branch like a flag.
Abe looked up into the canopy of trees and then over at the Land Rover.
“Look, man,” he said, pointing. “See the rifle? It’s not even out of the rack. The safari guides who go out with the guests, they’re no superstitious pussies like our dear kooky friends back there. They’re professionals. This all must have happened in seconds. Too fast for them to get their guns.”
“Male lions will protect their pride from humans, but this looks like some sort of ambush,” I offered, trying to be helpful.
“And what did they do with the bodies?” Abe said. “Lions usually feed where they kill. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Chapter 19
STRETCHED FLAT IN the tall grass, the dominant one-eyed male lion crouches, waiting. Since hearing the distant grumble of the engine, he has been lying on the edge of the clearing about eighty feet to the east, just within charging range.
His powerful chest rises and falls under his almost strawberry blond mane. His dusky amber eyes narrow, focused on the distance. He opens his mouth slightly, whiskers tingling as he scents the dry wind.
Having hunted this pride area almost from birth, the ten-year-old male knows every inch of the terrain. At first, he’d lain in wait to the west, but moved when the wind shifted. A keen predator, he takes up a position downwind, so his scent won’t be detected by his prey.
He is waiting patiently for his prey to put its head down or face the other way, the optimum position for attack. Just a moment or two of distraction will give him enough time to charge. He will finish the stalk as he always does, by quickly knocking his prey off its feet and clamping his jaws on its throat.
He would have already attacked, except he is wary of people, unused to hunting them. He has been shot at several times before by hunters and game preserve rangers during his days of wandering, before he had joined his pride.
Without taking his eyes off the prey, the lion makes a low vocalization. It is answered by a soft growl, almost a purr, in the grass to his right, and then by another string of moans in the grass to his left.
In response to his call for a stalking attack, the two dozen lions at his back split into two groups, one to flank and herd, the other to wait in ambush.
The flanking lions begin skulking quickly, silently through the grass, using every scrap of cover. Their yellow and brown fur makes them all but invisible, tawny masses of grass-colored animals in the vegetation. They string themselves into a loose net around both the sausage tree and the prey, cutting off any chance of escape.
Chapter 20
ABE COCKED HIS head and whistled, and the dogs leaped from the truck and into the tall grass.
“Listen, man,” Abe said as he sighted through his rifle’s telescope. “If it comes up, the best way to kill a lion is a head shot, right between the eyes.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said, continuing to film.
I lowered the camera a moment later when two sharp, loud dog whines rose in the air at the clearing’s edge. One right after the other.
Abe whistled for the dogs. Nothing happened.
He put his fingers to his lips, whistled louder. Silence.
“That’s not good,” he said.
Abe raised the Remington to his shoulder and pressed an eye to its sight. I swung my camera in the same direction and held my breath.
A lion appeared in the grass twenty yards to our east.
I had never seen a lion in the wild before. It is a beautiful and terrifying sight. The sheer bigness of the animal. It truly makes something spin in your soul, deep below the ribs.
I was still in a state of unprofessional awe when Abe pulled the trigger. The blast of the rifle so close to me was like a kick in the head. It left a mosquito whine in my left ear. In the place where the lion had been standing a moment before, there was nothing. It was as if he had disappeared.
Abe climbed back up into the Land Rover.
“Get your ass up here if you feel like staying alive, man.”
That sounded like a good idea to me. I slammed the door, and then there was motion from the other end of the clearing. A second male lion broke cover and stood up in the tall grass, stock-still, tail swishing. Watching us. There was something otherworldly and bleak about his implacable, amber-eyed gaze.
The lion roared and began moving toward us. Slowly at first. Then something triggered in him, and he tumbled into a charge, coming at us at breakneck speed. Abe pulled the trigger just as he began his leap. Another jolting crack of firepower in the air. I saw a fistful of brain fly out of the back of his head. He died in the air and slammed onto the ground in a tumble, rolling into the driver’s side of the truck, rocking it as though it were a cradle in the grass.
I kept filming as Abe kicked out the bullet casing. It pinged off the edge of the windshield with a sound like a wind chime. On the ground below, I noticed that the lion was still breathing.
Not for long. There was another whamming thud as Abe shot it right above the buttocks through the spine.
Abe replaced the three spent cartridges in the rifle’s magazine. When he was done, he lifted off his hat and swiped his brow as he looked around the clearing. Silence. No insects, no birds. The shadow of a high white cloud raced over us. I took my eye from the viewfinder for a moment and glanced at Abe beside me. He looked sick.
I panned the camera, following his gaze.
In the grass about thirty feet away, surrounding the truck, was a circle of tawny heads.
All the lions had manes. They were males. Two dozen male lions.
Abe was blinking, a finger to his open lips. He was so puzzled that confusion got the better of terror.
“Impossible,” he whispered. “All males?”
It didn’t make sense. Male lions just don’t do that. A pride of lions consists of a dozen or so related female lions and one, sometimes two, at most three or four males, if it’s an unusually large group. Adult male lions who aren’t part of a pride will hunt alone. Never—absolutely never—in the wild do male lions congregate in large numbers. It just doesn’t happen.
Except it was happening.
I kept rolling with the camera as the male lions began moving. They moved forward for a few steps, then stopped to allow the lion behind them to go forward. They seemed like trained soldiers, coordinated, choreographed, synchronized.
I expected Abe to stomp on the gas and get us the hell out of there. Instead, his mouth pinched into a hard set. Almost in a single fluid motion he raised the rifle to his shoulder, sighted, and fired. Off to the left, the head of the lion closest to the truck blew open and the animal slumped into the grass.
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
