04-30-2014, 04:05 PM
St. James' School, Masiaka, Sierra Leone
The compound housing the school was still quiet. Natalie liked the extremities at either end of the day and had never been a particularly restive sleeper; she usually roused when the morning was still grey, and was dressed and out by the time golden fingers of light brightened the sky. This morning, as he was sometimes prone to do, Azubuike Timbo, one of the school's senior teachers, had joined the restlessness of her wanderings. He had an earthy presence, and mostly held an equitable silence she had never minded as company. When he did speak, it was rarely the dull banalities of idle pleasantries.
She nursed a chipped porcelain mug of coffee, empty but for the cool dregs. The day already felt arid, as the season relented towards winter and cooler winds blew in from the Sahara. Not that it made the temperature much more bearable to her; the white shirt bearing the red stitched cross lay open over a grey vest, fluttering a little in the dry breeze. An identity badge hung loose from the belt loops of her trousers, supposedly worth more protection than the gun she sometimes wished she had instead. Not quite the humanitarian thought, but she'd never claimed unselfish reasons for bearing the red cross.
In the pale dawn they'd talked a little of the town and the creep of agitation simmering hotly beneath the surface of civility. This close to the southern border the unrest was palpable; it was one of the reasons the Red Cross had chosen Masiaka to house their education project for girls. Sometimes a reminder of neutrality helped ease the tensions, but Natalie believed they were here to better place themselves for the inevitable conflicts to come. Not a tactful thing to point out, and she didn't, but darkness eventually devoured the conversation anyway; they faded mutually to silence. Azubuike's heavy strides drummed a rhythm that lulled her mood, and she slipped a little in the monotony of the peace.
Until a whimper pierced the normal morning noises.
And then they found the two boys.
Her breath caught in her throat, though her expression remained unnaturally still. The burnt-orange dirt soaked up the blood greedily, where it did not splash sickeningly vibrant over the white wash of the wall where one boy had slumped. His forearms had been slashed under the duress of protection, though it had not stopped a gash to his head deep enough to bare skull. His eyes were rolling crazily to the whites, but he was still breathing. She recognised his slack face; the boy's name was Kofi. His sister Ayo attended the school on a scholarship supported by the Red Cross. They were both Mende.
The other boy was also on the ground, but aside from dust and red spatters his blue uniform was untouched. From the marks in the dirt, he'd fallen awkwardly and then desperately scooted himself back from his schoolmate. He was cradling his left hand, and the heavy wheeze of his breath alternated been viciousness, despair and pain, but he couldn't take his gaze off the massacre. His eyes were wet, black as polished onyx. She could see them shining feverish beneath the peak of his cap.
Anguish choked from Azubuike's throat; he moved reflexively, barreling his body between the two children charged into his care. Nausea rolled in Natalie's stomach; the scarlet soaking the front of Kofi's shirt worried her, but the weapon laying abandoned in the dirt concerned her more: a knife that looked like it belonged in someone's kitchen preparing meat, not in innocent hands carving flesh. She shifted closer.
"Ekene."
She held a placating hand out as she approached, bending to place her coffee cup on the floor and lean to close her palm on the knife. It was slippery. Warm. This boy, like most of the townspeople, was Temne; and like most children here she had seen him every day for the last six months; had seen him kicking up red dust as he chased a football with the others, grinning wildly, whooping and shouting; had seen the light furrow in his brow rise to pleasure when something made sense. The childish innocence in those wide eyes was frenetic now, glazed with shock.
Azu had already knelt to check Kofi's pulse, and he was bellowing for aid. Natalie glanced down at the weapon, the only open measure of disbelief she would allow herself. The blood pooled on her fingers, stained into the skin, but she had never been squeamish. Her jaw flexed, and her skin began to fizz like little bursts of electricity along the surface. The metal sting of blood caught in the back of her throat. When she looked up she could see every wet lash lining Ekene's eyes, could hear the barely there whimpers beneath his breath. Ten years old. Gauntness hollowed a little of his cheeks, made wide beacons of his eyes. The peaked cap was too big for his head; when he turned to look at her, it slipped over his eyes.
She wondered whether to be afraid, knew it was wise, but the fist around her heart was not fear.
"I'll take your car to the hospital,"
she said to Azubuike, straightening. The intensity of her gaze never left the bloodied child, who's jagged crouch seemed torn on the edge of fleeing, though he still babied his hand. Natalie's gaze pinned him. Or something else.
"He's not likely to make it to Freetown, Natalie."
Stoic pragmatism wrapped Azu's words, not coldness. Death and violence were engrained to this world; Azubuike's own father had been a child-soldier during the last war, and had found both God and charity in the bloody shards of his past. Azu wrapped a gentle palm around Kofi's face; he had been offering prayer rather than aid.
"And if he stays here, he will die."
"He deserves to die!"
Ekene found his feet; the soft pitch of his voice ill-suited to the vehemence he poured into the words. Shock had receded to an armor of zealous bravery, and if he'd considered running before, now he seemed inclined to blaze defiantly in defense of his actions. He flickered, like the mirage of two boys; one still a child, one twisted to a monster. In his fierce face, she saw the future.
"You sit next to this boy every day, Ekene. You play football together. Eat together. I've heard you, dozens of times since I've been here, call him your best friend. And now he is dying because of you."
"But he--"
The slightest waver held his voice; his hands were already trembling from the blood, but then a grotesque loathing twisted his expression. Bright teeth flashed in a snarl.
She plucked the cap from his head, held it in front of his face. "Your father tells you who to hate?"
"Natalie..."
There was warning in Azubuike's tone, and he was right; she was a foreigner playing with cultural fire, and one toeing the line of authority the red cross on her shirt even provided. These children would have relatives who had lived through the last civil war, and the fractious peace Sierra Leone had clung to the last fifty years had been unravelling in steady decline since the discovery of Rhodium in the south. She couldn't control the inevitable. It was foolish to try. But her pale gaze was unrelenting.
She dropped the hat on the blood-soaked earth. Men ripped themselves bloody on the barbs of hate. Children deserved better.
"Pick him up, Azubuike."
The thought of losing a battle had never stopped her fighting. The child met her stare for stare. "They'll look at your hand at the hospital. You're coming too, Ekene."
--*--
They staunched the blood flow as much as they could, and loaded Kofi into the front seat of the car. He groaned and whimpered, and though he didn't seem to lose consciousness his eyes were so wide, so frightened, that Natalie could barely stand to look at him as she tried to coax him to keep pressure against his front, then shut him in. Azu pressed the keys into her palm but he seemed reluctant to let her go; determination to save Kofi he could understand, if the furrowed resignation in his brow spoke of sorrow, but Ekene? The boy needed no emergency care and should be taken to the Masiaka police station; Azu said as much. Natalie brushed off the detail without care, and he never stopped her slamming the car door.
Her resolution to save Kofi she couldn't wholly explain, not to Azubuike - not to anyone, herself included, but the taste of light on her tongue, the sparks and threads that wrapped about the child's body, shivering like a heartbeat, convinced her it was worth the hour drive. At the very least, she knew she could ease his passing; she had done that before, when force of will alone had not been enough to hold someone from the precipice. He would think her mad if she tried to explain, else touched by a God she did not believe in. Somehow, the latter would be worse.
Ekene she could explain, but the moment Azu cited leaned in the unrolled window and cited a womanly heart among her misplaced motivations, her lips snapped shut and she said nothing. She thought he probably understood what she intended, but he was wrong to call it a weakness; it was not compassion that drove her, not naïve optimism; it was the sheer gall of twisting fate, of tilting it away from the status quo. For the son of a man who had dedicated his life to the rehabilitation and education of children he seemed thoroughly resigned to writing Ekene off. Of course, the blood coating the boy's hands and arms, the bloody ripped mess he had left of another child, marked an irrefutable line for some. Maybe she was deluded for thinking she could make a difference, but every last finger would need to pluck free from the edge before she'd let go.
Masiaka-Yonibana Highway
Ekene stood in the back, one arm draped over the back of Natalie's seat, the other held gingerly to his chest. He hadn't resisted getting in the car, though he'd continued his bravado act, beginning with scooping his hat up from the triumph of its bloody throne. It was currently flung on the backseat, abandoned for everything but symbolism. When she glanced in the mirror she saw a devil over her shoulder, his face twisted into an intense scowl. She wondered how long he could keep that up, with his hand hurting.
"Your bitch sister will be dead by sundown, Kofi."
"You'd bleed the same you know, Ekene, and you’d die just as quickly."
Not words she had ever imagined imparting to a ten-year old child, but she had always treated these children without patronisation. "All our blood runs the same. There's no difference."
Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror; he was staring at her blackly, and realisation froze outwards from her chest. Only twenty minutes into the journey, and she almost considered turning the car around. She glanced beyond the reflection of Ekene's head, but saw nothing untoward against the horizon Masiaka had drifted behind. The coldness settling into the pit of her stomach did not abate. Neither did she question the boy. What good would it do? In the end she just pushed the acceleration, and wished the car had been marked with the cross.
The highway stretched endless; it curled off into the distance in either direction, hemmed in by dying grass and the odd palm tree. The engine hum filled the silence, broken only by Kofi's whimpers. Despite Azubuike's accusations of softness, Natalie offered no conversation, no sympathy; nothing. Partly because her concentration was narrowed between the road and the threads of light wrapping about Kofi's bandaged arms and vibrating into his stomach. Ekene showed no concern, but he had finally sat down slumped in his seat. The adrenaline had drained from him by now, and pain had begun to pinch his expression. He rocked a little around his hand, and eventually he spoke.
"It hurts, Natalie."
Netland Hospital, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Kofi was taken almost immediately, leaving Natalie to scribble in the necessary paperwork and watch the boy hurried off to an uncertain fate. He'd drifted out of consciousness by the time they'd woven in and out of Freetown's traffic and pushed through the hospital doors; as he left her sight the ribbons of light about his body coiled and faded, and with it exhaustion dulled her senses. That coffee seemed a long time ago, now.
Blood stood stark against her pale skin, and had dried black in the lose braid over one shoulder. She wiped her fingers against her trousers as she returned to Ekene and sat down next to him to wait. His world had receded to his throbbing hand; thoughts of tribal differences, the poison poured in his ear, the friend he had probably murdered just didn't factor into his narrowed viewpoint any more. He'd begun to cry some time ago.
"Did you do that when you fell?"
His eyes looked up wide, like he'd forgotten she was there. Fear shone where hate had ruled; she could feel him trembling, just a little at first. And then he began to sob, broken gaping things that shook his body, and she began to doubt it was just the pain. No more questions followed, not yet. She put an arm about his shoulder.
--*--
It felt like hours rolled by before they were moved from the waiting area to a crammed ward. Natalie watched the traffic of patients with an eye that became increasingly alert. She disliked hospitals anyway, and perhaps it was just ill memories colouring her unsettled mood, but something felt increasingly off. Her gaze followed the expressions of the medical staff. Someone, one of the bedridden patients, fiddled with the frequency on a palm radio. The static curdled in her ears.
Ekene sat on the foldout bed, his legs dangling over the edge. Tears streaked track-marks down his cheeks but he was quiet and hunched over, staring at his bloodied shoes. He hadn't said anything since the sobs had run dry and she hadn't pushed him. She had her suspicions, though. Her conclusions lay hollow and horrific, and it only served to fortify the grim determination with which she surveyed the activity around them. When a nurse who had been headed in their direction was instead pulled away; when his face blanched and he hurried off, she stood.
"Ekene."
She gripped the boy by the wrist. "We need to go."
His head shot up, his mouth open in protest. Tears sparked anew in his eyes. Beyond the ward, a scream. The incessant drill of gunfire. As the chaos erupted, Natalie was already dragging Ekene away; he needed no urging now. The corridors spun a labyrinth, jammed with people desperately seeking escape in every direction, and Natalie no longer knew the way out. Ekene screamed when someone jolted into him and his hand bent backwards, doubling over until she was forced to shove him through the nearest door and they both stumbled into a private room. The bed was empty, the shades drawn across the small window. Natalie rested against the door, felt her legs suddenly tremor under her weight. She couldn't afford to stop. If she stopped, they would die.
Ekene had curled up on the floor, hugging his hand, sobbing once more. "We can't stay here, Ekene."
She spoke softly, forcing calm into the words, steeling iron into the beat of her heart desperate to panic. Smoke began to pour under the door jam, wreathing about her feet. Shots still popped in the distance, and muffled behind that a cacophony of shouting and screaming. It’s on fire. Her head began to swim, falling falling falling. She raked a hand through her hair, felt the vice of her control slipping. Fear nipped her heels.
It took a burst of light in her chest to steady herself. There was nothing to blockade the door so she left it to faith as she moved to crouch by Ekene. Sparks flickered from her fingertips as she pulled him up from the floor, cupped his face and forced him to look at her. "We need to get out, and I need you to be brave to do it. No crying, Ekene. If we're separated, I want you to look for the Sierra Leone Red Cross building - it'll be marked by a flag with the cross, like this-"
she plucked at the emblem on her shirt, though he knew well what it looked like. "They will keep you safe. Don't trust the men with guns, not even if you think you should."
Unless he impeded them, or was caught in the cross-fire, it was not his life she feared for, but what they would create of him. She paused for acknowledgement, but his gaze was a black abyss, his lungs beginning to choke on the smoke. She had no idea if she'd gotten through to him, but there was no more time.
The compound housing the school was still quiet. Natalie liked the extremities at either end of the day and had never been a particularly restive sleeper; she usually roused when the morning was still grey, and was dressed and out by the time golden fingers of light brightened the sky. This morning, as he was sometimes prone to do, Azubuike Timbo, one of the school's senior teachers, had joined the restlessness of her wanderings. He had an earthy presence, and mostly held an equitable silence she had never minded as company. When he did speak, it was rarely the dull banalities of idle pleasantries.
She nursed a chipped porcelain mug of coffee, empty but for the cool dregs. The day already felt arid, as the season relented towards winter and cooler winds blew in from the Sahara. Not that it made the temperature much more bearable to her; the white shirt bearing the red stitched cross lay open over a grey vest, fluttering a little in the dry breeze. An identity badge hung loose from the belt loops of her trousers, supposedly worth more protection than the gun she sometimes wished she had instead. Not quite the humanitarian thought, but she'd never claimed unselfish reasons for bearing the red cross.
In the pale dawn they'd talked a little of the town and the creep of agitation simmering hotly beneath the surface of civility. This close to the southern border the unrest was palpable; it was one of the reasons the Red Cross had chosen Masiaka to house their education project for girls. Sometimes a reminder of neutrality helped ease the tensions, but Natalie believed they were here to better place themselves for the inevitable conflicts to come. Not a tactful thing to point out, and she didn't, but darkness eventually devoured the conversation anyway; they faded mutually to silence. Azubuike's heavy strides drummed a rhythm that lulled her mood, and she slipped a little in the monotony of the peace.
Until a whimper pierced the normal morning noises.
And then they found the two boys.
Her breath caught in her throat, though her expression remained unnaturally still. The burnt-orange dirt soaked up the blood greedily, where it did not splash sickeningly vibrant over the white wash of the wall where one boy had slumped. His forearms had been slashed under the duress of protection, though it had not stopped a gash to his head deep enough to bare skull. His eyes were rolling crazily to the whites, but he was still breathing. She recognised his slack face; the boy's name was Kofi. His sister Ayo attended the school on a scholarship supported by the Red Cross. They were both Mende.
The other boy was also on the ground, but aside from dust and red spatters his blue uniform was untouched. From the marks in the dirt, he'd fallen awkwardly and then desperately scooted himself back from his schoolmate. He was cradling his left hand, and the heavy wheeze of his breath alternated been viciousness, despair and pain, but he couldn't take his gaze off the massacre. His eyes were wet, black as polished onyx. She could see them shining feverish beneath the peak of his cap.
Anguish choked from Azubuike's throat; he moved reflexively, barreling his body between the two children charged into his care. Nausea rolled in Natalie's stomach; the scarlet soaking the front of Kofi's shirt worried her, but the weapon laying abandoned in the dirt concerned her more: a knife that looked like it belonged in someone's kitchen preparing meat, not in innocent hands carving flesh. She shifted closer.
"Ekene."
She held a placating hand out as she approached, bending to place her coffee cup on the floor and lean to close her palm on the knife. It was slippery. Warm. This boy, like most of the townspeople, was Temne; and like most children here she had seen him every day for the last six months; had seen him kicking up red dust as he chased a football with the others, grinning wildly, whooping and shouting; had seen the light furrow in his brow rise to pleasure when something made sense. The childish innocence in those wide eyes was frenetic now, glazed with shock.
Azu had already knelt to check Kofi's pulse, and he was bellowing for aid. Natalie glanced down at the weapon, the only open measure of disbelief she would allow herself. The blood pooled on her fingers, stained into the skin, but she had never been squeamish. Her jaw flexed, and her skin began to fizz like little bursts of electricity along the surface. The metal sting of blood caught in the back of her throat. When she looked up she could see every wet lash lining Ekene's eyes, could hear the barely there whimpers beneath his breath. Ten years old. Gauntness hollowed a little of his cheeks, made wide beacons of his eyes. The peaked cap was too big for his head; when he turned to look at her, it slipped over his eyes.
She wondered whether to be afraid, knew it was wise, but the fist around her heart was not fear.
"I'll take your car to the hospital,"
she said to Azubuike, straightening. The intensity of her gaze never left the bloodied child, who's jagged crouch seemed torn on the edge of fleeing, though he still babied his hand. Natalie's gaze pinned him. Or something else.
"He's not likely to make it to Freetown, Natalie."
Stoic pragmatism wrapped Azu's words, not coldness. Death and violence were engrained to this world; Azubuike's own father had been a child-soldier during the last war, and had found both God and charity in the bloody shards of his past. Azu wrapped a gentle palm around Kofi's face; he had been offering prayer rather than aid.
"And if he stays here, he will die."
"He deserves to die!"
Ekene found his feet; the soft pitch of his voice ill-suited to the vehemence he poured into the words. Shock had receded to an armor of zealous bravery, and if he'd considered running before, now he seemed inclined to blaze defiantly in defense of his actions. He flickered, like the mirage of two boys; one still a child, one twisted to a monster. In his fierce face, she saw the future.
"You sit next to this boy every day, Ekene. You play football together. Eat together. I've heard you, dozens of times since I've been here, call him your best friend. And now he is dying because of you."
"But he--"
The slightest waver held his voice; his hands were already trembling from the blood, but then a grotesque loathing twisted his expression. Bright teeth flashed in a snarl.
She plucked the cap from his head, held it in front of his face. "Your father tells you who to hate?"
"Natalie..."
There was warning in Azubuike's tone, and he was right; she was a foreigner playing with cultural fire, and one toeing the line of authority the red cross on her shirt even provided. These children would have relatives who had lived through the last civil war, and the fractious peace Sierra Leone had clung to the last fifty years had been unravelling in steady decline since the discovery of Rhodium in the south. She couldn't control the inevitable. It was foolish to try. But her pale gaze was unrelenting.
She dropped the hat on the blood-soaked earth. Men ripped themselves bloody on the barbs of hate. Children deserved better.
"Pick him up, Azubuike."
The thought of losing a battle had never stopped her fighting. The child met her stare for stare. "They'll look at your hand at the hospital. You're coming too, Ekene."
--*--
They staunched the blood flow as much as they could, and loaded Kofi into the front seat of the car. He groaned and whimpered, and though he didn't seem to lose consciousness his eyes were so wide, so frightened, that Natalie could barely stand to look at him as she tried to coax him to keep pressure against his front, then shut him in. Azu pressed the keys into her palm but he seemed reluctant to let her go; determination to save Kofi he could understand, if the furrowed resignation in his brow spoke of sorrow, but Ekene? The boy needed no emergency care and should be taken to the Masiaka police station; Azu said as much. Natalie brushed off the detail without care, and he never stopped her slamming the car door.
Her resolution to save Kofi she couldn't wholly explain, not to Azubuike - not to anyone, herself included, but the taste of light on her tongue, the sparks and threads that wrapped about the child's body, shivering like a heartbeat, convinced her it was worth the hour drive. At the very least, she knew she could ease his passing; she had done that before, when force of will alone had not been enough to hold someone from the precipice. He would think her mad if she tried to explain, else touched by a God she did not believe in. Somehow, the latter would be worse.
Ekene she could explain, but the moment Azu cited leaned in the unrolled window and cited a womanly heart among her misplaced motivations, her lips snapped shut and she said nothing. She thought he probably understood what she intended, but he was wrong to call it a weakness; it was not compassion that drove her, not naïve optimism; it was the sheer gall of twisting fate, of tilting it away from the status quo. For the son of a man who had dedicated his life to the rehabilitation and education of children he seemed thoroughly resigned to writing Ekene off. Of course, the blood coating the boy's hands and arms, the bloody ripped mess he had left of another child, marked an irrefutable line for some. Maybe she was deluded for thinking she could make a difference, but every last finger would need to pluck free from the edge before she'd let go.
Masiaka-Yonibana Highway
Ekene stood in the back, one arm draped over the back of Natalie's seat, the other held gingerly to his chest. He hadn't resisted getting in the car, though he'd continued his bravado act, beginning with scooping his hat up from the triumph of its bloody throne. It was currently flung on the backseat, abandoned for everything but symbolism. When she glanced in the mirror she saw a devil over her shoulder, his face twisted into an intense scowl. She wondered how long he could keep that up, with his hand hurting.
"Your bitch sister will be dead by sundown, Kofi."
"You'd bleed the same you know, Ekene, and you’d die just as quickly."
Not words she had ever imagined imparting to a ten-year old child, but she had always treated these children without patronisation. "All our blood runs the same. There's no difference."
Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror; he was staring at her blackly, and realisation froze outwards from her chest. Only twenty minutes into the journey, and she almost considered turning the car around. She glanced beyond the reflection of Ekene's head, but saw nothing untoward against the horizon Masiaka had drifted behind. The coldness settling into the pit of her stomach did not abate. Neither did she question the boy. What good would it do? In the end she just pushed the acceleration, and wished the car had been marked with the cross.
The highway stretched endless; it curled off into the distance in either direction, hemmed in by dying grass and the odd palm tree. The engine hum filled the silence, broken only by Kofi's whimpers. Despite Azubuike's accusations of softness, Natalie offered no conversation, no sympathy; nothing. Partly because her concentration was narrowed between the road and the threads of light wrapping about Kofi's bandaged arms and vibrating into his stomach. Ekene showed no concern, but he had finally sat down slumped in his seat. The adrenaline had drained from him by now, and pain had begun to pinch his expression. He rocked a little around his hand, and eventually he spoke.
"It hurts, Natalie."
Netland Hospital, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Kofi was taken almost immediately, leaving Natalie to scribble in the necessary paperwork and watch the boy hurried off to an uncertain fate. He'd drifted out of consciousness by the time they'd woven in and out of Freetown's traffic and pushed through the hospital doors; as he left her sight the ribbons of light about his body coiled and faded, and with it exhaustion dulled her senses. That coffee seemed a long time ago, now.
Blood stood stark against her pale skin, and had dried black in the lose braid over one shoulder. She wiped her fingers against her trousers as she returned to Ekene and sat down next to him to wait. His world had receded to his throbbing hand; thoughts of tribal differences, the poison poured in his ear, the friend he had probably murdered just didn't factor into his narrowed viewpoint any more. He'd begun to cry some time ago.
"Did you do that when you fell?"
His eyes looked up wide, like he'd forgotten she was there. Fear shone where hate had ruled; she could feel him trembling, just a little at first. And then he began to sob, broken gaping things that shook his body, and she began to doubt it was just the pain. No more questions followed, not yet. She put an arm about his shoulder.
--*--
It felt like hours rolled by before they were moved from the waiting area to a crammed ward. Natalie watched the traffic of patients with an eye that became increasingly alert. She disliked hospitals anyway, and perhaps it was just ill memories colouring her unsettled mood, but something felt increasingly off. Her gaze followed the expressions of the medical staff. Someone, one of the bedridden patients, fiddled with the frequency on a palm radio. The static curdled in her ears.
Ekene sat on the foldout bed, his legs dangling over the edge. Tears streaked track-marks down his cheeks but he was quiet and hunched over, staring at his bloodied shoes. He hadn't said anything since the sobs had run dry and she hadn't pushed him. She had her suspicions, though. Her conclusions lay hollow and horrific, and it only served to fortify the grim determination with which she surveyed the activity around them. When a nurse who had been headed in their direction was instead pulled away; when his face blanched and he hurried off, she stood.
"Ekene."
She gripped the boy by the wrist. "We need to go."
His head shot up, his mouth open in protest. Tears sparked anew in his eyes. Beyond the ward, a scream. The incessant drill of gunfire. As the chaos erupted, Natalie was already dragging Ekene away; he needed no urging now. The corridors spun a labyrinth, jammed with people desperately seeking escape in every direction, and Natalie no longer knew the way out. Ekene screamed when someone jolted into him and his hand bent backwards, doubling over until she was forced to shove him through the nearest door and they both stumbled into a private room. The bed was empty, the shades drawn across the small window. Natalie rested against the door, felt her legs suddenly tremor under her weight. She couldn't afford to stop. If she stopped, they would die.
Ekene had curled up on the floor, hugging his hand, sobbing once more. "We can't stay here, Ekene."
She spoke softly, forcing calm into the words, steeling iron into the beat of her heart desperate to panic. Smoke began to pour under the door jam, wreathing about her feet. Shots still popped in the distance, and muffled behind that a cacophony of shouting and screaming. It’s on fire. Her head began to swim, falling falling falling. She raked a hand through her hair, felt the vice of her control slipping. Fear nipped her heels.
It took a burst of light in her chest to steady herself. There was nothing to blockade the door so she left it to faith as she moved to crouch by Ekene. Sparks flickered from her fingertips as she pulled him up from the floor, cupped his face and forced him to look at her. "We need to get out, and I need you to be brave to do it. No crying, Ekene. If we're separated, I want you to look for the Sierra Leone Red Cross building - it'll be marked by a flag with the cross, like this-"
she plucked at the emblem on her shirt, though he knew well what it looked like. "They will keep you safe. Don't trust the men with guns, not even if you think you should."
Unless he impeded them, or was caught in the cross-fire, it was not his life she feared for, but what they would create of him. She paused for acknowledgement, but his gaze was a black abyss, his lungs beginning to choke on the smoke. She had no idea if she'd gotten through to him, but there was no more time.