The Wounded

The sun hit us like a helicopter searchlight, and we poured out and onto the pavement. I turned around in time to see the last soldier closing the door to a rickety, old shed, similar to the one I’d seen the guards playing cards in front of in Pau. I squinted at the rusty, pale green structure and shook my head.

My head twisted around, trying to take in as much as I could. So this was the Superiors’ compound. It was certainly more open, only the one exterior concrete wall. Small dwellings were squashed closely together. Servants and workers quarters, Salim had explained.

As if on cue, a rough-looking woman poked her head out the door, her clothes simple but clean. She caught my eye, raised her eyebrows in alarm, and quickly slammed the door.

Two years ago, I’d seen this place briefly from the air, and it had looked completely open. But now that I was inside it, I could see the divisions. My eyes stretched over the tightly packed homes and snippets of wire fence between the gaps as we were strong-armed down the street, the soldiers crowding around us like they didn’t want people to see. The one holding me squeezed my arm painfully when I craned my head over their gold-tipped shoulders to watch three people pushing a trolley full of cleaning supplies down the narrow street and chatting. It was like Ring Eight in size, but without the sad sight of baggy, boney old people shuffling around with no aim. I returned my gaze to the back of the soldier in front of me, when the one holding my arm shook me violently. “Eyes forward, Own Kind. You’re not on a tour.” I clenched my teeth to stop a remark flying out my mouth. This guy could be a comedian.

We were marched towards a gap between two houses, dark shadows causing me to shiver with cold in my thin, white t-shirt. Another slide bolt lock, this time with a padlock on it, was opened, and we were in a field. High corn waved, back and forth like shaking heads, on either side of narrow path. So high that it skimmed the top of Joseph’s head. This was like some bizarre dream. I reached out to graze my fingers over the swaying sheaths and felt a nasty bite when my fingers co

One of the soldiers laughed. “Careful, it’s electrified.” I peered closer and noticed the fence, a few stalks deep into the field. I rubbed my hand against my pant leg and sighed. What next?

We walked for half an hour, the setting sun glinting gold over the tips of the feathery hairs encasing the corn. My stomach growled when I caught the bright yellow kernels peeking out the top like teeth.

Joseph was behind me and every now and then, he’d bump into me, just so we could touch. We didn’t know when we would be able to touch again, so every bump felt like the electric shock I’d received earlier.

The soldiers were quiet and, with the eerie sound of the corn moving in the breeze and complete isolation and disorientation, it was hard to believe we were heading to the center of the Superiors’ compound. Which was maybe the point. Nothing seemed as I would have expected. It threw me.

We finally hit another gate and, as a soldier drew out a large ring of keys and started flipping through them. The overpowering smell of rotten fish wafted through the wire and up my nose. It was like someone had booby-trapped the gate with a thousand tins of anchovies, which had been sitting out in the sun for days.

I wiped my nose with my hand, trying to expel the smell from around my face. Joseph snorted in disgust. I turned to him, about to ask who’d been eating cat food, when I heard a sound I’d never heard before. A trumpeting roar. Loud and aggressive, sailing towards us over the edges of the red, ornate roofs that now grazed the top of the corn stalks.

Standing on my toes, I peered over the top of the soldiers’ shoulders, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever made the noise, but I couldn’t see. Joseph’s breath caught and his eyes widened, which only made me more impatient to get through. I tried not to push the soldier in front of me. Putting my hand to my throat reminded of their violence, where his fingernails had dug in around my collarbone. Despite the quiet, almost peaceful marching we had just done, we were prisoners and assumed criminals.

The noise sounded out again, and I mentally urged the soldier with the keys to hurry up. I wanted to kick him in the back. Finally, the lock opened and we were shoved through a wire frame and into an open garden. Hedges were neatly trimmed into concentric circles; sweet smelling roses edged the low bushes. The smell mixed horribly with the fish odor and I covered my nose with my hand, gaining an amused snigger from the soldier next to me.

It was beautiful, organic, and completely wrong. But when I looked past the gardens with their inviting wooden benches and candy-colored lawn to the gritty, black iron bars giving stripes to animals who had none, it was more like I would expect. A prison for animals. I blinked slowly, trying to take it all in, and was hit sharply in the back with a gun butt for my dawdling, knocking the wind out of my chest like a door slammed shut. Joseph growled behind me.

Someone held up a radio and spoke low and quick into the speaker, alerting Superior Este’s guards we were coming.

“How far to Este?” Joseph asked with pent-up anger lacing his words.

The soldier in front of me grunted and then answered, “Her compound is closest to this part of the wall.”

“I wonder what kind of mood the flea will be in. Paranoid or really paranoid,” the redhead snorted.

“Be quiet!” the man in the front snapped, before picking up the pace. “Este is cautious. That’s why she devised this entry; it’s how she keeps our technology safe.” The redhead shut his mouth, but I saw him smirk while his chin was dipped towards his chest.

I rolled that morsel over in my head, and it scared me. Paranoia didn’t really help our plan. We needed her to believe we were telling the truth.

I thought back to my one and only helicopter ride, the ope

One of the guards dragged his gun butt across the bars as we walked over concrete pathways, the sound echoing dully like a broken bell. We wound this way and that, turning back on ourselves and seeming to walk in circles. I glanced at the animals as I passed them, their droopy eyes and swinging heads emitting pure depression. No wonder Salim wanted to take his monkeys with him.

We came to the source of the trumpeting noise, and I had to stop. Its crusty eyes were so large in its leathery head, but they looked human. Its expression distinctively wise. It lifted its head, blew from its long nose, and then began to step sideways and back, sideways and back, swinging its gigantic head repetitively like it couldn’t believe some unknown truth. My heartbeat crept up in anger, knocking on my ribs and struggling to find a voice. This was cruel. This Indian Elephant, as it read on the plaque glued to its prison cell bars, was the epitome of sorrow. My hands strained against my sides, as the want to free myself and then all the mistreated creatures in here started to overtake reason.

One of the soldiers cocked his gun and aimed it at the elephant. “Poor bastard,” he said with one eye closed as he took aim, “maybe I should put him out of his misery.” They all laughed, banging the bars and shouting at it. I co

One of them picked up a rock and threw it at the animal. It hit it on the flap of its enormous ears. It flinched. They were too busy laughing and cracking jokes to see it stomp its large foot, plumes of dust rising up around it. They were too distracted congratulating each other on their own idiocy to see the anger in its eyes. They didn’t hear it as it charged towards the bars.