Zoo Page 6

  Abe was swinging his rifle around for the next one when the grass in front of the truck opened up and a golden blur streaked in front of the camera.

  A paw caught Abraham in the face, and there was a cracking sound as he flipped out over the driver’s-side door.

  Chapter 21

  FOR A LONG—much too long—moment, all I could do was sit there in the passenger seat of the truck as if my ass had been nailed to it.

  I was visited with the same sudden, gut-squeezing spike of fear I’d experienced when I first jumped out of a Black Hawk as an Army Ranger medic in the Battle of Fallujah. I’d stood there at the door like a dunce with his dick in his hand, unable to move. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Okay, now. Paralysis. Here we go. I even did the same thing I’d done that day as bullets sang past my confused, cotton-filled head.

  Act, jackass! I mentally screamed at myself. Do something!

  Abe’s gun was lying cockeyed across the driver’s seat next to me. I snatched it up and anchored the barrel on the driver’s-side door. The lion had Abe in his mouth, and was dragging him backward through the grass by the collar of his shirt.

  The rifle kicked hard against my shoulder as I shot the lion in the head. I jumped out of the truck and ran the fifteen feet or so across the grass to where the dead lion lay and where Abe, his head pouring blood, was shakily climbing to his feet. My only goal at this point was to get us the hell out of there, get Abe to a doctor.

  I draped his arm around me and we hobbled back to the truck. Abe was bigger than me and much heavier. It was slow going.

  There was so much blood bursting from Abe’s head I couldn’t tell where the wounds were. I got him into the backseat of the truck, and I was trying to MacGyver a bandage out of his shirt when the truck rocked like a boat and almost tipped over. A lion had leaped onto the hood like a cat scrambling onto an armchair. He peered curiously through the windshield. His eyes were warm amber stones. They glowed like heat, blood, and honey.

  I decided—if you want to call it that—the best place to be was under the steering wheel. I crawled into the front of the truck, toward the lion instead of away from it, a bit like a boxer leaning into a punch. I dropped under the steering wheel and squeezed myself in until I was crouching against the floorboard and clutching the gun. As I was waiting for my life to end, I reflected on the fact that the Rover was still running. I slammed my palm down on the gas pedal.

  The engine roared in place, and nothing happened.

  It wasn’t in gear.

  I pounded the clutch with my elbow and reached up and toggled the stick shift back and forth until I heard something catch. I let out the clutch and gave it some more gas with my other hand.

  The truck lurched backward. I’d managed to put it in reverse, which was fine with me. We were moving. I pressed the accelerator onto the muddy floorboard with my palm and held it there, and I felt the driverless truck rocking and fishtailing at random across the grass. My head whacked against the steering wheel and the metal door frame as the Rover went bumping backward over the field. On the hood above me, I could hear the lion snarling; his claws clicked and shrieked against the glass.

  With the car still in motion, I unwound a little from the fetal position to see his front paws and his massive shaggy head peeking over the top of the windshield—he looked like one of those old “Kilroy was here” drawings—and I reached up and cut the wheel hard to the left. The lion roared as he slid, scrabbling for purchase, off the windshield and fell beside the car, yelping as the Rover thumped against him.

  And then we were flying. The Rover went airborne, backward off the steep riverbank, and for a moment, we were in the air. While bracing for impact, I had a good long two seconds of quiet time to reflect on the situation my life was in, and in those seconds, I decided that I really couldn’t blame Natalie for dumping my ass. Then we hit the ground.

  Chapter 22

  ABE AND I both went sailing out of the Rover as it smashed backward into the riverbank a good ten feet below the sandy ridge. My body whumped into the muddy shore and the truck beside me tipped onto its side with a groan and a decisive crunch of metal, plastic, and glass.

  I staggered to my feet, slapped mud from my face, and checked myself for injuries. I could feel bruises galore blooming all over my body, but nothing worse. The truck was still running, its engine panting, its back end submerged in muddy water. One sideways back wheel spun uselessly in the silt, stirring the muddy water.

  Abe was in bad shape—as in probably dead. One of his legs was pinned beneath the sideways Rover, and his head was all wrong, almost perpendicular to his body. It looked like his neck had broken in the crash. He wasn’t breathing.

  I checked his pulse and wasn’t surprised to find that he had none. Then I glanced up at the edge of the riverbank shelf we’d just been flung from. The heads of lions peered over it. A moment later they were spilling over its edge.

  I backpedaled into the shallows of the river. There was one lion in particular—huge, bigger than the others, with a reddish mane and one eye. This one had it in for me. He came right for me.

  I turned and dove deep into the river. Kicking as hard as I could, I swam as far out into the slow-moving muddy current as possible. This was a river in a time of drought—the water wasn’t cold and it wasn’t deep. It was warm, shallow, and dirty. I stood on my tiptoes in the middle of the river, and the water line was just below my head. I shook my hair, blinked water out of my eyes, spat, watched the shore. Abe’s body was surrounded by six or seven lions, their manes rustling against each other. They pawed and picked at him as less majestic animals would do. But the other one, the big lion, strode past the sideways Rover and dove into the water after me, panting like mad as he paddled in my direction.

  I’d thought I was safe. But no.

  Lions hate water. They’re not good swimmers—their dense, muscular bodies aren’t built for it. They’ll swim if necessary, to ford a river during the rainy season, for instance, but for a lion to chase prey into water is pretty much unheard-of.

  I turned again and headed toward a sandy spit of land in the middle of the river.

  Ten paces from the shore of the islet I saw a long black box bobbing in the water, drifting like a chunk of wood in the lazy current. Flotsam from the overturned Rover upstream. I splashed toward it, thinking I could maybe use it as a makeshift life preserver.

  It was a life preserver, in fact: one of the gun cases Abe had brought. I snatched it from the water and slogged for the shore.

  Stumbling, hurt, tired, with the gun case under my arm, I fought my way toward the reedy islet and felt the embankment rise under my heavy feet. I had no plan. I was beyond thinking. Ashore, I fell to my knees in the sucking reedy mud like a sinner in church, popped the clasps, thwack-thwack, and retrieved a flat-black bolt-action Mauser 98, a truly badass piece of machinery that had a barrel gauge like a plumbing pipe.

  What had Abraham said? I thought as I slung the bandolier over my shoulder and filled the magazine to its limit. Better to have it and not need it.

  Walking slowly backward onto the islet, I took aim at the giant cat that was paddling toward me in the river like a dog. He was mere feet away, emerging from the river, shaking off, flinging a thousand twinkling beads of water from his mane. I squared up the rifle, aimed between his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The gun butt rocketed against my shoulder and the lion went down before me like a sack of potatoes, tumbling in a sopping heap into the river mud. PETA, forgive me. It was a beautiful creature, but it was also a very big, beautiful creature that was trying to kill me.

  I turned my eyes back to the riverbank. I watched in disbelief as the lions loosed Abe’s corpse from underneath the truck and hauled him back up the steep, sandy embankment.

  Chapter 23

  I SAT FOR a long time on the shore of the river island, staring at the spot on the opposite riverbank where the lions had carried off Abe’s body. I didn’t think they would come back for me, but I kept the r
ifle in my lap with the safety off as I sat on the muddy islet, reflected on what had just happened, caught my breath, and collected my wits.

  Beside me, the lion I’d just killed lay on his side, sinking into the loose mud, his back legs in the river, tail floating, blood darkening the grass and eddying in the brown water.

  Time to assess the situation. Okay, Oz, here’s the 411: you’re lost and alone in the African bush without any supplies. This is a situation that needs to be addressed, quickly. But every time I tried to start figuring out what to do next, my mind would wander. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened.

  The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

  Lions are textbook examples of social mammals. Their pride structure, especially when it comes to group hunting, is one of the best-known and most well-documented social organizations in zoology. Lions live in prides, and female lions do the hunting. Nomad male lions will hunt alone, but male lions never hunt together in groups.

  Except now, all that was out the window. I’d never even heard of mass male group hunting in lions before, let alone witnessed it. Also: why were these lions carrying off their kills? And why no females? Female lions are better at hunting, anyway. That’s one reason why they do most of it for the pride—their lighter, more agile bodies are better built for it. Where the hell were the girls? I hadn’t seen a lioness all day.

  Such bizarre behavior in these lions wasn’t just curious, it was mind-blowing. These lions were doing things that lions just did not do. What I’d just seen contradicted everything I knew about the behavior of this apex predator. Why?

  This is to say nothing of the fact that lions are almost never actually harmful to humans. What’s the point in hunting a human? We don’t have a lot of meat on us. The way those lions had come after us, it was as if it were personal.

  I knelt and cupped some river water in my palm, splashed my face. I would have to save my confusion for a time when I was in a more comfortable position. For now, I had to snap out of it. Ponder later. I needed to do something to fix my current predicament, stat.

  Shifting the rifle in my lap, I patted a rectangular lump in the pocket of my wet khakis. It was my iPhone, which I’d jailbroken the day before so it would work in Africa. Ha-ha. I shook it off: bubbles wobbled under the screen and water dribbled from the battery compartment. So much for calling for help. In any case I wouldn’t have gotten coverage out in the remote African bush. Sure as hell not with AT&T.

  I chucked the now-useless chunk of sleek Apple design over my shoulder and saw two huge, gray lumps the size of oil tanks float past me in the river. I stilled as two river hippos swam past.

  Hippos are herbivores, of course—but they’re enormous and aggressively territorial animals. They’ll kill without hesitation when they feel their territory is being invaded. They’re actually some of the most dangerous animals you could encounter around here. I held my breath until the two malevolent tugboats disappeared around the bend in the channel.

  Chapter 24

  I HELD THE rifle and the bullets high in one hand to keep them dry and waded back into the river.

  I emerged beside the sideways Land Rover with my eyes on the rim of the riverbank where I’d last seen the lions. All I had to call a plan was this: get back to the safari camp where Abe and I had landed, figure something out from there. Brilliant, wasn’t it?

  I searched the crashed truck for my things: I’d left my bigger bag back at the camp and taken a small canvas backpack with me. There it was, one strap stuck on the busted gearshift. I disentangled it and shouldered the pack. As I gave the truck another once-over, I spotted something curious. In the backseat, on the ground, was a little pinpoint of glowing red light.

  I knelt in the silt and retrieved my Sony camcorder. I’d forgotten about it. I mean, I’d had a lot on my plate for the last hour or so. The thing was splattered with mud and the lens was scratched half to hell, but not only was it still working, it was still on.

  I stopped the recording, rewound it, and watched the footage on the view screen. After the crash, the camera had lain on its side in the mud and had accidentally filmed the rest of the attack. No, it hadn’t been a nightmare. The lions filled the screen, manes flaring and eyes burning as they swarmed the Rover. It was a mess of snouts and teeth and paws.

  Thing was—adversity aside, Abe’s death aside—I had actually done it. I’d gotten what I’d come to Africa for.

  Here was video evidence of inexplicable, hyperaggressive, aberrant animal behavior.

  The footage was incendiary. This footage had the power to change the conversation. This was a cute story to tell at a Molotov cocktail party. The scientific community wouldn’t be able to wrap their minds around this footage. Or be able to explain it.

  It wouldn’t be just the scientists, either, I thought. My gears were turning in double time now. The world would have to listen—they would have to start to realize that some sort of widespread environmental disaster was already underway.

  Your first job now, Oz: survive long enough to get this thing back to civilization. That means not getting eaten. That means getting the hell out of here, now-ish.

  I powered off the camera and zipped it up in the backpack. I checked the clip in the Mauser. Four rounds left. Bad news.

  It didn’t matter. I’d have to figure it out. This was bigger than me. I needed to make it out of here with this tape so the world would know what was happening. Ten-hut, Oz. Let’s rock.

  I glanced up at the sky: vultures were dropping to earth from their gyres. Back on the river islet where the dead lion lay, a peppering of flies already tickled the carcass, the sound of their wings reverberating in the air. A couple of marabou storks pranced daintily around the lion, piercing its flesh with their beaks now and then. They jostled for real estate with a smattering of African white-backed vultures. Speckles of blood flew as their rosy wrinkled heads bobbed up and down to beat the band, their beaks ripping delicate threads of tissue from the body and catching them in their throats.

  Ah, the circle of life. The rivers flow into the sea and yet the sea is never full and all that. Death becomes a meal ticket. Death was the modus operandi out here in the African bush.

  Now if I could only avoid becoming part of this regularly scheduled programming: I had to get back to humanity with an important message.

  Chapter 25

  BACK UP ON the tall grass clearing where we’d been attacked, I hunched down and watched the other Land Rover, parked beneath the sausage tree, for a time.

  I listened carefully. Nothing. The wind hushed the grass in rippling waves. Birds reeled in circles high overhead in a punishingly empty blue sky. I guessed it to be late afternoon. I debated going back to see if the truck was still working. Had the keys still been in it? I couldn’t remember. What with all those lions leaping for my throat, I’d forgotten to check. Though it was a nice day, I definitely would have preferred to drive. A wide expanse of grassland the length of a football field stretched flat between me and the parked truck, which seemed deserted.

  But it was almost too quiet.

  At last I decided against it. It was too risky. It would be foolish to go toward the lions. Though they were nowhere to be seen, that didn’t mean anything. This was their neighborhood, and besides, there was no way to predict their unstable behavior. They could be on their way back right now. I knew I had to go in the other direction, on foot, back toward the camp.

  I kept as low as I could as I skirted the glade. I found the rutted tire trail we’d driven in on and began following it back to the safari camp. Glumly I glanced up at the sun, which was starting to descend toward the salt flats on the horizon. It would be dark in a few hours. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

  I picked up my pace. The camp was only about five miles away, but I was looking at five miles through a zoo without cages, where some of the animals seemed to have gone schizoid.

  The sun dried my clothes to a crust and then I got soaked again
as I waded back through the river ford. I was hot and exhausted and starting to get thirsty, but decided not to drink the water for fear of parasites.

  I walked for an hour or so before I spotted the river dock where we’d picked up the Botswanans at the other end of a grassy field. They and their canoe were gone. After almost getting eaten, I didn’t blame them for pissing off. They’d known how wrong things were in the environment. How important it was to get out while there still was a chance.

  I headed toward the dock to see if there might be another boat. That’s when I noticed a sudden movement in the trees off to my right. Though there was no breeze, the trees seemed to be waving—undulating—ever so slightly. They also seemed to glisten, as if they were slathered in oil.

  I felt something crawl up my ankle.

  It was an ant. And not just any ant. It was a Dorylus: an African driver ant. By its badass mandibles, I knew it was a soldier. Some indigenous tribes actually use the driver-ant soldiers themselves as makeshift sutures: their bite is so strong that putting one of them on each side of a gash will hold it together.

  That’s what was covering everything: the trees, the grass, the ground. Millions upon millions of driver ants swarmed through the field in a loose black column. It had to be at least a mile long and six feet wide. The ants were the size of a baby’s fingers and the color of red wine.

  I flicked off the bug and squashed it under the heel of my boot.

  Now, I love animals as much as the next biologist. But I do not like bugs. They don’t do it for me. My subcortex says: Ick. Get ’em off me. I’d always known that entomology was not my bag. And the Dorylus is an especially nasty customer.

  The frenzied column of ants connected two dark masses in the field. I realized they were Cape buffalo calves. My guess was they’d wandered into the path of the ants and been overwhelmed. Already dead, with most of their hides stripped, they were now in the process of being consumed by the living sea of bugs.