Dingane pointed toward a cluster of children nearest us and we ran toward them, calling them toward us and encouraging them to get into the truck quickly. Most obeyed save for one who refused to leave his father’s side. Dingane pulled the small child off his dead father and wrapped his arms around the young boy, speaking into his ear as tears streamed down his tiny face. I couldn’t help the tears that fell quickly on my own as we gathered more and more motherless children. I counted twenty-three orphans in all, not including the ones who had died during the ambush.
I looked around for the woman Charles had attempted to save, but she was nowhere in the truck and I filed that away under “never think about again.” Not a single adult had survived, the LRA had made sure of that.
“We have to leave!” Charles yelled over the crying children.
He and Solomon hopped onto the bumper of the truck and held on tightly.
“They won’t be able to hold on the entire two hours like that!” I yelled at Dingane.
His tired face found mine over the grouped children. “They will. We’ve done this before.”
And it hit me.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. These attacks happened frequently, always targeting innocent families, always leaving children in an already impoverished nation without anyone to care for them.
“Get in, Sophie!” he yelled and I obeyed. He laid a small boy in my lap and I cradled him as best I could, trying to decide which way would be best to hold him that would afford him the least amount of pain.
Dingane shoved two more dazed children between us and got in, starting his truck and tearing away from the scene with decided purpose.
“The LRA is coming back?” I asked.
“They usually do. They use the leftover children as bait. They know we come in search of them.”
I turned my head toward the window and let the tears fall freely, the most I’d ever allowed, and the absolutely only time I’d ever cried and had a genuine right to.
Because I wasn’t crying for myself. I was crying for the innocents.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The gates opened as if in anticipation of our arrival around four forty-five in the morning, the sun had yet to rise and I found myself begging its return. The night I once found unbelievably peaceful and beautiful now felt unbearably dark, as if a decided lack of hope had enveloped us. As we passed, Kate and Mercy were on the other side, closing us in and running our direction. Dingane tore through and stopped abruptly, close to the schoolhouse, his headlights lighting up the baobab tree as we passed.
He ran to my side and took the little boy from my arms, running him inside. I gathered one of the girls, who’d grown unconscious during the ride back to Masego, and carried her behind him. He passed me again after dropping off the boy and gathered the remaining girl in the front.
Charles and Solomon were carrying those who could not walk on their own and within a minute we were all inside, hovering over children.
“Sophie, grab that bag for me!” Karina ordered, pointing to a bag on the creaky wood floor.
I brought it to her and opened it up. She was working on the first girl Dingane and I had helped, the one riddled with holes in the chest. She was unconscious. Karina stood quickly and ran to a drawer of a metal cabinet she had rolled into the room. Makeshift cots dotted the entire room and each bed was filled with a bleeding child.
She returned, ripping open a paper and plastic envelope carrying an IV.
“I’ll need your help removing the shrapnel,” Karina said dryly.
I looked behind me to see who she was talking to but there was no one there, everyone else was busy over the beds of one of the children. I looked back and saw her eyes trained on me.
“I can’t,” I told her.
“Wash your hands with Hibiclens. There’s a station set up there,” she said, gesturing to a corner of the room.
The room was awash in candlelight since there wasn’t any electricity and I could barely see a thing. They need a generator for these situations!
“Shouldn’t Charles help you with this? He’s trained!” I was panicking.
“He’s with another child, Sophie. It will be fine. Trust me. She’s bleeding out as we speak though.”
I ran to the corner and washed my hands, one of the older orphans there stood next to me, ready to rinse for me into the awaiting bowl. She handed me a box of older-looking latex gloves and I took two, putting them on as I walked back to Karina’s side.
“What do I do?”