“Never,” he said quietly, turning toward me again.
The remaining two-and-a-half-hour drive was met with silence. Thoughts circled my head and I tried so hard to imagine, to prepare myself for what I was about to witness but nothing could have readied me.
I smelled the burnt straw of the village homes before I actually saw them and it enveloped the cab, making me cough violently. Dingane threw a t-shirt at me to cover my face so I did. Finally, after rounding the bush that the little village must have tucked itself into in attempt to camouflage themselves, little piles of remaining flames flickered and twisted throughout the open field before us. I saw no one but heard faint screams and wails tear throughout the night. My gut tightened and my hands gripped the dash in front of me, my knuckles white with strain.
Dingane stopped the truck abruptly and ran into the center of the village. I jumped out and followed suit behind Charles and Solomon but stopped short at the terrifying sight before me.
Groups of small children sporadically spread throughout the camp, bent and weeping, cried into the night over the corpses of their burning parents. I immediately fell to my knees in want to vomit but could only dry heave at the sheer horror. The smell of burning flesh seared into my own and I had to cover my mouth in terror.
“Sophie!” someone screamed harshly beside me. I looked up toward the voice and Dingane stood above me. He grabbed my arms, picking me up and brought me close to his face. “Can you do this?” he asked but his eyes were sympathetic. He brushed a tear away with his thumb but one more fell in its place.
“Y-yes,” I sputtered, pushing all emotion away, thinking on Karina’s advice.
“Follow me,” he yelled over the blazing fires and bawling children.
“But they need help,” I hiccupped, pointing to the boys and girls sprawled in panic around us.
“And we will get to them, but we must tend to the hurt now. They’re priority.”
“Okay,” I told him, racing beside him toward what looked like a felled little girl around seven.
We passed Charles pumping a woman’s chest up and down to get her to breathe again and I quickly inhaled a sharp breath. Dingane and I both fell to our knees beside the little girl; her tunic was covered in splatters of blood across her chest.
Dingane pulled it back and exposed the wound. Small holes peppered her torso and they appeared to go deeper than anything considered superficial.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Please, tell me what to do.”
“We’ll bandage her tightly. Here, press this gauze here,” he told me and turned toward the kit I’d seen him carry earlier.
As he rummaged through it, I pressed the gauze tightly against her bleeding wounds and bent over her tiny head.
“It’ll be fine,” I soothed, knowing damn well it would never be for her again, even if she lived.
My free hand ran across her baby cheeks. Sticky tears mixed with red dirt stained that innocent part of her. Dingane added more gauze to the wound and I sat opposite him, trading the wrap and covering the girl’s torso carefully. I know we had hurt her every time we had to lift her small frame to allow the bandage to wrap around completely but not a single whimper was heard from her lips and all I wanted was to gather her in my arms because of it.
Dingane picked her up carefully and brought her to the back of the truck, laying her down across a blanket then covered her up with another. He spoke to her in Bantu and I guessed he’d assured her we’d return because she nodded once.
We ran back toward the village and found two more children in dire need of attention. We wrapped them, transported them to the truck and went back over and over. We’d tended to six wounded children within half an hour.
Dingane pointed toward a cluster of children nearest us and we ran toward them, calling them toward us and encouraging them to get into the truck quickly. Most obeyed save for one who refused to leave his father’s side. Dingane pulled the small child off his dead father and wrapped his arms around the young boy, speaking into his ear as tears streamed down his tiny face. I couldn’t help the tears that fell quickly on my own as we gathered more and more motherless children. I counted twenty-three orphans in all, not including the ones who had died during the ambush.
I looked around for the woman Charles had attempted to save, but she was nowhere in the truck and I filed that away under “never think about again.” Not a single adult had survived, the LRA had made sure of that.
“We have to leave!” Charles yelled over the crying children.
He and Solomon hopped onto the bumper of the truck and held on tightly.
“They won’t be able to hold on the entire two hours like that!” I yelled at Dingane.
His tired face found mine over the grouped children. “They will. We’ve done this before.”
And it hit me.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. These attacks happened frequently, always targeting innocent families, always leaving children in an already impoverished nation without anyone to care for them.
“Get in, Sophie!” he yelled and I obeyed. He laid a small boy in my lap and I cradled him as best I could, trying to decide which way would be best to hold him that would afford him the least amount of pain.
Dingane shoved two more dazed children between us and got in, starting his truck and tearing away from the scene with decided purpose.
“The LRA is coming back?” I asked.
“They usually do. They use the leftover children as bait. They know we come in search of them.”
I turned my head toward the window and let the tears fall freely, the most I’d ever allowed, and the absolutely only time I’d ever cried and had a genuine right to.
Because I wasn’t crying for myself. I was crying for the innocents.
CHAPTER TWELVE