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The Good Soldier

Day in day out they died and I was always a good soldier, I never intervened on their behalf. It was not my job to have an opinion, my job was to protect. Protect the few who had power, wealth, and health while the majority of the population withered in fear, avid poverty, and sickness. But often I wondered…what was I fighting for?

I was a pillar of supremacy for the perfect breeds and a pillar of fear for the mundane.

I had a mind of my own, even though I was created for one purpose and one purpose only.

I was bound to my creators. The only way I knew they had shown me. Kill and decimate anything that threatened their livelihood. Follow orders with no questions. I was the definition of a good soldier. And that’s what I lived for.

I’d gone out to smoke a cigarette. I’d just lighted it when I saw something lurking in the shadows. I went over to investigate.

I caught it before it made contact with the tip of my nose. It was acutely on target. Another caught my left knee, and another caught my right knee. I saw one pierce my waist and I dropped to the ground. I didn’t feel the impact but the effects were there, I could see the blood oozing out of my waist and kneecaps.

The bone was broken badly. I had no sense of feeling for what was happening to my body, I wasn’t engineered that way. I was strong, fast, and without physical feeling. That was perhaps the best and worst aspect of my being.

I felt no physical pain, but I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t indestructible. Matter of fact, I was easily prone to injury, as I’d just discovered. Later, I realised physical pain is not the only kind or definition of pain. And the events that followed my capture by Wassawa Kazibwe redefined me.

I opened my eyes.

A big round face with big brown eyes stared down at me.

“He’s awake,” the chubby-faced fellow said, looking behind him.

Two other faces joined the chubby fellow. They all looked the same. Six big brown eyes stared down at me. They showed no fear, an emotion I was used to and expected to see in the eyes of the mundane. But rather, they were curious.

Suddenly, they all straightened up and moved a few inches away from me. I heard the slow rhythmic pace of a tap tap coming through. I recognised the sound because that’s how my own shoes sounded as I moved. It was the signature sound of a soldier’s boots on tile.

But the face that looked down at me was not that of a soldier, it was a child, an old child. It stared down all knowingly and unlike the others it was not curious. I can’t put into words what I saw behind those eyes but I felt the inside of my chest come alive, throbbing with vigour. Like someone had just lighted a matchstick at a never before used candle, except my heart was the candle.

The words that came to my mouth were, “Who are you?”

But what I’d been wondering and meant to ask a second before was, “What did you do to me?”

I could not move my body, I willed it up but I stayed down.

“You’re still healing,” the old child said, perhaps noticing what I was trying to do although I was sure my body had not made any movements.

He then walked away and the others followed him, curious eyes glanced back as they exited the door. It was obvious the old child was in charge. He was not much taller than the others but he was less chubby and less lively.

Looking around, this room had a low ceiling. If I were on my feet I could possibly be able to touch it. The walls wore a shabby green colour, my boots stood near the door. It was then I realised I was naked, except for boxers.

The inside of my head started burning…I was hot with anger, then confused. I had never been angry a day in my life. It was not in my nature. Perhaps it was loathing I felt, or maybe both, I can’t remember correctly.

I could not stand another minute in this small enclosed room; it was almost a jail, with only a ventilation behind me and a bulb in the centre of it, which was its main source of light.

The light spilling in through the ventilation dimed out as time went by and as I envisioned an escape route I pondered on who these children were.

The door crackled open and the old child walked in. He was alone and he carried a container with him. He sat me up and fed me.

We stared at each other with every spoonful of the mixture of rice, beans, and katunkuma he held to my mouth. My eyes didn’t leave his face and neither did his leave mine.

After the awkward meal, the old child opened my knee wounds and cleaned and dressed them again. He then went on to dress my waist wound. In a few hours, I’d be all healed and I had a lot of questions for this old child and preferably they would be asked with my hands around his neck.

For the rest of the day, I received no other visitors. The faint sunlight that had been streaming in through the ventilation vanished and my immobility went with it. I could lift my hands and I tried lifting my legs but after the first attempt, I didn’t expect I would ever want to move again if that’s what it felt like.

It was painful. I had never known pain before.

“What have you done to me?” I roared.

The more I moved the more pain I felt. It was like my mind had been set on fire. I wanted to reach my limbs and tire them off. I tore off the bandage that covered my mid-section, shouting at the top of my voice.

The door opened and a gas canister flew in. Smoke enveloped the whole room, I coughed and held my breath but it caught me off guard… eventually I gasped for air, choking at the smoke. It tasted chemical and I passed out.

When I came to my hands and legs were chained on the bed I lay and I was in a different room. It was a bigger room with more colour than I had ever seen in one room.

The walls were painted blue, green, purple, yellow, black, orange, and everything in between. It didn’t necessarily have a pattern, just random colour that didn’t seem to represent anything.

On my right there were wide glass windows, they covered the entire wall. The room had a high ceiling and all its light came in through the glass wall. It was peaceful, my mind relaxed as I looked around. And like the room before, except for the narrow bed I lay on, this room was also empty of any objects.

My memory was blurry but I was thinking clearly now. The pain in my legs and torso had receded and I dreaded when it would make its come back.

Anxiety and stress wore over me, feelings I had never known before, feelings that were not supposed to make themselves known in my being.

“What is happening to me?” that one question bounced back and forth like a tennis ball in my mind.

I noticed a tiny red glow in the corner, I glared at it and in my mind I dared whoever was watching me to come face me. I had been captured against my will and they had done things to my body. It was no longer my body, it was now merely a vessel I inhabited.

The door cracked open, I turned my head in its direction and the all too familiar face of the old child showed itself before me.

“I want to ask you something,” the old child said….

“What do you feel?”

“Everything,” I said.

“And how does that make you feel.”

“Angry, very angry. You changed me.”

“No. I made you better.”

“I was better before, pain makes me weak.”

You’re wrong. Pain makes you strong.”

“How…?”

“Now you can fight for what’s right. Not what you are ordered to fight for.”

“A good soldier fights when he is ordered to fight.”

“A great soldier fights for what he believes in.”

“I believe in nothing.”

The old child came close to me and untied my shackles. Despite my earlier urge to jump at his throat, I didn’t. It was a surprise even to me.

“I want to show you something,” he said.

He looked into the camera in the corner and the glass windows opened. A heavy glow shot through from the outside, I narrowed my eyes, getting accustomed to the new light.

We then moved out to the balcony.

There was nothing, the land was completely bare, only black tree trunks, residues of a mad fire.

“They bombed the forest,” he spoke, his tone filled with pain.

“Apparently to destroy our hiding place.”

I was made with no sense or feeling of pain. But I liked the forest. The sound of the leaves when the wind passed, it was music to my ears. Looking at the emptiness in front of me, I was anguished. This was wrong.

Beyond the dead forest lay the city walls. So tall, so mighty, so cruel. Only accessible to the perfect breeds, while the mundane starved and died outside those walls.

“What are you going to do about it,” I stared at the old child.

“We are going to demand our right to be. We want to be recognised as a free state. No more attacks on our land and our people or we burn their city to the ground.

“I’ll fight with you,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, a little surprised.

“Because this is wrong,” I said, pointing to the dead forest.

That wasn’t the only reason I wanted to fight for the old child’s cause…. For a long time I had stood on the sidelines. Only followed orders but for a long time I had known, I had known it in my being. That the same blood that ran through the mundane’s veins ran through my veins too.

I knew empathy because I loved the forest… I enjoyed looking at the green everywhere and the sounds of birds chirping and forest animals going about their ways.

My squad mates back in the walled city hadn’t known empathy and I knew this because of the smug smiles that crossed their faces every time they took a life of a mundane. But it wasn’t in my nature, I had known this for a long time too. Now I felt I was fighting for the right side of the wall. Where I truly fit in.

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