Holy City Part Two: Chapter Seven

The man emerged from the desert. His hair was cut short. There was a few days growth of beard on his face. His exposed skin was burnt from the sun. There were a pair of light rings around his wrists where cuffs had once been. He walked with a limp.

There were others. They were walking across the desert from a different direction and were walking in a slow, straight line towards impermanent gates. The gates were open. Soldiers standing on the side of the gates watched the disheveled rabble with a mixture of boredom and disdain. V walked over the dune that separated him from the line and gradually blended in. It didn’t take much imagination to see him as part of the same group. His clothes were torn just as the clothes of the other marchers were torn. His face was burnt just as their faces were burnt. His eyes had the same hungry, despondent, defeated look of the others.

There were old men and women, young women carrying children, young boys and girls zigzagging back and forth as their parents were either too tired or too distracted to care. But there were very few men V’s age. The few men in the line that were his age walked with a limp like him, or had bandages around their arms or heads. When he looked at those men, V felt like he was walking amongst the dead, that the line was slowly making its way to the river Styx, hoping to be ferried across to oblivion.

But this group wasn’t on their way to oblivion, they were being herded into a refugee camp. They were from a tiny village, Gom, which now served as the front line in the battle between the Republic of Vitesia and Damasia. Gom had been bombed heavily over the last two nights. Both sides claimed the other had done the bombing and it was entirely possible that one nation dropped the bombs on the first night and after it was believed troops had moved into the decimated village, the other nation dropped the bombs on the next night. For the most part, the residents didn’t care who had bombed them, those who wanted to join the fight had done so a long time ago. Those who were left in the village only wanted to survive the war.

Vitesia opened their gates to the survivors as a humanitarian gesture that also happened to be very good public relations. There were men and women with cameras standing behind the soldiers at the gates. Occasionally one of these reporters would shout a question to the line. But the line was too tired to answer.

V was near the back of the line. He walked into the camp without anyone giving him a second look. When the line finished, the gates closed, the cameras turned off and the reporters were sent away.

There were a few tents and a few cots. Not nearly enough for the numbers now in the camp. A soldier stood in the middle of the compound on top of a platform. He was shouting at the line, trying to divide it: by gender, by age, by family, by anything, but none of these things worked, the line wasn’t listening and groups broke off quickly for the tents with little regard to classification.

V found a quiet place to stand along the western fence. A couple of older men stood next to him. The three of them watched the chaos. One of the old men had a cane, the other old man had an eye patch. The two men spoke to each other in Gommese, the language of Gom. Luckily, V spoke perfect Gommesse. He listened to their conversation, to their complaints and worries. Finally, the man with the cane looked at V, he knew that V had been eavesdropping.

“Who are you?”

“Me?” V asked feigning ignorance.

“You. I don’t know you. What street did you live on?”

“Riverview.” V answered plausibly. He had visited Gom once, it was the only street name he could remember from the visit. “I’m originally from Alexandria,” V offered, hoping this would explain why he lived on Riverview Street.

The man with the cane looked at V with a suspicious eye. Gommorans didn’t like Alexandrians, they were ancient rivals.

“What’s your name?”

“Fontan.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“It doesn’t seem funny to me.”

The eye-patched man now gave the same suspicious eye as the caned one.

“The cots are for the women and children, don’t try to take a cot or there will be trouble,” eye patch harrumphed as he and cane walked away into the closest tent.

V watched them as they passed a soldier who was trying to calm a woman. The soldier obviously did not speak Gommese. V walked over to them. There were two small children hiding behind the woman as the frustrated soldier shouted back to her. “Can I help?” V asked the soldier in accented Vitesian.

“She keeps screaming. She won’t stop screaming.” The soldier said, near hysterics himself.

V listened to the woman, then turned back to the soldier once he understood the problem. “She’s lost one of her children, her oldest. He ran off after they entered the compound. She’s afraid he ran out trying to make it back to Gom to find his father.”

The soldier gave a disheartened look, almost as disheartened as the woman’s look. He didn’t want to go looking for a child amidst the chaos.

“I can help you search,” V volunteered.

V asked the woman for a description of the child.

“Stefan, his name is Stefan.” V told the soldier once the woman finished.

“Stay here, we will go look for your son.” The soldier told the woman, V translating for him. An older soldier approached the conference. Perhaps he was worried that V and the woman had kidnapped the young soldier and were holding him against his will.

“What’s going on here?” He asked V’s soldier.

“We’re looking for a lost child.”

The older soldier grumbled an unintelligible response. It was clear he wanted to tell the other soldier to stop looking but lacked the authority to do so.

“His name is Stefan.” V said. “If you see a small child with…”

“I didn’t know any of these savages speak Vitesian.” The older soldier cut V off, talking past him to the other soldier.

“Most don’t. I’m an exception.” V said firmly. The older soldier turned to him and looked at V’s ragged clothes.

“You’re an educated sort, are you?”

“I can speak more than one language.”

“I hate your kind.” The soldier snarled at V. “At least these other people know their place. You, you snobs, you don’t know anything. You think you’re too good for this. Well, who’s too good now?” The soldier turned away before V could answer and marched to a different group of refugees and began shouting at them in words they clearly did not understand.

The other soldier, the younger soldier, seemed to feel bad about the way V had just been treated. His disposition visibly improved. “Let’s split up. You take that side,” he pointed to the western fence and I’ll take this side.

They didn’t find the child. V was the one to break the news to the mother. He tried to give her hope. It was a big camp. It was still possible the boy was somewhere in the camp and she would find him the next day.

The mother didn’t see hope as V whispered this into her ear. She moaned loudly, an indescribable primal call of a mother for her lost child. V tried to put his arms around the woman to comfort her. She pushed him away. The primal call now silent. Who was this stranger trying to comfort her, who couldn’t even find her child, who probably didn’t even look hard to find her child. She would have to do it herself, even with two small children in tow, but how could she do it herself, she might lose one of the other two. How could she find her foolish lost stubborn oldest child who was determined to go back to Gom and find his dead father? She fell to the ground in the middle of a swirling crowd of refugees and soldiers.

As the sun fell and the desert heat turned into desert cool, V positioned himself along the western fence leaning back against the chain-link and watching the never-ending jostling for the cots in the tents. As he watched, a familiar face emerged from the mass of flesh and noise. It was the young soldier from earlier in the day. He was walking directly, purposefully towards V. V wondered if it was good news, maybe the boy had been found and the soldier wanted to let V know there was a happy ending to the story. But he didn’t mention anything about the boy or the mother as he sat down next to V.

“It’s okay. I’m on break.”

The soldier took out a pack of cigarettes, and then a single cigarette from the pack and lit it. After taking a drag he looked at V, who was still watching the tents.

“Do you want one?”

V laughed. He did want one. He still felt the need to scratch the itch that had been denied to him in Damasia. He took a cigarette from the soldier’s pack, the soldier lit it for him, V inhaled, surprisingly, the taste was different than he thought it would be. He had never had a cigarette before.

“It’s a bad habit.” The soldier said apologetically.

“You sound like a Damasian.”

“I know.” The soldier shook his head. He looked at V, obviously deliberating about something but V couldn’t figure out what. The soldier held the pack out again.

“Here. Take it.”

V looked down at the pack of cigarettes.

“You should take it.” The soldier insisted. “For you, a pack of cigarettes is going to be as valuable as a life.”

“Are lives that cheap here?”

“No. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I meant as something to trade. It will be important for you to have something to trade.”

“I know what you meant. No harm. I don’t need the cigarettes. One is enough.”

The soldier continued to hold the pack out for a couple of more seconds, but he wasn’t one to insist. He put the pack away.

“There’s only a couple of others who speak Vitesian, yours is good.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you study here?”

“My mother did.”

The soldier nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Fontan.”

“I’m Henderson.” He held out his hand. They shook hands, the soldier had a very strong handshake. They must train their soldiers to have strong handshakes in Vitesia, V thought.

“It’s a shame about that kid. I hope she finds him, I really do. I have two kids at home. I know how it is, they run off and your heart freezes, even if it’s only for a minute, two minutes, it feels like a lifetime. I can’t imagine what she’s going through. That’s why I hate working the camps.”

“The camps?”

“The refugee camps.”

“Are there many of them?”

“Depends who you ask. Some think there are too many, some think there’s not enough.”

“What will happen to this camp?”

“Not for me to say. Were only here for the processing. For the cameras. After tonight, the contractors come in and I’ll go back to the fight.”

“The fight?”

“I don’t expect you to understand. It’s not your fight, your village just happened to get caught in the middle, these things happen.”

“They do.”

“I don’t like it. What happened, the bombing of the villages, but we can’t let those crazy Damasians control Alexandria or Lyonesse either, so we have to fight for it, you see how it is.”

“I try not to.”

“You try not to?”

“I try not to see how it is.”

Henderson shrugged not quite sure what to make of the statement and then threw his cigarette into the sand. It was time to get back to work.

“If there’s anything I can do for you while I’m still here, let me know. I try to help, I truly do, it’s just….” Henderson shrugged again and stood up. He started to walk away. V lowered his head. He heard Fontan’s name called. He didn’t look up at first. He heard Fontan’s name again and realized he was Fontan. V looked up. The soldier was standing ten yards away, he had turned back to V.

“Let me know if she finds her kid, okay.”

“Sure.” V said reassuring the soldier, while knowing he wasn’t going to let him know the mother had found her son because the mother wasn’t going to find her son.

Next Chapter: Chapter Eight
Previous Chapter: Chapter Six