Kalahari (14 page)

I
whirled on him. “He was going to tell me about my mother!”

“Yeah? Well, excuse me for saving your life!”

I snapped my mouth shut and stormed past him, not really angry at him but at Dr. Monaghan—why couldn’t he have mentioned her sooner?

How did he know my mom?

What did she have to do with this place?

I broke into a run, hardly noticing if Joey kept up or not. The wind carried the scent of smoke, but it didn’t worry me. It was blowing eastward, which would sweep the fire away from us. We were safe as long as we stayed west of it.

There was no sign of the others. I hoped that meant they’d gone ahead. There wasn’t time to check for their tracks in the sand. We crashed through the bushes, tripping over roots and aardvark holes. I nearly stepped on a pangolin shuffling through the grass, and twisted to look back at it; a sighting of the reclusive creature was rare and something Dad and I always got excited about.

This is not the time for zoology
,
I reminded myself.

From the sky came a heavy
chop chop chop,
and I yelled at Joey to get down. We ducked beneath a thornbush as the black helicopter swooped overhead, barely visible in the cloud of smoke from the fire. Had the men made it out of the infected menagerie?

Perhaps this would buy us time. Maybe Abramo would want to regroup and find some new thugs to replace the ones he’d lost at the compound, giving us maybe a day’s head start to disappear.

After the helicopter faded from sight, heading southwest, we continued trekking. A mile from the compound, I slowed down and began calling for the others.

“Sam! Avani!”

“Think they went back?” Joey asked.

I shrugged, then froze. “Wait. There they are!”

I jumped and waved, and saw a hand to the north wave in response. Joey and I hurried toward it and found Sam, Avani, Kase, and Miranda in the shade of a shepherd’s tree. Avani threw her arms around me. When she pulled away, Sam was there. For a moment, I thought he was going to hug me too, but at the last moment he shifted awkwardly and grasped my arm instead. While the others talked over one another, asking what had happened, Sam whispered, “Are you hurt? We saw the smoke. I was about to head back when you showed up.”

“I’m fine,” I replied. “Shaken up, but we’re not hurt. You?”

He just nodded. “I shouldn’t have left you. I—”

“You should have seen it!” Joey interrupted. “She went all Tomb Raider on them, pulling out guns, setting fires!”

“Well, I don’t know anything about tombs,” I said. “But you weren’t so bad yourself. He could have told them where you were, but he . . .” My fervor faded as I recalled the infected scientists falling under the gunfire. Suddenly my memory of our escape soured. I fell silent and let Joey pick up where I’d left off. He embellished some of the details, but the gist of the story was there.

Forcing my mind away from the massacre, I replayed Dr. Monaghan’s last words to me over and over, hoping there was some clue I’d missed. I walked a short distance away, wrapped in my own thoughts.

Jillian Carmichael—you look just like her.

I sank to the ground beside a shepherd’s tree. A hornbill hopped through the branches above, eyeing us excitedly. I watched him and fought to control my breathing, which had become short and shallow as if I were on the verge of hyperventilating. Then I looked down at my left wrist, sliding up my sleeve to expose the tattoo of the honeybee.

I realized the others had fallen silent and were watching me.

“Sarah?” Sam asked. “Joey said the doctor mentioned your mom. You . . . you okay?” Concern was etched in all their faces, and for some reason, it made me angry. This was something I hadn’t cared to share with them. The scars were still too fresh.

“Sure,” I said, shrugging, but then my heart sank and my voice gave out and I shook my head. I abandoned my defenses, lacking the strength to hold their concern at arm’s length. “No. No, I’m not.”

Sam knelt in front of me, his eyebrows drawn together. His face was tan and dusted with freckles from being out in the sun each day.

“We have to keep moving,” he said. “We don’t know if any of the infected animals escaped, but if they did, they couldn’t be far. And there’s the lion. He could be anywhere.”

I sighed and nodded, knowing he was right. He started to extend a hand to help me up, then hesitated.

“Sarah, in the menagerie, you didn’t . . .”

I shook my head. “None of the animals—or Dr. Monaghan—touched me. Joey?”

“Nope.” He held up his hands. “I’m clean.”

I rubbed my fingertips against my thumb. “Still. We have to watch each other. Dr. Monaghan said that it starts with itching.”

“Great,” said Avani. “Because the surest way to start itching is to
think
about itching, and now we’re all thinking about it.”

Suddenly Joey yelped. “My nose itches!
Help!
” He began scratching his face wildly, and at first we all recoiled, horror-struck, but then Joey burst out laughing.

“Look at your faces!” he gasped between guffaws. “Oh, I got you good!”

“I
hope
you’re infected,” said Avani. “It would serve you right!”

“Well, if I am,” said Joey with a sly look, “why not share the love?”

He lunged at Avani, arm outstretched. She screamed and kicked, her foot connecting solidly with his groin. Joey’s maniacal laughter turned into a squeal of pain as he crumpled, clutching himself and wheezing.

“Not cool,” he groaned.

We all stared down at him without an ounce of sympathy.

“We left all the food,” I said. “We have no supplies, nothing.”

“Not so fast,” said Avani. I realized then that she had a backpack on, and when she opened it to reveal cans of soup and beans and a box of saltines, we all cheered.

“Nice work, Avani,” said Kase.

“Yeah,” Joey added, still on the ground. “Hope you grabbed a can opener.”

Avani’s face went blank. “I . . .”

Her voice died in a puddle of silence.

“Don’t panic,” I said, as much to myself as the others. “We all ate and drank at the compound. That’ll get us through the rest of the day.”

“And then?” Kase prompted.

And then . . .
I shut my eyes and sighed. “We can forage. We can—”

“
Great
,” said Joey. “More fermented berries.
Yum
. Exactly how long can we live like this, anyway?”

“We can do it,” I said, my voice weak. Sure, we could do it—for two, maybe three days. It wasn’t food that concerned me most. It was water. I thought of all the bottles of water we’d left behind at the compound and wanted to punch something in frustration. The supplies at the compound would have made all the difference—possibly the difference between survival and death by dehydration. I kept that to myself.

“Should we go back?” Sam asked, perhaps guessing the concerns I dared not voice.

“I’m not going back here,” said Joey flatly. “That place is crawling with monsters.”

I nodded. “Joey’s right. Some of the men might still be back there, in addition to the animals Dr. Monaghan released. It’s too dangerous.”

No one looked happy with this decision, but they didn’t argue either.

We walked in silence. We were all paranoid, watching one another mistrustfully for signs of scratching. Joey limped at the back, blessedly quiet. Though his constant chatter and poorly timed pranks were irritating, I suspected they were just his way of exhibiting his fear. It was the same with animals: Their personalities shined brightest when they were most distressed. The biters bit harder, the runners ran faster, the hiders dug deeper. Jokers made more jokes.

My eyes played tricks on me, making me see things disappear into the bush—a silver tail, a silver ear. Every gray termite mound we passed made my stomach lurch, because I kept expecting to see a Metalcium-infected creature. What if some of them had escaped, like Sam said? Would they follow us? I tried to remember what Dr. Monaghan had said about the infected animals’ tendency to turn aggressive. It must have acted something like rabies, causing them to attack on sight, even if the animal was normally peaceful and shy. Certainly that had seemed true of the infected scientists. I shuddered. Well, at least they were out of their misery now.

I called a halt about an hour before sunset and instructed everyone to give me their shoelaces and to find firewood while I set traps. They gave me odd looks but did as I asked. I hunted through the grass until I found a few likely looking bird trails, then set up three traps using the shoelaces, which didn’t work as well as the handmade twine the Bushmen used but would have to do. The work was good for me. It settled my mind and distracted me from the haunting images of the Corpus compound.

If the traps caught anything, it probably wouldn’t be until the morning, so hopefully the food we’d eaten would last us till then. I paused, my hands filled with dusty shoelaces, to survey the wide Kalahari, wondering where Dad was, if he was okay, if he was as thirsty and hungry and desperate as I was.

“Be safe,” I whispered into the breeze.

I found the others sitting around a pile of firewood, staring listlessly at the ground. Sam was attempting to open one of the cans of soup, to little avail. Maybe if we’d had a rock to hit it with, but the only rocks we’d seen had been in the lab. I wondered how long it would take for Abramo to gather a new team and return to the labs to burn the rest of the research. Would he go there first, or would we become his new priority?

I forced myself to focus on problems I could control.

Avani had the one box of crackers, which was better than nothing. There were four sleeves inside, all of them full, and she parceled out one of them. It was hardly filling, and the saltiness made us all desperately thirsty. I wondered if we’d have been better off not eating them at all, but I took one look at the others wolfing down the crackers and decided to say nothing.

Building a fire posed a problem. I was already beginning to shiver from the cold. But a fire could attract more Corpus gunmen. I posed the question to the others.

“Start it,” said Avani. “We can take turns keeping watch. They’ll have to have lights if they’re searching during the night, so we’ll see them coming. As dark as it gets out here, we’ll be able to disappear into the bush.”

I had no matches or lighters; they’d all been in my pack.

“Okay,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Let’s do this Bushman style.”

I picked two sturdy sticks from the firewood pile and looked around at everyone, my eyes settling on Miranda’s hand.

“Miranda, can I have your ring?”

Her fingers closed into a fist, the square cut diamond on it probably worth as much as the Land Cruiser.

“Why?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, but it’s the sharpest thing we have,” I said, wincing a little. “There are no rocks out here. There’s no other way to drill this wood.”

“What would your precious Bushmen use?” she asked, tucking her hand under her shirt protectively.

“Knives made from giraffe bones, probably. Want to volunteer one of those?”

“Use your teeth.”

“Just give her the ring!” Avani said.

“Give her
yours
!”

Avani held up her hands, showing all ten of her fingers were bare, and then she lowered all but the middle ones.

“That’s
it
,” said Miranda, jumping to her feet and glaring at Avani. “You think you’re
so smart
, but what good do all your snotty facts do us now? You act like we’re all so far beneath you because we don’t know the Latin name for every blade of grass out here, when the truth is,
no one cares
,
Miss Honor Roll!”

Now Avani was on her feet. “Oh no. You do not get to talk about me looking down on people!
You!
Miss Debutante, with your ridiculous designer clothes and jewelry—we’re in the middle of the wilderness. What do you need to look like a supermodel for? I’m surprised your daddy hasn’t picked us all up in his private jet! Doesn’t he have you microchipped or something?”

Miranda slapped Avani hard across the face and Avani reeled backward, her hand going to her cheek. While Sam, Joey, and I sat gaping, Kase leaped up and grabbed Miranda, who looked ready to pull out Avani’s hair.

Avani fumed while Kase whispered to Miranda in an attempt to calm her down. Miranda seethed and glared at Avani but let her boyfriend lead her a little way off.

“Can you believe that?” Avani asked, looking at the rest of us.

I sighed and shut my eyes. “I need something to carve this stick with, or this fire is not going to happen.” I eyed my nails reluctantly. They were blunt and unlikely to be much use. I tried anyway, and succeeded only in getting a splinter wedged under my nail. For a few minutes I stared at the stick, trying to think of a solution but getting lost in a mental fog. My lips felt like blocks of wood, my tongue parched. Thirst was a terribly distracting need; it pulled at me more and more. I was just about to begin gnawing on the stick like a beaver when I heard a voice say, “Here.”

I looked up to see Kase holding out Miranda’s ring. She was sitting on a termite mound twenty yards away, her back to us.

“She’s not as bad as you think,” he said. “And she’s not a debutante, Avani. At least, not anymore.” He paused, as if weighing his next words, then he said softly, “Her family lost everything two years ago. And I mean
everything.
Her dad went to prison for fraud, her mom’s in and out of rehab all the time, and all her old friends won’t even acknowledge she exists. She’s not perfect, even I’ll admit that. But I love her, you know? And I just want you know the truth. She’s a good person, if you just get to know her.”

He seemed embarrassed by his speech, which for him was pretty long-winded, and he turned abruptly and walked back to Miranda.

We sat in silence for a moment, nobody looking up. I remembered suddenly something my mom had told me years and years ago, something I’d completely forgotten until now:
Everyone you meet has a secret that would break your heart.

My cheeks flushed with shame for the thoughts I’d had about Miranda, for the assumptions I had made about her. When I studied wild animals, I always waited until I had all the facts before drawing conclusions about their habits and lives—why couldn’t I do that with people?