CHAPTER 128: SIMPLE JUSTICE

I had lived long enough to witness many horrors, and lived through events that should have remained confined to feverish nightmares. The life of a soldier hardens you against death and cruelty.

As the price, it takes a piece of your humanity. Many lost too much of theirs and had become alien to peace and kindness—more at home in the chaos of war than the warmth of family or community.

After coming back from Korea, life was never the same. After seeing comrades fall while I ended up surviving, I felt guilty to be alive.

Smiles irritated me; laughter even more. Because how dare the world go on in its merry way, after so much life had been extinguished, so much pain endured, and so much evil had been wrought?

It ought to stop spinning—take even a moment’s pause. For faces to hide their smiles, for nature to conceal its beauty and take on a grim veil, and weep.

That was how I became estranged from my family. I had become too detached, like a citizen of another world. I lived my days stuck in a daze, imprisoned by the past, wandering through routines with no anchor to hold me.

It was hard—and at times, I thought impossible—but slowly, I healed that part of myself I had lost on the battlefield. In the Appalachian Mountains, where I had found magic when I was a boy, I had found myself again.

And even through the loneliness, I consoled myself that at least the horrors were now nothing but distant memories.

But today, they returned.

Corpses, irreverently lumped together, lay merely a couple of feet underground—right beneath where soldiers had marched and drilled that very morning. They were pale now, and stiff, but still recognizable. Dead men were a common sight to me. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe it is a man’s duty to protect society when threatened, and to sacrifice himself if need be.

But to see small children and women among the dead—that always felt wrong. It was like trampling flowers and killing butterflies. A deeper kind of sin. Salt to the wound of our failure to defend. The work of monsters in human skin.

The corpses had been unearthed and were laid out in front of the presidencia. The plaza had been cleared, and a row of canvas sheets laid down so that the bodies could be arranged with some form of order. Several of the recruits who had dug them out vomited from the gory sights. Some even had to be replaced midway through the task.

There were limbs hacked off, heads decapitated. Not even the smallest children had been spared from the cruelty. Very few had died a clean death by bullet. Most bore the marks of rage—multiple cuts, shattered limbs, signs of torture before death.

I stood in silence, watching the horrid scene unfold. My ears rang. My senses numbed. A lesser-experienced man might rush to the conclusion that this was the product of a backward time and a backward people. But I knew better. I knew that all men, even those who called themselves "civilized" or "modern," were capable of things like this. The difference was never in the time or place. Only in opportunity—and restraint.

Don Ernesto stood with me, and as expected, he wept. He wept until his voice was gone and the tears had run dry. His wife stood beside him, clutching his arm, her face turned away from the bodies, gaze locked on the dusty ground. Even she, who had likely seen so much already, trembled like a leaf.

"Some of them are laughing," Vicente suddenly said, breaking the hour-long silence between us.

"What?" I turned to him, my brow furrowed.

"Some of the people watching are laughing," he repeated, voice low but firm.

I followed his gaze. The spectacle had drawn a sizeable crowd from the town. Most stood at a respectful distance, either in tears or observing in solemn silence. But not all.

Alarmingly, several among them wore an expression so out of place, it made my skin crawl—grins, snickering, eyes gleaming with something between amusement and detachment. As if watching a juggler’s tricks rather than bodies pulled from a mass grave.

They were easy to pick out. Their rugged appearance, unkempt hair, dirty fingernails, and toothy grins—many of them revealing rows of decayed, blackened teeth. They looked less like mourners, and more like scavengers.

I was about to ask Vicente another question, but changed my mind. Instead, I walked toward the person most likely to have an answer. Don Ernesto turned to me as I approached, his wife still crying softly into his chest.

"If I am not mistaken... some of the people here are not from this town?" I asked.

"Heneral?" he raised his eyebrows.

"Some of the individuals in the crowd... especially the ones smiling. I get the sense they’re not locals."

Don Ernesto’s wife paused her weeping to listen. The man himself took another long look at the crowd. His face darkened.

"No... these people do not belong here," he said quietly, almost in a whisper, as if afraid to be heard. "The families of the Pulajan fighters, Gobernador. They stayed in the residences of the principalia around the presidencia since the cult took over."

"And even with all that happened, they chose to remain," I muttered. Furious. Disgusted. But begrudgingly impressed by their audacity. Most of the victims of the cult had been the poorest of the poor—servants, day laborers, tenants. But that didn’t excuse this utter shamelessness from those who had benefited from the carnage.

I glowered at the crowd, the side of my mouth twitching. I struggled to find the difference between them and their Pulajan kin. If they had the chance, would they not have joined in? Who was to say they hadn’t?

"Vicente," I said as I turned back toward my horse. "Assemble Cristobal’s platoon."

"For what, Heneral?" he asked, hurrying after me.

I mounted first before answering. The saddle creaked as I settled into it. I looked down at his face—curious, but unreadable.

He probably didn’t know the word war crime. The Geneva Conventions were yet to be written. The world wars yet to be fought.

In these simpler times, what I was about to order had a simpler name.

"Simple justice," I said.