The Hunt and the Kill

by Holly Watt

  The man at the door spoke again, and there was a long silence. And then she heard the footsteps moving away, pacing unwillingly. A couple more words and the light clicked off, the darkness a benevolence.

  The door slammed.

  It might be a trick.

  Casey stayed still, swallowed by the blackness. Slowly, her breathing returned to normal. She was a wild animal, hidden by the night, somehow safe in the dark.

  Or a child, closing her eyes: if I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

  Pathetic.

  A new movement close by sent prickles down her spine. They’re coming, they’re coming. All the fears blazed up again, and she almost screamed as someone pulled open the cupboard. But it was only Henke, a rough hand on her shoulder, and a minute later Zac was climbing out of his cupboard.

  ‘I definitely,’ he muttered, ‘want a sodding tile on that wall after all this.’

  ‘One of the men has gone to get another padlock.’ Henke’s whisper was nearly inaudible. ‘I put the padlock in my rucksack when I chopped it, so they’re not sure whether someone just forgot to lock it last night. He’s gone to ask. They’ve been told not to touch anything in the laboratory on pain of instant dismissal, so that’s why they didn’t search it. That’s what that older guy by the door was saying.’

  ‘We’ve got to run,’ whispered Casey. ‘Now.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Henke muttered. ‘The younger one, he’s still guarding the door. He’s right the other side,’ he paused. ‘And he has a gun.’

  Casey could just make out Henke’s face in the room, illuminated by the computer displays and digital clocks. He looked stern and determined. Quite ruthless.

  ‘We’ll have to try and run anyway,’ Casey decided. ‘We can’t stay here. We have to—’

  She stared around the room, trying to work out an escape route. But there were no other doors, and the floor and walls were a smooth, unyielding steel. The panic surged up again.

  ‘Fuck it.’ Zac made a furious gesture. ‘We’re completely trapped.’

  ‘We’ll think of something. We’ll—’

  In the glimmer of light, she could see Henke opening his rucksack, ignoring her pointless gush of words.

  Henke was pulling out a gun.

  ‘No.’ Casey felt her vision blur at the edges. ‘We can’t, Henke. These men are just a couple of guards, out in a safari park. We can’t kill them. We just can’t.’

  She watched Henke’s eyes narrow.

  ‘If those guys find us in here, they will kill us,’ he hissed. ‘These aren’t nice people, Casey. These guys are hardcore.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You’re going to die then. And I’m not going to die along with you. That’s not the deal.’

  Zac started to say something, then stopped.

  ‘You don’t know that these men are bastards,’ Casey insisted. ‘They could be anyone. They could be boys from the next village, who just need a job.’

  Henke let his breath out, almost a hiss. ‘You’re crazy, missus.’

  The room filled with silence.

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ Zac spoke quietly. ‘What are we going to do?’

  For a moment, Casey wished that Ed was there. Ed, always brave, his eyes calm in the chaos.

  Then she turned sharply towards Zac. ‘What would explode, Zac? In here?’

  ‘What?’ Casey could just make out Zac’s eyes as he blinked at her. ‘We can’t blast our way out of here, Casey. It’s made of steel. We’d all be killed.’

  ‘I know.’ Impatient. ‘But this is a laboratory, Zac. Can’t you make something like – I don’t know – a Molotov cocktail? Anything to push them back a bit, confuse things? Create smoke, maybe?’

  ‘Right.’ He looked around. ‘Probably.’

  Zac moved fast then, hurrying towards the shelves of chemicals. He was back within seconds, carrying a few large bottles, and enveloped in a smell that made Casey’s eyes water. A taper smouldered.

  ‘OK,’ Henke said appreciatively. ‘You two sling those in all directions, and I’ll lay down covering fire. We can make it tricky for them at the very least.’

  ‘Shoot over their heads,’ Casey demanded.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I will.’

  They crowded at the door, almost as if it was the start of a race.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ said Henke.

  ‘I should,’ Casey insisted. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘No.’ Henke spoke as if he was slapping away a fly. Then he paused, and handed her his rucksack. ‘The car is about two miles south-west of here. There’s a compass in that bag. Keep going that way, and you’ll come to the fence. If you can’t find the hole in the wire, just make another one.’ The briefest of smiles. ‘Make that the least of their problems, ja?’

  ‘Henke … ’

  ‘We have to give it a go,’ he shrugged. ‘If these bastards get their hands on us, they’ll … I’ll lay down fire as you run for it, OK? And then I’ll run for it too, and … ’

  ‘I’m sorry, Henke—’

  ‘Go left, and keep running. And don’t stop, no matter what happens.’

  Casey looked him in the eye. ‘I won’t stop.’

  ‘They’ll know who I am,’ Henke said, ‘if they get me. With any luck, they’ll think it was just a gang of poachers, who thought they’d take a look and see if there was anything else worth stealing.’

  ‘You won’t—’

  Henke’s hand moved towards the latch.

  ‘I’ll hold them off.’ There was arrogance in Henke’s voice.

  He stood by the door, and then he threw it open.

  44

  Afterwards, Casey could only remember a blur of shouts and gunfire and crashing explosions. She and Zac burst out of the door, hurling the bottles wildly as Henke blasted a hail of bullets across the clearing. As they sprinted up a tussocky hill to the left, she caught a glimpse of the guard. Younger than she’d thought, clinging to his gun and firing randomly, panicked and hysterical. She heard bullets zing past her head, ricocheting off the steel sides of the shipping container.

  And she heard the coughing choke as Henke was hit.

  She didn’t turn back. She didn’t even look.

  ‘Come on, Zac!’

  She sprinted up the hill, faster than she’d ever run, hearing shouts behind her and more gunfire, and then a final, deathly silence.

  They didn’t stop at the top of the hill, just kept running through the brush, dodging past crumbling grey rocks. Then it was down a gentle slope and there was the rhino fence and its heavy timber. They scrambled under the barrier and set off again, racing through the wilderness.

  They’ll have cars, Casey thought. Land Rovers, able to bump across this terrain, pickups able to go anywhere.

  She ran until her lungs screamed, and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Stop,’ Zac shouted, in the end. ‘We have to check the compass. We’ll get lost.’

  The sky was beginning to lighten. Casey slowed, chest heaving. She scrabbled through the rucksack. There was the compass. She stared at it, adjusted their direction slightly, and they were on the move again.

  ‘Remind me,’ Zac was almost laughing, ‘where were the lions hanging out again?’

  The light was pink now, the landscape coming to life. A herd of zebras trotted ahead of them for a few steps, before breaking to the right. Duikers watched them pass, jaws moving placidly.

  ‘We must be nearly there,’ said Casey. ‘It can’t be much further.’

  ‘Unless we’re lost.’

  And finally Casey saw it, the wire fence a gash across the grassland.

  ‘There, Zac. Look. We’re nearly there.’

  The growl of a motor splintered the silence. Casey spun round. Two safari trucks were racing across the savannah.

  ‘Run!’ she screamed.

  They sprinted.

  ‘Where’s the gap?’ shouted Zac. ‘I don’t see it.’

  They crashed into the fence, fra
ntically staring up and down the line of wire.

  ‘That’s the little track we drove down with Henke,’ Casey pointed, ‘isn’t it?’

  ‘It has to be,’ said Zac. ‘So the gap would be that way?’

  The roar of the trucks was getting closer. Too late. Casey yanked out the wire cutters.

  Her fingers were trembling, and clipping the wires was almost impossibly fiddly. Zac was trying to help by pulling at the wires. ‘You’re doing fine, Casey. Keep going.’

  As the last piece of wire snapped in two, the truck was nearly on them, crashing through the brush as Zac yanked the fence apart.

  ‘Go, Zac,’ screamed Casey. ‘Go!’

  Zac scrambled through, Casey on his heels, the sharp ends of the wires tangling in her clothes for agonising seconds. Ripping, snarling, she tore off her jacket, far beyond thought.

  The guns blasted. Zac and Casey sprinted down the road, guessing the direction: one chance, their only chance.

  The trucks roared to a halt beside the fence, unwilling to ram it, and it was that moment of hesitation that let Casey and Zac escape. There were shouts and a couple of men threw themselves out of the vehicles and forced their way through the gap after them. But they hadn’t seen Henke’s pickup, sitting patiently in the thicket. Casey sprinted towards it faster than she had ever run. With shaking fingers and exhausted legs, she scrabbled in the rucksack for the key.

  And then Henke’s pickup was thundering down the road. Bouncing over potholes, smashing past trees: gone.

  45

  ‘Jesus.’ Kizzie tugged the door open. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  They had abandoned Henke’s pickup a few streets away. Kizzie’s grin evaporated as Zac and Casey scrambled into the hall at Kewlake.

  ‘Henke,’ Casey gasped, too shattered to soften the blow. ‘I think he’s dead, Kizzie. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  Kizzie’s face sagged in shock. ‘Come in,’ she said automatically. ‘It’ll be OK, Casey. It’ll be all right.’

  Later, they sat wordlessly in the sitting room, perching on the uncomfortable ginger sofas as the morning light flooded through the long windows. Kizzie was crying, rubbing away each tear with a swipe of her palm.

  ‘I’ll have to tell Oscar,’ she said in the end. ‘I never especially … But he and Henke, they went back a long way.’

  ‘Henke was great,’ said Casey. ‘Without him … ’

  ‘If I hadn’t asked Oscar to call Henke … ’ Another tear ran down Kizzie’s face.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Kizzie. He was so brave at the end. If it hadn’t been for him … ’

  ‘I should never have asked him. Never. I knew the risks of Njana … It’s my fault.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Casey. ‘Not at all. I let Henke take us up there, and I should have guessed how dangerous it might be. It was my mistake, Kizzie. I shouldn’t have … ’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Kizzie whispered.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Zac was leaning back against the sofa, arms crossed, staring blankly out at the garden.

  After a long pause, Kizzie sat up and took a deep, ragged breath. ‘So what are they doing up there exactly?’

  ‘They’ve got a laboratory.’ As soon as Casey started to speak, she felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her. ‘They’re testing antibiotics, probably on the various samples of bacteria that man is getting from the hospital.’

  ‘And why are they doing that?’ As Kizzie concentrated on the new problem, she stopped crying. ‘Creating some monster superbug?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Casey pulled the file out of her rucksack. ‘We got this.’

  They all examined the file in silence.

  ‘There.’ Kizzie pointed. ‘That date’s three weeks ago, and it’s when Maita – the nurse who died – got it.’

  They read across. The sample had been tested against several antibiotics, overcoming most of them, only being defeated by one.

  ‘This antibiotic is performing well,’ Zac nodded. ‘It’s taking out all the zentetra-resistant strains. So that’s something.’

  ‘And it’s definitely not Corax?’

  ‘No.’ The impatience flared again. ‘Whatever antibiotic this is, it doesn’t perform well against that strain of MRSA, for example. Corax would destroy that sample.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Casey said. ‘What is it?’

  Kizzie went through to the ramshackle kitchen and returned with a battered cafetière and several rounds of toast. Casey and Zac were still poring over the file, occasionally referring to the photographs Casey had snapped with her phone. Then Casey sat up sharply.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘What is it?’ The other two stared at her.

  ‘What if the antibiotic that they’re testing is saepio?’

  ‘Saepio?’ Kizzie looked confused.

  ‘Saepio is Adsero’s new drug,’ Casey explained. ‘They’ve been developing it for a few years now. It’s meant to replace zentetra.’

  Zac leaned forward, peering at the file again. There was a long silence.

  ‘It might be,’ he said. ‘It very definitely could be.’

  ‘But … ’ said Kizzie.

  ‘It would be unorthodox,’ Zac said slowly. ‘And illegal. Not to mention unethical. But I suppose it is just about possible that Adsero could have set up an off-the-books lab down here. Running it in parallel to their operation in Milton Keynes.’

  ‘But why … ’ said Casey, then answered her own question. ‘A few years ago, Bailey realised that by losing control of millions of doses of zentetra near here, they would inevitably have caused resistance. So for some reason, he sets up a secondary operation in Njana to test his new drug against the various new resistant strains of these diseases.’

  ‘Why’s he doing it?’ asked Kizzie. ‘Because he wants to make a nice profit out of this new drug?’

  ‘He certainly would know that the market was going to be there shortly,’ Casey thought aloud, ‘because he created it. Either by accident or completely on purpose.’

  ‘Could he have done it deliberately?’ asked Zac. ‘That would be … ’

  ‘Who knows?’ Casey was fiddling with her silver necklace.

  ‘Bailey knows that the world is going to need a new antibiotic soon,’ Zac spoke slowly. ‘So he’s making sure that Adsero is ahead of the game.’

  ‘What a bastard,’ murmured Kizzie. ‘He created the problem, and he’s going to cash in with the solution.’

  They stared out into the garden. Two sunbirds were ducking and diving through the verandah uprights.

  ‘But the other option is that he is doing all this as a way of quietly fixing his own mistake,’ Casey said soberly. ‘By buying Njana and setting up a subsidiary lab to carry out the research, he might actually be finding a way to fix the problem. I don’t know. We don’t know. He could be doing it for any number of reasons.’

  ‘So is he saint or sinner?’ asked Zac.

  ‘Or a mix of both?’

  Who, what, where, when, why?

  ‘It would only truly fix the mistake,’ said Kizzie angrily, ‘if he made this new drug available to us in the hospital. For free.’

  ‘And we can’t know yet if he will or not,’ Casey said. ‘I can’t write something saying that he won’t. Because he might.’

  Why? The shout echoed in her head.

  They sat in silence in the old sitting room. A bougainvillea branch scraped against the window in the breeze, making them jump.

  ‘So what next?’ asked Zac wearily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Casey. ‘It’s certainly interesting that Adsero may have some sort of shadow operation running out of Njana, but it’s not a massive story.’

  The story, the story, always the story.

  ‘Great,’ said Zac. ‘So we just give up and go home?’

  ‘You can,’ Casey said defiantly. ‘But I have to find out what happened to Noah’s sister, and Professor Brennan. And Ed.’

  �
��You don’t know,’ Zac thumped the arm of the sofa, ‘that anything happened to them at all. Their deaths could just be accidents.’

  ‘I know something happened to Corax,’ said Casey truculently. ‘And that they’re doing something weird in Njana too. I have to find out what Adsero is up to, even if you won’t help me.’

  ‘Well, you’ve made sure that I have to, haven’t you?’ Zac’s eyes were hostile.

  ‘What?’ Casey stared at him.

  ‘When we were escaping the guards,’ Zac said, eyes hard. ‘Twice, you shouted, “Come on, Zac!”, “Go, Zac!” And I don’t have any way of knowing if they heard you or not. And that means I have to assume that they did.’

  Casey thought back to the blur, the chaos. ‘Did I?’

  ‘You know you did. You did it on purpose, Casey.’

  ‘No.’ But all at once she wasn’t sure. ‘I’m sorry.’ It sounded weak.

  Zac glowered at her.

  ‘So what,’ he asked, ‘do we do next?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Casey threw her head back. ‘I don’t have a bloody clue.’

  Kizzie drove them to the airport.

  ‘Stay for the night at Kewlake at least,’ she had said. ‘You must be absolutely knackered, both of you.’

  ‘I’m worried we might have put you in some risk,’ said Casey. ‘It’s best if we just get out of the country altogether.’

  Kizzie stared through the windscreen. ‘The police aren’t exactly going to kill themselves trying to work out what happened to Henke. That’s if the Njana lot ever even tell the police he was there in the first place. It’s a big ranch, that one. And those animals wouldn’t leave much, anyway.’

  ‘But his car … ’

  ‘You left it half a mile away from Kewlake,’ said Kizzie. ‘And Oscar called Henke from his foreign cell, which he does all the time anyway. The police aren’t going to guess that Henke came to this house to pick you up.’

  ‘But Henke’s family … ’

  ‘There isn’t much family any more,’ said Kizzie sadly. ‘I’ll work out what to tell them.’