SON OF HEKIMA

 

After the tragic loss of his family, Buntu and his fellow cadets flee into the jungle to become initiated into the rogue rebel group known as the M23…

CHAPTER SIX

Somewhere in the Jungle

The air grew thinner with every step as Buntu and his fellow cadets trekked through the ridges of Karura jungle. Each breath stung his chest, the climb endless, the forest closing in like a living cage. Around them, danger prowled in every shadow—creatures small enough to slip into their blood and beasts large enough to swallow them whole.

Buntu remembered the time a mosquito’s sting reduced him to delirium, leaving him feverish and raving like a madman. The jungle seemed determined to test them in every way. Ancient trees loomed overhead, towering like watchful sentinels. Their vast canopies locked together so tightly they blotted out the sun, trapping the boys in perpetual twilight. The branches caught the rain, dripping it down in slow, mocking rhythms. It felt less like protection and more like imprisonment.

Death was constant here. One boy screamed in the night when a snake’s fangs struck deep; his body stiffened, then grew cold within hours. Another, bitten by a spider in his sleep, woke to find his skin erupting in boils that oozed foul pus. He was gone by morning. Hunger drove them to hunt wild goats, pigs, even stray cattle—but on the days when the forest yielded nothing, they turned to berries and fruits. One cadet, careless and hungry, plucked a red berry and ate it as though it were a sweet. By nightfall he was convulsing; by dawn, he was a corpse.

The sky was almost always gray, the rain endless. Rarely did the sun break through. The gloom settled into Buntu’s soul like rot. He had lost everything—his parents, his sister—and the man who had taken them was the same man who now commanded his fate. Simba.

The name itself carried terror. Once a decorated officer, Simba had returned to the battlefield under the guise of patriotism, claiming to fight for the nation’s freedom. In truth, he was a madman who brought nothing but ruin. He torched villages, butchered families, raped women, and pressed children into war. Those who defied him were erased—fathers, mothers, children alike.

Simba wore his past like armor. His old military uniform, frayed but proudly adorned with medals, was his second skin. His body was massive, his muscles sculpted by years of violence. His bald head gleamed under his patrol cap, and a cigar often smoldered between his teeth. He carried himself with unshakable confidence, a tyrant who demanded obedience not just with words but with his very presence. He drilled the cadets relentlessly—rifle training, hand-to-hand combat, survival drills—and between battles he filled their mouths with war songs until they echoed the jungle with his madness.

Buntu’s initiation was unlike anything he had imagined. They came for him at night, rough hands dragging him from his cot, a cloth bag over his head. He was taken to a hidden camp where the stench of burned rubber mingled with the iron tang of blood. There, with two other boys, he was stripped naked before a mchawi, a witch-doctor who muttered incantations in a language older than the trees.

Boiling leaves were dipped into steaming pots and lashed across their skin, the sting biting deeper than whips. They were circumcised under chants they could not understand, pigs’ blood smeared across their chests in dripping streaks. Bitter brews of roots and bile were forced down their throats, and smoke from sacred leaves filled their lungs until they coughed and gagged. For three days it continued—pain, blood, delirium. One of the boys broke under the ordeal, coughing blood until his life slipped away.

When it ended, the survivors were rewarded not with comfort, but with weapons. An AK-47 was thrust into Buntu’s hands like a crown. He was no longer a boy—he was now a soldier of the M23 rebels.

But a soldier’s oath required blood.

Days later, Simba paraded hostages into camp—villagers blindfolded and trembling, their hands bound. They looked nothing like soldiers, nothing like the “government spies” Simba ranted about. They were fathers, farmers, teachers. Human beings.

“Now, Buntu,” Simba thundered, his voice rolling like distant drums. “Your final test. Kill these traitors, sent by the government to destroy us.”

Buntu felt the rifle’s weight in his hands, heavier than any metal should be. His heart hammered in his chest. He saw the faces beneath the blindfolds—ordinary men, terrified, pleading without words.

“Do it!” Simba roared. “Prove you are one of us!”

Buntu raised the rifle. His breath caught. His finger hovered over the trigger as his mind screamed, I am Buntu the inventor, not a murderer…

But the eyes of Simba burned into him. Around him, cadets watched. There was no escape.

The shot rang out.

A man crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

Buntu did not flinch. He did not weep. He did not feel.

Buntu had become a monster.

And this was only the beginning.

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