0131 A Chilled Heart

"Take me to that house immediately, hurry!" Hou Rui commanded in an unquestionable tone.

"Uh, yes, Lieutenant." The young man was baffled, but he agreed hesitantly and turned to lead Hou Rui toward the east.

A few minutes later, the young man brought Hou Rui to a detached house with a courtyard. Catching the scent of barbecue at the entrance, Hou Rui couldn't wait; he pushed the door open and rushed in.

In the center of the yard, a bonfire was burning with several thick logs. On a makeshift stove constructed from stones sat a square wire mesh, and on it, several large chunks of meat were emitting the savory aroma that had caught Hou Rui's attention. Little Lamb and Stone were crouched by the fire, using their knives to constantly flip the meat. Both children wore expressions of bliss and impatience.

At the other end of the courtyard, Judy stood far away, her face ashen; she was not participating in the meat feast.

"Where is Little Camel?" Hou Rui knew exactly what Little Lamb and Stone were eating. He had already given up on these two; raised from a young age by that pervert Sergeant Kun, Hou Rui didn't believe he could restore their deeply twisted psyches. He only wanted to save Little Camel, who had been a child soldier for a shorter time and still possessed a naturally good character.

"Over there!" As soon as Judy pointed, Hou Rui dashed past her like a gust of wind. He ran into the house, hurriedly searched, and when he arrived at the living room, he happened to see Little Camel straddling a corpse, his small arms gripping a dagger, repeatedly cutting into the body.

"Little Camel! What are you doing?" Hou Rui shouted, his voice a mix of disappointment, disgust, and regret. When Little Camel turned around at the sound, Hou Rui saw the blood-stained mouth of the boy.

"What on earth are you doing?" Hou Rui still harbored a desperate hope that Little Camel would give him a completely different answer.

"Lieutenant, I'm eating his heart! I killed this enemy with my own hands. Sergeant Kun and the captains taught us that eating an enemy's heart absorbs their soul and makes me stronger and braver. Do you want some, Lieutenant?"

Little Camel, not sensing any deviation in his behavior, looked at Hou Rui sincerely. In his young mind, being willing to share such a precious trophy with Hou Rui was an act of great respect and generosity, just as generous as when Hou Rui treated him to a soda.

Hou Rui felt a wave of intense powerlessness that almost made him collapse. He leaned against the doorframe of the living room. He was too late after all. Little Camel, once pure-hearted, had also been assimilated by the child soldiers, fully accepting the ideology instilled by the pervert Sergeant Kun and putting it into action.

"Come on, Lieutenant, don't be shy, I'm willing to share with you." Holding the remaining half of the heart, Little Camel walked directly toward Hou Rui, unaware of the look of devastation on the man's face.

When Hou Rui saw Little Camel's sincere, wide eyes and watched him struggle to stand on tiptoe to reach the meat toward him, Hou Rui finally saw the rows of tiny tooth marks on it. Now, Hou Rui had no more excuses to deceive himself: the Little Camel standing before him was already a child soldier accustomed to cannibalism.

From this moment on, Hou Rui swore to himself that he would no longer interfere with Little Camel's behavior. If such actions were considered normal in this living hell, then, unable to change the status quo, he would have to let him be.

For the next three days, Hou Rui did not say another word to Little Camel. Lieutenant Colonel Timo's condition finally stabilized. As soon as he could be carried, the Lieutenant Colonel ordered an immediate return to the Alliance's core control zone, where he could receive more detailed medical care.

Thus, Hou Rui drove the Alakran at the front again, with another sergeant providing directions, leading the long convoy as it began to move south.

Throughout the journey, Hou Rui became taciturn, barely speaking to anyone. He wasn't just refusing to communicate with Little Camel and Little Lamb; he had completely closed himself off, only opening his mouth to speak to the Alliance sergeant in the passenger seat when checking the route.

Though they didn't know what was wrong with Hou Rui, Judy, Little Camel, and the others sensed his abnormal behavior, and the atmosphere inside the Alakran became stifling and silent.

Unfortunately, even though Hou Rui avoided speaking to or making eye contact with them, he still could not shake his dark mood. He had originally hoped that as they neared the core control zone of the Liberation Alliance, the soldiers' atrocities against civilians would diminish somewhat, but sadly, that was not the case.

Along the road back to the core control zone:

Hou Rui saw a father, his face expressionless, throwing his child into a mass grave.

He saw a woman with a wooden stake driven through her lower body, piercing through her entire torso and exiting her mouth.

He saw an entire human skin stripped off and hanging from a treetop, fluttering in the wind.

He saw women who had been mutilated, despairingly dashing their starving infants to death.

He saw children, thin as skeletons, being eaten by wild dogs...

In short, this was a road of death. The most certain feeling Hou Rui had along the way was that a part of his own humanity had died along with them, forever.

Five days later, the convoy finally returned to Kismayo, the largest city held by the Liberation Alliance. Located near the Jubba River with vast alluvial plains, it had once been Somalia's primary grain-producing region, but it had quickly declined into a barren wasteland after being occupied by the Alliance.

Guided by the sergeant, the Alakran convoy passed through the city's outer checkpoint and entered a massive military camp on the west side of the city. Here, Hou Rui finally saw the true foundation of the Liberation Alliance.

Squads of adult soldiers and child soldiers were everywhere. Old T-54 tanks, having lost their power, had been turned into stationary artillery batteries. Anti-aircraft machine guns were positioned throughout the camp, and Hou Rui even caught a glimpse of a helicopter's tail rotor, though he doubted these ancient 1970s machines could ever fly again.

Soon, as the Alakran pulled into the garage and Hou Rui stepped out with his four attendants, he happened to see Lieutenant Colonel Timo being carried off an off-road vehicle and rushed into a hospital.

In the days that followed, reports from Alliance officers indicated that Lieutenant Colonel Timo had developed a high fever due to an infected wound. Consequently, the Alliance officers under his command became like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, spending their days either indulging in reckless hedonism or crowding into the hospital to inquire about the Lieutenant Colonel's survival, leaving the entire camp in a state of stagnation.

Since no one knew what arrangements the Lieutenant Colonel had made for Hou Rui, a logistics officer simply assigned him a place to stay and left. Hou Rui then became just another idle officer under the Lieutenant Colonel, spending his days drinking in the camp or having frantic sex with Judy. In his current state of utter decadence, he no longer even worried about AIDS.

One afternoon, having drunk until the early hours of the previous day, Hou Rui finally climbed out of bed. He blankly drank a cup of camel milk handed to him by Judy, then wandered toward the officers' club.

Ten minutes later, half a bottle of nameless strong liquor and a dirty glass sat before him. Hou Rui drank by himself, uncaring. There were at least 120 Alliance officers like him in the club, and no one was interested in looking at anyone else; it was the perfect time to numb oneself with alcohol.

As night fell, the crowd in the officers' club grew. Soon, two sergeants squeezed onto Hou Rui's table.

Hou Rui, already quite drunk, was slumped over the table. The two sergeants nudged him carefully, and upon realizing he was unconscious, they began to speak without restraint.

"Did you know? Lieutenant Colonel Timo's fever has finally broken!" one sergeant, his uniform unbuttoned, whispered to his companion.

"What? The Lieutenant Colonel finally pulled through? That's great! Now we don't have to worry about being annexed by another Lieutenant Colonel," the other sergeant, still wearing his military cap, replied with bright eyes.

"Yeah, I was worried too. If we were reassigned under someone else, let alone whether we'd be sent to the front lines, we definitely wouldn't have this leisurely life we have now. Who would want that?"

"Heh heh, what you're really reluctant to lose are those cute child soldiers under your command, right?"

"What's there to be reluctant about? If you like them, I'll give them to you."

"Forget it, I still think girls are cuter."

"Tsk, you have no taste."

After saying this, the two downed a few more drinks. Then, they simply took the rest of Hou Rui's liquor and poured it into their own glasses.

"Say, partner, how long do you think this negotiation with the UN will drag on? And what happens after? Are we really going to lay down our weapons?" The sergeant in the cap raised another topic.

"How could that be! The General won't allow such a thing to happen. Trust me, these negotiations will drag on for years, and then we'll just go back to the same old thing, fighting the government army," the unbuttoned sergeant said with apparent certainty.

"Yeah! The General and the Lieutenant Colonels won't give up the power in their hands anyway. It's only us lower-ranking officers who have to risk our lives on the battlefield; they don't care whether we live or die!"

"Shh! Keep your voice down."