Free Beneath the Darkening Sky by Majok Tulba Page B

front have their own canteens, but they
don’t share.
    ‘What if you step on a landmine?’ they say. ‘That would be a waste of water, wouldn’t it?’
    Then we’re walking again. Somewhere behind me, I hear a thump and some people mutter things. We are all just tired, but the line has stopped. I turn around and I see a boy lying on the
road. A soldier walks over and kicks him a little. The boy doesn’t move. The soldier grabs him by the shirt and drags him out of the line, then we walk again. The boy’s chest is still
moving up and down. His arm is reaching out and I think his hand is moving. Then again, maybe he’s just lying that way because of how the soldier dragged him.
    It doesn’t matter. We keep moving. I couldn’t carry him anyway. Today I don’t hurt as much, but my muscles ache badly and a few places they kicked extra hard are really sore.
Then I wonder whether I am better. Maybe I’m just as hurt as I was, but I can’t feel it as much. I know that I’ve lost feeling in my feet. What if that numbness is spreading? If
it is, is that bad? I have no idea.
    There’s nothing I can do anyway. I just keep walking. Today I imagine that I made a great escape from these animals and I’m just walking home. Any time now I’ll see my village,
and I’ll hear the old stories that I’ve forgotten.
    I hear a humming sound. Light, a little bit louder than an insect, like a dog’s stomach growling when it’s hungry, but not quite. Now I’m listening. It’s almost like
someone is whispering. I look behind me. The soldier a couple back is walking casually, humming a rebel song. But that’s not the murmuring I can hear. Now I know it’s in front of me.
It’s the lead boy.
    ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘What did you say?’
    ‘Huh?’ the boy replies. ‘Nothing.’ Then he’s silent. We walk for a few more minutes, then he says, ‘I don’t snore.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘I didn’t keep that guy up with my snoring,’ he says quietly. ‘It was the Captain. He was snoring. He kept me awake, too. But the soldier got mad and started to yell
before he realised it was the Captain, so he blames me.’
    I don’t know what to say to this. ‘I don’t think I snore either. My brother’s never complained.’
    ‘Yeah, but I heard the Captain —’ He suddenly stops.
    ‘What is it?’ I ask.
    ‘Step back.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Take a few steps back.’
    ‘Hey!’ a soldier yells. ‘Move it!’
    ‘Step back!’ the boy yells.
    I glance at the soldier. He’s not going for his gun, so I step back, bumping into the boy behind me.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ I already know the answer.
    ‘I heard a click,’ he says. ‘I think I found one.’
    I step back, pushing the others behind me. They don’t push back, they just move with me.
    ‘Damn Captain,’ he says.
Boom!
    The ground explodes in front of me. No fire, no flash of light. Just brown-grey dirt splintering up, a hundred thousand pebbles in a grey cloud. The boy is covered in the cloud. The pebbles fly
so fast they gouge into his skin, then exit the other side. My heart jumps and beats fast. As the blood trails after the pebbles, the pale dust swallows it up, makes it dark grey. I see the cuffs
of his shorts cut a dozen times, each pebble clutching fibres and pulling them up. The blast’s wind catches each strip of cloth, curling it like a flag. More pebbles cut into his leg, under
his thigh and out the top. His knee rises, more pebbles rip through it. His leg flings up faster than the rest of him, too fast, and he begins to spin around. The other foot rises off the
ground.
    Shreds of cloth turn dark, the skin at his hip tears. Shreds of dusty skin at the end of his leg – the foot is gone.
    White dust wraps around him as the pebbles dig and dig. The back of his head opens, and it’s red for less than a moment before the pieces are painted grey. Each little stone takes a piece
of him with it, less and less and less. Landmines don’t kill you, they eat