Free Beneath the Darkening Sky by Majok Tulba

just want to bleed for a while?’
    ‘Go to hell!’ the boy whimpers.
    The Captain laughs. ‘Look around you, boy! Do you see trees? Or grass? No! All you see is the heat coming off the ground. Where do you think you are?’ He laughs again. ‘Okay,
leave him. We don’t need this one. The villagers are making babies for us year round. We’ll get a new one soon.’
    We walk again. The boy they beat, he’s still breathing, but he’s already dead. The sun will burn the water out of him. His body will lie on the side of the road, unburied, with a
family of dark birds tearing his skin and muscles. By the time we get to where we are going we will have forgotten him. Even now I can’t remember his name. No one will tell his mother how,
where or when he died. Or even that he’s dead. When he left the village he was gone forever. Dying means nothing to the rebels. It only matters to our families and villages. Here, we step on
landmines and get shot and go to sleep hungry, never to wake up, but we were already corpses.
    But I remember what the boy did, and wonder whether I will ever be brave enough to do the same.
    The day is giving up the ghost, its heat is drifting away, and the sky lights up in fire and blood. The sunset squints, then
boom!
Another mine. We all stagger back. Some at the front
fall over.
    My stomach bubbles and knots, fear rises in my throat, my heart is between my feet. God, don’t make me lead. What will I do if they call on me? Will I be strong like Papa? A couple of
grown-ups are near the front now. They push whoever is next in line into the lead and tell him to walk.
    ‘No! I won’t!’ the boy shouts back. ‘I’m not leading. I’m not going to die!’
    A soldier pulls out his gun and,
bang,
the boy falls to the ground with a hole in his forehead. ‘You were saying?’ The soldier laughs. ‘All right, next up. You,
walk!’
    We walk again. For a moment I don’t mind the sharp rocks as I step on something soft, something I pray is not a piece of what used to be a boy from my village. Maybe he was. The boy they
just shot was. His name vanishes from my mind. But I know what I will do if they call on me. If you refuse to lead, you die a coward. If you lead long enough, you die a brave man.
    I suddenly realise that I don’t know where Akot is in the line any more. I look around, but there’s a tall boy right behind me and there are only a couple of boys ahead of me, so I
know he’s not in front. If I just stepped in my brother, I might be sick again, even though I haven’t had more than soup to eat.
    When it gets dark we stop. They hand out more water and dry crackers. The soldiers get food stolen from the government, these big rubber packs of food in a paste. I’ve seen them before.
I’d take those over dry crackers any time. We lie down on the road, afraid to step anywhere someone else hasn’t already stepped.
    In the dark, the soldiers talk and laugh, but we kids don’t. We just lie down and some snore. I can hear others crying. At first I lie there in pain, then I start to cry. But I don’t
get more than a few tears out before it turns into a crazy half-laugh that sounds like a wheeze. I don’t know why I’m laughing, what can there be to laugh at except that I’m still
alive?
    I actually sleep, right on the rock-hard ground. When I wake I’m so stiff I can barely move, though I’m not sure if it’s from the ground or the beating. At first light we are
back up and walking. They don’t rearrange us and I feel bad for the boy leading. He must have been so happy when they said we were stopping for the night. He’s survived how many hours
as the leader? There’s no way to know, really. Time doesn’t mean anything out here. Just night and day and hurry.
    My eyes catch sight of a solid shoulder. I’m sure I recognise it. But it’s difficult with others blocking my view. Is that Akot back there? His skinny legs look out of place with the
rest of him. He is covered in