When night stole over the village the surrounding bush erupted with noise.  The chirruping of crickets was a background hum, occasionally interrupted by the snuffling sound of a warm-blooded creature, taking advantage of the cooling night.  

    Against this ambient sound, it was no wonder that the villagers never heard the arrival of the young men and boys.

    They appeared from the darkness, backlit by their own torches and raggedly dressed in mismatched shorts and shirts.  Some wore sandals, some boots, some wore ridiculous high-top basketball shoes, worn, torn and barely holding together.

    The youngest of the group were barefoot, carrying battered machine guns that were taller than them.

    A voice barked over the noise of the night, and the boys quickly broke up into six smaller groups of five, and began moving from one small, single-story house to another.  They kicked down doors, and when they encountered people, they killed the men, attacked the women and dragged the kids outside.

    Where the doors were more secure, they set fire to the outside, and waited for the smoke to drive the inhabitants out into the open, where they killed them with machetes and long knives.  The younger ones chopping inexpertly at the victims, the older ones vying to display strength by severing limbs with the least number of hacks.

    There was one that was different from the rest.  A young man, smooth faced with wide eyes that reflected the carnage and flames in the darkness.

    His uniform was pressed, and matched.  Long blue shorts that came over his knees.  A checked short sleeved shirt that, though patched, was clean and neat.  He was barefoot, and had a kalashnikov slung over his left shoulder, and carried a sharpened, black-bladed knife in his right.

    He blocked the only road leading into the village, dispassionately cutting down any who tried to escape in that direction.

    He killed his fair share of men that night.  He was distinguishable from the rest by his lack of excitement or fear.  He didn’t boast loudly to the others, and didn’t fondle or molest the young women that had been pulled from the homes and families.  He slit throats, stabbed upwards through the ribcage, severed essential arteries in the legs.

    None of his victims lingered.  They were dead within minutes.  Some within seconds.  None of them had time to scream in pain or beg for mercy.  He was cold, calculated, a true expert in this bloody field.

    The militia had been in the village less than forty-five minutes, during which time; half of the 136 inhabitants were dead. Old women and babies were left weeping in the ashes of the homes, covered in the blood and viscera of their loved ones.

    39 young women and girls were herded into the lush green of the jungle, away from everything and everyone they knew.  Some were now guarded by their younger brothers, who had been initiated into guerilla warfare in the most brutal, traumatic way possible.

    Of those 30 young women and girls, one walked with the wide-eyed smooth-faced young man.  She stood at his side, instinctively.  And that night, when so many of the young women and girls faced more horror and humiliation at the hands of drunken young men, no one approached her.

    She sat in his shadow, and no one touched her.  

    She had claimed him