The Road to Masiaka

[Lawrence Monday]

Laurie ran toward where she saw Folami fall. He crawled from red-flowing water and ordered her to run. She was stuck though. She could help him. But he wasn't going to live long enough to make it worth the effort. A tree sprayed of its bark above her head, and she ducked and ran. The children had scattered, so she sprinted off in search of anyone.

Without the path to follow, Lawrence ran through branches scraping at her face and snagging her clothes as she went. Swinging her head left and right, she searched for short mops of hair bopping through the brush. There! To her left, two children ran. "To me!" She yelled, but the echo of gunfire was too loud. She diverted her path, long legs hoping to intercept them. She hopped over a fallen log, but landed in soft mush on the other side. She slipped and fell to one hip just as the two children, a boy and a girl, came upon her. They screamed when they saw her, like she was one of the monsters gunning down children. "It's okay!" She started to scramble to her feet. Distantly, her ankle ached, but who cared. Just as she grabbed the girl by the hand, and felt those little fingers tighten in her grip, their chests exploded with blood as bullets passed through their bodies. Laurie yanked the girl down like it was going to save her, but it was too late. Blank eyes stared up. She let go and kept moving, trying to stay low while yet running as fast as possible, and searching for more survivors.

As she ran around bushes and ducked under limbs, she threw back the giant wings of fern trees and searched. Gunfire soon slowed to a few occasional pops, echoed only by distant screams. She stopped to listen, heart pounding that any minute bullets would spray through the leaves. She willed her breaths to stillness and listened to the painful sounds of the jungle. When she heard whimpering, she picked her way through the chaos and found a boy of about seven, huddled in a crook of the roots of a giant tree. She crawled down into the crevices and wrapped him up in her arms, sushing him quiet. Her heart was pounding, but her eyes pierced the thick underbrush for sight of the militia.

Taunts echoed through the jungle. Orders barked between men in a language unknown to her. The boy in her arms froze and looked around, and Laurie wrapped her hand around his head, pulling her back to her chest. "We'll stay here until they're gone. They'll be gone soon."
Her whispers were breaths, and she didn't know if he understood her or not, but she held him tight and closed her eyes, not moving a muscle until darkness became their cover.

[Jacques]

The ambush did not go unnoticed thanks to the pair of Landwarriors the Lieutenant was carrying, his movement was tracked to at least some degree. It was slow in being processed, but the team that had been dispatched to bring the children to another refugee camp were alerted that something had gone wrong.

That something became evident thanks to the live camera feed at the refinery, some hour or so after the loss of Lt Kamenashi and his men, and many of the children. Alerted to the presence of the Temne rebels in the jungle by the onslaught of gunfire, the Mende soldiers under Lt Folami turned on the Temne refugees with renewed vigor. Ordered to hold the facility, they had no interest in entertaining the thought of having Temne snakes in their midst when the fighting began. The executions were brutal, and including any Mende that tried to protect their fellow refugees.

Jacques watched the executions through one small display on the HUD of his Landwarriors, refusing to look away. Although he could never have foreseen the attack by General Katlego's troops, it had still been his orders that had lead to the deaths of those refugees. An hour after the Mende rebels hit Lt Kamenashi's group, they fell upon the refinery. Both sides wanted the facility intact, and had little interest in the people sheltering there.

The fight was brutal, but in the end Lt Folami and his Mende troops were over run, the last few dying under the chop of machetes that were then turned on the Mende refugees that had survived the executions by the government troops. All of Jacques planning had failed to save anyone, it seemed.

The Legionnaires sent to meet Lt Kamenashi team left their vehicles under minimal guard and walked into the jungle to search for survivors, a risky venture that Jacques gave permission for, despite how unlikely it was to find anyone alive. Even if any children had escaped the ambush, they would have been lost in the jungle, or at best tried to return to the refinery or their homes in Masiaka, both of which would likely have not ended well.

But, through some small miracle they instead found the reporter, Lawrence Monday, and four other children. They returned to the vehicles, and two of the three returned to their refugee camp north-east of Masiaka. The third vehicle, with two grim-faced Legionnaires, brought Miss Monday back to Freetown. They met some resistance at the government checkpoints, but were relatively unharassed. The Interim President General Wallace-Johnson had achieved what he had desired as far as Legion Premiere was concerned; they had bowed head to his commands.

Jacques was silent for the ride back to Freetown, seeming to stare out the window without seeing anything. In truth, he watched the live feed from the refinery, and began the final steps in the plan that would, hopefully, see things put right again. He didn't even notice the tears.

Their arrival back at what had once been the embassy district was without fanfare, many of the Legionnaires that disembarked from the convoy were quiet, troubled. A terrible thing had been done that day, one that would likely haunt them till the day they died, something they had been directly ordered to do by the man that they had often thought infallible.

His orders then were short and terse. Tend to kit, officers were to reorganize Lt Kamenashi's Legionnaires into the undermanned sections. That to be followed by a period of forced rest, and then the resuming of duties. There was work to be done, and no time was to be spared for grievances or gripes.

To Natalie Grey, Jacques 'request' could hardly be misunderstood as a thinly veiled order. Her people were to get to work; there was need for their administrative and practical experience. Taking stock of resources and the establishment of kitchens and triage clinics. The remaining city hospitals would eagerly accept their aid, as would a myriad of public buildings turned refugee centers. She and her people would likely think him a monster for what he had allowed to happen at the refinery, their forced removal, and he would not ask of them to forgive him for that fiasco.

To Legionnaire Carpenter, to facilitate whatever reasonable requests Miss Grey had of the Legion. Escorts to or from the various places they would be needed, vehicles to move what meager supplies were at their disposal, even strong-arms to deal with any government forces that thought to take a cut of the Red Cross' supplies. That would more likely be a matter of bribes, as the Legion was on a low standing in the eyes of the government forces; they had bowed to the Interim President, after all.

And to Legionnaire Vanders, to train. The man's abilities were likely to be sharply tested in the days to come.

[Natalie Grey]

Her head was swimming, so much so that she finally relented to Jacques urging her away. Every muscle clenched tight in an effort to stop the sweeping tide that threatened to wash her inside out, a result of over-expenditure she didn't understand but cursed. The loss of control left her reeling and stiff of gait, expression drawn cold, her jaw tight. In the car she had trouble focussing beyond the blur of passing jungle, which she watched numbly. The ride was uncomfortable and silent, but she ignored the burdened atmosphere in favour of her own demons. The further they sped away, the deeper punctured the cavity in her chest. The wrongness. She clenched her fists in her lap, knifed her nails into the palms of her hands to keep from doing something stupid.

Their return was quiet. To Jacques' dismissal her glance flashed defiance. She was not one of them. But she took the order without quarrel, more concerned with relieving herself of company than inciting a battle, though her acceptance came with no acknowledgement. Every emotion reigned in tight. She only turned and left.

It was only later she found out exactly what had happened; the red trail that had been left in their wake.

She did blame Jacques.

Not for the risk she believed he had taken, but for the ignorance he'd shadowed over her, the choices he had denied her, when it was her people who suffered the consequences of his manoeuvring. He'd made her a pawn, a role she had fled a continent to escape, and worse, he did it after he had coaxed the beginnings of trust from her. They could have visited any refugee camp, but he had chosen hers. And showed no remorse for it.

In the solitude of her room she pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes, forehead against the wall, until the burning subsided. The grief made her feel of glass, both fragile and small. She internalised it in private moments, tightened control of the ghost that flickered whenever Azubuike's name was mentioned. Guilt trailed the grief. Made her long for the numbness of oblivion, if only as a tool to contain the helplessness, but on that front there was little to offer relief.

Outwardly Natalie showed little evidence of grief, but her demeanour nonetheless changed. If she could never have quite been described as personable, she had at least presented a veneer of affability to bridge her natural distance. She had smirked with the men, sat with them, learned names, but now the walls about her thickened with ridges of ice. She spent her time wherever she was most needed, and for as many hours as her body could sustain. It was the way she coped; the way she had always coped. The reason she found herself in the Red Cross to begin with.


Edited by Natalie Grey, Oct 22 2015, 01:16 PM.