Eric Brown: The Serene Invasion

She wept, and rolled onto her side.

Josef grabbed her under the arms, dragged her across the flat-bed and propped her in a sitting position against the hot metal, then did the same with Ben.

Josef jumped from the truck, fastened the back flap, and stood in the compound watching the truck as it revved up, turned in a wide circle, and raced through the open gates. Sally fastened her eyes on the soldier’s, hoping to cow him with her silent accusation, but his expression remained impassive as they drove away.

The Arab sat across from his captives, rocking with the bucketing motion of the vehicle as it accelerated along the sandy track. His face was thin, and running from his right ear to his hawk-like nose was a scar, a jagged wadi suppurating with some untreated infection.

The machine-gunner, a youth with a sickle-thin face and a milky left eye, stood with an arm slung negligently over his rattling weapon. He stared down at them, his expression contemptuous.

The direct sunlight was punishing. Normally Sally would have either rubbed high factor sun cream into her arms, face and neck, or ensured she was suitably covered. Now she felt her exposed skin burn.

They were heading north, she realised, into terrorist country.

She looked at Ben. His face was a mask carved from ebony. He whispered, “Try not to worry. They will make a ransom demand. We will be free in a day or two.”

She said, “I have a bad feeling…”

The Arab kicked out, the heel of his boot gouging Sally’s shin. “Be silent!” She pursed her lips rather than cry out at the pain.

They raced through the lifeless desert landscape, hitting potholes at speed. Sally rocked against Ben, his solidity reassuring. The metal ridge of the truck’s side panel scored her shoulder blades.

They passed a village — Mullambi. They had travelled over ten kilometres already. It struck her that she was in greater danger the further they travelled away from familiar territory. She felt the sun fry her head. She thought of her tiny room back at the compound and wanted to weep.

Across from them, the Arab closed his eyes, his head lolling. He appeared to be sleeping, his rifle propped across his lap.

“We will be fine,” Ben said in a whisper. “We must do as they say, and do not question them. Whatever you do, Sally, do not argue with them.”

“That,” she said bitterly, “might not be easy.”

“Just do not question what they are doing, okay?”

“Why? Because I’m a woman, and they don’t like –”

He said impatiently, “Whatever the reasons! We should not antagonise these men.”

She was silent for a time, then said, “They’re going to kill us. I know it.”

Ben turned to look at her. “That is not how these people work,” he said patiently. “They will ransom us, makes demands for cash so that they can buy weapons.”

The Arab opened his eyes and stared across at his captives.

Sally licked her rapidly drying lips and said, “Who are you?”

She felt Ben stiffen beside her.

The Arab stared at her, a potent distillation of contempt in his narrowed eyes. “My name is Ali,” he said.

“I meant,” she said, “which organisation do you represent?”

The man smiled. “Boko Haram,” he said.

She wished she had never asked. Northern Uganda was plagued by competing bands of Islamic fundamentalists — each one a little more fundamental, it seemed, than the other. Originally from Nigeria, Boko Haram was the most hard-line of them all: bloodthirsty, uncompromising, and intolerant of everything Western.

“What do you want with us?”

Ben hissed, “Sally!”

The Arab said, “To… make example.” He spat at her feet. “You come here, you fill my people with your ways –”

“Your people? Are you Ugandan?”

He said, “My people, my Muslim brothers.”

“We’re here,” she said, “to help your brothers, to help your men, women and children. There is a drought, or haven’t you noticed? Your people are dying.”

“A drought? The drought is God’s punishment. We do not need your help. You should go, all of you. Americans, Chinese, all of you infidels.”

Anger rose within her. She wanted to argue with him, attempt to point out the absurdity of his argument, but knew that it would serve no purpose.

“Sally,” Ben said again, almost inaudibly.

“Okay, okay,” she said.

Smiling, evidently satisfied that his little speech had silenced the Western whore, the Arab closed his eyes and dozed.

They drove on, to the north. The sun was going down behind her head, affording her face a modicum of shade even as the back of her head burned.

They left the crude track an hour later, slogging through sand and along a dried-up river bed before coming to a sun-warped timber hut leaning so much that it resembled a parallelogram.

Ali dragged Sally from the flat-bed, and then Ben. She stood on the sand, her left leg paralysed with pins and needles. The driver climbed from the cab and moved into the hut. Ali gestured with his rifle. “Inside.”

She limped away from the truck and stepped through the doorway, into the shade of the hut. The machine-gunner remained where he was on the back of the truck.

The instant shade was welcome — but the sight of what greeted them, when her eyes adjusted to the half-light, was not.

The room was empty but for three things.

A tiny camera mounted on a tripod, what looked like a butcher’s chopping block positioned in the centre of the room and, propped up against the far wall, point down, a long, curved sword.

ALI PRODDED HER into a corner and ordered them to sit down. Sally squatted, her back against the wall. Just above her head a broken window allowed blistering heat to fall across her cheek. Glass crunched beneath her canvas pumps.

She glanced at Ben. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.

Ali and the other Arab stood behind the mounted camera, speaking in hushed tones.

Sally looked from the sword, to the butcher’s block, and finally at the camera. It came to her that the most barbaric item of the three was the camera, because of what it denoted. The sword and the butcher’s block she could almost understand, but the fact that their deaths were to be recorded, and ultimately broadcast, added a twist of voyeuristic sadism.

Ali and his colleague appeared to be arguing about the camera. Ali knelt and tinkered with it, speaking in rapid Arabic to the other. He flicked it with the back of his hand and stood, striding to the door and staring out.

He lit a cigarette and calmly smoked. He appeared bored, and Sally wondered how many other innocent Westerners he had casually slaughtered. There had been an aid worker kidnapped and shot a year ago, she recalled, and three Catholic nuns abducted from a mission in the west of the country earlier this year. Nothing had been heard of them since.

She had been well aware of the trouble in the area when she accepted the job, but assurances from her employers that the compound would be well guarded, and that not one medical worker had lost their life in the ten years that the Red Cross had been working in northern Uganda, had convinced her that any danger was negligible.

The second Arab was fiddling with the camera in mounting frustration.

She found herself saying, “What’s wrong with it? Maybe I can fix it?”

Ben hissed, “Sally!”

Ali turned from the door, removed the cigarette from his lips, and said, “You are a woman. How can you know about cameras?”

“I am a woman, Ali, and I know many things.”

He sneered. “You know nothing. You put Western drugs into our people, and also Christian evil.”

She stared at him, restraining the urge to laugh. Soon she would be dead at the hands of this uneducated bigot, and her anger was overcome by despair.