Free Kingdom by Anderson O'Donnell Page B

7
    Tiber City
Aug. 26, 2015
2:29 p.m.
    I n the abandoned warehouse deep within Tiber City’s Jungle district, Campbell tended to the dying child.
    Campbell was amazed the child was still drawing breath. The boy had been brought to the warehouse-turned-field hospital, known as Camp Ramoth, less than five hours ago, his body ravaged by disease, his skin glowing, radioactive with fever, transforming the frail, prepubescent frame into a furnace of flesh and bone. A puss-caked lesion running the length of the child’s stomach quivered with infection.
    Despite the introduction of antibiotics, the fever persisted and the boy was writhing on top of the tiny cot that had been prepared for him, crying out in agony, his little hand reaching into the air for his mother, his father, for some reassurance that the pain would end and everything would be OK. But there was no mother, no father, only Campbell, and while the doctor knew the pain would end, he also knew that everything would not be OK.
    Taking the child into his arms, Campbell raised the boy off the sweat-soaked cot, whispering reassurances before gently lowering the tiny, shivering frame into a small tub of lukewarm water. The child moaned, his skin tremblingas the water rose around him. He placed one hand behind the boy’s head, creating a fleshy buffer between the hard ceramic of the tub and the child’s skull. With his other hand, Campbell picked up a sponge and began to clean the lesion. A thick layer of crust covered the disease, although when the sponge began to move across the infected area, fresh puss—yellow with the consistency and smell of mayonnaise left to bake in the sun—began oozing from the deformity. The child moaned, delirious, as Campbell continued cleaning the lesion, the boy’s body shaking as fever and bacteria revolted against the soapy green-gray water. Gradually the crust sealing the infection broke away, bits of scab crumbling into the tub, floating across the top of the water like bath toys.
    The boy was crying now, tears streaming down his scarred face as his mouth tried to form words but none would come because this child did not know language, only sound, but even in anguished wails his question was still clear:
Why?
    There was no way Campbell could answer the child, no response that would provide a sufficient explanation as to why this child had been chosen to suffer. Instead, he knelt by the side of the bathtub, continuing to bathe the boy as the infection cleared, squeezing the lukewarm water over the child’s bald and bruised head, and in that moment, the rest of the warehouse-turned-makeshift hospice seemed to melt away and there was only Campbell and the boy, and he began speaking to the child in low, soft tones, telling him of places far away from Tiber City, of lands filled with good men who performed good deeds, ancient tales in which
hero
was not a word that triggered snickering and the rolling of eyes, stories that, above all, were an attempt to convey to this dying child that the world had not always been like this.
    As if to reject this suggestion, the boy began to convulse, and Campbell dropped the sponge, placing his hand on the child’s head, cursing softly as the fever refused to break.
    Lifting the boy back out of the tub, Campbell held him in his arms, water soaking his shirt as he wrapped the boy in towels, calling out for assistance; he needed to pack ice in towels and wrap them around the boy to have any chance of breaking the fever. There was no intercom, no call button in Camp Ramoth, just Campbell’s voice booming off stone and exposed piping.
    Seconds later the gurney men arrived. They moved silently into the warehouse, entering from a side hallway two by two by one: five total. There wasno particular urgency to their movements yet there was purpose and precision and within seconds they were gathered around the child’s cot, laboring in silence as Campbell, exhausted, took a few steps backward before slumping