0109 Little Camel and Her Child (Part One)

"Hello! Do any of you speak English? I’m lost—could you tell me where I am?" Hou Rui spread his hands, forcing a friendly smile onto his face as he spoke loudly in English. In response to his sudden appearance, the group of children scattered instantly, leaving him standing there in awkward isolation.

A few minutes later, as Hou Rui attempted to enter the village, he found that every household had bolted their doors and windows. Countless terrified eyes peered at the strange foreigner through the cracks in the doors.

"Hello? Is there anyone here who speaks English?" Hou Rui called out loudly from the small clearing in the center of the village. He turned in a circle, scanning his surroundings. It was a tiny settlement, consisting of no more than thirty low-lying, mud-brick thatched huts. The total population couldn't have been more than a hundred, and judging by their frantic efforts to hide, there didn't seem to be any armed men present.

The silence remained absolute; no one answered his inquiries.

"I’m an American journalist. I’m lost and I need help!" Hou Rui resorted to using his journalist persona as a cover.

A long while later, just as Hou Rui was growing impatient and preparing to leave the silent village, the door of a small, round mud hut to his left finally creaked open. A local woman wearing a headscarf stepped out, hesitant and trembling.

Seeing the woman in her twenties looking so indecisive—her steps dragging as she walked toward him, as if she were ready to bolt back inside at any moment—an impatient Hou Rui spoke up first. "Hello! I don’t have any weapons. I won't hurt anyone. I just need help."

"You... are you American?" The woman stopped a good ten meters away, calling out from a distance.

"Yes, I am American. An American journalist."

"You aren't a member of the Coalition, are you?"

"No, no. Look at me—I don't look like one, do I?"

"What is your name, and what help do you need? We all just want you to leave our village as soon as possible."

"My name is Douglas. I’m lost, and I need to know where I am. If possible, I also need a telephone."

"We don't have a phone. This is Sige Village. I can give you some food, but you must leave the village immediately."

"Why? What are you afraid of?"

"We don't want trouble. If the Coalition finds out we helped an American, they will come here, kill us, and burn Sige Village to the ground."

After brief consideration, Hou Rui decided to eat and then leave. It was better to keep moving south than to waste time here. Logically, the closer he got to the Coalition’s core territory, the higher the chance of encountering high-ranking figures, which would be more helpful in his search for General Garcia.

"Fine. Give me some food and I’ll leave immediately. You just need to point me in the right direction." Once he agreed to this small trade, the villagers began to emerge from their homes. The adults stood in an outer circle, the children in an inner one, all collectively gawking at the rare, yellow-skinned foreigner.

After the woman brought him a bowl of corn mush and a cup of some unknown animal's milk, Hou Rui sat down and began to eat without ceremony. The villagers gradually dispersed to resume their interrupted daily chores, leaving only the woman and her son, who hid behind her, to keep him company—or rather, to monitor him.

"Who did you learn English from? You speak it quite well!" Since he had time to kill, Hou Rui began to fish for information. Knowing more about this isolated area controlled by the Liberation Coalition certainly couldn't hurt.

"There used to be foreign missionaries in a nearby town. They treated my son when he was sick. I learned it from them," the woman replied.

"Have the missionaries all left now?"

"No, they were all burned to death by the Coalition in the town square. The people of the Coalition are devils."

Hou Rui realized he had asked a sensitive question and shifted his approach. He looked at the young boy hiding behind his mother. "Little one, can you understand me?"

Encouraged by his mother, the boy nodded.

"What is your name, little one?"

"Little Camel." Perhaps because he wasn't accustomed to speaking English, the boy blurted it out after a short pause.

"Hello, Little Camel. My name is Douglas. Here, drink this." Hou Rui pulled out a can of cola, opened it, and handed it to the boy.

The stunned boy looked at his mother, then at Hou Rui, before gathering the courage to tentatively lick the brown liquid. Within a second, his taste buds were conquered. He took a small sip, then his eyes lit up, and he hugged the can, refusing to let go.

Hou Rui smiled at the boy and affectionately ruffled his hair before picking up the bowl of corn mush and scraping the last of it into his stomach.

True to his word, Hou Rui prepared to leave as soon as he finished eating. Keen to see him gone, the woman grabbed a stick and drew a map on the ground, marking the locations of nearby towns and villages—a valuable piece of intelligence.

However, just as Hou Rui finished listening to her instructions and prepared to head south, a panicked man suddenly burst out of the woods near the village.

The man fell hard as soon as he appeared in their sight. Before he could even scramble to his feet, he shouted something while still on the ground. Immediately, the entire village erupted in chaos. The panic was far more intense than when Hou Rui had first arrived; even the mother and son who had been watching him turned and ran in terror.

"What happened? Why are you running?" Unable to understand Somali, Hou Rui had no choice but to grab the woman to ask.

"Let go of me! The Coalition—the Coalition is here!" The woman forcefully shook him off, grabbed Little Camel, and sprinted back to her home, bolting the door tight.

*Bang! Clack! Bang, bang! Clack-clack!* The sounds of doors slamming and being barricaded with heavy objects filled the air. In the blink of an eye, Sige Village was deserted, all its residents in hiding.

Realizing the danger, Hou Rui didn't linger. He ran in the opposite direction of where the man had appeared, darted into the woods, and climbed a tree. Within seconds, he was hidden in the lush canopy. His position was excellent, offering both concealment and a clear view of the village.

Before the swaying leaves had even settled, two dilapidated pickup trucks, followed by a large group of infantry, roared into the village. Amidst the shouting and commotion, the Coalition soldiers began kicking in doors, dragging the villagers out and forcing them into the small clearing.

Ten minutes later, the seventy-eighty men, women, and children of the village were gathered together, surrounded by over a hundred armed Coalition soldiers.

From his perch, Hou Rui watched as the soldiers grabbed children aged eight to twelve, along with their parents, pulling them aside to isolate them from the rest. A Coalition leader wearing a baseball cap jumped down from one of the trucks.

The officer, appearing to be in his twenties, was sturdily built and wore a bright red baseball cap. He was dressed like a hipster, his sleeveless military jacket worn open, adorned with badges and pins. He wore oversized sunglasses, and his neck was draped in a chaotic mess of half a dozen necklaces of various styles and colors—a look that was not only tasteless but bordering on the ridiculous. Yet, the moment this clownish figure appeared, the parents clutching their children began to tremble, their faces masks of pure despair.

The leader shouted something in Somali. The surrounding soldiers, as if emboldened, began to fire their weapons into the air. One stray bullet nearly knocked Hou Rui out of his tree.

After a moment of this, the absurd-looking leader pulled a family before him. He grabbed the young boy, forced a .38 caliber handgun into the child's hand, and led him toward his parents.

Under the soldiers' coercion, the boy's parents were forced to kneel before their son. The leader then guided the child's hand, aiming the .38 directly at his father’s chest.