A flickering flashlight held overhead sliced a cone of visibility from the surrounding darkness on a small hill. Below two camouflaged men, a teenage boy lay tied to a thick wooden beam. One man rhythmically pressed the boy's naked chest with one hand clasped over the back of the other.

        The man with the flashlight held it on the face of the boy. “You're wasting your time. He's not going to make it.”

        “Maybe.” The other man compressed again. “I'm going give him a chance.”

        “He's already had his chance. God could have kept him alive. He's dead because he deserved it.”

        Tony kept pressing the chest of the boy, counting the interval between each compression to simulate a heartbeat.

        “Like I said, you're wasting your time. We're doing God's work here, Tony. If someone dies along the way, it's simply divine punishment. You're working against God's will by trying to keep him alive. He was tested by God and he failed. He doesn't deserve to live.”

        Tony stopped giving chest compression and felt for any pulse on the neck of the boy, the head lifelessly twisted off to one side exposed the unusual scar on the boy's face. After a moment, Tony straightened up, finally resigned to the fact of death. “These boys come here for help, not to confront death. It's too much... too much.”

        “Yeah, right. After the way you teased him the other day? If you want to blame anyone, look in the mirr--”

        “Shut up, Carl. Just shut up.”

        “Sure, I'll be quiet, but that doesn't change the facts.”

        Tony snapped his fingers, then held his hand open. “Your knife, please.”

        Carl unsnapped the black leather sheath on his utility belt. “I just cleaned it, Tony. Don't get any blood on it, if you don't mind.”

        Tony took the knife with a jerk and sawed his way through the blood encrusted ropes restraining the body to the wooden structure. He unwrapped the ropes and pulled them out of deep fleshy indentations. “Here's your precious knife. You can clean it when we get back in the lunch room.”

        Carl took the knife and cared for it as if it were alive, put it back in his sheath and snapped it shut.

        Tony took the boy under the arms and motioned with his head to Carl. “Quick... Grab his legs. We'll have to throw 'im in the trash pit.”

        The two men carried the limp, drooping body down the small hill, around some buildings of a larger compound, and past some head-high brush. Along the way, the butt of the boy scraped the dirt about half the time, drawing a wide dashed line on the ground. The men stopped at the brink of a steep bank littered with trash and garbage, culminating in a large pile of debris at the bottom. They set the body down for a moment and stopped to catch their breath.

        Tony grimaced from the odor of the pit and waved his hand to clear the flies. “Okay Carl, on the count of three...”

        They lifted the body and proceeded to swing it back and forth on each count. “One... two... three...” Both men grunted as they released the boy into the air.

        The body twisted and turned like a rag doll, finally coming to rest on the top of the garbage pile face up but with the legs twisted around to the back. The boy's lifeless eyes popped open and stared back accusingly at the two guards.