Hostile Territory (A Spider Shepherd short story) Read Online Free PDF

it during the numerous coups and countercoups.
    He turned at the Kissy roundabout, passing through the Lebanese district and along East Street past the bus station, deserted but for one rusting bus with every window broken. Pademba Road Prison dominated the street. Its featureless walls, unbroken by any opening, rose sheer from the edge of the road, but they also showed the scars of shells or grenades. A group of guards glared balefully from behind the gates as he drove past.
    The US Embassy, a monolithic grey block overlooking Cotton Tree roundabout, looked untouched from a distance but close up it also showed the scars of gunfire. Gum-chewing armed guards with mirrored sunglasses stared at Shepherd as he passed, and did not respond when Shepherd raised a hand in greeting. The guards at the entrance to the squat, ugly blocks of Wilberforce Barracks had looked far less alert, leaning against the gates or sitting in the dust, their torn and tattered uniforms an indication of their poverty.
     At the centre of the city, most of the once beautiful colonial buildings were falling apart, either from neglect or damage. City Hall was derelict, its windows shattered and the doors torn from their hinges. The interior was strewn with rubbish and Shepherd saw a group of ragged children inside, clustered around a smouldering fire. The football stadium, an open concrete bowl, was one of the few structures that seemed relatively untouched. There were rats everywhere and they looked better fed than most of the human inhabitants. Most of the shops, almost all with Lebanese names over the doors, were closed and abandoned.
    Medicaid International occupied a dingy warehouse in a side street. The yard was protected by iron gates, but one was broken and hanging from just one of its hinges. The guard glanced incuriously at Shepherd and waved him through. To Shepherd’s surprise, Laurence Beltran turned out to be a woman, French and in her early thirties, with black hair scraped back from her face and tied in a bun. He explained why he was there and told her about Baraka and the other village children, and she heard him out in silence, her gaze never straying from his face. When he’d finished, she thought for a moment and then said, ‘Come with me, I’d like you to meet someone.’
    They walked through to a storeroom at the back of the building and she called to a boy who was stacking boxes of medical equipment on the shelves. ‘This is Abiola,’ she said, as the boy walked over to them. He looked about thirteen or fourteen, but with a cold, hard look in his eyes that Shepherd was beginning to recognise. ‘Tell Dan your story,’ Laurence said to him.
    ‘I was a child soldier,’ the boy said, his voice flat and unemotional.  ‘When the rebels came to my village, they captured me and told me to kill my mother, my father and my baby brother. I refused but they said “Do it, or we will kill you.” I knew they would kill me because they were killing people all around me. So I did it. They made me burn my house down too. They took me and some of the other boys with them, including my friends Buzita and Musa, and marched us to their camp. They took girls too and did bad things to them. Every night they gave us boys tablets with our food. As soon as I took them I began to sweat and my body started trembling. I couldn’t hear properly - there was a roaring, rushing sound in my ears and my sight was so blurred that I could hardly see. I do not know what the tablets contained but they made my heart beat as strong as a lion. I stayed up all night that night and hardly slept for days. At night they showed us war movies on a TV. We watched all the Rambo movies again and again, and they told us we had to kill people the same way. When they thought we were ready, they gave us all rifles and taught us to use them. They gave us each an amulet too. They said it was juju - magic - and would make any bullets fired at us turn to water. By now I was not