Free Lords of Corruption by Kyle Mills

considering climbing over.
    Gideon revved the engine and gunned the vehicle forward, nearly brushing the old man as they passed. The unease that Josh felt at the similarity to the prison he'd been so anxious to leave faded as they skidded to a stop in a gravel courtyard overflowing with bougainvillea, fruit trees, and white Land Cruisers.
    He barely had a foot out the door when a thin African man with cheeks that hovered somewhere between extraordinarily chubby and dangerously swollen rushed toward him. His grin was full of teeth almost white enough to outshine his garish Hawaiian shirt, but they disappeared when Gideon began barking unintelligible orders. A moment later, he had pulled Josh's bags from the back of the vehicle and was teetering away with them.
    "Hold on!" Josh called. "Let me help you with those."
    He turned to thank Gideon for the ride, but the African was already reversing the Land Cruiser toward the gate. Josh swore quietly to himself. Making friends left and right.
    "Hey, you! New guy!"
    He spotted a white face emerging from a path that had nearly been reclaimed by the banana trees lining it.
    "Come on over here and introduce yourself, son."
    Josh pointed in the direction he'd last seen his luggage heading. "There's this really skinny guy trying to carry about two hundred pounds of my stuff, and --"
    "Luganda?" the man said in an accent that suggested northeastern United States. "Jesus Christ, kid. He doesn't need your help. He could twist your head off like a bottle cap. Now, who the hell are you?"
    After one last glance back, Josh walked over to shake the man's hand. He was probably in his late forties, though his shaved head and sun-damaged skin made that more of a guess than an estimate. His clothes were standard mail-order safari, though their style and threadbare condition suggested that the catalog dated back to somewhere in the early '90s.
    "I'm Josh Hagarty."
    "NewAfrica," he said, contemplating Josh with the same skepticism everyone else on this continent did.
    "That's right. Who are you?"
    He didn't answer immediately, instead taking a pull from a sweaty glass topped with a paper umbrella. "JB Flannary. Maybe you've heard of me."
    "No."
    "America's youth has become virtually illiterate, hasn't it? I blame those Ataris."
    "I have no idea what you're talking about."
    Flannary paused to take another drink, an act that went on long enough to turn the scene slightly awkward.
    "Well," he said finally, "you bothered to come all this way, so I guess I should show you where you're staying. Where are you from, anyway?"
    "Kentucky."
    "How'd a good ol' boy like you get hooked up with NewAfrica?"
    "It's kind of a strange story," Josh said, nearly tripping over a coconut as he followed the man on a detour through the landscaping.
    "Yeah? How so?"
    He was about to answer when Flannary came to a sudden halt, their path blocked by a white woman in her midtwenties. She wore her mouse-brown hair in a short, square cut that seemed to have been designed to fit around her sturdy-looking glasses. Blue fatigue pants and a similarly colored top gave her a vaguely SWAT feel.
    "Hey, Josh, let me introduce you to Katie -- one of our quickly dwindling crew. She's with the African Women's Initiative."
    "Nice to meet you. I don't think I' m f amiliar with your charity."
    "They do firewood," Flannary said before Katie could respond.
    "What?"
    "Firewood," he repeated.
    "So people can cook," Katie cut in. "Most of the area has been clear-cut, so the women have to go farther and farther to get wood. And with the lawlessness, they're getting raped and mutilated by rebels."
    Josh squinted his tired eyes, trying to process that. "Why don't men get the wood?"
    "Because they'd be executed if the rebels caught them."
    "You're telling me that African men are such cowards that they stay home while their daughters and wives get raped and mutilated?"
    She froze, staring at him with an expression of shock, colored with just a hint of