Chapter 768
Chapter 768
Nina could feel the ground shaking. She grabbed onto a nearby tree for support and saw the sky lit up
in red.
“Rat-tat-tal…” The sound of gunfire reached her ears. Instinctively, she looked in that direction, and the scene before her left her frozen in place.
Countless men in camouflage uniforms wielding long guns were mowing down people, their path leaving bodies in their wake, blood flowing like rivers.
Nina didn’t dare move. She watched as these men stormed into small houses, coming out with goods and setting the buildings ablaze.
Nina was completely stunned. These people were dressed like soldiers, yet they were committing acts of murder and arson. In her country, soldiers were protectors, like Nash, who followed orders to save lives, even if it meant sacrificing their own. She saw a flag flying, a black one with a white skull and a coiled cobra beneath it. The sight of this emblem made her skin crawl. “Retreat!” a voice shouted in English.
Nina understood the command.
Within seconds, the group piled into military vehicles and sped away.
As Nina drew closer, she saw the devastation they had left behind. There were bodies of the elderly, women, and children scattered everywhere. Some of the children were dismembered.
“Ugh!” She couldn’t hold back her nausea, retching violently as the acrid smell of burning filled her senses.
This wasn’t an army. These were monsters. She felt helpless, with no word on Scott and Nash’s whereabouts and now separated from Scarlett.
Suddenly, she noticed a hand moving under a pile of bodies. Her heart skipped a beat, but she quickly steadied herself and moved toward it. Ignoring the overpowering stench of blood, she began lifting the bodies off the hand.
In less than two minutes, she uncovered the face of a blood-streaked boy, around fifteen years old. His features were obscured by blood, but his eyes shone with a clear, sharp light.
The boy looked at her warily. “Are you from Birkham?” he asked in broken English.
Nina was surprised. “I am. You speak English?” The woman and her child she had met carlier couldn’t speak English, but this boy could.
He nodded. “Some soldiers from Birkham came here before. They taught me.”
The soldiers from Birkham had been kind, helping them dig wells, plant crops, repair houses, and even teaching them to read. But now, his home was destroyed.
“You’re hurt,” Nina observed, noticing a long gash on his arm, the flesh turned outward.
The boy didn’t even glance at his wound. Instead, he methodically moved the bodies together, gritting his teeth against the pain without making a sound.
Nina was impressed by his resilience. “Why are you moving them together? Aren’t you scared?”
She was terrified by the sheer number of corpses, but she couldn’t leave. The boy seemed to be the only survivor from his village, and he spoke English.
A faint, bitter smile crossed the boy’s lips. “These people lived with me. They were my neighbors, my grandmother, and my younger siblings.”