REBIRTH

Chapter 15

Something woke me up from a very light and restless sleep. It was dark and hot. Very hot, and my clothes were soaked in perspiration. Something in the air was wrong. I couldn't explain what, I just felt it. Then I heard it, what must have woken me up in the first place, a piercing scream. The kind that makes every nerve in your body stand on edge, then night was invaded by silence again. Maybe I had only imagined it, but something within told me I hadn't.

I did the one thing a soldier should never do, go investigate alone without letting anyone know what was doing. I just wasn't about to wake up my squad for a possible hallucination. We had patrolled the dessert looking for rebels for sixteen hours in excruciating heat. We had sand and dust in every orifice of our bodies, and I would have bet my next paycheck, not that it was much, we were severely dehydrated. In a nutshell, we were all dog tired.

I made my way toward where the scream had come from, I was willing to bet the origin was the village situated about a quarter of a mile from our camp. I figured if nothing else, the walk would help ease my nerves. I had my rifle, knife and Kevlar. Good enough to do some reconnaissance. If the situation was more than I could handle, I'd radio for back up.

It had been quiet around this area the last couple of months, there had been no incidents or reports of rebel activity. At worst I was expecting a bad case of domestic violence.

As expected it was quiet the whole way there, but my nerves were on high alert. So much for taking a relaxing walk, I thought. I could sense more than hear movement as I approached the village, and then another soul shattering scream. I began moving faster and as quietly as the urgency propelling me forward allowed me to. Another scream. It was so terrifying, emotion began taking over me compelling me to hasten my approach against my better judgment.

I must have tripped over something because next thing I knew I was spitting sand out of my mouth. Lamenting a sharp pain on my right wrist, I gasped to recover the air that was knocked out of my lungs when I landed on my arm and riffle. My efforts were thwarted when a heavy boot landed on my back, and the cold barrel of a gun pressed my temple down to the ground.

My captor yelled something in a language I couldn't understand back to his crew followed by a cruel mocking laugh. He removed the gun barrel from my head, brought his knee down hard on my back and yanked my hair back to bring me closer to him. He whispered something in my ear that sent chills down my spine even though I couldn't understand a word, while he padded me down to remove my weapons and equipment.

He got off me pulling me up and against him. He held the gun against my cheek, and said something that going by tone, meant move or die. After I gasped for air and recovered from the fall, I looked ahead and the moonlight revealed before me a scene of pure horror. There was blood and body parts everywhere, small and large. It felt like a giant hand of pain grabbed a hold of my heart and squeezed it. The pain was so intense it was physical. I began shaking and let out a scream alike the one I'd heard earlier as the soul searing pain overpowered me.

My captor slapped a hand over my mouth and pushed me forward toward a shack. I looked up at the sky and let him, I knew I wasn't getting out of this alive, and I'd rather not take in the violent images with me; I had enough to contend with at the moment.

As we entered the shed, I couldn't make out what was going on or maybe I just didn't want to, but my brain began registering the details and sluggishly puzzling them together. The small shack was lit with a gas lamp that allowed me to see through my tears a woman lying on a table while a man raped her, and another one redesigned her face with a knife. There was no one holding her down, there was no need. There was no more fight left in her.

I screamed with renew pain in my heat and was rewarded with a punch on my side. The man holding me pushed me face forward onto a sleeping pallet on the floor. I tried to use my hands to absorb some of the impact, and the injury on my wrist sent waves of pain throughout my body. My captor flipped me over, and without further ado began ripping my clothes off. I kicked and fought, but my efforts were short-lived when the man who had been raping the woman came over to help hold me down.