She framed Harry on one knee in a nearby doorway, tenderly lifting in bright-gloved hands a child of two or three years, whose blood and brain was splattered brightly in the sunlight over the exquisite carving of the hard wood jamb. She pressed the button. The shutter clicked and the motor whined.
She framed Harry booting a bloated vulture off the body of a woman exactly like the woman she had first interviewed beneath the dead acacia on the outskirts of Mawanga; the vulture had been feasting on her baby. One bullet had been enough for both of them by the look of things. Ann pressed the button and the shutter clicked.
She framed Harry beside the central pile — or as much of it as she could fit into the trembling square. The wiry little Englishman stood five feet seven or eight. The pile of corpses was taller than he was even though the scavengers had pulled so many away. She found she could take the shattered limbs and the bright chests with their lungs like strange pink flowers; the lazy serpentine loops of intestine and the dark clots of internal organs so beloved of the flies. It was the faces which made her cry. And especially the wide eyes. She pressed the button.
Then, terrified that her weakness had made the camera tremble and spoil the shot, she wedged her elbows against the metal frame and took it twice again.
She framed him on his knees and throwing up, although she suspected there would be a lawsuit if she published. She framed Robert standing with the Remington, his elbows on the Land Rover hood in a puddle of his tears.
When she swung the camera back, Harry came into close-up so abruptly that she jumped. ‘Robert. Come and witness this. I need an official witness. But put on gloves. There’s AIDS everywhere.’
‘Can’t we do something?’ Robert seemed dazed by it, made helpless and indecisive, too shocked even to register Harry’s warning about AIDS. But he too pulled on heavy-duty rubber gloves as though preparing to wash dishes.
‘We can look. Remember. Report. Report in detail.’
‘Bury them or something?’
‘There are too many and we haven’t enough time. It’ll be dark soon. There won’t be much left by morning. Listen to them out there.’
As the shadows lengthened, the horrific chorus in the forest gathered new strength and volume.
‘Burn them?’
‘With what? The only fuel we have is in the Land Rover and we need it to get home. And we still haven’t found my askaris, remember. They went that way.’ The warden gestured over his shoulder past the pile of bodies towards the jungle.
‘We’re going in there?’ Robert was clearly stunned by the thought of going where the terrible, inhuman cacophony was coming from. He caught up the Remington again as though it were a security-blanket.
‘Certainly. Once we leave, they’ll all be back out here, won’t they? But do hurry up, old man. I want to at least try for a head count. Some kind of solid facts for the report.’
‘Jesus CHRIST!’ yelled Robert and he threw the gun down. Harry flinched as the weapon, loaded and primed, hit the vehicle. It did not go off and he straightened.
Ann framed the pair of them searching. Lifting a doll-like child, one arm each. Rearranging the edges of the pile. Checking that the pile was composed of bodies to its oozing core. Sorting. Counting. And at last the distance was too much. Hiding behind the safe glass of the Land Rover’s windows was cowardice when the men were doing what they were doing. They were striving to compute and to remember. She had a function here: to feel and to record.
She opened the door. Flies and stench. The ground crackled as she stepped down onto it and not only because it was covered in dry grass. She crossed to the nearest doorway. She lifted her camera as though it was a shield and framed the bright spray of blood. In the shadows of the interior there were other children who had had their brains dashed out. She had not realised that. A pile of ten or so. She framed the huddled little bodies and then the bright spray of their blood. It caught the sun so vividly because it was alive with green-winged flies. She had not realised that.
She crossed to the woman and the baby. She was sitting up so straight because her back was supported by more corpses. Ann framed the mother with her almost headless baby but the camera was no kind of shield. Her hands were shaking so much that the camera case split her lip. She sucked at it automatically and her mouth filled up with blood. It was only when she tore the scarf off her mouth and started throwing up that the two men noticed her. Robert stumbled over to her, took her by the shoulders and pulled her erect. His broad face twisted with such rage that she thought he was going to strike her and she flinched. The movement made him realise what he was doing and he stood, gulping in fetid air and bloated flies until he calmed. His fingers bruised her shoulders. The pressure of his thumbs beneath her collarbone made it crack.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked at last, his deep voice raw and ragged.
‘My job! The same as you are doing yours. People need to know about this. You report to the UN. I’ll report to every programme and paper in the world. Everyone who will listen to me and print my pictures. You have to do it. I have to do it. Otherwise what’s the point?’
‘She’s right, Robert,’ called Harry. ‘She’s right and you know it.’
He let her go. His gloved palms made a tearing sound as they peeled away from the cotton of her shirt and at once the flies began to settle on the bloody hand prints there. She tucked the end of the headscarf back across her mouth. Her hands shaking with reaction, anger and shock, she went rapidly, brutally, through the routine of emptying and reloading her camera. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ called Harry. ‘We’ve no more gloves.’
Robert returned to his grim work and she followed. She brought the camera up and crushed it to her cheek. She framed a naked body face down where he had laid it beside half a dozen others. It bore a series of wounds which were striking in their regularity. Low on the back, almost between the buttocks; mid-back, shattering the spine; just below each shoulder blade; the back of the head. She framed and pushed the button.
Harry was crouching by another pile. She framed him as he worked. He had pulled his neckerchief up and looked like a bandit. The cloth and his cheeks beside it were smeared red. He looked up and she caught the white channels running downwards where his tears had washed the blood away. He was arranging the corpse of a girl whose upper chest and face had been blown away as though her heart had exploded like an anti-personnel mine. She framed and pushed the button. The shutter clicked and the motor whined.
‘There are only women and children here,’ she said.
“The old men and the boys are over there.’ He nodded towards the section of the stockade nearest to the forest. ‘Looks like they made a stand but they didn’t have a chance. Whoever did this just walked right over them and moved in. Then they took their time with the women and girls.’
Whoever did this. The flat phrase echoed in Ann’s head. What had happened here seemed so colossal that she had viewed it as some kind of natural catastrophe. In some part of her shock-numbed mind she had been treating this as though it was the result of some earthquake. Now Harry’s words brought home to her with terrible force that this had been done deliberately. That there had been a pattern to it. A sequence. That the horror, terror and agony on these faces was not put there by the exercise of death but by someone who had done things to these people which had horrified and terrified and agonised them.