he fell limply to the ground, a small dart embedded in his throat. Across the street, Mwamba swiftly reloaded his dart gun with another poisonous round and took down another soldier who was frozen with fear. Both of the Reckoners quickly scanned the area for more enemies, and finding none, hurried down the street in an effort to clear the area before more patrols were alerted by the rising column of smoke billowing out of the tank’s blown hatch.

Far in the distance, an alarm began to sound its shrill voice.

Thirteen: The Power of Death

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For what is it to die,

But to stand in the sun

and melt into the wind?

–Khalil Gibran

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2033 Congo River Valley

Edjembe’s return to the room gave Mwamba just enough time to rush away from the window and its portal into the landscapes of Hell, although he could feel that both the old man and Jorge let him go at last, lest he collapse from the shock of the scene.

Edjembe looked like a ghost, and had apparently become quite sober since setting foot in the basement. Having exchanged glances with the boss-man which released them from further duties, they rushed out of the door, pay slips in hand.

“You want to know what I pay them with, yes?”

Silence.

The old man seemed to relish the absence of words, in the hard eyes that were hazy with rage and violent suffering. “Well, there is much you will come to learn in this place, much.

“I have been searching for you Mwamba, searching for a very long time.”

At first Mwamba was unsure what to do; the dynamic had suddenly shifted, and while he wasn’t sure what changed, he didn’t like it. Somehow it felt better to be a random victim than it did to be a target. Being a target made it personal.

“Me?”

“Yes and no. Not you as in you in particular, Mwamba Okonkwo, the inheritor of the genes that your mother and father donated, born these eleven years ago in a dirty inner-city hospital. No, not you in particular, Mwamba, but yes, you.

“My name is Dingane, and I am quite ancient, Mwamba. I have seen entire generations pass like leaves on the wind, I have seen dynasties rise and fall, empires created and crumbled, great leaders and terrible dictators live and die. Do you know how I have done this boy? Death.”

The old man began to study Mwamba anew, searching over his entire body looking for something hidden beneath the frail flesh, some inner quality that he required so desperately. Turning again towards the splotchy light filtering through the partially obstructed window, he studied the scene developing outside. “What do you know of your grandmother, boy?”

Yet again Mwamba was caught off guard, this man knew too much about him, and furthermore what did he really know about his grandmother? Even worse, why should this evil old bastard even know a thing about her?

“I take your confused pause as implied recognition of the fact that you know little to nothing about her. I am going to suppose that you believe her to be your real grandmother? Yes? Well, if by real you mean biological then no, I’m afraid she has no genetic relationship to you. If, however, by real you mean the woman who raised you and was your protector and guide, then yes, she is your real grandmother.

“Do you want to know who she really was, boy?” The question seemed oddly phrased, as though a great deal of weight and turmoil lay at the end of the answer Dingane was about to give. Mwamba was not sure what he was accepting if he decided to listen to the creature’s deceitful tongue, but his curiosity was peaked and although not accepting the information, neither did he reject it.

“Mmm, yes, you want to know, you do, but you are weak and know not what power your own grandmother had, what she was capable of… what you are capable of.”

Twelve: A quick death

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From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

–Edvard Munch

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2052 Old Germany

Snow crunched beneath thick-soled combat boots; a hidden ice slick squeaked and caused the soldier to lose balance for only a second.

Unfortunately for that particular soldier, a second was all it took for his life to come to an abrupt end. It had been a few days since Mwamba’s machete had tasted blood, but its sanguine appetite was at last appeased in this most sullen of environs.

With proper use, the simple farming tool commonly known as the machete can be used with deadly precision. Designed primarily as an agricultural implement used to harvest fruits and produce, its blade is weighted at the tip so that it can be swung with minimal effort and maximum effect. Unlike blades designed for military use, which are intended for quick thrusts and parries, the machete operates on pure momentum, and when used as a weapon, the weight can be used to mutilate, or to kill, with a single blow.

Fortunately for that particular soldier, Mwamba’s blade met effortlessly with his throat, and he died within a few seconds.

A quick death.

A good death.

Falling to his knees, the soldier dropped the shotgun that he had been carrying, and collapsed onto the ground, engulfed momentarily by the steam rising from the warm blood.

As quickly as Mwamba had sprung from his hiding place, he ducked into another, just as a second soldier clamored through the doorway, locked and loaded.

While the first had died as a result of slipping on unseen ice, this particular human being met with his own ignominious end due to the shock of seeing his squad mate lying before him in a pool of blood. The red hues and warm scent overloaded his senses for but a moment, yet a moment too long.

Fortunately for this particular soldier, he instinctually swung the muzzle of his shotgun towards the shadow lunging from the darkness, finger tight on the trigger; although his mind was preoccupied, his muscle memory compensated.

Unfortunately for this particular soldier, having aimed his weapon at the Silence, he became a greater threat, and thus his right hand had to be severed from his arm before his world went dark from a cut throat.

His finger still clung to the trigger, and although his grip went limp with the removal of his hand, as the weapon hit the floor the pressure from the taut finger was enough to discharge the chamber.

The pellets from the round embedded themselves harmlessly in the wall, and the world suddenly fell silent; the shot rang out, echoing down the street, the lumbering machine mere meters away jerked to a halt, and every single soldier in the patrol froze, muscles tight and ready for a fight.

The silence had been broken, and the fate of the rest of the squad sealed with it.

Eleven: Circle of Death

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2033 Congo River Valley

“The next move is yours, boy.” The old man’s voice cut through the air with the precision of a scalpel, and it sent a chill down Mwamba’s young spine.

The two men also occupying the room seemed suddenly forgotten, and they felt that they were no longer wanted or needed.

“Uhh, boss? What should we do with the dead one?”

“Take it to the basement; just leave it in my lair.” Hairs raised on Mwamba’s neck at the insolence and graven disrespect for the dead displayed by the old man, referring to his best friend as an it. Edjembe didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the idea, but his hesitation was only momentary. Repositioning Lokomo’s limp body in his arms as though the corpse were a sack of potatoes, he cautiously crept over to the door where the withered old man had entered the room. Disappearing through the portal, his lumbering weight caused the floorboards to groan in misery as waterlogged wood was stressed by his overweight body.

Again moving with too much dexterity, the living corpse of a man slid across the floor without a sound, and began to gaze out the window.

“Smell that, boy?” Thus far Mwamba had been doing his best not to smell the air too much. “That’s the smell of life mixed with death.” The camp buzzed and the noises from outside grew more acute in Mwamba’s tender ears. “Life mixed with death, such a precarious combination, but of course, all life is mixed inevitably with death. Life depends on it really, life survives for it’s bitter shining moment only through the power afforded by the death of other life. Think for a moment, boy, when was the last time that you ate something that had not once been alive?”

Mwamba was caught off-guard by the question; what was the old fool driving at?

“Think about it, boy: you eat a chicken, it obviously had once been alive. But even if you are a vegetarian, do not think that you don’t take the life force of others in order to sustain your own. Even the yam that you ate for breakfast was once alive, was once another living thing, just like yourself. Yet you ate it, you took its life energy and you absorbed it, in this case through the lining of your stomach, but regardless you took its life and made it your own. All life does this, continues this cycle. One dies so another may live, it is the natural order.

“Even plants, the most inane of life forms in a certain sense, survive off the dead remains of other plants and animals. Beneath your feet at every moment of every day you walk over the deceased remnants of billions of creatures and life-forms. Yes, boy, the dirt between your toes at this very moment is a composition of untold numbers of particles from the dead. The life force contained in that magical black and brown mixture of decomposing organisms is what gives the life for the grain to grow, the trees to blossom, and ultimately allows for us to survive as well. Death; death is what grants life, and without it paradoxically life could not sustain itself, because only through death can life be furthered. Just as light is understood only when considered with its opposite, darkness, so too life is only made possible through the cycle of death.

“Humans have a problematic position on the subject, however, for somewhere along the way humanity came to believe that life itself is a thing to be worshipped, to be praised, while death is relegated to an immoral monster that takes the weak and the old. We spend our entire lives running from it, and yet constantly having to rely on it. We must rely on the once living, the deceased flesh of plants and animals in order to survive. We cannot artificially manufacture life energy, it must be harvested from other living things. This is natural.”

The old man paused for a moment, realizing how little Mwamba was even listening. “What is running through your head, boy? Are you imagining what your grandmother’s corpse must look like, all of that blood matted in her hair, lying there on the ground? Well, you need not worry, you see, for she will be given a… proper burial. Come and see for yourself.”

Although lagging a moment, Jorge realized that the old man was beckoning the two of them over to him and his view out the window. Edjembe could still be heard rustling around in the basement causing boards throughout the building to moan in protest. The light filtering through the partially boarded up window was blinding at first; Mwamba hadn’t realized how dark it was in the room, as though it were illuminated by some unnatural and equally undetectable light source.

The scene outside was just as he expected, muddy, dirty, sweaty, and bloody. A group of people were bustling about, coming to and fro, unloading the line of military vehicles that were parked in the clearing in front of the old plantation house. The distance couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty meters, but it seemed unnaturally remote, removed as though he were peering into a an alternate dimension inhabited entirely by illusory phantoms. Perhaps it was simply the difficult angle combined with the poor visibility caused by the intense black smoke that permeated the entire camp, but it took a moment for Mwamba to make out what was going on.

What he had at first mistaken for bags of loot were actually human bodies.

Why did they take the dead with them? he wondered.

Although Mwamba was largely naïve to the world, it didn’t make sense to him for the raiders to have taken the bodies with them, what possible use could…

An immensely large man, towering over the rest of the workers, staggered over to the pile of bodies that had been unloaded from the truck convoy and picked out one of them. The man was a living nightmare, mostly bald with a scattering of greasy scraggly hair patches, wearing a white butcher’s uniform that looked as though it had never been washed, covered in a variety of blood stains ranging from fresh crimson to deep rusty brown. Plucking a body from the pile with one hand as though it were a ham, the massive beast of a man threw the body over his shoulder and waddled over to a metal water tower that was precariously perched a little further away.

A thick burst of smoke obstructed the view for a moment, and Mwamba tried to turn away, but suddenly the old monster’s icy hands were iron around his jaw, forcing him to watch. The smoke cleared, and Mwamba saw clearly through the haze as the towering figure lifted the body high up, and secured it to a hanging butcher’s hook that was chained to the underside of the water tower. Although the distance and visibility should have kept the corpse anonymous, suddenly Mwamba’s vision became startlingly acute, and though the clarity lasted but an instant, he recognized with full certainty the frail figure of his grandmother on the hook as the macabre butcher walked away for a moment to gather his implements.

Struggling to turn away, to close his eyes, to do anything that would prevent the grisly scene from unfolding, Mwamba was frozen in place, held tight by the ancient monster’s steely fingers.

“Yes… good… you see your beloved grandmother… you see clearly now…” The butcher returned to the dangling body and began to feel what was once Mwamba’s caretaker, the woman who had saved him and taught him everything he knew; he returned to feel her body for meat. A single fiery tear rolled down Mwamba’s terrified face, only to be caught by the leathery finger tip of the old man.

Given a moment’s respite from the ghastly scene, Mwamba watched as the skeletal figure carefully raised the tear drop to its withered lips. Closing its eyes, the monster savored the taste of the tear as though it were fine wine, adding only further to the terror of the world he had been plunged into. Mwamba was repulsed by the act but further disturbed by the very slight improvement in the color of the cheeks of the ancient creature.

“Mmm… yes…” the old man spoke between hissing breaths that echoed faintly of the viper, “you certainly have the fire of resistance, boy… yes… delicate and hopeful, you are exactly what I have been looking for.” Savagely wrenching Mwamba’s face back towards the scene of bloody carnage being committed only a stone’s throw away, the serpentine voice hissed in Mwamba’s tender ear, “Like I said boy, death mixed with life. The death of your grandmother gives life to me and my men.

“It’s the natural order of things you know.”

Ten: Encounter with a patrol

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The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

–Simon Weil

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“Report.”

The two men scurried from building to building; despite their size they made only a whisper of sound across the hardened ground, slithering like the late afternoon shadows that cloaked them. Picking a particularly well-shielded alley, they scaled a small fence and came to rest amongst frozen garbage. Wayland scanned the area and stood over Mwamba, guarding against any intrusive guests.

Seeing no movement and hearing only the whispers of the arctic wind blowing through the abandoned buildings, Silence responded, “Yes, Abidan, we have received the contact information from McKrougar; it seems that the Syndicates are being pitted against each other, of course we had already guessed as much. We have a series of leads, although I trust McKrougar’s gut about the recent rural genocides.”

“Good, very well done, Silence. Are you ready for the next stage of the operation?”

“Yes.”

“Engage.”

Abidan’s tiny metallic voice cut off inside the transparent ear piece and the two men paused for a moment to ensure that there was still no movement, and then they scaled back over the small fence and continued their journey down the desolate street.

Mwamba froze; without hesitation Wayland stopped mid-step, both men straining to listen to the secrets the wind carried to them. Nothing… a gut feeling perhaps… no, it was something.

The sheets of ice encasing the perpetual shadows along the street began to shake ever so slightly, and in the distance a metallic whine became audible.

“Shit, patrol.” Without another word, both men darted to their left, and jumped through an empty window-frame, rolling across the debris that littered the floors with only a minimum of sound. Sliding across the floor like a stalking tiger, Mwamba climbed up to the base of the window so that he could barely peek out without much movement. Meanwhile, Wayland disappeared around a corner, his footsteps crunching lightly up a hidden set of stairs.

Gradually the building began to vibrate, icicles shook loose and sank into the deep snow drifts, sometimes shattering on frozen cars or burned out masses of refuse. Mwamba waited in silence, ready at the slightest hesitation to spring into action, his hand tightly gripping something deep within his white leather trench coat. Upstairs the soft rumble of Bludgeon’s movements grew silent, and the air became thick with tension. Something was about to happen.

Carefully peering over the broken window ledge with one eye, Mwamba scanned the street and finally caught a glimpse of the mechanical beast lumbering towards them. Was it after them, or were they simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? The sound of its powerful engine revved deeper, and the entire building shook violently as the massive tank crushed an abandoned car beneath its treads. A scattering of infantry moved ahead of it, scanning alleys and checking doorways. They were moving slower than usual however, they were looking for something, or someone.

With deadly precision, Mwamba lowered himself from the window and crawled across the floor on his belly, hiding himself in the deep shadows concealing most of the room from the lazy afternoon sun. Beneath his breath he swore, he didn’t want to kill these men, but he knew he would if he needed to, and the next move was theirs. As he positioned himself carefully behind a warped and twisted old armoire, his machete came out of its sheath with a bone-chilling whine of sharpened metal against leather.

The next move was theirs.

Nine: The Devil in his eyes

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Silence is the true friend that never betrays.

–Confucius

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2052 Old Germany

“So where do we go from here?”

An awkward silence hung in the air, only punctuated by the raspy breathing of the child in the next room. The two stood in the darkness, facing each other although both peering off into the uncertain night.

“What can we do? We aren’t shrinks, that boy has problems…”

“Angie, we knew that when we agreed to take him in, imagine what that boy has been through, imagine the horrors he’s seen. Of course he has problems, that’s why he’s here. That’s why they are all here.”

She wasn’t sure what to say, her heart reached out to the tender youth, she wanted to embrace him and tell him that it was all going to be okay, that the night would be filled with dreams of childhood innocence, but she knew better. She had seen something, something deep within his soul that had made her squirm. It wasn’t as if she was unaccustomed to having troubled children around, she was a veteran in a certain sense. Besides that, she herself had been a troubled youth once.

“I’m scared of him, Paul… scared of… what’s inside him.”

“What?!” The gaunt man tried to keep his deep voice at a whisper level, but his voice trembled. “What do you mean scared of him? He hasn’t done a thing, Angelina. He’s the victim here, for God’s sake.”

She knew. He didn’t have to remind her. She knew. She had seen it, if but for a moment, she had seen. She knew better than most, she knew what it was like to be the victim of unspeakable violence. Just because she knew what it was like didn’t mean that she knew what to do about it.

“It isn’t him, Paul, it’s not that poor helpless little boy lying in a pool of his own sweat and tears in that room… it’s just… I don’t know, Paul.” Suddenly she had reached the edge, the jagged edge of the abyss where all emotions flowed freely and without hesitation. Her eyes swelled with tears that she could no longer hold back. Folding herself into Paul’s embrace, she surged with a deluge of weeping that she could only keep quiet with the last of her strength.

“What is it that has you so scared?”

Choking back tears and speaking in abbreviated bursts, “I… I looked… into his eyes… Paul… his nightmares… his soul… I could see into them… into … into the darkness… into the… suffering…”

“What did you see?”

“The Devil.”

Eight: The Silence grows

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To be thoroughly conversant with a man's heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.

– Edgar Allen Poe

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2033 Congo River Valley

Mwamba won, even if it was a small victory, he had won. He didn’t let the old man in, didn’t let his stare penetrate the recesses of his soul. He was strong, strong for his grandmother, for his village, for the parents he never knew, strong for himself. The man pushed harder, eyes coming to life with an unnatural haze that found pleasure in the challenge that Mwamba was giving him.

But he was strong.

It was a small victory, but it was a victory nonetheless.

This man was responsible for the deaths of everyone he had ever known. But Mwamba was not dead, and neither was the monster responsible.

Not yet.

The burning wall of resistance the formed between the two figures suddenly made the old man realize that he had found what he was looking for, that it was the spirit of this child that he had killed so many for, had razed villages, had brutally murdered all who had opposed him, for so long. And for what?

For this.
This… spirit, this fire, this was what he required, what he needed, what he had committed so much unspeakable brutality for.

For this.

The silence.

Seven: The boy that survived

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Nightmares, bloody, grotesque nightmares. Every night the boy had them. Sitting by his bed, Angelina shook her head as she watched his pale figure struggle and fight against the specters of the night. Breathing heavily, the child strained to speak in his sleep, only able to gurgle out some broken guttural syllables. What sort of monster would do this to a child? What had happened to him? Every night since Peter had come into her protection she would watch over him until he fell into the depths of dark delta sleep, his mind shutting down almost completely. Tonight was a particularly bad one, usually he settled down by this time. She was conflicted about whether to wake him, which she ultimately decided against. Although coming back to the physical world again would dispel the demons that Peter wrestled with in his dreams, it would also start the process over again and mean that he would be plagued with more hours of relentless nocturnal torture.

Peter rolled over on his side, scratching the sheets with strained fingers, “maa-maa…” Angelina sparked to life, had he just spoken? “Maa-maa!” He was starting to thrash about, and his face was strained with distress. “Ahhhhhhhh! Maa-maaaaaa!” His screams echoed in the silent house, and Angelina finally grabbed him by his shoulders, trying to ease his convulsions, and bring him back to consciousness as peaceably as she could.

“Peter? Peter? It’s okay, Peter, you’re safe! Wake up, honey, it’s me Angelina. You’re safe here with me.”

Peter’s eyes flew open as he screamed, and for a split second she could see into the depths of his suffering. A flame ignited behind his pupils that seemed borne on the very crests of the seas of fire. With every fiber of her being Angelina struggled back, but the flame flickered on, casting its wicked shadows on the walls of her soul, scorching the very interior of her being.

As soon as it had begun, it ended.

Peter cried and sobbed into his pillow.

Angelina was silent.

Six: Meeting with Otis

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Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

-Charles De Gaulle

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2052 Old Germany

“Where is the child now, Otis?”

“Well, like I said, the Durenbergers found him, although they don’t really have much need of him since he’s not communicating, so they dumped him on some poor schmucks in the city who run a half-way house for kids, the Lebendsgarten home for the orphans. It’s located in the eastern section of the city, outside the conflict zone and behind the Durenberger blockade. Why are you interested in him anyway?”

Mwamba thought on the question for a moment, carefully constructing his answer, knowing full well that Otis was an informant for many beyond the Reckoners, and as such he was always collecting information. Although it may seem innocuous to know a person’s life story, or even hints of it, when you have more enemies than friends, it’s better that nothing is known about your past. The past has a way of reliving itself, of ever seeking to once again burst forth in the present. Mwamba wanted the past to stay there, and thus chose his words carefully.

“Listen, you’re a smart guy, Otis, you put things together in such a way that information goes from irrelevant to pertinent, that’s why you do what you do.” A compliment, good way to start off. Already the fine-tuned radar in Otis’ head was becoming numb with the swelling of pride. “So if you say there’s a connection, even if you can’t explain it yet, then I think it’s worth looking into. Now if there is such a connection, then whoever has been burning these towns could be the very same who kidnapped the Durenberger kids. If so, then by finding out what happened to this kid, I might be able to find out what happened to them, got it?” Otis smiled at the indignant remark, comforting himself instead with the pleasure that it was his suggestion and gut feeling that Silence decided to follow, his. Although he didn’t give two shits about Crimson Reckoning or their weird philosophies, he did know Silence well enough, and knew what a stone-cold killer the man was, and so respect from him was something rarely given, and he took it as the infrequent honor that it was.

“Bludgeon? I think we have what we came for, enjoy the fruits of your labor MacKrouger, we’ll be in touch.”

Although the massive Briton had been casually snoozing while the two men conversed, as soon as Mwamba spoke he silently and deftly opened the door and the duo darted out without another word. Otis pulled the door shut, and saw the two of them disappear into another abandoned building, leaving only a set of footprints behind.

Sitting back again in the plush leather seats of the limo, Otis gruffly whispered to himself, “I hope I never have to tango with those fuckers.”

Five: Welcome to the Jungle

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The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.

-Herodotus

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2033 Congo River Valley

Mwamba wasn’t sure where he was. Fear’s steely talons gripped his adolescent mind as he lay in the sweaty, salty rear of a Jeep, eyes covered, mouth gagged, hands bound. Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought that he was lying next to a corpse. Something wet and warm had soaked his pants; whoever the body had once belonged to had been thrown carelessly into the bed of the truck just as he had been. The only difference between them was that the force of the impact had cracked the other occupant’s skull, thus accounting for the warm sticky stain crawling up the fabric of his pant leg.

The men driving were obviously drunk, the thick smell of cheap whiskey floated on the wafting air as they spoke to each other and haphazardly navigated the vehicle over rough paths. The sound of other vehicles told Mwamba that he was in a convoy of sorts, and he guessed that he had been taken prisoner by them, but the reason that he was kept alive he couldn’t imagine. One of the men belched loudly, the smell mixed with the odor of blood and the thought of being bound and gagged next to the deceased remains of someone he had grown up around made him retch. Unfortunately for Mwamba, the cloth that was tightly wound around his mouth forced him to swallow the vomit. Unpleasant certainly, but a better fate than choking on it and sharing the one-way ticket out of this cursed existence with the traveling companion next to him.

A new stench entered Mwamba’s keen nostrils: the smell of smoke and burning flesh. So too new sounds gradually became discernible over the drumming of the Jeep’s engine, of people talking and shouting. All the voices were male that he could make out, and all had the malevolent edge shared by his own drunken captors. Suddenly the vehicle came to a halt, having driven over a more substantial bump and sliding slightly as though across a muddy slick. One of the men cursed.

“Fuck man, did you run over that goat?”

“Ehh, whatever, tell Briggs to get over here and get it cooking so the meat doesn’t go foul, I’ll deal with booking the new… arrivals.”

“Right, fuck you, mate. I go and clean up your road kill why you go collect the bounty? Fuck off!”

“Oh well, Briggs will just have to figure it out after we share the bounty on these two!” The Jeep lurched forward again at the hands of the drunken compatriots, and drove on for another few hundred feet through the stifling air of the camp, thick with pungent and questionable odors.

Cloth doors slapped shut, and the rear gate was lowered with a tangible thud. The body next to Mwamba began to be shaken by one of the men. “Get up you little piece of shit, get up now…” He must have found the pool of blood that had been silently spreading across Mwamba’s pant leg. “Oh wonderful, you killed the bloody little bastard! Hey, Edjemba, I’m talking to you, you prick! You killed this one, you drunken fool!” A barely audible fuck off sounded from a few feet away over the sound of public urination.

“Great, and what about you, you still all in one piece?” Rough calloused hands seized Mwamba and forced him to sit up. Seeing that he was still conscious and otherwise unharmed, the man untied the binds around his ankles and scooped him out of the Jeep, setting him on his feet. “That blood ain’t yours, is it?” A poor attempt at a joke.

Silence.

“Oh, right, bit hard to speak when you’re mouth is all done up, eh bru?” The cold steel of a knife slid across Mwamba’s cheek, causing hairs to rise all over his body. He wanted to scream, but then with a forcible flick the knife cut the gag off his face and it fell to the ground. “There, you ain’t hurt are you?” The man’s coarse hands once again gripped the boy’s face roughly as he appropriated the youth more carefully. Mwamba recoiled at the touch, and the vile sensation that it brought with it.

Not knowing what to say, feeling suddenly all of the rage that he didn’t know how to express, Mwamba fumbled as sounds without words trickled from his mouth.

“Mumble mumble, yes or no, you little shit, are you hurt?” The savage man’s accent hinted at a South African origin, although nothing was certain, since most of the African borders had all but dissolved after the Fall.

“No.”

“See, much better, now let’s go and have the old man take a look at you, bru.” Releasing his face at last, the man’s fingers instead pressed themselves beneath Mwamba’s right armpit as he was forcibly guided forward, still blinded by the cloth stretched over his eyes.

“Umm… sir? Could you take my blindfold off, it’s hard to walk with it on,” Mwamba hated being civil with the beast of a man, but knew that he was in a position of submission at the moment, and instinctually felt that if he could lull his captors into a sense of complacency he would have a better chance of escaping. Of course, where would he even escape to? Somehow it still didn’t feel real; the image of his grandmother’s dying eyes haunted him and reminded him that everything he had ever known was dead and gone, destroyed in a single bloody afternoon.

An alcoholic grunt was the only response, as the hardened fingers of a hand scraped across Mwamba’s face, taking the blindfold with it.

Blinking as the hot African sun blinded his youthful eyes, gradually the world came into focus. In the heart of the jungle, a rough camp had been erected. Scanning around himself as he was again marched forward, Mwamba guessed that there were maybe twenty buildings in the camp proper, thick acrid smoke rising from a few of them. The smells were atrocious, blood mixed with sweat, decaying flesh mixed with fresh mud from a recent shower. Mwamba barely kept himself from retching again.

“Come on asshole, let’s go get whatever we get for this one, since you killed the other one!” The second captor finished relieving himself and came to join the pair as they neared one of the larger buildings, or shacks more appropriately. Combinations of sheets of rusty metal, warped wood, baling wire, duct tape, and other such ingredients were thrown together with the expertise of a hyperactive child building a playhouse, twisted into frankensteinian creations that assaulted the senses, and did little more than ward off the basic elements. The house that they were walking toward seemed to be the only one of the camp that looked well built, and very likely predated the creation of the camp itself. Although its construction heralded a plantation from over a century before, the elements had helped it to decay over the decades, and so it had been patched in much the same method as the rest of the housing had been built. The door was a prime example of this sort of primitive architecture, a thick metal sheet that had been reinforced and hung on impromptu hinges. It groaned painfully as the man guiding Mwamba opened it.

“We’ve got another one for you, old man!” The smell inside the house was atrocious, a combination of formaldehyde and mildew, turning Mwamba’s stomach yet again. The room into which the party entered was likely once the parlor of the historical plantation house, although water spots spread like a Rorschach across the sagging ceiling, a reminder that the elements had not been kind. The furniture was grotesque, for just as the house it had once been elegant and regal, yet years of disrepair had left the fine fabrics stained and riddled with mildew, the hand-crafted wood eaten by insects and warped with water damage. The other man, who had been called Edjembe, staggered over to one of the chairs and plopped down in it, apparently uncaring about the cesspool of mold and moisture that let out a sickly groan induced by his weight.

“You in here, old man?” The hardened voice echoed through the house with a slight timbre of uncertainty. Something in the tone of the man’s voice made Mwamba detect a strain of fear embedded deep within the apparent bravado. “We… we don’t have all day, old man!”

Silence.

Slowly at first, footsteps began to echo in the rotted floorboards, and at one end of the long room a door opened, apparently an entrance to a basement or cellar, as the current of air that flowed out of the passage was thick with the deep musk of the earth. An ancient figure was born from the doorway, and the very sight of him made Mwamba recoil as a subconscious terror assaulted the foundations of his soul.

Human beings have an innate sense of danger, a deep instinctual response buried beneath millions of years of evolution, a reminder of the times when humanity as a species slept beneath the stars and actively competed with other animals for existence. It is precisely this instinctual core that becomes excited when walking through the forest the sound of a rattlesnake erupts from beneath a nearby rock, or when lying in bed reading a book a scorpion begins to crawl along the baseboard, or when at night the very wind itself seems to carry deep in its somber voice a warning of dangers lurking in the darkness…

The physical presence of the man was slight at best; his aged back was bent over and twisted like a misshapen root. Although the man was obviously African by his features, his skin was as white as ash. Mwamba was unsure whether it was a skin disorder or simply a lack of sunlight that had created such a startling blend of color and feature, but the combination was unnerving at best. Something just wasn’t right about the elderly man, something unnatural that made Mwamba want to turn and flee from the room in terror. Meanwhile, the man holding him tightened his grip unconsciously, a sign that he too didn’t feel right in the presence of the ancient fellow.

“Oh, and what have we here my loyal soldiers?” Nails scratching across chalkboards, Styrofoam pieces rubbing together, felines caterwauling in the night, all of these things seemed somehow more peaceful than the timbre of the man’s voice. Wrecked by unknown decades, there was a vicious edge in the voice that seemed to perfectly match the grotesque visage the man presented. “Oh, you have brought me a good one today, Jorge, yes you have!” The drunken man smiled uneasily, but seemed impatient to leave all the same.

“Yeah, well, how much is he worth?”

“How easily you insult our guest! He is not simply cattle to be bartered, Jorge, how unfair you are to him!” Slithering across the floor like a snake, the old man did not seem troubled by decayed joints as Mwamba’s grandmother had been… had been, past tense, she was dead now, lying in a pool of her own blood where Mwamba had left her. The apparent ease of motion only contributed to the fleeting suspicion of the supernatural that the man aroused in everyone who laid eyes upon him.

The false humility and manners that the old man poured upon Mwamba only made the scene even more difficult to assimilate, and added to the unnerving surrealism that seemed to permeate the very air. Coming ever closer, the slender figure stopped short and raised a twisted hand to the boy’s face. “Mmm, you have very fine features boy, you should be proud of the inheritance that you were given. Here, stand up straight now, let me get a look at you.” Jorge’s iron grip tugged harshly at Mwamba’s slender arm and he straightened his back. The eyes of the old man slid up and down Mwamba’s figure like the groping hands of a pedophile, every glance made the boy shiver, every stare made his blood run icy in his veins. There was an odd desire, something more insidious and darker than mere sexual drive that shone behind his withered ashen eyes.

“Jorge, for once you haven’t… fucked up. This is a fine specimen, he will make a wonderful addition. I will give you a full half kilo for this boy.” At once both Jorge and Edjembe seemed to perk up and life flowed into them. “Here, let me write you a ticket for him.” Once again slithering across the floor in a single continuous motion, the old man came to rest upon a warped old wooden desk chair at a roll-top desk that had long ceased to be able to roll, and instead was frozen in a partially open yawn, its contents haphazardly shoved therein. The twisted old man spoke as he scribbled something on an official looking light green pad reminiscent of a receipt booklet, “is he the only one, I thought you had two with you this time?” The two men froze, looking at each other with a quizzical stare of ‘how did he know…’ but neither deigned to speak a word of it aloud lest their conspiracy be detected by the withered figure across the room.

Finally, fearing the silence itself might become noticeable, Jorge spoke, “yeah boss, we did get another one, the only two in the village that we could find… but donkey brains over there was too plastered and the kid’s head got cracked.”

Silence.

“I didn’t mean to, really, I just set him down… but the damn little thing was so brittle, like a tea pot he was!” The old man stopped for a moment and glared out of the corner of only one of his glassy eyes, Mwamba could swear that the pupil was a slit, and while the glance lasted only a second or two, it was plenty long enough to make the temperature in the room palpably drop.

Before either of the men could speak again, the old man seemed to shrug off the issue and scribbled something else on the paper.

“You two are lucky that I am a benevolent god, especially you Edjembe,” although there was a note of sarcasm, Mwamba was not sure whether the man truly believed his own words, “I have added another three grams to your pay quota for the… body.” Jorge breathed a sigh of relief and Edjembe swallowed a golf ball at last. The latter of the two suddenly jumped up so as to retrieve the body of the deceased child in question. Mwamba began to wonder who it was… who it was that he had lain prostrate next to while the last pulses of life soaked into his pant leg? The answer returned born on a pair of burly black arms moments later.

“Lokomo…” the name slipped across his lips before he could stop it from leaking out. It was the body of his closest friend in the village, hair matted with blood, eyes still covered by a scarf, mouth gagged open and stuffed with a ball of cloth, hands and feet bound tightly with nylon cording, just as he had been. Yet the already stiff joints and ashy skin were obvious signs of the boy’s violent demise. The divine coin had been flipped, and now Mwamba stood with a single tear collecting at the corner of his eye, while his best friend’s limp body was handled like so much freight by uncaring hands. Mwamba wondered for a moment whether he was better off being alive, or if his friend had gotten the better deal by dying so quickly that he was spared the knowledge of the fate of the village.

As thoughts swirled in his adolescent mind, Mwamba began to notice that the old man was studying him as a scientist might study a rat in a maze, wondering what’s going on in its insignificant little brain. Mwamba resolved himself that he wouldn’t give him the pleasure. He wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t show emotion, he wouldn’t let the old man feed on his pain and suffering. Slowly, he raised his hand and wiped the solitary tear from his duct before it could be shed. He would give nothing.

Mwamba stared back at the twisted figure and gave him only silence.