Free The Future Is Japanese by Unknown

distance.
    I sense wild animals watching us, warily keeping a safe perimeter. They’re biding their time, waiting for their opportunity to chow down on the mangled corpses we’ve so casually scattered about the place. When the white men first came to this country they were shocked at how you only needed to step beyond the narrow confines of the city before the feral underbelly of this savage continent exposed itself.
    Forward march ! I call out, my voice calm.
    Some of the guys are taking their time, others are impatient to get going. We each advance at our own pace. No need to bother anymore with the pretense of trying to step in time.
    Fat, thin, lanky, short—we all start moving. Walking, climbing down the slope.
    The gentle breeze that meets us carries with it the bustling smell of life, and we advance.

    I think back to the day the war ended. At the exact moment I heard the orders for ceasefire, the tip of my AK had been shoved up against my friend’s head.
    This fucked-up situation had come about due to a terrible coincidence. Earlier that day orders had come down for us to kill everyone in the encampment. Not just the SLF fighters and their commanders, but every last one of the children and women too, even the pregnant ones. Our ambush was a success, and we captured the frontline base with only five or so casualties on our side, but then we were faced with a lot of Xema women—the womenfolk of our tribe. Kept women for the enemy leaders—bed-warmers, there to be used and abused at a moment’s notice.
    The SLF—the Shelmikedmus Liberation Front—were from the Hoa tribe.
    That’s why our orders from above were to massacre the girls along with the rest of them. We couldn’t risk trying to mount a rescue mission. The Hoa who managed to escape would have had a field day. The shit they’d talk about us. Even more importantly, if any of the girls were with child, their babies would be tainted by Hoa blood. Just thinking about it gave me the creeps. The very idea that womenfolk from our tribe could have their children.
    That’s how they do things, we’d been taught over and over by our leaders. They pollute our bloodlines with their filthy blood, and at the rate they’re going it won’t be long before they manage to wipe the Xema tribe from the face of the African continent. The Hoa abduct our womenfolk so that they can eradicate the Xema.
    I shuddered. Just thinking about a Hoa face made me feel sick. Ugly eyes so far apart, big flat noses. Just like toads. The white men in the Peace Corps apparently can’t tell them apart from us. That pisses me off, it’s ridiculous. Nothing on Earth is uglier than a Hoa. As for me, I almost felt that we’d be doing the girl prisoners here a favor by killing them—at least they’d die with their honor intact and wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of whelping ugly Hoa brats.
    So orders came down to kill them all, and that’s where it all went tits up.
    Ndunga had become separated from his younger sister a few years ago, and it turned out she was among the unlucky ones held captive in the base. Ndunga discovered this fact during the battle and decided to take it upon himself to go against orders and try and rescue her. Well, he failed. The captain shot her dead himself, so I hear, though I wasn’t there to witness it. Our platoon moved out as soon as we set fire to the village that had been serving as their outpost.
    It was after we’d reached a safe distance and had stood down that the shit really hit the fan. We had our debriefing by the riverbank as we drank and refilled our canteens. Our leaders wasted no time in getting straight into the postmortem for the battle. Had any of our soldiers wasted any bullets on unnecessary fire? Had we let any standards slip? And just at the end of all the usual debriefing schtick, Ndunga’s name was dropped like a bombshell.
    The captain hauled Ndunga out in front of all of us and denounced him. This traitor put the whole