“The staff—when they see a plane landing, they are usually waiting here, clapping, singing their silly folk songs and holding a stiff drink and a hot towel. I do not see or hear anything. Do you? Not even any animals.”
He was right. The only sound was the thrumming drone of insects under the glaring sky. The thatch-roofed buildings in the distance, which we could see at the end of a dusty path lined with brittle brown reeds and papyrus, all seemed empty, deserted. A silvery band of light shimmered on the horizon, vague, shaking with heat.
Abe whistled and the two sleek red dogs broke into a trot, scouting ahead, heads scanning, their sense of smell going into overdrive. The camp we followed them into was as bustling as a graveyard. We searched all six platform tents, along with the dining area. We found clothes, luggage, safari gear, tourist stuff—pith helmets and khaki utility vests—open portmanteaus spewing socks and underwear onto unmade beds. But no tourists and no staff.
There was what looked like a shipping container—a giant red box of corrugated metal—behind the kitchen. Alongside it we found a Land Rover with two extra rows of raised seats to accommodate wildlife watchers.
Abe half coughed and half cursed in a language I didn’t recognize. He spat a jet of shit-brown tobacco juice into the grass and wiped his mouth with his shirt.
“Two of the trucks are missing. Besides the guides, there are another half dozen maids and cooks. This is very strange, Oz. Where the devil is everyone? Where’s my little brother? I have a bad feeling.”
Abe put his fingers to his lips and pierced the air with a whistle, and the dogs came running. He hopped into the Rover, found the keys, and started the engine. After we drove back to the plane and retrieved his rifles, we drove north from the camp over a badly rutted car path. Pebbles popped and crunched under the tires, and the car rattled and shuddered over the washboard-like waves in the road. When the car path petered out, we hit an even bumpier field of tall dry grass. Around a stand of ebony trees, some baby hyenas were wading in the shallow river water, fat gloves of reeking mud on their paws. I couldn’t help but gawk as though I were on safari, but if Abe noticed them or the family of giraffes drinking in the shallows a hundred feet south of them downriver, he didn’t say anything.
We were steering around a stand of fig trees when we finally saw people. A group of Africans stood milling around by a dock at the river’s edge. It was two men and a pudgy boy, all in chef’s whites, and they were preparing to get into some dugouts. Abe pulled hard on the wheel, piloted the Rover over to the men, and brought it to a jerky stop. He shouted something quick at them in Setswana. The men yelled something back. They seemed to be arguing. The conversation took a few minutes. At the end of it, the three kitchen workers reluctantly got out of the canoe and climbed into the back of the car. I turned around and looked at them. Their faces were stolid and blank, hard to read. They didn’t acknowledge me.
“What’s the story?” I said to Abe as we pulled away. Abe tucked another pinch of tobacco into his cheek.
“It’s worse than I thought, man. Two groups went out day before yesterday—twenty people, including my brother. Haven’t heard from them since. Not only that, they said lions were actually in the camp last night. Roaming around like stray kittens, picking at scraps. These bozos back there hid themselves in the shipping container. When they woke up, the radio transmitter had been broken, smashed somehow. Just now, they were going to try to go downstream to get help.”
“Why were you arguing?”
Abe took off his straw hat and wiped sweat off his sunburned brow. Abe perspired like a leaky faucet.
“I told them to come with us to help find the tourists and guides, but, like my trackers, they’re terrified. They said something is wrong with the lions. The same superstitious boogie shit. The gods are angry. There’s black magic about. Ooga booga booga!”
Behind us, the cooks started singing some sort of chant.
“Ah, here they go,” said Abe, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at them. “Ooh, ee, ooh ah ah, ting, tang, walla walla bing-bang!”
Abe stomped the brake and brought the Rover to a sudden stop. He hopped out, went into his bag in the back, and took out one of the hunting rifles. It was a Winchester Model 70 bored for a massive .458 cartridge. He loaded a magazine with the huge brass shells and slapped it home with a clack. He climbed up into the back, maneuvering around the men, bags, and dogs, and strapped it into the truck’s gun rack.
“You bozos want black magic? I’ll show you some black magic,” he called back at them as he revved the engine and threw the truck into gear.
Chapter 16
A LITTLE LESS than a mile northeast of the safari camp’s river dock, two massive male lions lounge on the highest rocks in their pride area. They lie on their stomachs, still as golden rugs, panting, catching the breeze. Their impassive amber eyes lazily scan the horizon.
Like dogs, but unlike humans, lions are unable to sweat through their skin. Their only effective means of thermoregulation is panting. The heavy breathing they are doing now, though, isn’t from the heat, or even from exertion.
It is from eating.
Beneath them, scattered throughout the thorny scrub of the forest glen, swarms of fat, shiny flies hover above the meat that lies rotting under the sun’s steady blaze. They tickle across the bones, collectively making a wavy droning noise like a cello holding a note in sustained vibrato. Human bodies—or, rather, human body parts— are strewn in the bloody grass. Rib cages and hip bones shine white as aspirin under the blinding sun.
The rest of the pride is arranged in a large, loose circle around the bones. Vultures hop around in the mess, their wings like shrugging shoulders, their necks like little worms, yanking rubber-snap strings of meat off the skeletons with their beaks. The lionesses and the cubs have eaten their fill, and are happily active now, tumbling around in the grass.
The two males are massive as golden hills. They are brothers, twins, almost identical, except now the older one is missing an eye, recently lost while taking over the pride. The brothers, having killed two of the former alpha males and driven off the third, have further established their dominance by devouring all their rivals’ cubs, four young females.
But the swell of power and dominance they felt when they took over was a feeble feeling compared to the killing of the two human groups.
A new feeling has overtaken the lions, a new understanding. One that changed their perception of humans from fellow predators—irritating, inconsequential animals to be ignored, mostly—into prey.
They saw them coming. Two of the smaller, swifter lionesses had climbed into a sausage tree above the tire trail and lain in wait. When the cars passed, the lionesses dropped in from above on the open metal boxes full of the pathetically weak mammals. Once those big naked monkeys were on their slow, idiotic feet, it had been a quick rout.
It wasn’t because the lions were particularly hungry. The humans had been nothing compared to the eighteen-hundred-pound Cape buffalo, the pride’s more typical prey. The cars had been like boxes full of snacks.
The two males slip off the rock, first one, then the other. They amble through the pride, heads held high, ears perked up, mouths closed, tails swishing from side to side. After a moment, the females begin to follow, heads held low.
As the two lions approach, a vulture standing on a woman’s face shrugs its shoulders and takes flight, flapping, awkward and sloppy as a big pigeon. The one-eyed lion nudges the meat with his paw. He holds it down and takes a bite, his jaw making a popping sound as his carnassial teeth efficiently peel meat off the bone.
After a moment’s chewing, he looks up and turns his remaining eye to the east. His ears swivel, his nostrils dilate. His sense of hearing is only slightly above average, but the sebaceous glands around his chin, lips, cheeks, and whiskers give him a powerful sense of smell.
He smells something. He glances at his brother, who is looking in the same direction now.
Humans, the two convey to each other with a glance, a growl. More humans.
The two males turn to the pride, changing their expressions and postures. They go through a repertoire of
