Free The First End by Victor Elmalih

uncomplaining woman who walked behind
him.
    Half an hour later, they stumbled across two
badly burned and mutilated bodies of children. That alone made
Gardner want to retch. He had seen a lot of death during his
military career, but the bodies of children always bothered him
profoundly. The indiscriminate slaughter of innocents finally
proved too much for Bill, who mustered out of service after what he
had witnessed in Columbia. He didn’t appreciate having those
memories forcefully brought back into his mind. He turned away,
refusing to look.
    Lorna noticed. “You okay?”
    He shook his head. “Not really. This…this is
monstrous.”
    Lorna sighed. “I understand.”
    Whatever distaste she might harbor, she hid it
well. Opening her satchel, she slipped on some dark blue gloves,
and then with some unnamable instrument, she began probing the
bodies.
    Bill just looked at the horizon, wondering what
the last thing these poor children had seen. The sun had just begun
to set, and despite the trash, the blazing colors were beautiful to
behold. He hoped that these children had at least time to enjoy
this before being murdered.
    “These children didn’t die due to the fire,”
Lorna observed. “They were both shot first.”
    “What is the placement of the wounds?” Bill
asked, refusing to look.
    “Heart shot on the slightly larger corpse. Head
shot on the smaller one.”
    “Execution style?”
    “The head shot one for sure. The heart shot was
done from slightly further away based on the entry wound. I’m
sorry, but it’s really hard to tell. Whoever burned these bodies
certainly didn’t leave much to go on.” She looked around. “It’s not
as if this is a state of the art laboratory.”
    “Is there any chance of having any of this
analyzed?”
    “Here?” She gave a soft snort, glancing sidelong
at one of the armed mercenaries pretending to be a bodyguard. “I
doubt they even know what laboratory is.” She used a tool to gently
extract a burned strip of cloth. “I can probably have this sent
back to the States for analysis. The chemical compound of an
accelerant is like a signature. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you
where the compound was manufactured if not the one who purchased or
used it.”
    Bill crossed his arms, thinking. “That would at
least be something,” he mused. “I guess our best bet is to find a
witness.”
    Lorna frowned. “You think there were
witnesses?”
    “Yeah. This isn’t like our landfills back home.
This one is home to all sorts of displaced people. Children,
mostly, I suspect.”
    “And what makes you think they’ll talk to
you?”
    “We can offer something.”
    “Like what?”
    “We can take pictures and offer them for free.
Children love to be taken in pictures,” he muttered aloud, hardly
hearing her.
    Lorna stood, frowning. “Pictures?”
    “Yeah…” Bill looked around. “Right about there,
I think.” He pointed to one of the less used entrances to the
landfill. A rambling series of shacks and shanties were built along
the edge and even now he knew that dozens—perhaps hundreds—of eyes
were watching them. Bill grabbed her arm and started pulling her
back towards the jeeps. “Come along sweetheart. How good is your
photography skills?”
    “What?”
    “You can use my camera and my portable printer.
We can give them pictures they can keep as a memento.”
    “Uh…okay? What are you doing?”
    “We need a few more things though,” he mused,
ignoring her. “I’ll make an appeal directly to General Hynes. That
ought to get the ball rolling.”
    A small smile of glee played across the woman’s
lips as understanding dawned on her. “Oh this is going to be rich.
Come on, I want to make this call!” Now it was she who pulled him
along.
    Almost two days later, Bill and Lorna set up a
stand. Lorna had scrounged up a table from somewhere and some
chairs to go with it. The equipment had been delivered under heavy
guard, something that Lorna found downright