Simple-minded bigots, with racism wrapped in jokes and topped with smiles. That’s what Salim thought of most of those kids.
Nevertheless, through high school Austin and Salim hung around in the same group. They’d gone to movies together with their friends and had dinner at each other’s houses. Salim knew Austin’s parent’s names, his dogs’ names, the familiar smell of their house, and Heidi’s cooking—especially her homemade ravioli. It was bad enough that his friend was dying of a vicious tropical disease, but Salim was being asked to burn him alive.
Vehicles of every sort started to arrive in the village from the east and were parked at the eastern edge of Kapchorwa.
After the tank of diesel fuel was emptied and spread over the houses, many men, presumably all Westerners like Salim, got into the trucks and headed toward Kenya. Salim was one of a dozen left at the west end of the village. They went to work binding dry grass into bundles, and Salim immediately guessed their purpose—torches.
Salim’s commander put him at the southwestern corner of the village, where circular grass-roofed huts fringed the town. They would burn easily. The commander lit one of Salim’s bundles and directed him to move along the edge of the town, lighting each house as he went. Still in sight of the other torchbearers, Salim struggled to light the first hut, then walked quickly to the next one in the row. Before lighting the building, he peered inside and thanked Allah it was empty.
He hurried to the next. Also empty.
At the fifth hut, the story changed. A man lay on a blanket where a decrepit woman tended to him. The smell of the disease was overpowering. The man would die. Looking at the woman, Salim guessed she would quickly follow the man down that dark road.
What kind of disease kills everybody?
Salim stood in the door with his torch burning, contemplating that thought. Maybe that’s why they were leaving all of a sudden. Maybe the disease was something other than typhoid? Maybe it was something that killed everybody. If that was the case, then it was a good thing they were getting out of town before they became infected.
Infected?
Salim laid his palm on his forehead to check for a fever. There was none. He had no symptoms of any kind. The momentary fear passed.
With all doubt gone about what was going to happen to the two wretches on the floor, Salim couldn’t burn the hut with them inside. He couldn’t bypass the hut, either. To do that would risk the wrath of his commander—a wrath that would likely be his own death.
He closed his eyes, not believing that he was doing it. In clear view of the woman sitting on the floor, Salim raised his torch and lit the edge of the thatched roof. Her eyes went wide, then dropped. She looked down at her man on the floor. Her evolution through surprise, anger, hate, and despair disturbed Salim in a way he couldn’t quite believe. How could people give up so easily?
He let his torch fall to the dirt, ran inside, dropped to a knee beside the man and lifted him, surprised by how light he was. Hoping the woman would follow, he ran through the door, past caring if anyone saw what he was doing. If he was seen, he’d just keep running. He’d figure out how to make his own way back to Denver at some point down the road.
No one was outside to witness his transgression. Salim hurried across a wide dirt path with the woman making every effort to keep up. Even though he was burdened with carrying her stick figure of a husband, the disease was taking a heavy toll on her. He crashed into a field of towering sugar cane, pushing through the stalks, hoping the couple would be well hidden inside. The woman struggled behind him—grunting, wheezing, and pushing against the cane.
When Salim figured he was far enough in, he stopped and looked back. He couldn’t see through the tall crop. They were deep enough. The woman fell to her knees and emptied the reddish-black contents of her stomach onto the ground.
“Sorry,” Salim told her as he lay the man in the red dirt. “I’m so sorry.” Without looking back, he took off at a sprint toward the burning village, already glowing orange in the sky over the field.
Chapter 56
Oily black smoked settled to the ground all through the village. Gray smoke blew over his head. Night grew darker in the sky as the fire grew up to meet it. Salim retrieved his bundles of grass, lit one on the last hut he’d torched, and ran onward. But instead of going on to several small buildings close to the road, he instead took off across an open field, the shortest distance to the hospital.
With the glow of the fire ruining everyone’s night vision, he hoped no one would notice his sole lit torch running across the field. Structures were going up in flames through the town from east to west. He wasn’t the only one hurrying through the task of burning.
He tripped, got a face full of dirt, and his torch bounced across the rough ground in front of him. Thankfully, the fall didn’t extinguish it. A thought crossed his mind that he shouldn’t get up. His jihadist brothers were going to be in a hurry to leave the burning township. They’d likely not even notice his absence.
Rising up on his hands and knees and to his feet, he knew the question of whether or not he got on one of those trucks headed east wasn’t as important as getting to the hospital’s back door before it was set ablaze.
Salim picked up his torch and ran.
As he approached the back of the hospital, he saw he didn’t have much time. The other jihadists were past the town’s central intersection and were working their way up the road toward him.
Bodies behind the hospital were strewn in piles large and small, with some from earlier cleanups laid next to one another in neat rows. Salim touched his torch to the cloth that wrapped the first body, near its feet. It had diesel fuel on it, and after a little coaxing, it burst into flames that jumped quickly to the adjacent bodies. Those burning bodies were the cornerstones of the hope he needed to make his desperate plan work. None of his comrades would come around to the back of the hospital to light the bodies if they saw them in flames already.
Salim hurried past body after body, lighting as he went. He reached the largest pile, lit it in several places, and stepped back for a few seconds to watch the flames crawl with red fingers across the crumpled cloth that wrapped them. He tossed his torch to the top of the pile and ran to the hospital’s back door. A half-dozen bodies were piled outside the door to prevent it from opening. Salim grabbed the feet of the one on top and dragged it out of the way. The second followed. He rolled a few more away and pulled others far enough from the door that he was able to get it open.
It was then that Salim realized he would need to light those bodies, too. If he didn’t, anyone coming around to check the backside of the building—not that it would happen, but it could—would see the door unblocked. Burning bodies just outside the door would keep it hidden.
Salim pulled one of the smaller grass bundles from where he had it tucked in his belt, ran to the nearest fire and lit it. He heard voices. The others were getting close.
Running back to the door as the sickly smell of burning flesh mixed with the diesel and smoke, he quickly lit the scattered bodies and flung the door open. The lantern light in the room seemed dim compared to the conflagration outside. He cast a fearful look at the front door and ran to the center of the room. Patients who could were getting up on their hands and knees, panic in their blood-red eyes. Some fell right back down. Others slept—good for them. Many were too sick to have any awareness of the flaming horror coming their way.