Fever Dream

'How horrible,' Helen said with relish.

'They say she gave birth to a cub with a flaming red mane.'

'Go on.'

'The villagers were angry with this continuing desecration of their burial grounds. Eventually they tracked down the lioness, killed her, skinned her, and nailed her hide to a frame in the village square. Then they held a dance to celebrate her demise. At dawn, while the villagers were sleeping off the effects of all the maize beer they'd downed, a red-maned lion snuck into the village, killed three of the sleeping men, then carried off a boy. They found his gnawed bones a couple of days later in a stand of long grass a few miles off.'

'Good Lord.'

'Over the years, the Red Lion, or the Dabu Gor as it was called in the Bemba language, killed and ate a large number of locals. It was very clever, they said: as clever as a man. It shifted ranges frequently and sometimes crossed borders to evade capture. The local Nyimba claimed the Red Lion could not survive without the nourishment of human flesh--but with it, he would live forever.'

Pendergast paused to circumnavigate a pothole almost lunar in its depth and extent.

'And?'

'That's the story.'

'But what happened to the lion? Was he ever killed?'

'A number of professional hunters tried to track him, without success. He just kept killing until he died of old age--if he did die, that is.' Pendergast rolled his eyes toward her dramatically.

'Really, Aloysius! You know it can't be the same lion.'

'It might be a descendant, carrying the same genetic mutation.'

'And perhaps the same tastes,' said Helen, with a ghoulish smile.

As the afternoon turned to evening, they passed through two more deserted villages, the usual cries of children and lowing of cattle replaced by the drone of insects. They arrived at Kingazu Camp after sunset, as a blue twilight was settling over the bush. The camp stood on the Luangwa River, a cluster of rondevaals arranged along the banks, with an open-air bar and a dining shelter.

'What a delightful setting,' Helen said as she looked around.

'Kingazu is one of the oldest safari camps in the country,' Pendergast replied. 'It was founded in the 1950s, when Zambia was still part of Northern Rhodesia, by a hunter who realized that taking people out to photograph animals could be just as exciting as killing them--and a lot more remunerative.'

'Thank you, Professor. Will there be a quiz after the lecture?'

When they pulled into the dusty parking area, the bar and dining shelter were empty, the camp staff having taken refuge in the surrounding huts. All the lights were on, the generator chugging full blast.

'Nervous bunch,' said Helen, flinging open the door and climbing out into the hot evening, the air shrill with cicadas.

The door of the closest rondevaal opened, striping yellow light across the beaten earth, and a man in pressed khakis with knife-edge creases, leather bush-boots, and high socks stepped out.

'The district commissioner, Alistair Woking,' Pendergast whispered to his wife.

'I'd never have guessed.'

'And the fellow with him in the Australian cowboy hat is Gordon Wisley, the camp concessionaire.'

'Come inside,' said the district commissioner, shaking their hands. 'We can talk more comfortably in the hut.'

'Heavens, no!' said Helen. 'We've been cooped up in a car all day--let's have a drink at the bar.'

'Well...,' the commissioner said dubiously.

'If the lion comes into camp, so much the better. Then we won't have the bother of stalking him in the bush. Right, Aloysius?'

'Flawlessly argued.'

She lifted the soft-canvas bag that held her gun out of the back of the Land Rover. Pendergast did the same, hefting a heavy metal canister of ammunition over his shoulder.

'Gentlemen?' he said. 'To the bar?'

'Very well.' The DC eyed their heavy-bore safari guns with a certain look of reassurance. 'Misumu!'

An African in a felt fez and red sash ducked his head out a door of the staff camp.

'We'd like a drink at the bar,' said Woking. 'If you don't mind.'

They retired to the thatched bar, the barman taking his place behind the polished wood counter. He was sweating, and not because of the heat.

'Maker's Mark,' said Helen. 'On the rocks.'

'Two,' said her husband. 'And muddle in some mint, if you have it.'

'Make it the same all 'round,' said the DC. 'Is that all right with you, Wisley?'

'Just so long as it's strong,' said Wisley with a nervous laugh. 'What a day.'