Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

“He’s a child,” repeated Mark, through gritted teeth. “He just wants to help you.”

“I don’t want or need any help,” she hissed.

The poor woman was a bit unhinged, and she clearly wasn’t dealing with processing her ordeal at all. While Laura’s trauma manifested as emotional detachment, Alicia’s roared in impotent fury. There was no getting through to her it seemed, until a breakthrough came from the most unlikely of places.

“Enough,” said Nate into the space between them, his voice flint hard. “Enough,” he repeated, this time more softly. “Alicia, you can’t do this alone. We don’t pretend to know what you’ve been through, but Mark’s right. Charlie’s a kid and what you just did was a step too far.”

“And what do you know about what I’ve been through, Nate?” she demanded. “What makes you think you can say anything about it?”

The lodge was silent after Alicia’s demand, everyone nervous as the issue was effectively brought out into the open, with everyone there. Nate doesn’t say things without thinking them through, and I knew better than most what was coming. He was ordering his thoughts, letting the brief silence add a gravitas to what he was about to say. What came next blew my mind.

“Between ’91 and ’02, Sierra Leone endured an intense civil war. You may have seen it on the news, though a few of you probably would have taken no notice being too young. At the start of May 2000, British forces began a military intervention under the codename Operation Palliser. D squadron of 22 Special Air Service was my unit.”

“I knew it!” I said, slapping the kitchen counter. “I fricking knew you were special ops.” Remembering myself as everyone turned toward me, I cleared my throat and magnanimously gestured at Nate. “Please, continue,” I permitted.

Nate just raised one eyebrow, before turning his attention back to Alicia.

“I saw some things and met some people who changed me during my time there, Alicia. Never have I met anyone with more strength, resilience, and incredible compassion, than a woman named Kadie.” Nate’s eyes focused entirely on Alicia, the whole room silent as they waited breathlessly, myself included. “Kadie was taken in the early part of the conflict in ’92. At the age of twelve, she was indoctrinated as a child soldier, an assault rifle put in her hands. Her brother was initiated as well, he was two years younger than her, at just ten, only a year older than Charlie here.”

All eyes drifted to Charlie, all of us trying to imagine the horror of him having an AK-47 thrust into his hands and forced to fight. I couldn’t do it; it went against everything a sane mind could comprehend.

“It was bad for her brother, Amad, but Kadie’s experience was much more harrowing, being a girl.”

He left that statement hanging, not saying it out loud to shield Charlie from the naked truth but leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind exactly what poor Kadie endured.

“She was… hurt… by men in her own unit, given as a child-wife to one of the commanders who was ‘unpleasant’ to her and when her little brother, Amad, tried to escape at the age of twelve, he was captured and brought back to their encampment.”

My own breath quickened, fearing at what I was about to hear. It was far worse than I could have imagined.

“Kadie was given an order, a heavy wooden club thrust into her hands, and told to beat her twelve-year old brother to death in front of everyone, as an example to what fate awaited traitors and cowards. She was fourteen, Alicia. Fourteen. She had been a child soldier that had killed grown men in war, had been physically assaulted—repeatedly—by her own so-called allies, forcibly addicted to opiates to keep her dependent and compliant, and then had to beat her own little brother to death with a club while everyone watched, as he begged her for mercy.”

Jesus fucking Christ. My chest was hollow by this point, more so by the pain I heard in Nate’s voice as he recounted the tale. I know him well enough now to see and hear those little nuances that tells me something has affected him, and this wound ran deep. He’d had this woman in front of him, telling him her story with her own words, seeing every flicker of emotion at the memories on her face. Christ, I’d be a bawling mess if someone told me their story with that much horror in it. My heart would absolutely bleed for them.

“Being forced to kill Amad was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” continued Nate, his voice impossibly soft. “That was in ’94 and she waited six years, nursing that trauma, forging bonds with those in the same situation as her, before she could make her escape. When our forces landed in Sierra Leone, she led a breakout of thirteen other women, all taken as child soldiers, all with similar tales of heartbreak, and fled to the safety of our lines. She was only just twenty, Alicia.”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to shrug all this off?” demanded Alicia, though her voice had considerably less heat.

Nate shook his head. “You didn’t let me finish,” he chided gently. “Five years ago, I received a letter from Kadie.”

“How did she get hold of you?” I asked. “Weren’t you like, super-secret special ops?”

Nate nodded. “Aye, but after I’d left the service, I found her on my mind often. That was my last year in 22 SAS, as forty-two is the upper age limit, and in all my years of service through the Falklands, the Gulf, and other operations in Africa, Kadie’s story had a profound effect on me in a way no other had. I pulled some strings with old contacts to see if they could locate her and sent her a letter, just giving a PO box to return to.” A faint smile touched his lips.