Disclimer: I don't own ER, I'm only borrowing it a little.
A/N: This is a sad little one-shot about the harsh life in the Congo. How it could have ended. Reviews are highly appreciated.
The end
The Congo
Humid, intense heat.
Green almost impenetrable jungle. Silence, except for the sound of feet hitting the stamped path, as so many feet before them. People walking in seemingly endless streams, barefoot, some are limping, others carrying children, old and sick. Their eyes empty, looking out into green nothingness.
Fatigue. The emotions lost long ago, eyes that have seen far too much. Malnourished children clinging to their mother, holding on as if their life depends on it. And it does. The weak doesn't last long here, in the green hell of the Congo.
Hordes of people are walking down the path towards a common goal, towards peace, freedom and a better life across the border, in Uganda. No one says a word, once in awhile the sound of a crying child can be heard, but it is soon quieted by its mother. There could be rebels lurking in the forest; the refugees have to keep quiet, can't make a sound. It will be the end of them all.
The people keep on walking, looking in front of them. Jungle, endless jungle. Or looking down to avoid their sore, tired feet tripping over roots crisscrossing over the path, or the swollen bodies of those who didn't make it, the weak. Flies thriving on the bodies in the humid heat, completing their life cycle in the rotting flesh. The stench would normally make people vomit their guts out, but the refugees keep walking on, without noticing the smell. They have smelled worse before, when the rebels burned their villages while most people were asleep, burning them alive.
A small clearing opens up the dense tree cover of the woods. The scene in front of the refugees is horrible, but not unlike what they have seen so many times before. The stench of decaying human flesh is thick in damp jungle air. Two dead men.
But something is different here; some refugees react, stare at the bodies, and stop for a little while.
The two men are both white.
The refugees look at each other, nod consenting and head to the middle of the clearing.
One man is strung up by his arms to a branch of a dying tree, his shoulders obviously dislodged from the sockets. His lifeless, naked body smeared with caked blood. Flies hovering around him, crawling around and depositing their eggs in his oozing, open wounds. The larvae will thrive there. Scars are forming networks on his back. Some are new, a few seem years old, probably inflicted by a knife, a different time, a different place. His dark brown hair is matted with blood, his eyes dull. Death has taken him; put him out of his misery.
Another, slightly taller man is lying under the tree, his arms and legs drawn to the chest, in the fetal position. A machete was what it took to make all his pain go away forever. His neck is a big open wound. Horror can still be seen in his eyes. The man's t-shirt was white long ago, but now mostly is stained with blood, a sickening, reddish color mixed with the brown dirt of the forest floor. The print on the shirt is barely readable, "Medecins sans Frontieres".
From somewhere one of the refugees produces a small shovel and starts to dig. Others join him. Soon, two open graves can be seen in the clearing, and the bodies find their final resting place, their destiny. Two unmarked graves in the jungle. The refugees start walking and are soon engulfed by the jungle. Gone.
To dust shall you return.
This is the Congo.