War Child - Attack On The Mountain: War Child, #2

By C. P. Clarke

WAR CHILD Trilogy

Attack on the Village

Attack on the Mountain

Attack on the City

 

Set in war torn Africa.   A young boy fights for survival against a corrupt regime and power hungry rebels, and a dark force controlling them all.  A handful of warriors stand beside him trying to keep him alive as the pasts of all come back to haunt them.

For more details of each book, click on the link to read the full description.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. P. Clarke
• Release date: Nov 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223106524

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Part Two

Attack on the Mountain

1

The location is different, the terrain altered, the elevation more stifling and unforgiving, and the visibility more clouded as the mist of Kyala's hypnotic essence bears down on the village.  The faces are different too: ageless childhood friends and college pals, and acquaintances not seen in years, wearing uniforms out of character as their personas morph into the bodies of the dead as is typical and only possible in the realms of a deep dream state.  Jenny is there too, looking on, tied up and helpless, the pleading in her eyes for me to help, for me to save her.

And then there is Jok, bearing down on Benjamin with all his weight as he had towered over me in the camp during our last encounter.  Only Benjamin is no longer there, he is playing football innocently on the field with the other boys, not yet aware that there are armed men hiding in the trees waiting to attack.  Benjamin plays on, oblivious to his adopted fathers' sacrifice as I trade places with him, the machete bearing down on me with violent savagery.

Then all goes black.  I can feel my heart beating and hear the commotion and panic as the village erupts in gunfire and women and children scream in terror.  Run Benjamin, run!  But my voice can't speak, my mouth won't open, and my eyes are reluctant to see the light and the sights my terrified mind refuses to acknowledge.  There is an agonised scream from above and I feel the splash of warm blood spray over my face, acid blood that burns a fire across my features, disfiguring me - but even this is wrong.  Fear and mourning have distorted the facts so that my memory is confused into merging the accounts of the past.

For too many years I have dreamed this same nightmare.  For too many nights I have awaken to the cold, damp sweats of terror and loathing that haunt me, and no doubt will continue to do so until the end of my days.  I have lived and dreamed many horrors of my not so proud past, but this is the worst.  This is the nightmare I can't evade.  This is the fear that of what is still out there.

And then I awake.  My eyes open to my surroundings, my safety, my sanctuary hidden away from the world beyond the reaches of Daniel Jok and his demented thirst for vengeance.  I sit up, one elbow on the green canvas camp bed, just one of a number scavenged from the distant supplies of disused and abandoned army barracks we had raided in the early days of our flight across the country.  We had gathered all we needed for our remote base, our hideout hidden away in the valley behind distant hills, scavenging carefully to far reached places to avoid detection and attention to the camp we now call home.

I can hear Benjamin's harsh breathing as he pushes through his early morning training regime, exerting all his strength to condition his body, building on those muscles that are no longer those of a boy but of a youth, a teenager, a young man forced to grow up ahead of time, like so many other African boys faced with hardship.  Benjamin is a fighter, a child born of war, and unless I, as his chosen guardian, can keep him safe, he will most likely die a war child, never living to experience the fullness of manhood.

The downhill flow of water crashing over the rocks is subdued; it hasn't rained for weeks and the river and the falls are low, making access to the island on the lake more easily accessible.  I can hear other sounds too: birds and insects, monkeys in the trees and baboons on the bank, and wild boar thrashing the underbrush farther back, and I can even hear elephants trumpeting off in the distance beneath the rapids.  It all relaxes me.  All is peaceful.  All is calm.  I rest my head back down on the thin pillow and mentally cast my mind to the tasks for the day.  That is when the gunfire erupts through the serene, shattering the morning with a discord of screeching animals and squawking birds in panicked flight.  I hear Benjamin yelling my name, calling for my aid nearby just outside the hut.  Then more gunfire, a scream of mortal pain, and a splash of water as a body falls.  Immobilized with uncertainty I am frozen to the spot, my body glued to the bed, my eyes staring at the door, fearfully awaiting what I have dreaded all along, yet part of me welcomes it.

My heartbeat echoes in my ears with a drowning swash of age and anxiety belonging to an organ much older than me, a sure sign that the combat years of my life and a lifestyle of disregarding my health are now beginning to take their toll.  Not that it matters as I am unlikely to live long enough to enjoy breakfast.

I wait patiently for the inevitable, not bothering to reach for the knife I routinely keep beneath my pillow, nor for the sidearm strapped to the belt of my jeans overhanging the chair I use as a bedside table.  I just sit and wait with the resignation of a man defeated.

As the blood pulsing through my veins ticks away the moments of expectation, Jenny's laughter rises in the distance and I visualise her smiling face mouthing to me not to give up, not yet.  It is enough to shake me from my stupor, raising me from my bed as I reach across for the gun, a moment too late it would seem as the door bursts open and the monstrous figure of Jok fills the void, casting out any light that threatens to step in with him.

Daniel Jok's eyes are red with fire, a conjured spirit of evil having overtaken him, his face scarred, his left arm missing and replaced with a blood-stained hook, more a curved and sharpened blade fashioned to survive and kill in the jungle.  Upon his head he wears a horned helmet, its ivory tusks curved high and wide and pointed so that even the devil himself would be envious of such a headpiece.  Paint of crimson and black decorates the metal shell and merges into the corners of his mouth as a permanent fanged grin, growling menacingly at his opponents and friends alike, not that he has any friends left in life.

But of all of this none is so horrific as what hangs from Jok's right hand.  He holds it up and then hooks its underside to lift it high as a trophy with the limb that had caused the fatal cut.

Benjamin's decapitated head drips blood across the floor as Jok steps forward, drawing his machete from behind him as he comes, speaking gruffly with a deep grizzled voice that bites with unrestrained anger.

You know why they call me Mad Dog? he asks rhetorically.  Because when I go after something I don't let go until I've got it.  He flings the head forward and then races forward towards his nemesis, the flying head knocking the gun from my hand and preventing me from regaining my composure.

Having caught the head of the boy I had grown to love as my own son, I give an involuntary scream of disgust and fear as the Mad Dog bears down on me with the machete.

––––––––

Emerging from the hut I’m sure I look tired and ragged.  My eyes are most likely the dark rims and wrinkles stretched out towards the grey wings edging my temples that I usually glimpse as I bow to dip my head in the water.  I am thinner now than I had been in my prime, hell even a few years ago when we had first come to this sanctuary I had been heavier and bulkier, but now I am wasting away, despite my daily training and teaching all that I know to the boy.

The nightmares are exhausting, and over a prolonged period have drained both my energy and my will.  I am thankful it was Benjamin this time, too often it has been Jenny's head that Jok flings at me, an all too real reality I can't escape from as her death was final, and at least Benjamin still remains to greet me every morning to reassure me life is still worth living.  I worry what the boy thinks of my screaming.  I know I can be heard amidst the cascades of the nearby waterfall and rapids.  We have never spoken of it, Benjamin having never asked, and me having never offered to divulge such intimate fears.  I want the boy to grow strong and wise and never to have to suffer the debilitating fear of his own death at the hands of the monster that chases us, though our nemesis now being the same and with us living in ever ready preparation of a confrontation, the boy needs not to have his head filled with visions of his own massacre.

As for myself, I’ve trained the boy daily, and have done so ever since we had fled the guerilla camp four years ago, seeking refuge in the distant hills far away in the southern lands of the country away from the emerging civil war that would so quickly overtake the land.  But in truth the fight has gone out of me.  Sure, I had been a great warrior, and even now my legendary status still echoes through the countryside, the rumours of which no doubt contributed to driving Jok on in his madness and determination to track us down.  Yet I no longer have the will to fight; to survive is now my only aim, and that purely for the preservation of the boy, to fulfill the vow I made all those years ago.  If it wasn't for keeping the child alive, I would have retreated back to the West, back to merge into a boring home life and a monotonous desk job in the city away from the toils and troubles of war.  Not that I have ever experienced such a life, but I have fantasised about it, especially of late.  Even the thought of meeting a girl and dating someone, telling the false tale of decades of average living and uneventful society and having never left my homeland, scares me.  It is a dream, and one that Jenny would have appreciated, but one the haunting nightmares of her would never let me escape to as guiltily I hold myself responsible for all that has transpired; I hadn't slain her myself, but she was dead on account of me.

He's ready, says the big Russian stepping out from behind the hut, not that he ever entertained being labeled as such; only when there is a need to rile him do I call him