Africander - Chad
Title: All Who Wander
Author: Aeneas (aka Jerib_78)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: It's Joss's sandbox, I just play there.
Author's Note: This is for the Scatterlings and Orphanages Ficathon.
All Who Wander
There was no duct tape this time and Xander was grateful for that. He had no illusions that he was any less a prisoner but the uniformed Texan didn’t seem to feel compelled to put a bullet through his skull and he didn’t intend to make waves that might change his mind. It was a newer Toyota and this time Xander got to ride up in front with seatbelts, something his bruised body was thankful for.
“Lot of open border here,” the man who identified himself only as Jasper, Marine Corps, shouted over the noise of the engine. “All sorts come in and out of Chad real easy like. Not every day we catch ‘em.” He cackled at that last part and gave Xander a wicked grin.
“I’m a tourist.” Xander yelled back. “I was kidnapped in Tripoli.”
“It happens.” He didn’t seem surprised by that, jerking the wheel to take a hard left. “Goddamn sun ain’t the only villain in this fucking place. Lucky you didn’t get your throat slit. Can’t throw you back over the border without pissing Libya off, best plan is to get to the U.S. Embassy in N’Djamena and go from there.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Xander was trying to think of a good excuse to give the Libyan government for why he’d left the tour and the country.
“Nah, next stop is my patrol outpost. Ain’t much but it’ll get us on our way. See those mountains?” He pointed to a string of hazy peaks nearly obscured by dust and the shimmering heat off the desert. “Use to be active volcanoes, beyond that ain’t nothing but dust thick as soup. Look close and you’ll find burned out tanks, dud missiles; some of ‘em left over from the second World War. Then there’s all the fucking landmines. Few years back, Libya made a grab for the strip of land we just came through and this area’s still full of rebel fighters. Beats me why they give a shit who owns this piece of hell.”
“Sounds like a great vacation spot.”
Jasper laughed at that, harsh and gritty with too much exposure to heat and sand. “Long as you don’t bring the kiddies. This end of Chad ain’t particularly friendly. Got rebels from three countries plus the homegrown kind, all up here just looking for something to use as target practice. What about you? Why come to Libya?”
“Roman ruins. I was on a tour,” he lied without batting an eye.
“That’s some fucked country, ain’t it? Outlawin’ liquor. Who’s brilliant idea was that?” Jasper shook his head with amusement.
“Those crazy Muslims.” Xander managed not to roll his eye sarcastically. Disagreeing with the nice man holding the gun was never a good idea.
“Ain’t got nothing against them but not everybody walks the same line, you know. Taking away people’s choice, turning them into clones of something, that don’t ever work in the long run. Can’t control people forever.”
Xander wasn’t sure he had anything to say to that so he changed the subject. “How many kidnap victims have you seen?”
“Still alive? Not many. Had one a few days back, just a little thing. Gutsy though. Stopped the Jeep and she made a break for it, fast as a jackrabbit. Reminded me of my niece back home.” He shook his head tiredly. “Probably planning to sell her off once they got here.”
“Do you still know where she is?” He barely dared hope that coincidence might be on his side.
“Back at the outpost until my run is up and I head south. There’s a consulate in Faya-Largeau. Arrange to send her back if they can contact her family. Might be they’re the ones arranged the kidnapping in the first place. Fucking crazy what some people will do, you know.” He squinted at the horizon ahead of them and gunned the engine. “Looks like we got ourselves a dust storm. If we can’t beat it, we’ll have to sit tight until it blows out. Those things are hell on the engine. Some of the bastards are big enough you can see ‘em from space.”
Xander held on tighter to the passenger door handle and tried not to panic at the wall of sand building to the southwest. The air outside was getting hazier, filling with a fine white dust that seeped through every crack and began to coat the inside of the truck.
“Dustiest place on earth south of those. You ask me, dust is dust but they’ve been sending a bunch of National Geographic types to study it. Bunch of geeks with cameras and test tubes.” He fished through one of his jacket pockets and produced a crumpled plastic bag with some kind of food wrapped inside. “Camel jerky?”
“No, thanks.” Xander grimaced and was treated to another of Jasper’s cackles.
“Ain’t half bad. Nothing like the steak back home. Man, I’ll be glad to have a t-bone again.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I’m a long-termer,” he shouted as they took another hair-raising turn and tore down a hill toward the rocky plain and the ominous dust cloud. “Counter terrorism training runs through summer but some of us have to stay to keep the ball rolling. Been on border patrol for six months now.”
“Counter terrorism?” Xander was less surprised than he thought he should have been.
“That’s what the paperwork said. Lately we’ve been training the Presidential guard. Had one attempt at a coup last year and it’s about time for another one. Hate those fucking things, man. Blood and bullets and no one in this goddamn country knows how to shoot worth shit.” Jasper shuddered with horror and disgust. “Now we got ‘em running drills, shooting AK’s. Kids like to collect the shell casings, make little necklaces out of ‘em and stuff.”
“Which side are we on? In the coups, I mean.”
“Guy in power ain’t much but he’s better than whatever asshole would take his place. Mostly we’re just trying to keep a lid on it.” He gave Xander a sideways look. “I always forget you guys stateside probably don’t know shit about this.”
“I’m bad with the news. Since Rather retired and Jennings took the job as news anchor in the sky, it’s just no fun anymore.”
“Right,” Jaspar chuckled. “It breaks down like this. The country’s split down the center like California. North and south don’t exactly agree on what’s good. North has desert but the south gets rain enough to have a lake and rainforest. ‘Sides that, Exxon runs a big pipeline out of southern Chad and oil money’s good for everyone if they don’t tear the place apart.”
“So they’re fighting over oil?”
“Ain’t just that. Muslims in the north, Christians in the south. And those two ain’t never gonna stop killing each other. Southern border’s got tribal warfare spillin’ out all over.” He squinted at the wall of dust and grinned. “Looks like we’re just gonna make it. Hold on.”
Their destination was a rather odd looking set of what must have been buildings. To Xander they looked like gray-blue beehives squatting amidst the brown rock and sad little scrub bushes barely managing to hold onto to life. They nearly spun to a halt, throwing gravel and sand as the tires dug in for traction. It came to mind that his rather odd guide might have rodeo somewhere in his past and not just because he had the sneaking suspicion that all the sand had gone to Jasper’s brain.
“Home shit home.” Jasper grinned as he hopped out of the truck.
The wind had picked up and Xander choked on the dust in the air, blinking futilely to keep it out of his eyes as he followed the Marine through a narrow opening in one of the beehives and down a set of stairs carved out of the earth. Beneath the surface was a hollowed out room of surprising size and doorways leading into dark passageways.
“Whoa.” Xander looked around the weapons adorning the walls and boxes of ammunition piled haphazardly.
“When in Rome.” Jasper motioned for him to follow down one of the corridors. “There’s a whole goddamn city built underground in Libya. Heard about it from some of the guys. Berbers do it too. Keeps them out of the sun and the dust. Winter’s a bitch too, gets fucking cold out there.”
Fumbling through the pitch black wasn’t unusual for Xander but he was glad to come out into another chamber that seemed to be the kitchen area. There was a rickety card table and some empty ammunition crates for chairs. Food seemed to consist of canned and processed goods, anything that wouldn’t rot or go bad in the miles of nothing that surrounded them. He accepted a canteen of water gratefully, realizing how thirsty he’d gotten.
“The desert always wins.” Jasper cut open a can of baked beans and dumped them into a battered pot over a kerosene burner. “It’s like Everest. You’re dying just as soon as you set foot on the goddamn mountain. May take years but this place’ll kill you sure as shooting.”
“That’s a happy thought.”
“Gotta be something, right? Ain’t none of us lives forever.”
Xander glanced around, hoping to find an innocent little Libyan girl who could snap him like a toothpick. “I’m partial to the quietly in my sleep route.”
“Long as I’ve still got my boots on.” He dumped the heated beans unceremoniously into three misfit bowls and handed two of them to Xander. “Maybe you can convince the kid to eat something, she don’t seem to like me much and I don’t speak Arabic. Chad’s got more languages than the US has states so I got my hands full just tryin’ to say hello in those. There ain’t no pork in this shit so should be fine for her. Can’t never remember what all they don’t eat. Through there.”
That explained the chatting on the drive. This might have been the first time in weeks Jasper had a captive audience who spoke English as a first language. Xander took the bowls and started down the dark corridor with hesitant footsteps. The next chamber room was darker than the last two, lit only by a single lamp run on batteries. Rolled up blankets and sleeping mats were stacked against the far side, providing minimum protection against the rough floor.
It was a relief to see the girl huddled against the wall; her head cloth and tunic stained the color of the dust outside. He kept a safe distance as he set down the bowl of beans and sat down to eat his own. His stomach growled but he figured it was probably just happy for something other than oranges and date bread. Vaguely, he wondered when he’d gotten used to eating without the luxury of utensils but figured it didn’t matter.
“Salaam aleikum,” he said after swallowing down a mouthful. She didn’t answer, turning her head away from him. “Maa ismuk?” He was trying to formulate the question of whether or not she had been kidnapped in Arabic when she slowly reached for the bowl.
“I speak English,” she told him quietly.
“Good, because my Arabic? Pretty scary.” He gave her his most comforting smile. “I’m Xander.”
“Muna,” she said, her face nearly buried in the bowl as she ate.
“Pleased to meet you, Muna. The nice man with the gun tells me you were kidnapped. I bet your family is worried about you.” He waited patiently as she ignored him. The girl couldn’t have been older than fourteen and her wide eyes reminded him of Dawn Summers. “Muna? Are you all right?”
“They are glad to be rid of me.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the bowl down, curling tighter into a ball.
“Do you have a brother named Hassan?”
Her eyes got a little wider and he thought he saw something close to fear in them. “You know Hassan?”
Xander swallowed hard as he remembered what he would have to tell her. He’d been half hoping this was a different kidnapped little girl. “He asked me to look for you.”
“I cannot go back. I dishonor my family and Allah.” Tears brimmed her eyes and the raw misery in her voice made him ache.
“No, you don’t. You’re different. I know you’re different, that’s why I’m here. You’re special, you’re chosen.”
“I am evil,” she sniffed despondently.
“Trust me. I’ve seen enough evil to know what it looks like and it’s not nearly as cute as you are.” He moved the slightest bit closer to her. “You’ve been having nightmares about people you know but you’ve never met, about things that can’t be real. Monsters that come out at night.”
“Yes,” she answered warily.
“You’re not alone. There are others like you. That’s why I was sent to find you, so you can be with girls just like you. You’re not evil, Muna.”
“It is not against Allah?”
“I think he’ll make an exception for you. There’s the whole greater good thing and gods tend to go for that, most of them anyway.” He debated putting off the worst of the bad news, wondering if the band-aid method was really the best in this situation. If he didn’t tell her now, he risked her believing later that he had lied to her. A win-win scenario wasn’t coming to mind so he decided on cautious honesty. Taking the lie in the past had only left him on the wrong end of a Slayer’s temper.
Tears left streaks of dust on her face as she wiped them away. “Did you really speak with Hassan?”
He tried not to wince, setting his bowl on the ground and focusing on her. “Yes. I’m sorry, Muna. Your brother and your father were killed a few days ago.” He watched her face go through an array of emotions from disbelief to rage and finally to sadness.
“It is because of me,” she whispered, her lower lip trembling.
“No, no! It’s not your fault, don’t ever think that.” He sat there awkwardly not knowing a way to comfort a sobbing teenage girl from a culture he didn’t understand. It wrenched at his heart to be there and unable to do anything at all. If he’d never come to Libya, her brother and father might still be alive and she might be in the back of someone else’s truck on her way to who knows where.
He waited until she cried herself to sleep before he finished what was left of his meal, laid a blanket gently over her, and gathered the bowls to return to the kitchen room. These were the times he wished for Giles or Willow. Even Buffy would be handy when it came time to breaking the bad news. Someone who didn’t fumble with words as much as he did and didn’t come up feeling inadequate in the face of tears. He couldn’t even tell her that everything was going to be fine because he knew better and lies wouldn’t keep her alive. It was a pity he couldn’t just slip her into an envelope and mail her back to Giles.
There was no sign of their host but he figured Jasper had better things to do than wait on them hand and foot. He set the bowls on the table for lack of knowing what else to do with them. The truth was that he was about dead on his feet anyway and even the stone floor was looking good. He grabbed the duffle he’d abandoned in the kitchen and headed back to the sleeping chamber.
Compared to the bed of a pickup, a sleeping mat was nearly heavenly bliss and his duffle served as a lumpy pillow. Muna was still huddled up beneath the ancient wool blanket, shivering against cold reality rather than the temperature of the room. He wiggled until he found the right combination of grooves in the floor and settled in to attempt sleep. With the bone deep weariness and the darkening bruises from the rollover, he doubted he’d be able to do more than stare at her and think of ways to get her back to Giles, thereby dashing what was left of her hopes for a normal life.
Xander hated that part of the job.
It was surprising how comforting it felt to be underground, safe in the solidity of the earth around them. Dust storms and war came and went but the earth stayed. He drifted to sleep listening to the wind howl as the dust storm raged over them, lost in darkness without the small lamp; his dreams full of shadows and faces he never quite saw chasing after him. Somewhere in the dark, he heard a voice calling his name and vaguely remembered that he wasn’t alone.
“Harris!” It was a man’s voice, accented and rough.
Dragging out of sleep, he squinted when the beam of a flashlight hit his eye. “Wha? What’s going on?”
“Looks like rebels stirred up by the dust storm headed our way. Best get going and stay ahead of them, never know what they’re in the mood for. You got the girl?” The flashlight revealed a terrified Muna cowering away from the Marine.
“I’m on it. We’ll be out in a second.” He fumbled for the lamp and began rolling up his mat. “Can you trust me, Muna? Enough to come with me? You’ll be safe with me, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She waited for the sound of Jasper’s boots to fade away before carefully folding her blanket and setting it aside. “Where else am I to go? I have no home now.”
“I know it feels like you’ve lost everything, like your whole world was ripped away in one morning. But you won’t have to do this alone. I have cool friends in odd places and most of them are even human.” Seeing the look of fear return, he laughed nervously and picked up his duffle bag. “We’ll get to the human versus not human part later. I have a speech. I like to think of it as motivational really.”
“You are strange, Xander.” There was the barest hint of humor in her dark eyes.
“It has been said. You ready?” He waited for her to adjust her headscarf before leading the way through the dark corridors.
The outer room had been stripped of everything but the battered furniture and from the coating of dust on Jasper, he must have spent the time while Xander slept hauling it out of the underground post. A tarp was stretched over the bed of the Marine’s truck as flimsy protection from the desert. He didn’t seem to know what to do with Muna there, far more used to fully-grown and heavily armed men than teenage girls. With the duffle stowed away, they piled into the cab with Muna, eyes wide and suspicious of the Marine, nestled between them.
Jasper seemed less inclined to talk this time and slid a beat up Johnny Cash CD into the player to fill the silence. It gave Xander a welcome break from trying to make idle conversation and freed up his brain to think about what he was going to do. The paperwork alone would be enough to give him a migraine. He had to get to the US Embassy in a country he didn’t have a visa for with a girl who’d been kidnapped from Libya. None of that was going to look good to Chadian authorities regardless of how he explained it. There was always the option of letting them send her back to Libya and following her but somehow he doubted the people behind her kidnapping had given up.
Somewhere between desert and scrub brush, she felt asleep against Xander with one hand holding onto his arm even in her sleep. There was dust on her face, turning her dark lashes to a lighter hue of brown. He wondered what would happen to her once he got her back to the others. Would she take up painting her nails and gossiping about boys? Maybe she’d be one of the serious Slayer types who talked shop and ambush tactics at their enormous sleepover parties. Part of him hoped he’d be there the first time she killed a vampire and really understood what it meant. Part of him hoped she’d never have to.
That was the trick, the one rule of the game. Go get the girl and bring her back but don’t start to care and don’t get attached. Even with the Slayer Club to make sure all the girls had someone at their back, it was still a cutthroat business. They all had expiration dates and the vampires weren’t going anywhere. There had been talk, idle dreams, of ridding the world of evil, but who were they kidding? Apparently Evil didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He brushed a strand of hair that had fallen away from her headscarf out of her face, patting her hand lightly in an inadequate gesture of comfort. It was one thing that he certainly hadn’t learned from his parents or non-existent siblings. How to tell a child that monsters were real and it was all okay in the same hypocritical breath. The larger message was that there was light in every darkness and hope in every pothole.
Buffy, good old stoic Buffy, encouraged them to befriend and form bonds with the girls. Get to know them, give them something to fight for. He listened to it with half an ear, believing that she believed it but pulling away at the same time. A friend, a family, an eye, not to mention at least one high school he’d spent a good number of hours rebuilding from nothing. How much more was he expected to lose? If staying at arm’s length didn’t make the pain less then he figured nothing would short of a stake to his heart. That was the road best left un-traveled; one always ended up soliloquizing to the skulls of dead friends if those thoughts took root.
“There’ll be a convoy headed south to pick up supplies.” Jasper kept his eyes on the road, looking and obviously expecting some trouble. “Main base is out of Loumia, it’s south of N’Djamena so they can drop you at the embassy. Paperwork’s gonna be a bitch but they know where to find me and they’ll be getting my report.”
“Thanks. For everything.” He didn’t expect a response so he wasn’t surprised at the somewhat awkward silence. It was understood that being in a foreign country surrounded by languages you didn’t speak made a face from home a welcome relief. There were trips when Xander had been so glad to see an American that he could have hugged the poor person. They were united by the love of McDonalds, Starbucks, and Gap jeans. There were those stars and stripes as well but even where the flag didn’t fly there was usually a place to find a Big Mac.
Soon the Marine from Texas who was homesick enough to treat a kidnap victim like a guest would be just another ghost from his past. Africa had a way with ghosts. It took away everything it gave, burned it away under the roaring sun and left nothing behind but memories and footprints.
***
Xander wasn’t exactly heartbroken that the convoy didn’t leave until the next morning. It gave him time to formulate a plan for taking Muna with him and he had no desire to die on a poor excuse for a road in the middle of Chad. The accommodations left a great deal to be desired but it was a free ride to a place that might get him back on track and that made being sandwiched in another truck bed with empty crates and pallets worth the discomfort.
It had worked out well for him to sneak Muna into one of the crates with a blanket and he had the whole trip to think of a way to get her out. She’d given him a look that meant she thought he had scrambled eggs for brains but climbed in and curled up in the corner. He figured that it worked out well this way. She had no desire to return to Libya where her family thought she was unnatural and evil, and he wasn’t about to let her slip away from him until she was safely with the others.
He wasn’t used to how small and timid she was, like a frightened bird he was trying to coax out of the nest. This was no badass Buffy or powder keg Faith; there had been no sign that she even had Slayer powers. If the Coven was wrong about this one then Giles owed him a week at a spa getting massages and mud wraps that didn’t include complimentary flesh-eating parasites.
The aching in his muscles as the miles passed gave him the appreciation of what it meant to travel a country twice the size of Texas. Just looking at a map didn’t convey the magnitude of endless landscape. He watched the desert and sand gradually fade into brown with patches of date palms and ugly little thorn bushes. It was a dusty, dirty green at first. The green of things eking out of living from next to nothing and barely finding enough water to drink. A darker green infused the landscape as they continued to move south and new species of trees began to appear. This was the Africa they sold in brochures for safaris and wildlife trips, with dense grass and oddly shaped trees.
Increasing traffic was the first sign that they were getting close to their destination. Traffic was a loose definition of the chaos on the roads. Beat up station wagons piled high with suitcases and crates of chickens zoomed like racecars around the larger military truck. It also meant more annoying insects buzzing in his ears and dive-bombing his head in crazy zigzags. N’Djamena itself was the closest he’d seen to a sprawling, smog-ridden metropolis since Tripoli and he was surprised what a relief the sound of civilization was after too much time in the silence of the Sahara.
The soldiers in the front of the truck spared him the hassle of devising a clever plan by pulling over and banging on the side of the door. He dropped the side of the crate open and helped Muna out of her hiding spot, easing her over the back of the truck bed and onto the pavement. Metal echoed as he struck the tailgate to let them know he was out and then they were gone.
He watched Muna self-consciously adjust her headscarf and patted her shoulder a little awkwardly. “How about some food? There’s bound to be a market around here somewhere.” She only nodded in response, watching the bustling city around her with wide eyes.
There was a large open-air market nearby full of rickety little booths selling anything under the sun. Paved ground radiated the sun’s heat back up again, turning the walkways into one continuous oven. There were girls dressed in rainbow robes carrying wide bowls of nuts and biscuits on their heads. Everyone, it seemed, was dressed like some sort of brightly colored tropical bird. He bartered for dates and seasoned bread, picking up a few cans of European canned peas or petit pois as the vendors called them. His spirits soared considerably when he found a young boy selling bottles of Coca-Cola. Muna didn’t seem convinced that it was worth drinking and stuffed her mouth with dates and nuts instead.
“So what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked as they settled under the scant shade of a wizened tree to eat their bread.
“You are making a joke?” Muna looked up at him with date juice on her chin.
“Yes, I am making a joke. And we might be stuck with each other for a while so I should warn you that I make a lot of jokes. Some good and some not so good.”
She hesitated and glanced around as though waiting for the secret police to arrest her. “My father does not believe that women should make jokes.”
“Why not?”
“He says it is not our place.”
“What is your place?” He sipped the warm Coke with relish.
“To be a good wife and a mother some day. Take care of the home, feed my family. That is a woman’s place,” she told him seriously.
“Then you’re in for shock. You’re different and your life is going to be different from now on. Do you understand?” He didn’t expect an answer. The girls who had never heard of Slayers or vampires always took a few hours or even days to come to terms with the idea that they were different. There really was never an easy way to explain a world gone mad.
“You say there are others like me?” Muna asked.
“Just like you. I’m part of a group that travels around the world to find them and help them.”
“The man,” she paused again to consider her words. “The man who took me from my home. He said others would come and they would try to hurt me. He said I mustn’t trust any of them.”
“There are bad people looking for you too, Muna. I can help you if you can trust me. Do you think you can trust me?”
“You are nicer than the other man,” she said matter-of-factly as she finished off the dates. “Where are we going now?”
“We are going to the American Embassy and we’re going to ask for a phone. Then we’re probably gonna sit in some stuffy chairs for awhile, fill out a bunch of papers, and eventually we’ll go to England.” He had no idea how he was supposed to get a Libyan girl with no passport out of Africa and into England but that was for Giles’s big brain to figure out. And if there wasn’t a neatly red-taped solution, not all of Xander’s mission exits had involved sitting in a comfy seat and smiling for customs.
“What is America like?” she asked suddenly, her dark eyes wide and inquisitive.
“It’s big. There are a lot of roads and people. And there’s a Walmart for everyone.”
“Walmart? I have heard of this. What is it like?”
“Like a marketplace where you can get anything you want. Food, clothes, bicycles, DVDs. Even new tires for your car.” He laughed when her eyes got wide enough that he thought they might pop out of her head. “Don’t you have markets like that?”
She shook her head quickly. “My mother stands in a line for bread and eggs. There are some markets that have vegetables now. Mother says it’s better than it was when I was a baby. Xander…will I ever see my family again?”
“Of course you will. Once we’ve convinced you that you’re not evil and taught you how to use a stake, you’ll be homeward bound just like the movie.”
“Good.” She smiled hopefully up at him. “I will show them I am not evil.”
“That’s the spirit.” Tousling her headscarf didn’t have quite the same effect as hair but she giggled and swatted his hand away, rearranging the lightweight fabric carefully. He hoped that once she’d seen the truth about who she was, she wouldn’t lose the sparkle in her eyes or that laugh. There was laughter among the Slayers now but the dark times were all too fresh in his memory.
Once the food was gone, they found their way back through the hellishly hot marketplace to the American Embassy. It took some convincing and name-dropping for the guard to let Muna follow him into the building. They would have to contact Jasper to verify that she was a kidnap victim and even then, Xander would have to answer to why he hadn’t left her with the Libyan Consulate in Faya-Largeau. He pushed the protective older brother angle on that one and vehemently argued that he was only trying to ensure that the girl was safely returned to her family.
In the end, he had the impression that the Embassy was even more interested in keeping it quiet than he was. This would be just another state secret that never made the light of day or the evening news, completely taken care of behind closed doors. A final agreement was due mostly to a calming voice from England assuring them that Xander wasn’t trying to start an international incident, he was just profoundly stupid.
They were pointed to a small room with a prayer mat and a sofa with lumpy cushions. It would be their home until many more phone calls were sacrificed and the gods of paperwork finally smiled.
Hours ticked by, the waiting room was traded for a back office that wasn’t being used and a carpeted divider between two ancient army cots. The harried Embassy official couldn’t give them an estimated time of departure so they made the best of being stuck with each other. He claimed a prayer mat for Muna and pointed her toward Mecca as best he could with the decorative compass hanging on the Embassy wall and his shaky knowledge of geography. North and to the right, he marked a spot on the far wall with a little smiley face and remembered to stay quiet while she was praying. She tried to teach him a prayer but couldn’t stop giggling at his fumbling Arabic.
At night, when the city was quieter and only the security night shift patrolled the building, he told her about Sunnydale, demons, and the Slayers. She took it all in, eyes wide and serious as she listened to every word and every story. The bottom of the spray-on deodorant can twisted off and he gave her the small stake stored inside to practice with. Like all the others, she had an inherent gift for wielding a weapon and she took to fighting like a fish to water. There was still hesitation and she was far too timid to last long once the real patrolling started, but time was on his side. Since arriving in Chad, he had seen no sign of vampires or demons despite the fact that countries with body counts due to civil unrest usually served as breeding grounds for all sorts of nasties. He hoped his luck would hold until the paperwork got sorted.
He was their first glimpse into the world, their first Watcher in a way, and it was an experience he was still honing. Don’t be a Wesley. That was what Faith always shouted at his back when he left for another girl. At first he’d assumed she was telling him not to be useless but after the first few retrieval ops, he decided that she was really telling him not to forget that they were still teenage girls. Teenage girls who’d woken up one morning as aliens among their own family, their heads filled with nightmares about to knock on their doors.
Some nights he knew she cried her self to sleep, quietly enough that he might not have noticed if he hadn’t expected it, and there was no further mention of home or family. Those were wounds a long time healing and there were no patches for that kind of thing.
It took three days before he was allowed to speak to Giles directly instead of sitting idly by and wondering what was going on at the other end of the phone. He could hear the weariness with bureaucracy beneath the static and frequent breaks for nose pinching and glasses cleaning.
“How much longer, Giles? Not that I’m in a hurry to get out of a country that’s been tearing itself apart for the last twenty years.” He held the phone away from his ear long enough to avoid the inevitable sigh.
“It’s not that easy, Xander. You have to understand.” There was the sound of nose pinching. “I can’t even explain how much trouble you’ve caused diplomatically. There are four countries involved and none of them are particularly happy that you have absconded with a teenage girl.”
“Hey! There’s been no absconding. I was kidnapped too. I’m just making sure she gets home safe.” He glanced around to see where the Embassy official was. The little man with bits of gray in his black hair always seemed to be listening in with round, bunny-style ears. “If we’re going to be here much longer, I don’t suppose you could wire me some moulah. Just enough to get some food and a change of clothes for Muna.”
“I’ll do what I can. Strangely enough, getting you money should be easier than getting you out of the country. There is no British High Commission in Chad but the Commission in Cameroon has ties to the American Embassy, I’ll send it through them.”
“Thanks, G-man. And send my love to the gang, wish they were here and all that. If I find some postcards, I’ll send them your way. Hopefully I’ll be back before they arrive but I may be an old man by then.” There was small talk after that but Giles was no more inclined to explain the diplomatic complications than Xander was to listen to it. He wished they were speaking in a secret code, saying glamorous and spy-like things rather than exactly what the words meant. Simplicity was a small favor in a complicated world.
Two more days brought a diplomatic pouch with money and ad hoc visas for him and Muna that allowed them to stay in Chad until further arrangements were made. The Embassy official looked more and more harried with each phone call, disappearing into a back office for hours at a time and reappearing only when he needed signatures. It seemed that none of the countries involved could come to an agreement about who was going where and how. The stars and stripes wanted Xander’s kidnappers accounted for and were in no hurry to return Muna, who was obviously in danger in her own country. Libya wanted her back and for Xander never to return while England and Chad just wanted them anywhere other than where they were.
Trying to rush the process would get him nothing but an ulcer. Life and government worked a bit differently in Africa. That had been his first lesson bestowed by the continent and he doubted it would be his last. The pace of life could vary from mile to mile, hectic and chaotic going to languid and heavy with no signs or road markers to give a warning. He’d seen iPods, cellphones, and clothes stamped at Old Navy; then there were villages with no running water or electricity, anything that might be considered civilized still years away from those who would benefit. Heat, sun, and insects were the only constants over all twelve million square miles.
“Xander!” Muna emerged from the back room with an excited smile on her face.
“Guess what?”
“I get something new to wear?” She brushed ineffectually at the dirt on her smock.
“And the teenager gets it in one.” He held up the pouch with the money. Most of it would be tucked inside the inner pocket of his equally dirty trousers but he gave her enough to pick up new clothes. “Go wild. Get something plaid.”
“Plaid?” The look she gave him was classic teen girl.
“Something with color at least. You blend in with the desert any more and I won’t be able to find you.” The money and Muna were out the door before he could say another word. He slipped the rest into the inner pocket and grabbed his coke bottle before heading after her. A change of clothes wasn’t a bad idea for him either since doing laundry consisted of rinsing his shirts and pants in a pail of muddy water.
When he caught up with her, she had a paper basket of figs in one hand and was frowning studiously at her clothing selection. He rolled his eyes at the fabric and she stuck her tongue out in return. Another coke and some nuts and he figured he was good to go for at least twenty minutes of shopping with a teenage girl. Five minutes later and with no more nuts, he was reevaluating that time estimate.
He found a lightweight cotton shirt and a pair of knee-length shorts in a bright blue cousin to paisley to add to his collection of travel couture. In the back of his mind, there was always the sneaking suspicion that the reason Buffy had chosen Europe as her round-up territory had something to do with the proximity of high fashion. A girl had to have her stylish boots for kicking demon ass. Theoretically, once the Slayers had gone through boot camp, they’d head back from whence they came and complete the global network. Some would be welcomed home and some would build homes where they were needed. Girls like Muna would never belong in a culture where women were dogmatically inferior; her worst enemy would be her own people.
It was a sobering thought and it stopped him in his tracks. A few yards ahead of him, she was just a normal teenage girl looking at a pretty green scarf to wrap over her hair. He had to smile as she bartered stubbornly with the vendor until she was happy with the amount. There might be hope for his hummingbird-sized Slayer yet.
The sight of Caucasian skin caught his eye, standing out like a sore thumb amidst the palette of brown to black. He craned his neck to get a better look and recognized two middle-aged subjects of the Queen. It took the space to two heartbeats, which he felt in his chest like drum beats, to think that Livvy Marchant didn’t look friendly and to come to the conclusion that they couldn’t be in Chad on a lucky coincidence. Nothing happened by accident in this line of work.
He started pushing through the crowd, elbowing his way toward Muna with his eye still trained on the Marchants. Muna waved when she saw that he was headed toward her, calling his name and holding up her new headscarf for him to see. He saw Edward Marchant turn toward the sound of his name and didn’t wait to see if he was reaching into his hip pack for a gun with a silencer.
“Xander?” Muna clutched the scarf, realizing that something was wrong the moment he reached her.
“We have to go. Stay close.” He circled his arm around her back protectively and started the complex dance of weaving and darting back through the market.
“What is wrong?” She glanced back over her shoulder with a frown.
“Let’s just say it’s getting a little too crowded for me.” Pulling her closer, he tried to be reassuring. They just had to make it back to the Embassy and they would be safe enough. He could venture out later to look for the Marchants and hopefully find out what they were doing in Chad.
A familiar wide-brimmed straw hat appeared several feet ahead of them and he veered right down a narrow passage between the stalls. One behind and one ahead of them, cutting off the direct route to the Embassy. They would be able to outrun them if they could get clear, but they couldn’t outrun bullets. He stopped at one of the stalls, looking both ways before he motioned to the pile of woven baskets being sold.
“Hide behind those, stay low and keep quiet. I’ll come back for you when they’re gone.” Once she had crawled behind them, he rearranged several baskets to ensure she couldn’t be seen before heading back toward the heart of the market. They probably wouldn’t kill him until they’d tortured her location out of him. It wasn’t much to look forward to but he figured his odds weren’t too dismal against two middle-aged Brits, even if they did have guns.
He bought a handful of dates and found a place to wait. A few minutes later they converged about fifty feet away from him, their gestures agitated as they spoke. Leisurely chewing on one of his dates, he strolled toward them and waved cheerfully when they saw him.
“You’re a little off the beaten path if you’re looking for Roman ruins. What brings you to Chad?” He smiled brightly.
“Xander! We were worried sick about you.” Livvy covered quickly.
“I bet you were. So tell me, with one of you is the lousy shot? Cause I counted six bullets that missed me at Leptis Magna. Pretty sloppy.” He continued to smile as their expressions turned ominous.
“Where’s the girl?” Edward kept his hand in his hip pack.
“Who can keep track of a teenager? I need a locator beacon for that girl, I turn my back and she’s off. I’m sure you know how that goes, since you lost her once yourself.”
“Our associate lost her,” Livvy informed him coldly. “And if you value your life, you’ll tell us where she is.”
“Just out of curiosity, what’re you gonna do with her? You know she’s a Slayer. Got some vamps need dusting?” He casually popped another date in his mouth. “Or is this another one of those assassin recruiting deals? Cause I’m really not a fan of those and they never work. Those Slayers can be quite the handful, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know and I don’t particularly care. We were hired to collect her and to kill anyone who tried to stop us, so I suggest you cooperate.”
Xander noticed that the British accent had vanished from both of their voices. “Who hired you? Wolfram and Hart? More of those robo-ninja guys? Come on, you can tell me. Who’s putting up the dough for this little pleasure cruise?”
She glared at him before turning to scan the crowd for any sign of Muna. “You really are the most annoying Watcher I’ve had to kill.”
“Exactly how many have you killed?” he fired back to cover his surprise at being called a Watcher.
“Not enough. You’re all alike. The Slayer is Chosen, the Slayer is supposed to fight evil. It’s pathetic. Times change and the Council is still a thousand years behind. Best thing that ever happened was most of them getting blown to bits three years ago.” Livvy shook her head with disgust.
“You’ve got a better plan?” He waved her off before she could respond. “Don’t bother. I’ve heard it all and it’s always some sick variation of wanting control over the Slayers. I’m not buying and I never will. I was there when the Big Evil swallowed up my hometown, fighting the good fight and getting the most out of my HMO. Which side were you on?”
She bristled visibly. “The side that isn’t about to let the Watcher’s Council make a mockery of the Slayers for another thousand years. Even with most of them dead, it’s still made up of shortsighted, pompous idiots. They have a weapon and they refuse to use it.”
Xander took a step closer, ignoring the emerging gun in Edward’s hand. “They’re human beings, not weapons.”
“This is ridiculous. Give us the girl, and we’ll let you live,” Edward interrupted their stand off irritably and jabbed the barrel of the gun into Xander’s side.
“Not happening.” He crossed his arms and stared them down defiantly. “I grew up on a Hellmouth with vampires, Hell Gods, and the Preying Mantis Lady so it’s going to take more than one little gun to scare me.” If there was anything he was supremely good at, it was being stupid and causing international incidents. Getting shot in the middle of a market in Chad sounded right up his alley.
He saw Muna peer around the corner of a stall and couldn’t decide if he was furious at her for leaving her hiding spot or proud that she’d shown initiative. If he’d had time to decide, he probably would have come down on the side of pride. She had a good arm and the gourd hurled at Edward’s head was a solid hit. Marchant lurched forward and to the side, eyes turning glassy and the gun sliding back into his pack. Xander grabbed onto the older man’s shoulders and pushed him into Livvy, using the diversion to dash around them and shove his way to Muna.
Crates of fruit and vegetables clattered to the ground behind them as he and Muna rounded the corner, sprinting through the corridors as fast as they could through the crowd. He held tightly onto her hand, ignoring the angry shouting that followed them. It was not the time for please and thank you or even a simple get out of the way. He wouldn’t know what language to shout in anyway.
They were steps away from the edge of the market and the wide street that would lead them down to the front of the American Embassy. He felt the heat and heard the whistle of a bullet as it whizzed past his ear. The Marchants could fire at will now that they weren’t surrounded by people.
Muna hesitated. He pulled her along without looking back; just two more buildings and they would be safe. When she continued to resist him, he paused just long enough to hook his arm around her shoulders to encourage her. Almost there. His heart was pounding and there was sweat pouring down his face and down the back of his neck. His palms were slick with it, sliding easily along the fabric of her tunic even as he tried to tighten his grip.
She stumbled against him and he felt another bullet fly by. Scrambling desperately to the side of the road for cover, he pulled her behind a stack of crates and out of harm’s way.
“We’re almost there, Muna. Don’t be afraid, okay?” He reached out to brush away a lock of hair that had escaped her headscarf. The green scarf she had picked out was limp around her neck, her head bowed against his shoulder. “Muna? Muna!” When he pulled his hand around to take her shoulder, there was blood on his forearm and palm. There was no resistance as he pulled her forward, her head lolling against his shoulder. Blood had soaked through her clothes from her shoulder to the small of her back, blossoming out from a single bullet hole between her shoulder blade and spine.
He waited for a pulse beneath his fingers. Something, anything, even if it was faint and slow. There was nothing. His mind imagined her skin cooling under his touch. He pulled her to him as he slumped against the wall of the building, numb and ice cold. There was no ambulance to call, no doctor who could bring her back from where she’d gone. The busy market had barely even noticed their flight, let alone the death of one little girl.
There were footsteps somewhere at the edge of his senses but he didn’t feel inclined to care or look up. If it was the Marchants, they’d lost what they’d come for and there was no one to blame but themselves. How long he stayed curled up against the building with Muna in his arms wasn’t important.
In the heat and the sun, the flies found her soon enough and that made him furious. He hid her behind the crates, curled up in a ball just like he’d found her in the military outpost, and returned to the market. A bou bous that a toucan would have been proud was his for far more than it was worth but he had no heart for bargaining. It was another quick jaunt back to the Embassy to collect their few belongings and then he returned to the crates. He tucked the green scarf into his pocket, wrapped her tightly in the bou bous, and carried her back through the market to the yard of waiting bush taxis.
He looked back only once, to watch the American flag shiver above the Embassy building. Maybe it was the air shivering with the heat instead of the flag. He paid the driver for two, arranged himself and Muna in the backseat of the battered Peugeot, and waited. Once they were out of the city and into the scrub, he left the taxi behind and carried her away from the road.
The scent of water and marshland was heavy in the air. Vaguely remembering the map, he guessed they were near Lake Chad. He found a quiet place in a small thicket of bushes and laid her down. There was no way to bury her according to her faith. He didn’t know her customs, he didn’t understand her belief. The next best thing was all he knew how to do and he hoped that would be enough for her.
It took him until nearly dusk to carve out a dent in the earth big enough to lay her body in and he filled in the grave by starlight, collecting rocks to pile on top that would keep the animals at bay. He changed into the clothes he’d bought at the market, miraculously not soaked in her blood, and tossed the bloody clothes far away from the thicket. By dawn his eye was dry and scratchy with dust and too little sleep. He was tired enough to ignore the insects and scratching claws of unseen critters.
What was he going to tell Giles? He didn’t know how to explain that he hadn’t been able to protect her, that he’d been powerless to stop it. The feeling of utter uselessness had been dormant for nearly three years stirred and breathed once again. He thought he’d left it behind in the crater that was Sunnydale. But now he had a pile of rocks staring him in the face as a reminder of just how useless he was.
He could almost see Buffy’s face and hear the heartfelt but ineffectual pep talk about none of it being his fault. Except he’d come to Africa and set the ball rolling. His meeting with her brother and father had gotten them bullets as well. The piece of metal in her body was meant for him. He couldn’t even get shot and that didn’t take any particular talent at all. In fact, it was hauntingly similar to bullets he had failed to prevent in his equally worthless past.
The sun drove him from the thicket by noon, eye watering in a poor attempt to remove the grit. He ached with every step back to the road and sat down with his duffle as a cushion. His lips had started to crack before he remembered that he had water bottles in his pack.
In the silence and heat, he barely remembered to speak when a bush taxi pulled over; a battered Toyota sedan with suitcases piled five deep and strapped on with baling twine. There was room enough to stuff his bag between two of the suitcases and he slid into the front passenger seat. Landscape went by but he didn’t see anything other than green and brown blurs. The back seat emptied and refilled again with new faces, new voices. N’Djamena appeared on the horizon, swooping toward them like a monstrous anthill.
When they arrived, he found he couldn’t move or reach for the door handle. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the city and wonder what he was supposed to tell them. He’d nearly imploded four countries when he had a live teenager with him; explaining that he’d buried her body in the countryside would cause more than an international incident, it could start a war.
He became aware that the driver of the bush taxi was speaking to him in broken English, asking him where he was going. There was no easy answer to that question. Maybe there was no answer at all.
“North,” he finally managed to get out. “I’m going north.”
Author: Aeneas (aka Jerib_78)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: It's Joss's sandbox, I just play there.
Author's Note: This is for the Scatterlings and Orphanages Ficathon.
All Who Wander
There was no duct tape this time and Xander was grateful for that. He had no illusions that he was any less a prisoner but the uniformed Texan didn’t seem to feel compelled to put a bullet through his skull and he didn’t intend to make waves that might change his mind. It was a newer Toyota and this time Xander got to ride up in front with seatbelts, something his bruised body was thankful for.
“Lot of open border here,” the man who identified himself only as Jasper, Marine Corps, shouted over the noise of the engine. “All sorts come in and out of Chad real easy like. Not every day we catch ‘em.” He cackled at that last part and gave Xander a wicked grin.
“I’m a tourist.” Xander yelled back. “I was kidnapped in Tripoli.”
“It happens.” He didn’t seem surprised by that, jerking the wheel to take a hard left. “Goddamn sun ain’t the only villain in this fucking place. Lucky you didn’t get your throat slit. Can’t throw you back over the border without pissing Libya off, best plan is to get to the U.S. Embassy in N’Djamena and go from there.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Xander was trying to think of a good excuse to give the Libyan government for why he’d left the tour and the country.
“Nah, next stop is my patrol outpost. Ain’t much but it’ll get us on our way. See those mountains?” He pointed to a string of hazy peaks nearly obscured by dust and the shimmering heat off the desert. “Use to be active volcanoes, beyond that ain’t nothing but dust thick as soup. Look close and you’ll find burned out tanks, dud missiles; some of ‘em left over from the second World War. Then there’s all the fucking landmines. Few years back, Libya made a grab for the strip of land we just came through and this area’s still full of rebel fighters. Beats me why they give a shit who owns this piece of hell.”
“Sounds like a great vacation spot.”
Jasper laughed at that, harsh and gritty with too much exposure to heat and sand. “Long as you don’t bring the kiddies. This end of Chad ain’t particularly friendly. Got rebels from three countries plus the homegrown kind, all up here just looking for something to use as target practice. What about you? Why come to Libya?”
“Roman ruins. I was on a tour,” he lied without batting an eye.
“That’s some fucked country, ain’t it? Outlawin’ liquor. Who’s brilliant idea was that?” Jasper shook his head with amusement.
“Those crazy Muslims.” Xander managed not to roll his eye sarcastically. Disagreeing with the nice man holding the gun was never a good idea.
“Ain’t got nothing against them but not everybody walks the same line, you know. Taking away people’s choice, turning them into clones of something, that don’t ever work in the long run. Can’t control people forever.”
Xander wasn’t sure he had anything to say to that so he changed the subject. “How many kidnap victims have you seen?”
“Still alive? Not many. Had one a few days back, just a little thing. Gutsy though. Stopped the Jeep and she made a break for it, fast as a jackrabbit. Reminded me of my niece back home.” He shook his head tiredly. “Probably planning to sell her off once they got here.”
“Do you still know where she is?” He barely dared hope that coincidence might be on his side.
“Back at the outpost until my run is up and I head south. There’s a consulate in Faya-Largeau. Arrange to send her back if they can contact her family. Might be they’re the ones arranged the kidnapping in the first place. Fucking crazy what some people will do, you know.” He squinted at the horizon ahead of them and gunned the engine. “Looks like we got ourselves a dust storm. If we can’t beat it, we’ll have to sit tight until it blows out. Those things are hell on the engine. Some of the bastards are big enough you can see ‘em from space.”
Xander held on tighter to the passenger door handle and tried not to panic at the wall of sand building to the southwest. The air outside was getting hazier, filling with a fine white dust that seeped through every crack and began to coat the inside of the truck.
“Dustiest place on earth south of those. You ask me, dust is dust but they’ve been sending a bunch of National Geographic types to study it. Bunch of geeks with cameras and test tubes.” He fished through one of his jacket pockets and produced a crumpled plastic bag with some kind of food wrapped inside. “Camel jerky?”
“No, thanks.” Xander grimaced and was treated to another of Jasper’s cackles.
“Ain’t half bad. Nothing like the steak back home. Man, I’ll be glad to have a t-bone again.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I’m a long-termer,” he shouted as they took another hair-raising turn and tore down a hill toward the rocky plain and the ominous dust cloud. “Counter terrorism training runs through summer but some of us have to stay to keep the ball rolling. Been on border patrol for six months now.”
“Counter terrorism?” Xander was less surprised than he thought he should have been.
“That’s what the paperwork said. Lately we’ve been training the Presidential guard. Had one attempt at a coup last year and it’s about time for another one. Hate those fucking things, man. Blood and bullets and no one in this goddamn country knows how to shoot worth shit.” Jasper shuddered with horror and disgust. “Now we got ‘em running drills, shooting AK’s. Kids like to collect the shell casings, make little necklaces out of ‘em and stuff.”
“Which side are we on? In the coups, I mean.”
“Guy in power ain’t much but he’s better than whatever asshole would take his place. Mostly we’re just trying to keep a lid on it.” He gave Xander a sideways look. “I always forget you guys stateside probably don’t know shit about this.”
“I’m bad with the news. Since Rather retired and Jennings took the job as news anchor in the sky, it’s just no fun anymore.”
“Right,” Jaspar chuckled. “It breaks down like this. The country’s split down the center like California. North and south don’t exactly agree on what’s good. North has desert but the south gets rain enough to have a lake and rainforest. ‘Sides that, Exxon runs a big pipeline out of southern Chad and oil money’s good for everyone if they don’t tear the place apart.”
“So they’re fighting over oil?”
“Ain’t just that. Muslims in the north, Christians in the south. And those two ain’t never gonna stop killing each other. Southern border’s got tribal warfare spillin’ out all over.” He squinted at the wall of dust and grinned. “Looks like we’re just gonna make it. Hold on.”
Their destination was a rather odd looking set of what must have been buildings. To Xander they looked like gray-blue beehives squatting amidst the brown rock and sad little scrub bushes barely managing to hold onto to life. They nearly spun to a halt, throwing gravel and sand as the tires dug in for traction. It came to mind that his rather odd guide might have rodeo somewhere in his past and not just because he had the sneaking suspicion that all the sand had gone to Jasper’s brain.
“Home shit home.” Jasper grinned as he hopped out of the truck.
The wind had picked up and Xander choked on the dust in the air, blinking futilely to keep it out of his eyes as he followed the Marine through a narrow opening in one of the beehives and down a set of stairs carved out of the earth. Beneath the surface was a hollowed out room of surprising size and doorways leading into dark passageways.
“Whoa.” Xander looked around the weapons adorning the walls and boxes of ammunition piled haphazardly.
“When in Rome.” Jasper motioned for him to follow down one of the corridors. “There’s a whole goddamn city built underground in Libya. Heard about it from some of the guys. Berbers do it too. Keeps them out of the sun and the dust. Winter’s a bitch too, gets fucking cold out there.”
Fumbling through the pitch black wasn’t unusual for Xander but he was glad to come out into another chamber that seemed to be the kitchen area. There was a rickety card table and some empty ammunition crates for chairs. Food seemed to consist of canned and processed goods, anything that wouldn’t rot or go bad in the miles of nothing that surrounded them. He accepted a canteen of water gratefully, realizing how thirsty he’d gotten.
“The desert always wins.” Jasper cut open a can of baked beans and dumped them into a battered pot over a kerosene burner. “It’s like Everest. You’re dying just as soon as you set foot on the goddamn mountain. May take years but this place’ll kill you sure as shooting.”
“That’s a happy thought.”
“Gotta be something, right? Ain’t none of us lives forever.”
Xander glanced around, hoping to find an innocent little Libyan girl who could snap him like a toothpick. “I’m partial to the quietly in my sleep route.”
“Long as I’ve still got my boots on.” He dumped the heated beans unceremoniously into three misfit bowls and handed two of them to Xander. “Maybe you can convince the kid to eat something, she don’t seem to like me much and I don’t speak Arabic. Chad’s got more languages than the US has states so I got my hands full just tryin’ to say hello in those. There ain’t no pork in this shit so should be fine for her. Can’t never remember what all they don’t eat. Through there.”
That explained the chatting on the drive. This might have been the first time in weeks Jasper had a captive audience who spoke English as a first language. Xander took the bowls and started down the dark corridor with hesitant footsteps. The next chamber room was darker than the last two, lit only by a single lamp run on batteries. Rolled up blankets and sleeping mats were stacked against the far side, providing minimum protection against the rough floor.
It was a relief to see the girl huddled against the wall; her head cloth and tunic stained the color of the dust outside. He kept a safe distance as he set down the bowl of beans and sat down to eat his own. His stomach growled but he figured it was probably just happy for something other than oranges and date bread. Vaguely, he wondered when he’d gotten used to eating without the luxury of utensils but figured it didn’t matter.
“Salaam aleikum,” he said after swallowing down a mouthful. She didn’t answer, turning her head away from him. “Maa ismuk?” He was trying to formulate the question of whether or not she had been kidnapped in Arabic when she slowly reached for the bowl.
“I speak English,” she told him quietly.
“Good, because my Arabic? Pretty scary.” He gave her his most comforting smile. “I’m Xander.”
“Muna,” she said, her face nearly buried in the bowl as she ate.
“Pleased to meet you, Muna. The nice man with the gun tells me you were kidnapped. I bet your family is worried about you.” He waited patiently as she ignored him. The girl couldn’t have been older than fourteen and her wide eyes reminded him of Dawn Summers. “Muna? Are you all right?”
“They are glad to be rid of me.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the bowl down, curling tighter into a ball.
“Do you have a brother named Hassan?”
Her eyes got a little wider and he thought he saw something close to fear in them. “You know Hassan?”
Xander swallowed hard as he remembered what he would have to tell her. He’d been half hoping this was a different kidnapped little girl. “He asked me to look for you.”
“I cannot go back. I dishonor my family and Allah.” Tears brimmed her eyes and the raw misery in her voice made him ache.
“No, you don’t. You’re different. I know you’re different, that’s why I’m here. You’re special, you’re chosen.”
“I am evil,” she sniffed despondently.
“Trust me. I’ve seen enough evil to know what it looks like and it’s not nearly as cute as you are.” He moved the slightest bit closer to her. “You’ve been having nightmares about people you know but you’ve never met, about things that can’t be real. Monsters that come out at night.”
“Yes,” she answered warily.
“You’re not alone. There are others like you. That’s why I was sent to find you, so you can be with girls just like you. You’re not evil, Muna.”
“It is not against Allah?”
“I think he’ll make an exception for you. There’s the whole greater good thing and gods tend to go for that, most of them anyway.” He debated putting off the worst of the bad news, wondering if the band-aid method was really the best in this situation. If he didn’t tell her now, he risked her believing later that he had lied to her. A win-win scenario wasn’t coming to mind so he decided on cautious honesty. Taking the lie in the past had only left him on the wrong end of a Slayer’s temper.
Tears left streaks of dust on her face as she wiped them away. “Did you really speak with Hassan?”
He tried not to wince, setting his bowl on the ground and focusing on her. “Yes. I’m sorry, Muna. Your brother and your father were killed a few days ago.” He watched her face go through an array of emotions from disbelief to rage and finally to sadness.
“It is because of me,” she whispered, her lower lip trembling.
“No, no! It’s not your fault, don’t ever think that.” He sat there awkwardly not knowing a way to comfort a sobbing teenage girl from a culture he didn’t understand. It wrenched at his heart to be there and unable to do anything at all. If he’d never come to Libya, her brother and father might still be alive and she might be in the back of someone else’s truck on her way to who knows where.
He waited until she cried herself to sleep before he finished what was left of his meal, laid a blanket gently over her, and gathered the bowls to return to the kitchen room. These were the times he wished for Giles or Willow. Even Buffy would be handy when it came time to breaking the bad news. Someone who didn’t fumble with words as much as he did and didn’t come up feeling inadequate in the face of tears. He couldn’t even tell her that everything was going to be fine because he knew better and lies wouldn’t keep her alive. It was a pity he couldn’t just slip her into an envelope and mail her back to Giles.
There was no sign of their host but he figured Jasper had better things to do than wait on them hand and foot. He set the bowls on the table for lack of knowing what else to do with them. The truth was that he was about dead on his feet anyway and even the stone floor was looking good. He grabbed the duffle he’d abandoned in the kitchen and headed back to the sleeping chamber.
Compared to the bed of a pickup, a sleeping mat was nearly heavenly bliss and his duffle served as a lumpy pillow. Muna was still huddled up beneath the ancient wool blanket, shivering against cold reality rather than the temperature of the room. He wiggled until he found the right combination of grooves in the floor and settled in to attempt sleep. With the bone deep weariness and the darkening bruises from the rollover, he doubted he’d be able to do more than stare at her and think of ways to get her back to Giles, thereby dashing what was left of her hopes for a normal life.
Xander hated that part of the job.
It was surprising how comforting it felt to be underground, safe in the solidity of the earth around them. Dust storms and war came and went but the earth stayed. He drifted to sleep listening to the wind howl as the dust storm raged over them, lost in darkness without the small lamp; his dreams full of shadows and faces he never quite saw chasing after him. Somewhere in the dark, he heard a voice calling his name and vaguely remembered that he wasn’t alone.
“Harris!” It was a man’s voice, accented and rough.
Dragging out of sleep, he squinted when the beam of a flashlight hit his eye. “Wha? What’s going on?”
“Looks like rebels stirred up by the dust storm headed our way. Best get going and stay ahead of them, never know what they’re in the mood for. You got the girl?” The flashlight revealed a terrified Muna cowering away from the Marine.
“I’m on it. We’ll be out in a second.” He fumbled for the lamp and began rolling up his mat. “Can you trust me, Muna? Enough to come with me? You’ll be safe with me, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She waited for the sound of Jasper’s boots to fade away before carefully folding her blanket and setting it aside. “Where else am I to go? I have no home now.”
“I know it feels like you’ve lost everything, like your whole world was ripped away in one morning. But you won’t have to do this alone. I have cool friends in odd places and most of them are even human.” Seeing the look of fear return, he laughed nervously and picked up his duffle bag. “We’ll get to the human versus not human part later. I have a speech. I like to think of it as motivational really.”
“You are strange, Xander.” There was the barest hint of humor in her dark eyes.
“It has been said. You ready?” He waited for her to adjust her headscarf before leading the way through the dark corridors.
The outer room had been stripped of everything but the battered furniture and from the coating of dust on Jasper, he must have spent the time while Xander slept hauling it out of the underground post. A tarp was stretched over the bed of the Marine’s truck as flimsy protection from the desert. He didn’t seem to know what to do with Muna there, far more used to fully-grown and heavily armed men than teenage girls. With the duffle stowed away, they piled into the cab with Muna, eyes wide and suspicious of the Marine, nestled between them.
Jasper seemed less inclined to talk this time and slid a beat up Johnny Cash CD into the player to fill the silence. It gave Xander a welcome break from trying to make idle conversation and freed up his brain to think about what he was going to do. The paperwork alone would be enough to give him a migraine. He had to get to the US Embassy in a country he didn’t have a visa for with a girl who’d been kidnapped from Libya. None of that was going to look good to Chadian authorities regardless of how he explained it. There was always the option of letting them send her back to Libya and following her but somehow he doubted the people behind her kidnapping had given up.
Somewhere between desert and scrub brush, she felt asleep against Xander with one hand holding onto his arm even in her sleep. There was dust on her face, turning her dark lashes to a lighter hue of brown. He wondered what would happen to her once he got her back to the others. Would she take up painting her nails and gossiping about boys? Maybe she’d be one of the serious Slayer types who talked shop and ambush tactics at their enormous sleepover parties. Part of him hoped he’d be there the first time she killed a vampire and really understood what it meant. Part of him hoped she’d never have to.
That was the trick, the one rule of the game. Go get the girl and bring her back but don’t start to care and don’t get attached. Even with the Slayer Club to make sure all the girls had someone at their back, it was still a cutthroat business. They all had expiration dates and the vampires weren’t going anywhere. There had been talk, idle dreams, of ridding the world of evil, but who were they kidding? Apparently Evil didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He brushed a strand of hair that had fallen away from her headscarf out of her face, patting her hand lightly in an inadequate gesture of comfort. It was one thing that he certainly hadn’t learned from his parents or non-existent siblings. How to tell a child that monsters were real and it was all okay in the same hypocritical breath. The larger message was that there was light in every darkness and hope in every pothole.
Buffy, good old stoic Buffy, encouraged them to befriend and form bonds with the girls. Get to know them, give them something to fight for. He listened to it with half an ear, believing that she believed it but pulling away at the same time. A friend, a family, an eye, not to mention at least one high school he’d spent a good number of hours rebuilding from nothing. How much more was he expected to lose? If staying at arm’s length didn’t make the pain less then he figured nothing would short of a stake to his heart. That was the road best left un-traveled; one always ended up soliloquizing to the skulls of dead friends if those thoughts took root.
“There’ll be a convoy headed south to pick up supplies.” Jasper kept his eyes on the road, looking and obviously expecting some trouble. “Main base is out of Loumia, it’s south of N’Djamena so they can drop you at the embassy. Paperwork’s gonna be a bitch but they know where to find me and they’ll be getting my report.”
“Thanks. For everything.” He didn’t expect a response so he wasn’t surprised at the somewhat awkward silence. It was understood that being in a foreign country surrounded by languages you didn’t speak made a face from home a welcome relief. There were trips when Xander had been so glad to see an American that he could have hugged the poor person. They were united by the love of McDonalds, Starbucks, and Gap jeans. There were those stars and stripes as well but even where the flag didn’t fly there was usually a place to find a Big Mac.
Soon the Marine from Texas who was homesick enough to treat a kidnap victim like a guest would be just another ghost from his past. Africa had a way with ghosts. It took away everything it gave, burned it away under the roaring sun and left nothing behind but memories and footprints.
***
Xander wasn’t exactly heartbroken that the convoy didn’t leave until the next morning. It gave him time to formulate a plan for taking Muna with him and he had no desire to die on a poor excuse for a road in the middle of Chad. The accommodations left a great deal to be desired but it was a free ride to a place that might get him back on track and that made being sandwiched in another truck bed with empty crates and pallets worth the discomfort.
It had worked out well for him to sneak Muna into one of the crates with a blanket and he had the whole trip to think of a way to get her out. She’d given him a look that meant she thought he had scrambled eggs for brains but climbed in and curled up in the corner. He figured that it worked out well this way. She had no desire to return to Libya where her family thought she was unnatural and evil, and he wasn’t about to let her slip away from him until she was safely with the others.
He wasn’t used to how small and timid she was, like a frightened bird he was trying to coax out of the nest. This was no badass Buffy or powder keg Faith; there had been no sign that she even had Slayer powers. If the Coven was wrong about this one then Giles owed him a week at a spa getting massages and mud wraps that didn’t include complimentary flesh-eating parasites.
The aching in his muscles as the miles passed gave him the appreciation of what it meant to travel a country twice the size of Texas. Just looking at a map didn’t convey the magnitude of endless landscape. He watched the desert and sand gradually fade into brown with patches of date palms and ugly little thorn bushes. It was a dusty, dirty green at first. The green of things eking out of living from next to nothing and barely finding enough water to drink. A darker green infused the landscape as they continued to move south and new species of trees began to appear. This was the Africa they sold in brochures for safaris and wildlife trips, with dense grass and oddly shaped trees.
Increasing traffic was the first sign that they were getting close to their destination. Traffic was a loose definition of the chaos on the roads. Beat up station wagons piled high with suitcases and crates of chickens zoomed like racecars around the larger military truck. It also meant more annoying insects buzzing in his ears and dive-bombing his head in crazy zigzags. N’Djamena itself was the closest he’d seen to a sprawling, smog-ridden metropolis since Tripoli and he was surprised what a relief the sound of civilization was after too much time in the silence of the Sahara.
The soldiers in the front of the truck spared him the hassle of devising a clever plan by pulling over and banging on the side of the door. He dropped the side of the crate open and helped Muna out of her hiding spot, easing her over the back of the truck bed and onto the pavement. Metal echoed as he struck the tailgate to let them know he was out and then they were gone.
He watched Muna self-consciously adjust her headscarf and patted her shoulder a little awkwardly. “How about some food? There’s bound to be a market around here somewhere.” She only nodded in response, watching the bustling city around her with wide eyes.
There was a large open-air market nearby full of rickety little booths selling anything under the sun. Paved ground radiated the sun’s heat back up again, turning the walkways into one continuous oven. There were girls dressed in rainbow robes carrying wide bowls of nuts and biscuits on their heads. Everyone, it seemed, was dressed like some sort of brightly colored tropical bird. He bartered for dates and seasoned bread, picking up a few cans of European canned peas or petit pois as the vendors called them. His spirits soared considerably when he found a young boy selling bottles of Coca-Cola. Muna didn’t seem convinced that it was worth drinking and stuffed her mouth with dates and nuts instead.
“So what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked as they settled under the scant shade of a wizened tree to eat their bread.
“You are making a joke?” Muna looked up at him with date juice on her chin.
“Yes, I am making a joke. And we might be stuck with each other for a while so I should warn you that I make a lot of jokes. Some good and some not so good.”
She hesitated and glanced around as though waiting for the secret police to arrest her. “My father does not believe that women should make jokes.”
“Why not?”
“He says it is not our place.”
“What is your place?” He sipped the warm Coke with relish.
“To be a good wife and a mother some day. Take care of the home, feed my family. That is a woman’s place,” she told him seriously.
“Then you’re in for shock. You’re different and your life is going to be different from now on. Do you understand?” He didn’t expect an answer. The girls who had never heard of Slayers or vampires always took a few hours or even days to come to terms with the idea that they were different. There really was never an easy way to explain a world gone mad.
“You say there are others like me?” Muna asked.
“Just like you. I’m part of a group that travels around the world to find them and help them.”
“The man,” she paused again to consider her words. “The man who took me from my home. He said others would come and they would try to hurt me. He said I mustn’t trust any of them.”
“There are bad people looking for you too, Muna. I can help you if you can trust me. Do you think you can trust me?”
“You are nicer than the other man,” she said matter-of-factly as she finished off the dates. “Where are we going now?”
“We are going to the American Embassy and we’re going to ask for a phone. Then we’re probably gonna sit in some stuffy chairs for awhile, fill out a bunch of papers, and eventually we’ll go to England.” He had no idea how he was supposed to get a Libyan girl with no passport out of Africa and into England but that was for Giles’s big brain to figure out. And if there wasn’t a neatly red-taped solution, not all of Xander’s mission exits had involved sitting in a comfy seat and smiling for customs.
“What is America like?” she asked suddenly, her dark eyes wide and inquisitive.
“It’s big. There are a lot of roads and people. And there’s a Walmart for everyone.”
“Walmart? I have heard of this. What is it like?”
“Like a marketplace where you can get anything you want. Food, clothes, bicycles, DVDs. Even new tires for your car.” He laughed when her eyes got wide enough that he thought they might pop out of her head. “Don’t you have markets like that?”
She shook her head quickly. “My mother stands in a line for bread and eggs. There are some markets that have vegetables now. Mother says it’s better than it was when I was a baby. Xander…will I ever see my family again?”
“Of course you will. Once we’ve convinced you that you’re not evil and taught you how to use a stake, you’ll be homeward bound just like the movie.”
“Good.” She smiled hopefully up at him. “I will show them I am not evil.”
“That’s the spirit.” Tousling her headscarf didn’t have quite the same effect as hair but she giggled and swatted his hand away, rearranging the lightweight fabric carefully. He hoped that once she’d seen the truth about who she was, she wouldn’t lose the sparkle in her eyes or that laugh. There was laughter among the Slayers now but the dark times were all too fresh in his memory.
Once the food was gone, they found their way back through the hellishly hot marketplace to the American Embassy. It took some convincing and name-dropping for the guard to let Muna follow him into the building. They would have to contact Jasper to verify that she was a kidnap victim and even then, Xander would have to answer to why he hadn’t left her with the Libyan Consulate in Faya-Largeau. He pushed the protective older brother angle on that one and vehemently argued that he was only trying to ensure that the girl was safely returned to her family.
In the end, he had the impression that the Embassy was even more interested in keeping it quiet than he was. This would be just another state secret that never made the light of day or the evening news, completely taken care of behind closed doors. A final agreement was due mostly to a calming voice from England assuring them that Xander wasn’t trying to start an international incident, he was just profoundly stupid.
They were pointed to a small room with a prayer mat and a sofa with lumpy cushions. It would be their home until many more phone calls were sacrificed and the gods of paperwork finally smiled.
Hours ticked by, the waiting room was traded for a back office that wasn’t being used and a carpeted divider between two ancient army cots. The harried Embassy official couldn’t give them an estimated time of departure so they made the best of being stuck with each other. He claimed a prayer mat for Muna and pointed her toward Mecca as best he could with the decorative compass hanging on the Embassy wall and his shaky knowledge of geography. North and to the right, he marked a spot on the far wall with a little smiley face and remembered to stay quiet while she was praying. She tried to teach him a prayer but couldn’t stop giggling at his fumbling Arabic.
At night, when the city was quieter and only the security night shift patrolled the building, he told her about Sunnydale, demons, and the Slayers. She took it all in, eyes wide and serious as she listened to every word and every story. The bottom of the spray-on deodorant can twisted off and he gave her the small stake stored inside to practice with. Like all the others, she had an inherent gift for wielding a weapon and she took to fighting like a fish to water. There was still hesitation and she was far too timid to last long once the real patrolling started, but time was on his side. Since arriving in Chad, he had seen no sign of vampires or demons despite the fact that countries with body counts due to civil unrest usually served as breeding grounds for all sorts of nasties. He hoped his luck would hold until the paperwork got sorted.
He was their first glimpse into the world, their first Watcher in a way, and it was an experience he was still honing. Don’t be a Wesley. That was what Faith always shouted at his back when he left for another girl. At first he’d assumed she was telling him not to be useless but after the first few retrieval ops, he decided that she was really telling him not to forget that they were still teenage girls. Teenage girls who’d woken up one morning as aliens among their own family, their heads filled with nightmares about to knock on their doors.
Some nights he knew she cried her self to sleep, quietly enough that he might not have noticed if he hadn’t expected it, and there was no further mention of home or family. Those were wounds a long time healing and there were no patches for that kind of thing.
It took three days before he was allowed to speak to Giles directly instead of sitting idly by and wondering what was going on at the other end of the phone. He could hear the weariness with bureaucracy beneath the static and frequent breaks for nose pinching and glasses cleaning.
“How much longer, Giles? Not that I’m in a hurry to get out of a country that’s been tearing itself apart for the last twenty years.” He held the phone away from his ear long enough to avoid the inevitable sigh.
“It’s not that easy, Xander. You have to understand.” There was the sound of nose pinching. “I can’t even explain how much trouble you’ve caused diplomatically. There are four countries involved and none of them are particularly happy that you have absconded with a teenage girl.”
“Hey! There’s been no absconding. I was kidnapped too. I’m just making sure she gets home safe.” He glanced around to see where the Embassy official was. The little man with bits of gray in his black hair always seemed to be listening in with round, bunny-style ears. “If we’re going to be here much longer, I don’t suppose you could wire me some moulah. Just enough to get some food and a change of clothes for Muna.”
“I’ll do what I can. Strangely enough, getting you money should be easier than getting you out of the country. There is no British High Commission in Chad but the Commission in Cameroon has ties to the American Embassy, I’ll send it through them.”
“Thanks, G-man. And send my love to the gang, wish they were here and all that. If I find some postcards, I’ll send them your way. Hopefully I’ll be back before they arrive but I may be an old man by then.” There was small talk after that but Giles was no more inclined to explain the diplomatic complications than Xander was to listen to it. He wished they were speaking in a secret code, saying glamorous and spy-like things rather than exactly what the words meant. Simplicity was a small favor in a complicated world.
Two more days brought a diplomatic pouch with money and ad hoc visas for him and Muna that allowed them to stay in Chad until further arrangements were made. The Embassy official looked more and more harried with each phone call, disappearing into a back office for hours at a time and reappearing only when he needed signatures. It seemed that none of the countries involved could come to an agreement about who was going where and how. The stars and stripes wanted Xander’s kidnappers accounted for and were in no hurry to return Muna, who was obviously in danger in her own country. Libya wanted her back and for Xander never to return while England and Chad just wanted them anywhere other than where they were.
Trying to rush the process would get him nothing but an ulcer. Life and government worked a bit differently in Africa. That had been his first lesson bestowed by the continent and he doubted it would be his last. The pace of life could vary from mile to mile, hectic and chaotic going to languid and heavy with no signs or road markers to give a warning. He’d seen iPods, cellphones, and clothes stamped at Old Navy; then there were villages with no running water or electricity, anything that might be considered civilized still years away from those who would benefit. Heat, sun, and insects were the only constants over all twelve million square miles.
“Xander!” Muna emerged from the back room with an excited smile on her face.
“Guess what?”
“I get something new to wear?” She brushed ineffectually at the dirt on her smock.
“And the teenager gets it in one.” He held up the pouch with the money. Most of it would be tucked inside the inner pocket of his equally dirty trousers but he gave her enough to pick up new clothes. “Go wild. Get something plaid.”
“Plaid?” The look she gave him was classic teen girl.
“Something with color at least. You blend in with the desert any more and I won’t be able to find you.” The money and Muna were out the door before he could say another word. He slipped the rest into the inner pocket and grabbed his coke bottle before heading after her. A change of clothes wasn’t a bad idea for him either since doing laundry consisted of rinsing his shirts and pants in a pail of muddy water.
When he caught up with her, she had a paper basket of figs in one hand and was frowning studiously at her clothing selection. He rolled his eyes at the fabric and she stuck her tongue out in return. Another coke and some nuts and he figured he was good to go for at least twenty minutes of shopping with a teenage girl. Five minutes later and with no more nuts, he was reevaluating that time estimate.
He found a lightweight cotton shirt and a pair of knee-length shorts in a bright blue cousin to paisley to add to his collection of travel couture. In the back of his mind, there was always the sneaking suspicion that the reason Buffy had chosen Europe as her round-up territory had something to do with the proximity of high fashion. A girl had to have her stylish boots for kicking demon ass. Theoretically, once the Slayers had gone through boot camp, they’d head back from whence they came and complete the global network. Some would be welcomed home and some would build homes where they were needed. Girls like Muna would never belong in a culture where women were dogmatically inferior; her worst enemy would be her own people.
It was a sobering thought and it stopped him in his tracks. A few yards ahead of him, she was just a normal teenage girl looking at a pretty green scarf to wrap over her hair. He had to smile as she bartered stubbornly with the vendor until she was happy with the amount. There might be hope for his hummingbird-sized Slayer yet.
The sight of Caucasian skin caught his eye, standing out like a sore thumb amidst the palette of brown to black. He craned his neck to get a better look and recognized two middle-aged subjects of the Queen. It took the space to two heartbeats, which he felt in his chest like drum beats, to think that Livvy Marchant didn’t look friendly and to come to the conclusion that they couldn’t be in Chad on a lucky coincidence. Nothing happened by accident in this line of work.
He started pushing through the crowd, elbowing his way toward Muna with his eye still trained on the Marchants. Muna waved when she saw that he was headed toward her, calling his name and holding up her new headscarf for him to see. He saw Edward Marchant turn toward the sound of his name and didn’t wait to see if he was reaching into his hip pack for a gun with a silencer.
“Xander?” Muna clutched the scarf, realizing that something was wrong the moment he reached her.
“We have to go. Stay close.” He circled his arm around her back protectively and started the complex dance of weaving and darting back through the market.
“What is wrong?” She glanced back over her shoulder with a frown.
“Let’s just say it’s getting a little too crowded for me.” Pulling her closer, he tried to be reassuring. They just had to make it back to the Embassy and they would be safe enough. He could venture out later to look for the Marchants and hopefully find out what they were doing in Chad.
A familiar wide-brimmed straw hat appeared several feet ahead of them and he veered right down a narrow passage between the stalls. One behind and one ahead of them, cutting off the direct route to the Embassy. They would be able to outrun them if they could get clear, but they couldn’t outrun bullets. He stopped at one of the stalls, looking both ways before he motioned to the pile of woven baskets being sold.
“Hide behind those, stay low and keep quiet. I’ll come back for you when they’re gone.” Once she had crawled behind them, he rearranged several baskets to ensure she couldn’t be seen before heading back toward the heart of the market. They probably wouldn’t kill him until they’d tortured her location out of him. It wasn’t much to look forward to but he figured his odds weren’t too dismal against two middle-aged Brits, even if they did have guns.
He bought a handful of dates and found a place to wait. A few minutes later they converged about fifty feet away from him, their gestures agitated as they spoke. Leisurely chewing on one of his dates, he strolled toward them and waved cheerfully when they saw him.
“You’re a little off the beaten path if you’re looking for Roman ruins. What brings you to Chad?” He smiled brightly.
“Xander! We were worried sick about you.” Livvy covered quickly.
“I bet you were. So tell me, with one of you is the lousy shot? Cause I counted six bullets that missed me at Leptis Magna. Pretty sloppy.” He continued to smile as their expressions turned ominous.
“Where’s the girl?” Edward kept his hand in his hip pack.
“Who can keep track of a teenager? I need a locator beacon for that girl, I turn my back and she’s off. I’m sure you know how that goes, since you lost her once yourself.”
“Our associate lost her,” Livvy informed him coldly. “And if you value your life, you’ll tell us where she is.”
“Just out of curiosity, what’re you gonna do with her? You know she’s a Slayer. Got some vamps need dusting?” He casually popped another date in his mouth. “Or is this another one of those assassin recruiting deals? Cause I’m really not a fan of those and they never work. Those Slayers can be quite the handful, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know and I don’t particularly care. We were hired to collect her and to kill anyone who tried to stop us, so I suggest you cooperate.”
Xander noticed that the British accent had vanished from both of their voices. “Who hired you? Wolfram and Hart? More of those robo-ninja guys? Come on, you can tell me. Who’s putting up the dough for this little pleasure cruise?”
She glared at him before turning to scan the crowd for any sign of Muna. “You really are the most annoying Watcher I’ve had to kill.”
“Exactly how many have you killed?” he fired back to cover his surprise at being called a Watcher.
“Not enough. You’re all alike. The Slayer is Chosen, the Slayer is supposed to fight evil. It’s pathetic. Times change and the Council is still a thousand years behind. Best thing that ever happened was most of them getting blown to bits three years ago.” Livvy shook her head with disgust.
“You’ve got a better plan?” He waved her off before she could respond. “Don’t bother. I’ve heard it all and it’s always some sick variation of wanting control over the Slayers. I’m not buying and I never will. I was there when the Big Evil swallowed up my hometown, fighting the good fight and getting the most out of my HMO. Which side were you on?”
She bristled visibly. “The side that isn’t about to let the Watcher’s Council make a mockery of the Slayers for another thousand years. Even with most of them dead, it’s still made up of shortsighted, pompous idiots. They have a weapon and they refuse to use it.”
Xander took a step closer, ignoring the emerging gun in Edward’s hand. “They’re human beings, not weapons.”
“This is ridiculous. Give us the girl, and we’ll let you live,” Edward interrupted their stand off irritably and jabbed the barrel of the gun into Xander’s side.
“Not happening.” He crossed his arms and stared them down defiantly. “I grew up on a Hellmouth with vampires, Hell Gods, and the Preying Mantis Lady so it’s going to take more than one little gun to scare me.” If there was anything he was supremely good at, it was being stupid and causing international incidents. Getting shot in the middle of a market in Chad sounded right up his alley.
He saw Muna peer around the corner of a stall and couldn’t decide if he was furious at her for leaving her hiding spot or proud that she’d shown initiative. If he’d had time to decide, he probably would have come down on the side of pride. She had a good arm and the gourd hurled at Edward’s head was a solid hit. Marchant lurched forward and to the side, eyes turning glassy and the gun sliding back into his pack. Xander grabbed onto the older man’s shoulders and pushed him into Livvy, using the diversion to dash around them and shove his way to Muna.
Crates of fruit and vegetables clattered to the ground behind them as he and Muna rounded the corner, sprinting through the corridors as fast as they could through the crowd. He held tightly onto her hand, ignoring the angry shouting that followed them. It was not the time for please and thank you or even a simple get out of the way. He wouldn’t know what language to shout in anyway.
They were steps away from the edge of the market and the wide street that would lead them down to the front of the American Embassy. He felt the heat and heard the whistle of a bullet as it whizzed past his ear. The Marchants could fire at will now that they weren’t surrounded by people.
Muna hesitated. He pulled her along without looking back; just two more buildings and they would be safe. When she continued to resist him, he paused just long enough to hook his arm around her shoulders to encourage her. Almost there. His heart was pounding and there was sweat pouring down his face and down the back of his neck. His palms were slick with it, sliding easily along the fabric of her tunic even as he tried to tighten his grip.
She stumbled against him and he felt another bullet fly by. Scrambling desperately to the side of the road for cover, he pulled her behind a stack of crates and out of harm’s way.
“We’re almost there, Muna. Don’t be afraid, okay?” He reached out to brush away a lock of hair that had escaped her headscarf. The green scarf she had picked out was limp around her neck, her head bowed against his shoulder. “Muna? Muna!” When he pulled his hand around to take her shoulder, there was blood on his forearm and palm. There was no resistance as he pulled her forward, her head lolling against his shoulder. Blood had soaked through her clothes from her shoulder to the small of her back, blossoming out from a single bullet hole between her shoulder blade and spine.
He waited for a pulse beneath his fingers. Something, anything, even if it was faint and slow. There was nothing. His mind imagined her skin cooling under his touch. He pulled her to him as he slumped against the wall of the building, numb and ice cold. There was no ambulance to call, no doctor who could bring her back from where she’d gone. The busy market had barely even noticed their flight, let alone the death of one little girl.
There were footsteps somewhere at the edge of his senses but he didn’t feel inclined to care or look up. If it was the Marchants, they’d lost what they’d come for and there was no one to blame but themselves. How long he stayed curled up against the building with Muna in his arms wasn’t important.
In the heat and the sun, the flies found her soon enough and that made him furious. He hid her behind the crates, curled up in a ball just like he’d found her in the military outpost, and returned to the market. A bou bous that a toucan would have been proud was his for far more than it was worth but he had no heart for bargaining. It was another quick jaunt back to the Embassy to collect their few belongings and then he returned to the crates. He tucked the green scarf into his pocket, wrapped her tightly in the bou bous, and carried her back through the market to the yard of waiting bush taxis.
He looked back only once, to watch the American flag shiver above the Embassy building. Maybe it was the air shivering with the heat instead of the flag. He paid the driver for two, arranged himself and Muna in the backseat of the battered Peugeot, and waited. Once they were out of the city and into the scrub, he left the taxi behind and carried her away from the road.
The scent of water and marshland was heavy in the air. Vaguely remembering the map, he guessed they were near Lake Chad. He found a quiet place in a small thicket of bushes and laid her down. There was no way to bury her according to her faith. He didn’t know her customs, he didn’t understand her belief. The next best thing was all he knew how to do and he hoped that would be enough for her.
It took him until nearly dusk to carve out a dent in the earth big enough to lay her body in and he filled in the grave by starlight, collecting rocks to pile on top that would keep the animals at bay. He changed into the clothes he’d bought at the market, miraculously not soaked in her blood, and tossed the bloody clothes far away from the thicket. By dawn his eye was dry and scratchy with dust and too little sleep. He was tired enough to ignore the insects and scratching claws of unseen critters.
What was he going to tell Giles? He didn’t know how to explain that he hadn’t been able to protect her, that he’d been powerless to stop it. The feeling of utter uselessness had been dormant for nearly three years stirred and breathed once again. He thought he’d left it behind in the crater that was Sunnydale. But now he had a pile of rocks staring him in the face as a reminder of just how useless he was.
He could almost see Buffy’s face and hear the heartfelt but ineffectual pep talk about none of it being his fault. Except he’d come to Africa and set the ball rolling. His meeting with her brother and father had gotten them bullets as well. The piece of metal in her body was meant for him. He couldn’t even get shot and that didn’t take any particular talent at all. In fact, it was hauntingly similar to bullets he had failed to prevent in his equally worthless past.
The sun drove him from the thicket by noon, eye watering in a poor attempt to remove the grit. He ached with every step back to the road and sat down with his duffle as a cushion. His lips had started to crack before he remembered that he had water bottles in his pack.
In the silence and heat, he barely remembered to speak when a bush taxi pulled over; a battered Toyota sedan with suitcases piled five deep and strapped on with baling twine. There was room enough to stuff his bag between two of the suitcases and he slid into the front passenger seat. Landscape went by but he didn’t see anything other than green and brown blurs. The back seat emptied and refilled again with new faces, new voices. N’Djamena appeared on the horizon, swooping toward them like a monstrous anthill.
When they arrived, he found he couldn’t move or reach for the door handle. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the city and wonder what he was supposed to tell them. He’d nearly imploded four countries when he had a live teenager with him; explaining that he’d buried her body in the countryside would cause more than an international incident, it could start a war.
He became aware that the driver of the bush taxi was speaking to him in broken English, asking him where he was going. There was no easy answer to that question. Maybe there was no answer at all.
“North,” he finally managed to get out. “I’m going north.”