Chapter 26
I HAD JUST made it back to the trail when I heard a scream. It was hard to make out over the wind and splashing water, but it was definitely a human scream, coming from the direction of the river dock.
Apparently I was not alone out here.
I heard it again, and then once more as I ran back across the field, away from the ants. It sounded like a woman. I remembered the bloody clothes from the massacred animal-spotting safari and picked up my pace.
I arrived at the end of the dock and stopped short at the edge of the riverbank. There was a white woman with dark hair clinging to a large rock in the middle of the river. What the hell she was doing up there was a mystery. She was wearing khaki pants, but was barefoot. Her clothes were soaked flat against her skin. She clung to the pinnacle of the rock, scrambling for balance with her feet and hands.
I cupped my hands and shouted across the water: “Can you move?”
In retrospect it was a strange thing to say.
She glanced over at me, seeing me for the first time. The look she gave me was as if she’d never seen a person before. I didn’t know whether she knew English or not. Then she let loose another scream, pointing upriver, to my right.
I followed the direction of her point with my eyes and saw what looked like a fifteen-foot-long clump of grayish mud appear on the surface.
It wasn’t mud. This thing had more teeth than the average mud clump.
It was a Nile crocodile: the largest and most aggressive species of crocodile in Africa. As I watched, its scaly, spiny, and very powerful tail flicked, and it began floating out into the middle of the stream toward the woman clinging to the rock. I didn’t know how the hell she’d managed to get herself into this situation, but I ordered myself to help her out of it.
I had four rounds left. Make them count, Oz.
I dropped to one knee and lined up the Mauser’s sights with the crocodile’s paddle-shaped head. I balanced the barrel against my arm, held my breath, and pulled the trigger.
The gun cracked and kicked hard into my shoulder, and I saw a splash in the water in front of the crocodile. I’d missed.
I sighted again and squeezed off two more shots. There was no splash. I’d nailed the son of a bitch, twice. I couldn’t see where, but I’d heard bullets hitting meat.
But it didn’t die. That would have been too easy. All it did was turn toward me with a quick sideways jerk of its surfboard-size head, as if I’d tapped it on the shoulder.
I blasted one more bullet at it and got the sucker right on the crown of its head. That did the trick. It stared out from the muck a moment, then sank and flopped over, belly-up, in the river.
I looked to my right again: a second crocodile, racing downriver in our direction.
Then I noticed the rest of them. In a lagoon some distance upriver was a bask of at least four crocodiles, and another three sunning themselves on the shore. No wonder they were riled up. It looked like the woman had entered a nesting area.
I aimed at the next approaching croc. It was coming at us like an animated hunk of driftwood. I pulled the trigger.
On nothing. I’d spent my last round, and the gun clicked on an empty chamber.
Chapter 27
HMM. THE CROCODILES glided through the water toward the woman while I sat on the bank with an unloaded gun. A lightbulb appeared over my head, and I threw down the gun.
I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted across the water: “Be right back!”
I turned tail and began running back the way I’d come, into the field behind me.
I peeled off my wet shirt as I ran into thrashing brown grass. Just to clarify: I was about to dive into a horde of army ants with my shirt off. I ran through the glittering black carpet, feeling ants crunch under my boots with each step, to the corpse of the Cape buffalo calf. With my wet shirt I slapped ants from its gnarled, stiffened hooves, grabbed the body by the leg, and began dragging it back toward the river as fast as I could.
The ants went mad. A softly clicking, chattering swarm of ruby-dark ants followed after me. I could see the column shift and darken as millions of insects got new marching orders to deal with the intruder. I saw the message spread through the colony, borne on pheromones from one pair of antennae to the next. The only advantage I had was my legs.
The calf was lighter than I’d expected, as it had already been hollowed out some by the ants. The ants scampered up my arms and I swatted them off as best I could. I had ten or fifteen bites throbbing on my arms and chest by the time I made it back to the river dock. The pain was no big deal—it was only like being shot repeatedly with a staple gun.
The black swirling column had fallen a long way behind me by the time I arrived back at the riverbank.
Two crocodiles were swimming circles around the woman on the rock. I ran out onto the creaking wooden dock with the buffalo calf.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Dinnertime! Here!”
And I heaved the buffalo calf into the river. It splooshed into the slow muddy current below me like a fat kid doing a cannonball.
One of the crocodiles turned when it saw the heap of floating meat. A bird in hand is better than one on top of a rock, he probably thought. But the other one lingered, swimming a languid circle around the woman.
I snatched up the rifle and heaved it by its barrel at the crocodile. The butt of the rifle splashed next to its tail. Then it, too, turned and went toward the buffalo calf, following the other crocodile, who was now ripping into the dead meat. Confused ants stippled the thrashing water around them, flailing crazily on the surface of the river as the two crocodiles tore apart the carcass.
I ran along the shore until I was opposite the dark-haired woman. “Swim to me!” I shouted. “You have to swim to me now!”
She shook her head and closed her eyes, hugging the rock tighter.
“It’s okay. You have to. You’re running out of time. It’s your only chance!”
She looked at me for a moment. She looked at the crocodiles, not far upriver. She climbed down into the water and pushed herself away from the rock.
She wasn’t a good swimmer. Granted, conditions weren’t ideal. Her arms slapped the water and her feet flailed. She seemed to take a day to paddle across the twenty-odd feet of calm water to the bank.
“Come on! Come on!” I said, my eyes flicking back and forth between her and the crocodiles.
I almost had to stifle the urge to clap when she finally arrived on shore. She stumbled when she tried to climb up the steep embankment onto the clearing, and fell to her knees in the mud.
“No, no! You’ve got it. Come on, take my hand.”
I was lying flat on my belly, reaching my hand down to her. And then I felt a tickling cloud of insect legs skittering up my bare back.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
My backside was already flaming with pain.
The woman grasped my hand and I nearly ripped her arm off dragging her to her feet, up the embankment, and onto the clearing.
“Move!” I screamed, yanking her into a run with one hand as I slapped at myself with the other.
The ants were everywhere. On my neck, in my hair, my ears. I spat one out that had crawled into my mouth. The sound that involuntarily rose out of me was what I might call a shrill shriek of revulsion, like a woman standing on a chair screaming at a mouse.
I didn’t stop running until I tripped over the tire tracks and fell to the ground. Clear of the pulsing red-black column, I threw off my backpack and rolled over in the dust as though I were on fire, spitting and slapping at myself. I very literally had ants in my pants. With panicky, fumbling fingers I jerked at my boot laces and kicked off my boots. I tore off my pants and leaped out of them, yelping as I hopped up and down, flapping my pants as though they were a flag, ants flying out of the legs like flung pebbles.
After swiping them all off my legs, I thumbed the waist of my boxers for the most vital check of all. Clear.
“Thank God!”
Ant-free now, I squeezed my feet back into my unlaced boots and went about stomping the little bastards as they tried to scatter.
“Not so tough without your friends, are you?” I screamed at them, hopping like a crazed leprechaun, doing a little ant-killing jig in the dust. “Die! Die! Die!”
When the last ants scampered away, I caught my breath and inspected my arms, my legs, my chest, and back. My flesh was pebbled with welts, welts on top of welts, each about as red and juicy-looking as a maraschino cherry.
Suddenly, as though shaken from a dream, I remembered the woman. I turned and looked at her up close for the first time. She was petite—tiny as a child, with slender, birdlike bones. Even covered in river mud, she was undeniably good-looking—olive skin, bitumen-black hair slightly dusted with premature gray, sharp brown eyes, and high, distinct cheekbones.
“You saved my life,” she said softly. She was still gazing somewhere into the middle distance. Her English had an elegant European lilt, what I thought was a French accent—vowels in the front of her mouth, consonants brushed with feathers. She hugged her knees, her body a seesaw anchored on her tailbone, rocking back and forth in the dirt. She definitely wasn’t all there yet, but the lights were coming on.
Then I recalled I wasn’t wearing pants. I slapped them into the dirt to knock any stray ants out of them and worried them on over my boots. I checked my camera in the backpack to make sure all was fine and sat down on a rock to lace up my boots.
“You saved my life,” she said again, more lucid now.
“Actually,” I said, grabbing her hand to pull her up, “I’m not done.”
Chapter 28
WE HALF JOGGED the rest of the way back to the camp. It took us a little over an hour. In silence, the woman followed, still somewhat out to lunch in her brain, off somewhere else. It was late afternoon now, verging on gloaming, what photographers call the golden hour. The sinking African sun was huge above the darkening horizon, hanging there like a ball of burning blood. Bats had come out, flittering, swooping, and diving to catch insects. The world was beginning to chatter with twilight noises.
“Find some dry clothes and get changed,” I said, guiding her into the first of the camp’s platform tents. “We’re not out of danger yet. I’m going to need your help barricading this place before nightfall.”
After I left her, the first thing I did was look for another gun. I couldn’t find one, not in any of the other tents or the storage container. Not anywhere.
So I went to the next item on my priority list. I headed straight for the camp’s centrally located bar and dining area and cracked the seal on a bottle of twelve-year-old Glenlivet—for medicinal reasons. I poured some on my smarting arms and legs and took a swig.
I was trickling Scotch down my back when I heard the unmistakable mumbling drone of a plane. Thank God. I ran out onto the little road that led to the airstrip and waved my arms as a single-engine plane buzzed low over the camp.
The plane waggled its wings in response as it flew past. It cut a wide arc around the camp and came circling back. As it roared overhead again, something fell from its window and landed in the reeds beside the airstrip. I searched thrashingly in the reeds and found it: it was a note crumpled around a stone.
“Staff informed us of situation. Need to check on camp farther upriver,” the note said. “Back in twenty minutes.”
I jogged back to the bar. Maybe we weren’t dead after all.
I’d switched the Glenlivet for a bottle of Veuve Clicquot when the woman came in carrying a bag. She was wearing fresh khakis and a faded white polo, but she was still filthy, scratched up, hair bedraggled, muddy, wet.
“Was that a plane?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said from behind the bar, unwinding the wire cage around the cork. “They saw us and dropped a note saying they’ll be back soon.” I thumbed out the cork. It popped and hit the drum-tight inner wall of the tent. The bottle smoked and white foam cascaded over my fingers like a science-fair volcano. I slurped Champagne off my wrist and took a swig.
“Vive la being out of here in twenty minutes,” I said, offering her the bottle.
“Twenty minutes?” she said, eyes brightening with panic. “But we need to get out of here now!”
I looked at her hands: they were shaking like a machine about to break. I put the bottle on the bar and walked around to her.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re going to be okay, Miss…”
“My name is Chloe. Chloe Tousignant,” she said. She slumped and gripped the counter with one hand. She began to look sick, the color draining from her face.
“Listen, Chloe,” I said, guiding her onto one of the bar stools. Her thin shoulders were shaking. I tried to rub them, but the muscles under her skin were so tensely knotted it was like massaging sponge rubber.
“You’ve been through hell, but you’re okay now. I promise you. Nothing’s going to happen now.”
She didn’t reply. Her color wasn’t getting better.
“Come on, Chloe,” I said. “Stay with me. Can you talk to me? Who are you? Were you with the safari that was attacked? Were you on vacation?”
“No, I’m not a tourist. I’m a scientist. Population ecology.” The words came out of her in a rapid, piqued flutter. Talking seemed to help, at least. “Our group came from the École Polytechnique in Paris.”
That’s an impressive institution. École Polytechnique is basically the French MIT. Female biologists I knew usually didn’t look like ballerinas. They tended to favor Morrissey T-shirts and combat boots.
“Have you seen anyone else?” Chloe said. “I was with two colleagues, Jean Angone and Arthur Maxwell.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re the only other person I’ve seen, besides some Botswanan cooks who threatened us with machetes and the guy I came in with, and he’s dead.”
She shook her head and bit her lip as she stared, glassy-eyed, at the floor.
“Why were you here?” I said. “A field trip?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “We were collecting data on migratory birds at the Moremi Game Reserve. We came here to the delta two days ago. The lions attacked at dusk the day before last. They fell from a tree. The guide died first, and then everyone ran. I don’t know how I escaped. I fled across the water and spent the night in a tree. When I heard your truck, I climbed down and headed for the sound. I was wading back across the river when I saw the crocodiles, and climbed onto that rock, and then just stayed there waiting for them to go…”
She closed her eyes and took a shivery breath. When she opened them again, I suddenly realized I’d been wrong about her. She wasn’t just good-looking. There was something else, something austere and regal about her face. She was beautiful.
“And you are?” she said. “An American reporter? A documentarian?”
“My name is Jackson Oz,” I said. “I came here to try to document aberrant behavior in lions. I got a tip that the lions in Botswana were acting weird from a guy I know—well, knew—Abe Bindix, who guides safaris here. Or did. His brother ran this camp, but he’d been out of contact for days, and we came to check on him. We were searching for you when the lions attacked us today. I escaped, but Abe died. There was nothing I could do.”
Before I knew what was happening, Chloe softly took my hand in hers. She leaned forward and gave me a soft kiss on both cheeks.
“Thank you so much for what you did,” she said, starting to tear up as she continued to hold my hand. “I was so tired. I was in despair. If you hadn’t come along right then, I’m not sure if—I don’t know if I would have lived.”
“Well, you’re here now,” I said. I found myself wanting another brush of her lips. I squeezed her hand back, swiped the Champagne bottle from the bar, and offered it to her. “You made it. We both did.”
“So you’re not a documentarian. Who—I mean, what are you?” she asked.
“I’m actually a scientist, too. A biologist.”
“From
Columbia University?”
“Yes,” I said. “How’d you know?”
She took a swig of Champagne.
“It was written on your underwear.”
Chapter 29
“JACKSON OZ. COLUMBIA University,” Chloe said. To my great irritation, I felt my face reddening. “I thought I knew all the names from Columbia. Do you know—er…” She put a thin finger to thin lips and her eyes turned up, trying to think of a name. “Michael Shrift?”
“Mike was my adviser,” I said.
“Oh, so you are—er—a student?” Chloe said.
I liked her accent. This woman somehow made being confused sexy.
“Well, actually, I dropped out,” I said.
She gave me a cockeyed glance, the needle of her WTF-ometer twitching.
“You dropped out? Um…let me guess. You have a blog.”
“Yeah,” I said, brightening. “Do you read my blog?”
“No,” she said, taking another sip from the Champagne bottle. “It was just a guess. But I will now. Since you saved my life.”
I didn’t like the faint note of sarcasm in her voice. When things aren’t going your way, change the conversation.
“What was your population study about?”
“Over the last few years, there has been a big change in some migratory bird populations,” Chloe said as she shifted the bottle to her other hand and looked at the label. “Changing very rapidly. We do not know why.”
“So you’re saying what?” I said. “Birds are dying?”
“No,” Chloe said, picking at the foil on the bottle with her thumbnail. “It’s just the opposite. Bird populations are increasing at incredible rates. Exponential. It is very, very strange.”
I thought about that. Like frogs, birds are often indicator species—animals whose population stability is a good measure of the stability of an ecosystem. Changes in the environment affect them quickly. Did this have something to do with HAC? I wondered.
“Tree nesters?” I said raising an eyebrow.