Around her there are already screams and shouts. She’s lucky that her tent wasn’t on the edge of the camp. Some are burning there already, probably with the people still inside, and there’s the sweet stench of petrol. It will be several minutes yet until everyone in this camp even knows what’s happening, and that it is not an accident or a generator fire. Through the tents, by the red glow of the fire, she glimpses a short, squat woman setting a flame with the spark from her hands. The flash lights her face white for an instant. Roxy knows the look on her face; she’s seen it before. The kind of face her dad would have said was a bad bet for business. Never keep someone on a job who likes it too much. She knows when she sees the single flash of that gleeful and hungry face that they’re not here to raid for what they can find. They’re not here for anything that can be given.
They start by rounding up the young men. They go tent to tent, pulling them down or setting them on fire so the occupants have to run out or burn. They’re not neat about it, not methodical. They’re looking for any halfway-decent-looking young men. She was right to send Tunde into the forest. A wife, or perhaps a sister, tries to stop them from taking the pale-skinned, curly-haired man who’s with her. She fights off two of them with precise and well-timed jolts to the chin and the temple. They overwhelm her easily, and kill her with a particular brutality. One of them grabs the woman by the hair and the other delivers a bolt directly through the woman’s eyes. Finger and thumb pressed against her eyeballs, the very liquid of them scrambled to a milky white. Even Roxy has to look away for a moment.
She backs further into the forest, climbs a tree hand-over-hand, using a loop of rope to help her. By the time she’s found a criss-cross place where three branches meet, they have turned their attention to the man.
He will not stop screaming. Two of the women take him by the throat and send a paralysis into his spine. One squats on top of him. She pulls off his trousers. He is not unconscious. His eyes are wide and glistening. He is struggling for breath. Another of the men tries to rush forward to help him and gets a crack to the temple for his trouble.
The woman on top cups his balls and dick in her palm. She says something. Laughs. The others laugh, too. She tickles him there with the tip of a finger, making a little crooning sound, as if she wants him to enjoy it. He can’t speak; his throat is bulging. They might have broken his windpipe already. She puts her head to one side, makes a sad face at him. She might as well have said in any language in the world, ‘What’s the matter? Can’t get it up?’ He tries to kick with his heels to get away from her, but it’s too late for that.
Roxy would like very much for this not to be happening. If she had it in her power, she would jump down from her concealed position and kill them. First these two by the tree – you could get those before anyone knew what you’d done. Then the three with knives would come for you, but you could dart to the left between the two oaks, so they’d have to come one by one. Then you’d have a knife. It would be easy. But that’s not her position right now. And it is happening. No wishing on her part can stop it. Therefore, she watches. To be a witness.
The woman sitting on the man’s chest applies her palm to his genitals. She starts with a low hum of a spark. He’s still doing muffled screaming, still trying to get away. It can’t hurt too much yet. Roxy’s done this herself to blokes, for both their fun. His cock comes up like a salute, like they always do. Like a traitor. Like a fool.
The woman makes a little smile appear across her face. Raises her eyebrows. As if to say, See? Just needed some encouragement, didn’t you? She holds his balls, tugs on them once, twice, just as if she were giving him a treat, and then jolts him fiercely, right through the scrotum. It’d feel like a glass spike, driven straight through. Like lacerations from the inside. He screams, arches his back. And then she unbuttons the crotch of her combat trousers and sits on his cock.
Her mates are laughing now and she’s laughing too as she pumps herself up and down on him. She’s got her hand firmly planted in the centre of his stomach, giving him a dose every time she thrusts up with bunched thighs. One of her mates has a cellphone. They photograph her there, straddling him. He throws his arm over his face but they pull the arm back. No, no. They want to remember this.
Her mates are egging her on. She starts to touch herself, moves faster, her hips rocking forward. She’s really hurting him now, not in a measured and thoughtful way, not to extract the maximum pain in interesting ways, just brutally. It’s easily done as you get close. Roxy’s done it herself once or twice, scared some bloke. It’d be worse if you’d taken the Glitter. The woman’s got one hand on his chest and every time she tips forward she’s giving him a crackle across his torso. He’s trying to push her hand away, and screaming, and reaching out to the crowd around them for help, and begging in a slurred language Roxy wouldn’t understand, except that the sound of ‘Help me, oh God, help me’ is the same in every language.
When the woman comes, her mates roar their approval. She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. She rises, smiling, and they all pat her on the back, and she’s laughing and smiling still. She shakes herself like a dog, and like a dog looks hungry yet. They start up a chant, the same four or five words in a rhythm as they ruffle her hair and give each other fist-bumps. The pale, curly-haired man had been stopped finally and for ever by that last blast. His eyes are open, staring. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. His prick is going to take a while to subside, but the rest of him is gone. Not even death throes, not even twitching. The blood is even now pooling in his back, in his buttocks, in his heels. She’d put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.
There is a noise that is different to grief. Sadness wails and cries out and lets loose a sound to the heavens like a baby calling for its mother. That kind of noisy grief is hopeful. It believes that things can be put right, or that help can come. There is a different kind of sound to that. Babies left alone too long do not even cry. They become very still and quiet. They know no one is coming.
There have been staring eyes in the dark, but there are no shrieks now. There is no rage. The men are quiet. Over on the other side of the camp there are still women fighting the invaders to drive them back, and there are still men picking up rocks or pieces of metal to hurt the women with. But here, those who saw it make no sound.