chest by the time I made it back to the river dock. The pain was no big deal—it was only like being shot repeatedly with a staple gun.
The black swirling column had fallen a long way behind me by the time I arrived back at the riverbank.
Two crocodiles were swimming circles around the woman on the rock. I ran out onto the creaking wooden dock with the buffalo calf.
And I heaved the buffalo calf into the river. It splooshed into the slow muddy current below me like a fat kid doing a cannonball.
One of the crocodiles turned when it saw the heap of floating meat. A bird in hand is better than one on top of a rock, he probably thought. But the other one lingered, swimming a languid circle around the woman.
I snatched up the rifle and heaved it by its barrel at the crocodile. The butt of the rifle splashed next to its tail. Then it, too, turned and went toward the buffalo calf, following the other crocodile, who was now ripping into the dead meat. Confused ants stippled the thrashing water around them, flailing crazily on the surface of the river as the two crocodiles tore apart the carcass.
I ran along the shore until I was opposite the dark-haired woman. “Swim to me!” I shouted. “You have to swim to me now!”
She shook her head and closed her eyes, hugging the rock tighter.
“It’s okay. You have to. You’re running out of time. It’s your only chance!”
She looked at me for a moment. She looked at the crocodiles, not far upriver. She climbed down into the water and pushed herself away from the rock.
She wasn’t a good swimmer. Granted, conditions weren’t ideal. Her arms slapped the water and her feet flailed. She seemed to take a day to paddle across the twenty-odd feet of calm water to the bank.
“Come on! Come on!” I said, my eyes flicking back and forth between her and the crocodiles.
I almost had to stifle the urge to clap when she finally arrived on shore. She stumbled when she tried to climb up the steep embankment onto the clearing, and fell to her knees in the mud.
“No, no! You’ve got it. Come on, take my hand.”
I was lying flat on my belly, reaching my hand down to her. And then I felt a tickling cloud of insect legs skittering up my bare back.
“Hurry!
My backside was already flaming with pain.
The woman grasped my hand and I nearly ripped her arm off dragging her to her feet, up the embankment, and onto the clearing.
“Move!” I screamed, yanking her into a run with one hand as I slapped at myself with the other.
The ants were everywhere. On my neck, in my hair, my ears. I spat one out that had crawled into my mouth. The sound that involuntarily rose out of me was what I might call a shrill shriek of revulsion, like a woman standing on a chair screaming at a mouse.
I didn’t stop running until I tripped over the tire tracks and fell to the ground. Clear of the pulsing red-black column, I threw off my backpack and rolled over in the dust as though I were on fire, spitting and slapping at myself. I very literally had ants in my pants. With panicky, fumbling fingers I jerked at my boot laces and kicked off my boots. I tore off my pants and leaped out of them, yelping as I hopped up and down, flapping my pants as though they were a flag, ants flying out of the legs like flung pebbles.
After swiping them all off my legs, I thumbed the waist of my boxers for the most vital check of all. Clear.
“Thank God!”
Ant-free now, I squeezed my feet back into my unlaced boots and went about stomping the little bastards as they tried to scatter.
“Not so tough without your friends, are you?” I screamed at them, hopping like a crazed leprechaun, doing a little ant-killing jig in the dust. “Die! Die! Die!”
When the last ants scampered away, I caught my breath and inspected my arms, my legs, my chest, and back. My flesh was pebbled with welts, welts on top of welts, each about as red and juicy-looking as a maraschino cherry.
Suddenly, as though shaken from a dream, I remembered the woman. I turned and looked at her up close for the first time. She was petite—tiny as a child, with slender, birdlike bones. Even covered in river mud, she was undeniably good-looking—olive skin, bitumen-black hair slightly dusted with premature gray, sharp brown eyes, and high, distinct cheekbones.
“You saved my life,” she said softly. She was still gazing somewhere into the middle distance. Her English had an elegant European lilt, what I thought was a French accent—vowels in the front of her mouth, consonants brushed with feathers. She hugged her knees, her body a seesaw anchored on her tailbone, rocking back and forth in the dirt. She definitely wasn’t all there yet, but the lights were coming on.
Then I recalled I wasn’t wearing pants. I slapped them into the dirt to knock any stray ants out of them and worried them on over my boots. I checked my camera in the backpack to make sure all was fine and sat down on a rock to lace up my boots.
“You saved my life,” she said again, more lucid now.
“Actually,” I said, grabbing her hand to pull her up, “I’m not done.”
Chapter 28
WE HALF JOGGED the rest of the way back to the camp. It took us a little over an hour. In silence, the woman followed, still somewhat out to lunch in her brain, off somewhere else. It was late afternoon now, verging on gloaming, what photographers call the golden hour. The sinking African sun was huge above the darkening horizon, hanging there like a ball of burning blood. Bats had come out, flittering, swooping, and diving to catch insects. The world was beginning to chatter with twilight noises.
“Find some dry clothes and get changed,” I said, guiding her into the first of the camp’s platform tents. “We’re not out of danger yet. I’m going to need your help barricading this place before nightfall.”
After I left her, the first thing I did was look for another gun. I couldn’t find one, not in any of the other tents or the storage container. Not anywhere.
So I went to the next item on my priority list. I headed straight for the camp’s centrally located bar and dining area and cracked the seal on a bottle of twelve-year-old Glenlivet—for medicinal reasons. I poured some on my smarting arms and legs and took a swig.
I was trickling Scotch down my back when I heard the unmistakable mumbling drone of a plane. Thank God. I ran out onto the little road that led to the airstrip and waved my arms as a single-engine plane buzzed low over the camp.
The plane waggled its wings in response as it flew past. It cut a wide arc around the camp and came circling back. As it roared overhead again, something fell from its window and landed in the reeds beside the airstrip. I searched thrashingly in the reeds and found it: it was a note crumpled around a stone.
“Staff informed us of situation. Need to check on camp farther upriver,” the note said. “Back in twenty minutes.”
I jogged back to the bar. Maybe we weren’t dead after all.
I’d switched the Glenlivet for a bottle of Veuve Clicquot when the woman came in carrying a bag. She was wearing fresh khakis and a faded white polo, but she was still filthy, scratched up, hair bedraggled, muddy, wet.
“Was that a plane?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said from behind the bar, unwinding the wire cage around the cork. “They saw us and dropped a note saying they’ll be back soon.” I thumbed out the cork. It popped and hit the drum-tight inner wall of the tent. The bottle smoked and white foam cascaded over my fingers like a science-fair volcano. I slurped Champagne off my wrist and took a swig.
“
