Zambezi (35 page)

Chris screamed in pain as the lion swiped once more and connected with her leg, just above the ankle. She felt her flesh rip. She rolled and propelled herself between the Land Rover’s front seats.

The lion’s body smell and the fetid odour of his breath filled the cab. He was half stuck – his rear legs in the cargo area of the truck and his front paws on the back seat. He roared and tried to push himself forwards.

Chris reached for the keys in the ignition and grabbed the battery-operated alarm activator on the key ring. She pressed the button in and set off the panic alert.

Mashumba’s brother bellowed at the terrible sound that pierced his ears. All thought of his hunger and the easy meal in front of him disappeared in the cacophony that invaded his pain-wracked head.

Chris leaned on the horn as well as she cowered in the front passenger seat. She saw the lion was trying to escape now, but having trouble extricating the front half of his body from the back seat compartment of the truck.

Leaving the alarm still screaming she opened the front passenger door and tumbled headfirst out onto the ground. The lion spared her a glance as he, too, tried to exit, his stinking breath fogging the passenger’s window as he bellowed at her. Chris slammed the front door closed and sprinted for the lodge, ignoring the pain in her leg.

As she ran she looked back over her shoulder and saw the lion had managed to rock back on his haunches and fold his huge body into the cramped rear of the Land Rover. Chris didn’t see the raised edge of the concrete slab which provided the lodge’s foundation. She tripped and fell forwards, grazing her knee and outstretched palms. Her wounded leg was afire with pain as it, too, connected with the concrete.

Mashumba’s brother jumped down out of the back of the four-wheel drive and looked around. He saw her, now, lying on the ground, and lunged forwards, covering metres with each outstretched bound. He would have her, after all.

Chris crawled, tried to stand and fell again as her injured leg crumpled. The lion was almost on her. She summoned the last of her energy and dragged herself into a crouch. Terror and adrenaline gave her new strength and she half ran, half fell through the swinging screen door into the kitchen. She grabbed the heavy wooden door, which had been propped open, and swung it, pushing against it from the inside with her back.

The lion stopped and nudged the door with his huge snout, preventing her from closing it fully. The door bashed against its frame as the confused beast reared up and slashed it with his claws. One huge paw slipped along the painted planks and popped through the narrow gap. Chris shrieked in fear at the sight of the hooked claws so close to her body, and pushed hard again with her back. The lion roared in pain and dragged its paw out. Chris fastened the bolt on the door and sank to the floor.

The windowpanes rattled at the sound of his roar. She dragged herself to her feet and watched through the window as the lion turned and flicked his tail in anger, his pendulous testicles swinging as he trotted back off into the bush.

Suddenly feeling sick, Chris leaned against the kitchen sink, one hand supporting her weight. Her other hand covered her eyes. ‘Oh, poor Miranda. Poor baby’, she sobbed. ‘My God, what did I do to you?’

Outside the car alarm had stopped. She looked down at the blood pooling on the floor and it took a moment for her to realise where it was coming from. She brushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and examined the wound. It was a fifteen-centimetre gash down the outside of her left calf. She raised her leg up high onto the kitchen sink and turned on the cold tap. She picked up a measuring jug, filled it and then tipped the water straight into the wound, biting her lip to stifle her cries. The wound was not as deep as she had first feared and there appeared to be no damage to muscle or ligaments. However, she knew the real danger was infection. A lion’s teeth and claws were forever coated with bacteria from the flesh and blood of their prey. Though primarily hunters, the big cats were also opportunistic scavengers and would feed almost as readily on days-old rotting carcasses as on fresh meat.

She wrapped a tea towel around the wound and hobbled into the lounge room of the lodge, where she had left her daypack. Inside was her first-aid kit. She opened it and drew out a phial of saline solution, a plastic bottle of iodine, some butterfly sticking plasters and a US Army field dressing. She had thought the three field dressings she carried were probably overkill – they were designed for use on bullet and shell wounds.

Chris snapped off the cap of the saline solution and doused the open wound. While this hurt, she knew the pain was only a prelude for what was to come. She thrust the unbloodied corner of the tea towel into her mouth and bit down hard on it as she emptied the little bottle of iodine into and around the cut. Tears welled in her eyes again. Once it was done she spat out the towel, ripped open the field dressing and dried the wound with the big sterile pad. Before the blood could well again she placed four butterfly sticking plasters across the gash as makeshift stitches. She thought she probably needed sutures, but the plasters would hopefully hold until she could get to Kariba and a doctor. Next, she wrapped the field dressing around her calf to further stem the bleeding and tied it on with the attached bandage.

Chris activated the car alarm again from inside the lodge and let the siren wail for half a minute before she hobbled out and slammed the door of the building closed. She retrieved the now-scuffed carry case holding the laptop and hurled it in the back of the truck, not caring how it was stowed, slammed the rear door and jumped into the driver’s side. Only then did she deactivate the alarm.

She wondered if the lion was related to the one she had shot. It was not unusual, she knew from her own research, for pairs of lions to turn into man-eaters. As the animal that had just tried to kill her was a male, she wondered if it was the brother of the dead one. They appeared to be the same age, old men who had probably been kicked out of their pride by younger, stronger cats. Maybe this one had fed on Miranda as well. She pushed the terrible thought from her mind.

Chris drove the short distance to park headquarters at Nyamepi, and hobbled into the office.

‘You know, Professor, that I am obliged to keep the lodge vacant until five-thirty p.m. each day in case someone has made a booking from Harare,’ the warden said when she asked him to reserve her accommodation for another week, even though she would be out of the Park.

‘And you and I both know, Warden, that it is very unlikely anyone will be booking a lodge here in the next week because of the current lack of fuel in the country. We both also know the political situation is keeping foreign tourists and tour operators out of this park. Here’s enough money to pay for the next seven nights,’ she said, pushing a wad of cash across the counter.

He smiled but studiously avoided discussing politics. ‘We will keep the lodge for you, Professor.’

There were two rangers lounging around the office. One of the men asked her why she wore the bulky dressing on her leg.

‘Stupid, really. I scalded myself with hot water when I dropped a pot. Nothing to worry about.’

‘You should get that seen to when you are in Kariba,’ the warden said.

As she turned to leave, a sound far off, but nonetheless distinct, made them all turn and look downriver.

‘Lion,’ said the warden.

‘A long way off,’ said one of the rangers.

‘Maybe two kilometres,’ the other said.

‘Strange for him to be calling so late in the morning,’ the warden said. All in the room knew that lions generally called at dawn and dusk, either to bring other members of the pride together or to warn other pride males that they were entering another group’s domain.

‘Maybe he’s just plain angry at something,’ Chris ventured.

‘Perhaps he was annoyed by the sound of your car alarm going off earlier. Did you have a problem with it?’ the warden asked.

Chris felt her cheeks start to redden. ‘Silly me, I get the remote-control buttons mixed up sometimes. It took me a long time to shut it off.’

‘I think in the future we will keep all researchers either in the lodges or in the main camp ground here at Nyamepi,’ the warden said. ‘I fear that leaving people out by themselves in the remote campsites is too much of a temptation for the lions. Also, and forgive me for saying this, but maybe people sometimes get careless when they live alone in the bush for too long.’

Chris thought about Miranda. Had she just grown careless? She had got close to Hassan bin Zayid, and that was not part of her brief. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said to the warden.

She would miss Africa, she realised as she passed Long Pool and the open vlei where the zebra grazed. It was a hot, dusty and bone-jarring eighty kilometres out of the park on a corrugated dirt road. She thought of the things she would not miss – the tragic, pervasive evidence of the AIDS pandemic; man-eating animals; suicidal drivers; carjackers in Jo’burg armed with AK-47s; corrupt politicians; petty bureaucrats; poachers; and arms traffickers. Then she considered what she was leaving behind -sunsets that made one believe in God; the birth of baby animals with the coming of the summer rains; the smiles on the faces of African schoolchildren seeing an elephant for the first time; cold beers on hot, cloudless days; and the wonderfully comforting knowledge that in some outof- the-way corners of this overpopulated, heartless world, paradise still existed.

But leave she would, she decided as she left the valley behind her. As soon as she had briefed the general on the local situation it would be time to move on and, in all likelihood, face some kind of penance back in the States over the death of Miranda Banks-Lewis. She felt she deserved that. There would be an enquiry, above and beyond whatever the local police had done in Zimbabwe, conducted by the people who funded her work in Africa. It would find that Miranda was sent to do a job; she completed that job and then died by accident. It happened. But people would ask, behind her back, why Chris Wallis had recruited a science major fresh out of college to go alone into a country whose security situation was parlous at best to do a job some would say Chris should have done herself.

It was a good question. The answer was that Miranda wanted the assignment in Zimbabwe more than anyone back home could really imagine. Chris thought Miranda had the right attributes to carry it off successfully, and she couldn’t be everywhere at once. Chris wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and blinked away the tears as she slowed for the turn-off to Kariba. She’d had such high hopes for Miranda, imagined her taking up her line of work as a full-time career some day. There would be plenty more time to think about her own future in the coming days, but first she needed to find a doctor and get the wound on her leg properly dressed.

She smiled grimly at the thought of what she would say when the doctor asked her, ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Luke Scarborough woke to the sound of his own snoring. He had never been so exhausted in his life.

The breath whistled through his broken nose. His eyes watered with pain as he blew a clot of dried blood from one of his nostrils into his palm and wiped it on his filthy T-shirt.

The exhaust-smoke-shrouded office buildings of Lusaka were on either side of the bus, a stark change from the flat plains they’d been travelling through for hours. The driver called out something in Swahili, then, looking at Luke, the only white man on the bus, said, ‘Rest break coming up. Don’t go far from the bus, it’s only fifteen minutes.’

He had been travelling for three days straight. The first leg had been the unnerving boat trip from Zanzibar to the mainland, with the roguish band of Arab sailors casting nervy sideways glances at the bruised and bloodied passenger throughout the three-hour voyage. The pungent odour from the sacks of cloves he lay against, so intoxicating on dry land, added to his queasiness on the open water. He had been sick over the side of the leaky dhow so many times he had lost count, and arrived on a deserted beach north of the port city of Dar es Salaam dehydrated, unsteady on his feet and green in the face. He’d flagged down a passing
matatu
minibus cab on the main road between Bagamoyo and Dar and headed for the latter.

He was desperate to get in touch with Jed Banks. He had tried several times from mainland Tanzania, but received no reply He had wheedled Jed’s mobile phone number out of the man’s exwife, Patti, whom he had called from Dar, just before boarding the train to Zambia, the Tazara Express. She had not been happy when he called her at home for the second time.

‘Mr Scarborough, I must have had fifty calls from press people since I spoke to you about Miranda. Your story identified us to the rest of the world and I’ve had television crews on my doorstep and calls from radio stations at all hours of the morning. I don’t think I can take much more of this,’ she had fumed.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lewis, really I am, but I need to get in touch with Jed urgently.’

‘I’ve spoken to him and told him I’ve been bothered by reporters and that he should probably expect more of the same. Why can’t you people let us grieve in peace? Why can’t you let her rest?’

He understood her bitterness. Dealing with grieving relatives in the wake of tragedies was part and parcel of a journalist’s life, and even the most cynical could not help but feel bad sometimes about the way the media intruded on people at the worst time of their lives. ‘I apologise again, Mrs Lewis, but this is something different. I think your ex-husband may be in grave danger.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I tried to interview the brother of an Al Qaeda terrorist Jed killed in Afghanistan and, as a result, I was attacked and nearly killed myself. Your husband needs to know this man is on the loose in Africa and that he may be looking for revenge against Americans and US interests over here.’

‘Slow down. Why should I believe you?’

‘Jed saved my life in Afghanistan, Mrs Lewis. I’m only trying to repay the favour.’ There was more he could tell her, but he needed to see Jed in person first, to confirm his theory.