"Not for the next hundred miles," the laibon told her.
"Swell." She slammed the car into gear and splashed the nearby trees with mud as she sent them careening back out onto the highway.
As soon as she got the hang of aiming the big, boxy vehicle she peered into the rear-view. "How about it, Josh? I haven't killed us yet. What do you have to say now?"
He looked at the mirror. "This male chauvinist has to say that you've got the most beautiful eyes he's ever seen."
"You're avoiding the issue."
"You bet I am." He turned onto his side. "Wake me up when we get to Chalinze or when the rain stops, whichever comes first." By turning he missed the look she gave him via the mirror. That was a shame, because it would have made him feel very good indeed.
By late afternoon the gentle shower had turned into a tropical downpour, slowing their progress further. Each pool of standing water was an obstacle that had to be avoided. Once, Merry had to bash a path through the woods to circle around a small lake.
The thunder awakened Oak, but didn't upset him. It was a wonder he'd been able to sleep at all, between the sound of the rain and the bouncing of the Land Rover. Merry's eyes flashed at him in the rear-view.
"You're awake."
He checked his watch, then straightened. "Two hours. We're not there yet?" The Land Rover whammed into the ground, threatening to send his stomach up into his throat.
"Are you kidding? Look what's doing outside."
Oak could hardly see out the window. "You've been driving all this time?"
"Kakombe offered but I thought I'd stick with it until you woke up."
"I could have driven," the giant grumbled.
"You are better at driving cattle." Olkeloki wagged a finger at the senior warrior. "If you would one day become an elder or laibon, you must first learn to recognize your limitations."
Kakombe acknowledged the lecture with a grunt. "I could have driven."
"Want me to take over?" Oak was rapidly being bounced awake.
"It's okay. Olkeloki says we're less than thirty miles from Chalinze. I can handle it that much longer."
"Okay, but if you start feeling tired let me know. I had a good nap."
"Take another if you feel like it. I'll—Oh shit!" She wrenched the wheel hard over and the Rover slipped through the muck as Oak and the others grabbed at the nearest support.
Not only the pavement but also the underlying gravel ahead had been washed away by rushing water. In its place was a muddy bog ten feet across which they slid into despite Merry's best efforts to avoid it. As the Land Rover began to settle she worked the gear shift back and forth. The engine roared dutifully, but the Rover was not an aquatic vehicle. Water and mud rose to within an inch of the floorboard before the tires touched bottom.
Six lousy feet away from the front bumper the road rose out of the bog like a rainbow from a cloud. There was even some real blacktop just ahead. Merry kept at it for another couple of minutes, but the wheels just spun in place, throwing up geysers of mud behind them. She slumped back in the driver's seat and rubbed at her eyes.
"That's it, I give up. You want to give it a try, Josh?"
"What's to try?" He put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "Nothing I can do that you haven't tried."
Her tone was bitter, full of self-directed anger. "I should have seen it. I should've gone around it."
"How?" He nodded forward. "There's a damn river running across the road here. We'll have to pull it out."
She smiled regretfully back at him. "Sorry. At least we're already in four-wheel drive. You won't have to go skin-diving to unlock the hubs."
Olkeloki was trying to see through the storm. "We must leave this place before nightfall. We cannot stay here. This is a bad place to be stuck."
"Tell me about it," sighed Oak. He looked over at Kakombe. The senior warrior looked strong enough to lift the Land Rover all by himself—if they could find some solid ground. "Come on, big fella. Let's unlock the winch and find ourselves a tree. The winch is that thing mounted—"
"I know what a winch is, ilmeet," Kakombe interrupted him curtly.
Oak nodded once, then leaned between the front seats until he located the right switch on the dash. "We'll give you a holler when she's all hooked up."
"Right. I'll keep the engine running. Don't want it to die here." Or anything else either, she thought worriedly as she scanned the trees.
It was like stepping into a steady, tepid shower, Oak reflected as he exited the Land Rover and promptly sank up to his waist in thin mud. He envied Kakombe. The muck barely rose over his knees.
Together they slogged forward until the ground began to rise beneath them. The road ahead was in better condition than anything they'd driven over for the last three hundred miles. All they had to do was prise the Land Rover from the bog and they'd be in Chalinze in forty minutes, if the pavement held up and the rain didn't get any worse.
How could it get any worse? he asked himself. You could hardly make out the forest for the rain.
He found a suitable tree firmly rooted alongside the road.
There was more than enough cable on the winch drum to reach.
"I will get it," said Kakombe. Oak didn't argue with the giant. The mud was much less of an obstacle to him. As he watched the senior warrior wade back toward the Rover it occurred to Oak that this was the first time he'd seen Kakombe without his spear. His massive torso looked like a tree floating through the water.
Merry released the cable catch from inside. Kakombe nodded to her, wrapped the end of the cable twice around his midsection, and slogged back to rejoin Oak. Together they wrapped the excess cable several times around the trunk of the tree before slipping the big curved steel hook through one loop. Oak walked back to the edge of the bog and waved both arms over his head.
He couldn't see Merry through the rain-slicked windshield, but the Rover's engine revved and it gave a perceptible lurch forward. It advanced about a yard before the wheels resumed their tractionless dance. Steam rose from the straining winch.
"Must be slicker than greased owl shit under those tires," Oak muttered. Droplets of water flew from the taut cable, but the winch couldn't pull the heavy vehicle out of the muck by itself. What they really needed was something solid under the wheels, but any rocks they could slip beneath would likely just be ground deeper into the mud.
"Come on," Oak said. Kakombe followed him back into the bog.
Feeling as though he'd never be dry again, Oak fumbled through one of the two steel boxes bolted to the roof of the Rover. He found the emergency cable he was looking for in the second one, splashed back down into the water with the heavy nylon coils draped around his shoulders. While Kakombe watched, he secured it to the right corner of the front bumper.
"If we can get the car turned at an angle," he shouted as he spat out water and mud, "maybe Merry can break it out of the trenches the tires have dug!"
Kakombe nodded, took the front position. Together the two men heaved on the nylon. Pulled by the two men, the winch, and all four tires, the Land Rover began to turn. Sweat mixed with rainwater on Oak's face. It was in his eyes, in his nose, and any minute now, he thought a little hysterically, a tidal wave was going to drown his brain.
A faint voice reached him. Looking back over his shoulder he saw that Olkeloki was leaning out the open window of the Rover. That's stupid, Oak thought. He's going to get the cab soaked. The old man was gesturing wildly toward the forest with his staff while Merry raced the engine.
Oak turned and tried to see what the laibon was pointing at. Nothing but rain, rain, and jungle. Not a shetani in sight.
Then Kakombe was pointing too, and the movement Olkeloki was trying to draw their attention to could no longer be ignored.
Part of the forest was alive and slithering toward them.
At first it looked like the branches of the trees were falling off and making for the bog, wiggling and squirming with some horrible, artificial life. Then Oa
k saw that it was an army of four-foot-long worms, each as green as an Irishman's bouquet on St. Paddy's day, a bright, reflective pale green that was somehow not reassuring. Not when it was coming toward you with sinuous deliberation.
Of course, they weren't giant worms, any more than they were animated branches.
Oak yelled at Kakombe as he pulled with all his strength on the nylon line. "Those snakes—are they poisonous?"
The giant hesitated long enough to study the oncoming legless horde. "No, but they can still bite. All snakes bite. We do not want to share this water with them."
We sure as hell don't, Oak murmured to himself. He was no squamataphobe, but neither did he count snakes as among his favorite inhabitants of the earth. The last thing he wanted was a couple dozen exotic varieties curling around his legs. There were hundreds of them squirming and slithering through the undergrowth and they were all heading for the bog. A glance to his left revealed that the other side of the forest was equally alive with rustling bushes and leaves. But why had they appeared here so suddenly and in such numbers?
As he leaned into the rope he tried to remember some of what Olkeloki had told them about the shetani. There was one variety, the Mbilika, that fed exclusively on snakes. Maybe these bright green beauties were being driven toward the bog by something farther back in the trees, by horrors as yet unseen. Apparently the shetani were not ignorant of simple tactics. The snakes would attack and confuse the prey, and when the inhabitants of the Land Rover had been suitably worn out and weakened…
"Come on, pull, damn you!"
Kakombe whirled to glare back at him. "Pull yourself, ilmeet." Then he saw that Oak was grinning at him and, after an instant's hesitation, the giant was grinning too.
A new sound, a delightful, mellifluous, altogether exquisite sound: an aria of rubber on gravel as the Land Rover's tires found solid purchase under the mud. As the two men scrambled clear, Merry drove the Rover halfway out of the water, swung the wheel back to the left, and in seconds had it idling high if not dry on the cracked pavement above the bog. Olkeloki was leaning out his window and motioning anxiously.
"Quickly, quickly!"
Oak fastened the emergency line and heaved it onto the roof of the car while Kakombe unhooked the tow cable from the tree. There was something on Oak's boot. Looking down, he saw tiny dark eyes staring back up at him out of a triangular green head. The snake was trying to bite through the leather. He stomped it with the heel of his other shoe and it let go, sliding back into the mud.
He turned to face the car—and froze. A second streamlined skull was staring directly into his face. The snake must have gone up his back. Now it was resting on his shoulder, pausing while it decided which portion of his face to sink its teeth into.
The head vanished and snake blood struck him in the eye.
It was warmer than the sweat and rainwater. A glance showed Kakombe beckoning to him as he retreated toward the Land Rover. In the giant's right hand was one of those oversized Maasai knives. The rain was already rinsing the blood from the blade.
Shaking as much from exhaustion as from the near encounter, he stumbled up the slight slope and fell into the back seat alongside the equally fatigued senior warrior. Up front, the winch was reeling in the rest of the steel cable like a fat man sucking spaghetti.
"Drive, Merry Sharrow, drive!" he heard Olkeloki say.
"As soon as the cable's all in or we're liable to foul an axle—there!" The Land Rover lurched forward and started to slide backward on the slick blacktop. Oak twisted around and stared out the back window. The surface of the bog was alive with thrashing, twisting serpents slithering over one another by the hundreds and biting at rocks, broken branches, one another, anything within reach of their teeth.
The transmission growled as the tires bit in. The Rover held its ground, shuddering, and then began moving forward: an inch, a foot, a decisive yard. Faint crunching noises came from beneath the floorboards as they rolled over several dozen legless bodies. The Rover's speedometer needle rose slowly and like a bad dream the bog began to recede behind them.
No one relaxed until they neared the outskirts of Chalinze.
Here a small piece of the primeval had been pushed aside and cleared for human settlement. The sun was down and the rain made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of the car. But Olkeloki seemed to know where they were and where he was going. Merry was more than content just to follow his directions.
The old man pointed to his left. "Over there, there is a place I know. A good garage. We will sleep there tonight. It will be cleaner than the local rest house."
The owner of the garage was a Sikh named Jana Singh.
He greeted Olkeloki effusively, leading Oak to suspect that the garage owner and Maasai gold were old friends. He led them to a back room of the garage which turned out to be a vision lifted straight from paradise: dry cots laden with clean linen and real pillows. Half an hour later Singh's wife and two elder daughters appeared carrying bread and a curry that smelled like ambrosia. He was not in the least dissuaded by the fact that the principal ingredient of the curry was goat meat. As for Merry, she finished two bowls and asked for a third.
"We're both going to end up with the trots." She giggled. Her face was streaked with mud and grime. "You know what? I don't care. This garage has a real bathroom with a real john. I'm going to sit on it for a while just to enjoy the feel of it."
Merry's fears were reasonable but premature. The curry, spices and all, warmed their bellies and stayed down, even refusing to be drawn into a fight with the saltine crackers and Rumanian pâté they'd had for lunch.
Suddenly Oak was more tired than he'd ever been in his life. Olkeloki and Kakombe refused cots, opting to sleep on straw mats on the floor. As they were preparing to extinguish the lights, the garage owner came to bid them good night. He smiled sympathetically at them through his neat beard.
"My old friend Mbatian says that tomorrow you go to Morogoro."
"That's right," Merry told him.
"You are tourists?" The way he asked the question indicated that he wouldn't believe their reply, but he accepted Merry's nod of affirmation politely and did not press for details.
She lay on her back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. The steady rain on the corrugated metal roof sounded like Japanese drums. "This is a long way from Seattle," she whispered.
"What?" Oak mumbled sleepily. "You still awake?"
"I'm listening to the rain, Josh. Isn't it beautiful?"
He made an impolite noise.
"You were very brave out there today."
Oak thought her disembodied voice was lovely in the darkness. He also wished she would shut up.
"I never could have gone out there with all those snakes."
"Neither would I. Kakombe and I were already up to our asses in mud when they started pouring out of the woods around us. It was either stay out there and get the car moving or spend the night in that bog. It had nothing to do with being brave. Bravery and self-preservation aren't the same thing. Better to get bit a couple of times than stay stuck there."
"Oh no." In the darkness of the garage she sounded surprised. "One bite would have killed you, Josh."
His stomach muscles began to knot and he felt a coldness on the insides of his thighs. "Say what? Kakombe told me they weren't poisonous."
"I don't know what Kakombe told you, but I read through two guidebooks on East Africa on the plane down from London. Those snakes were mambas. You can't mistake them for anything else. Green mambas. If any one of them had bitten you, you would've been dead inside thirty minutes without an injection of the proper antivenin. If three or four had bitten you nothing on this earth could've saved your life. No, you were very brave, Josh. Good night."
"Good night, Merry." he heard her roll over on the cot.
Instead of closing his eyes he turned to his left and stared across the floor to where Olkeloki and Kakombe were already sound asleep. Had the senior warrior
been ignorant of the true nature of all those snakes? Hardly likely. This was his country. It seemed more than unlikely that an experienced herder would mistake hundreds of green mambas for harmless forest snakes. The lie had been deliberate.
Why? To keep Oak from panicking and running for the cover of the mired Land Rover? Would he have panicked? That was something neither of them would ever know. Better to be insulted and alive than an unoffended corpse. Tricky son of a bitch.
Under different circumstances Oak might have shaken the other man awake and demanded an apology. He did not. Because Kakombe had stayed out there in the mud and dragged on the cable despite the fact that he wore only sandals and a thin toga instead of thick boots and tough Levi's.
He closed his eyes, listening to the rain on the roof. Sleep would come fast and easy. Off in the distance he thought he heard something rise above the rumble of the storm, above the occasional burst of contented thunder. It sounded vaguely like a growl.
We all have our lions, Olkeloki had told them more than once.
Hell with that. After swimming with a few hundred venomous snakes, any lions they met would be a picnic.
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21
Ubenazomozi, Tanzania—25 June
"Turn off here."
Oak glanced at the old man, who was staring out the front window. "What, here? There's no road."
"Just beyond the big tamarind tree."
Oak eased forward along the side of the main road. Yes, there, a barely visible gap between the huge tamarind and another tree. They would have missed it last night in the rain, and without Olkeloki to indicate the way they would have shot past despite the morning's bright sunshine. Even so, the "road" was little wider than a game track.
"You think we can get through here?" Branches were snapping against the sides of the Land Rover.
"If not we will have to walk."
"Walk where?" asked Merry from the back seat.
"To Nafasi's house."
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