Five Tribes

by Brian Nelson

  He rang the bell and waited. A minute passed. He tried again. This time the door immediately opened. It was Carol.

  “Bud, what are you doing here?” She wore that suspicious look that he remembered.

  “I came to talk to Joan. I thought she should hear . . .”

  “No,” she said emphatically, “this is not a good idea.”

  “I feel like I owe it to her.”

  “You shouldn’t have come. She’s not ready. Not at all.” She began to close the door.

  “Wait,” he said, stepping closer. She drew back, a flash of fear in her eyes.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she said. She could always tell, no matter how little.

  He felt his anger rise, but he kept it in check. Yeah, he thought, after I watched thirty people die I had a drink. “Just one,” he said, “to get my courage up.”

  “You haven’t changed, have you?” It was said with more pity than disdain.

  “Look, I just want her to know what happened. Carol, don’t you see. I figured it out. But I was just a minute too late. Another sixty seconds and they could have all gotten out.”

  “Is that why you’re here, to cleanse your guilty conscience?”

  “No, I’m here because she deserves to know the whole story, even if it’s hard to hear.”

  “She knows the whole story, Bud. Her husband is dead. It doesn’t matter how close you came to saving him. The point is you didn’t.”

  Suddenly he had no reply.

  “You’d better go,” and without waiting for him to reply, she closed the door. Bud heard the deadbolt click into place and the security chain slide into its groove.

  He stood there for a moment, unsure if he should knock again. If he could just talk to Joan . . . From inside he could faintly hear another woman’s voice. “Who was it?”

  “Oh, no one . . . some teenager selling something.”

  He walked down the steps, out of the porch light into the darkness. Back in the Ford he grabbed the brown paper bag and took another long drink. He started the engine, put the bottle between his legs, and headed for home.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Seeds

  December 6, 2026

  Roslyn, Virginia

  “Is it safe for us to breathe?” Olivia asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Ryan said, “Emma’s DNA is the only DNA it will recognize.”

  Ryan took the small glass vial out of his pocket. It was well past midnight, and Emma was sound asleep in front of them. A bedside lamp made a cone of light beside her head.

  In the ten days since Ryan had agreed to help Olivia, they had been working around the clock. While Ryan had to split his time between the Global Hologram and Emma’s cure, Olivia had done little else than work on saving her daughter. Working together for long hours meant they had argued, bickered, occasionally screamed, but eventually made up. They were a good team. And much to Ryan’s amazement, it looked like they had done it. In the tiny flask in his hand was the first gene therapy in history that could cross the blood-brain barrier.

  He caught Olivia’s eye and gave her a reassuring smile. She was so exhausted and nervous that she could only respond with a tight-lipped grimace.

  He was still madly in love with her, but he knew she would never be his, not fully, not until . . .

  He looked down at the sleeping girl and realized how closely their futures were now intertwined. Right now Olivia’s heart was so full of worry for Emma there was little space for him. That would only change when and if the girl were cured. And even then, how much of Olivia’s heart would he get? That question worried him. Because he wouldn’t know until it happened. All he knew for sure was that he had to try.

  He pulled the small rubber stopper from the vial.

  “Would you like to do it?” Ryan asked.

  “I feel like I should.” Olivia took the vial and sat down beside Emma.

  “Just hold it under her nose . . . that’s it.”

  Olivia gently moved the flask from one nostril to the other.

  “That’s fine, they’re in her now.”

  She handed him the flask, then leaned down so that her forehead touched Emma’s. “Dear God, please let this work. Please help my little girl.”

  PART Three

  TRIBAL WARFARE

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Poison

  December 6, 2026

  Namibia

  It took a day and a half for them to make their way back to the salt flats where Eric had regained his sight. He couldn’t wait to see the watering hole again and behold the dizzying menagerie of animals. At noon they started the hard march across the flat waste. It looked like a white sea, with low, rolling waves topped with pink crests made by salt-loving microbes.

  He realized that he was beginning to lose track of the days. Had it been thirty-one days or thirty-two? Perhaps it was more. There were no calendars or watches here.

  When they were about a quarter mile from the hole, Khamko stopped them. Vultures could be seen circling in the sky. The heat made everything a blur at that distance, and Eric could only make out rough shapes on the horizon but none of them were moving.

  “The old and young need to wait here,” he announced. “The rest come with me.”

  They took off at a trot. Khamko, Eric, Naru, Karuma, and the six other able-bodied adults and teens. As they got closer, Eric’s apprehension began to grow and grow. He wanted to think he was wrong, that it couldn’t possibly be true. But the closer he got, the greater the enormity became.

  He had remembered this place as one of breathtaking beauty. A place where thousands of creatures gathered in the great celebration of life.

  But the vision before him now was so nightmarish, he had to turn his head away. And he was not the only one. The others began to stop, unable to go any closer, not wanting to look. Many cried openly. They, too, had never seen anything this horrible in their lives.

  Hundreds of carcasses sat festering in and around the waterhole. Eland, gemsbok, springbok, ostrich, hyena, and lion lay fat and bloated among the bodies of thousands of small birds. The smell of rot and death was overpowering, and many of the Sān held their noses. For a moment, they all stood there, unbelieving, then Eric, Naru, and Khamko moved slowly forward, trying to understand what had happened.

  About twenty elephant carcasses lay on the far side of the water. The bull elephants’ faces had been sawed off with chainsaws and were now ghastly masks of blood, bone, and gore. Flies swarmed in black clouds over them, peppering their bloody visages. The bodies of cow elephants and calves lay untouched among them. The tracks from several pickup trucks crisscrossed the sand from one bull elephant to the other. At one end of the watering hole was a huge plastic drum, tipped on its side, a clear liquid waxing the brown water around it. Even over the stench of the rotting corpses, the bitter almond smell reached Eric.

  “No, no, no,” Khamko kept repeating. “How can this be?”

  No one answered him.

  Eric looked at Naru and on her face he saw an expression of rage and hardness that he didn’t think was possible. A deep well of hate was being stirred inside her.

  Eric looked around but found himself closing his eyes at each new horror. A herd of eland. A lion cub dead across her mother’s belly. A dozen ostrich chicks huddled together in death.

  “You! Your people did this!” It was Naru, she was coming toward him, her spear out on in front of her. “Every year you take more and more and more and more. You never stop.”

  She was only a few feet away. Brandishing the point. “I will kill every one of you, if it’s the last—”

  “Naru!”

  She turned the spear aside at the last moment and gave her father a look of disgust. Then she tossed the spear to the ground and gave a shriek of frustration. She slowly sank to her knees, and—bringing h
er hands to her face—began to sob.

  She muttered, “Why . . . why?”

  “I want to go with you,” Eric said.

  The sun was going down, and Khamko was preparing a hunting party to track down the poachers.

  “I’m sorry, my son,” Khamko said, “but I have to say no to you. I don’t want you to see these ugly things.”

  “I know what you are going to do and I want to help.”

  “Killing a man is different than killing a gemsbok.”

  “I know. It’s easier.”

  Khamko stopped and searched Eric’s face. It was clear that he had not expected this answer.

  “Can you do it again?”

  “To stop the men who did this? Yes.”

  They set out to the south, a dull yellow sunset on their right. Khamko, Naru, Gǃkau, and Eric. Soon a half moon rose, making the tracks of the pickup trucks easy to follow.

  “It is rough terrain for thirty miles around the salt flat,” Khamko said. “They will have to go slow and won’t make the road until noon tomorrow.”

  They ran long into the night, stopping only once to drink from their supplies of water. Eric knew they were getting close when Khamko stopped talking and switched to hand signals. Soon the glow of a fire appeared under the canopy of two umbrella acacias. A moment later, Eric smelled them. Sweat and fuel and alcohol and scraps of food. Smells he had lived with all his life, but never identified as “civilization.”

  All the men were asleep near the fire. Bottles of beer and cheap schnapps were scattered around. Khamko went ahead, moving silently about the camp, confirming that all the men were indeed there, then, using hand signals, he indicated that they should move in.

  Eric had expected to find signs of sophistication. Well-outfitted military types. Perhaps white men or Chinese men leading them. But what he found was very different. They were poor black men in two beat-up pickup trucks. One truck was missing a rear fender, the other a passenger door. They found the ivory tusks in the bed of one truck wrapped in a tarp beside a chainsaw and another oil-drum full of cyanide.

  They moved silently to each victim. Eric stood over his man, the tip of his spear just inches from the notch in his throat. The man’s clothes were little more than rags. Filthy and smelling of dirt and urine. His trousers were held up by a piece of rope.

  Eric looked around at the others, and he saw three angels of death with their spears poised, their silhouettes half lit by the fire. Khamko made a cricket call and all the spears were thrust down. Eric’s man did not die instantly. He awoke and grabbed the spear and tried to push it out. He kicked and flailed, his face an expression of confusion and shock. He seemed to be asking why. Eric twisted the spear, cutting the spinal cord, and the body went slack. For a moment Eric stared at the man’s face. Then he turned away. As he had suspected, it had been much easier than killing the gemsbok.

  Naru was the first to break the silence, “Bah!” she said in disgust. “No big boss, no white man, no yellow man!” She got out her flaying knife and began to cut up the bodies exactly as if they were a fresh Kudu or Elan. She cut out the liver of the first man and began to eat. Soon Gǃkau followed suit. They stoked the fire and were soon laying strips of meat across branches to cook.

  Eric watched them in shock and amazement. “I thought you were joking.”

  Khamko walked over to him and spoke softly. “Berries, honey, baobab melons, these are things that we can still find, but meat will be scarce for many weeks. In fact, it may take months for the cyanide to work its way out of the food chain. It is not what we would choose to do, but we must survive.”

  Khamko went to the fire and took some of the meat and brought it to him. “This will be the last fresh meat you have for many weeks.”

  But Eric shook his head. “I can’t. It’s just not right.”

  “Not right?!” Naru exclaimed. “Not right?!” She marched toward him, the filleting knife tight in her fist. “And starving to death, that’s the right thing to do?” She made a stabbing motion at his chest, her forearms wet with gore and glistening in the firelight. “You don’t know anything. You’ve been with us a month and you think you can tell us what’s right. You”—her eyes rose to the sky and she shivered with rage, then she looked at him again—“You need to be taught a lesson. Yes, a lesson. Sit!” She jabbed again with the knife. “Sit!”

  Eric held up his hands in appeasement and sat down.

  “You are going to listen before you judge us.”

  She stood towering over him, breathing heavy with anger. After a moment she began.

  “Have you heard of the Great Hunger?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Well, I’m going to tell you. Two hundred years ago all the tribes were so desperate for food that they became cannibals. The Griqua, the Basuto, the Bechuana. They all began to eat each other. And not for just one or two years, but for a whole generation. That was during the White Expansion, when the Europeans came and kept coming, taking everything they wanted and killing all the animals for sport. That’s when the remaining tribes had to fight for what was left—which was too little.

  “Every tribe resorted to cannibalism. Except one. We, the Bushmen as they called us, were eaten, but we never ate. We held on to our dignity even as the others slaughtered our children for meat.

  “When the intertribal warfare had decimated us, when only a few thousand remained, the whites came and tried to finish us off.

  “Because we were smaller and our skin was different and we refused to adopt any of the European ways—no horses or guns or livestock or farming—for all these things we were considered less than human. In their eyes, that made us fit for extermination. Even the pastors, the church leaders, the pious who had been sent to convert the other tribes, had no qualms about killing the Bushmen. The pastors themselves organized the hunting parties.

  “Their hypocrisy ran deep. They thought we were subhuman, yet they loved to take our children as their servants. They said they were so much more loyal and clever than the children from the other tribes.

  “That is the history I think about whenever we hunt our enemies. Khamko has taught us that if we are to survive, we must take at least some of the things from your world. It has not been easy for us. And some will still not eat the enemy’s flesh. But I relish it.” And here she sucked up through her nostrils as if preparing to eat. “It is fitting that we now hunt those who once slaughtered us. When I eat their meat, I grow stronger in both mind and body. Because I am eating retribution. I am exacting justice for a hundred thousand murders that went unpunished.”

  Eric looked her in the eye and nodded. He knew there was little he could say. She was right: he was a foreigner with little understanding of what these people had been through. “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

  This seemed to defuse her anger, though just a little, and she stomped off to the fire. A minute later she returned with a strip of cooked meat and handed it to him.

  He hesitated. Then he looked her in the eyes, took the meat, and ate it.

  They spent the rest of the night in the poachers’ camp. There was an unnatural stillness to the world around them. As if the night locusts and toads were still mourning the death of so many animals.

  Khamko and Eric took the cyanide and the tusks and drove them to a remote stretch of the woods and buried them. Then they spent much of the rest of the night hiding their tracks, so no one could follow their trail. When they returned, the red disk of the sun was just breaking above the horizon.

  “I want to destroy the trucks, the guns, everything,” Khamko said to Eric. “Can you help?”

  Eric nodded. “Just give me fifteen minutes.” Rummaging through the trucks he found some string and some cooking supplies. With these he made a simple fuse and rigged it to the gas tanks. “This will give us about ninety seconds before the first truc
k explodes.”

  Naru and Gǃkau had made backpacks out of the skins of two of the men—just as they would have done with any other game, tying each skinned leg to the skinned arms created the shoulder straps. Then they stuffed them with the cooked meat and put them on. Eric noticed that the fingers of the men had been hacked off and were piled on top.

  Naru followed his eyes and gave him a sinister smirk. “The children love them,” she said. “It’s a treat.”

  When they were assembled at the edge of the camp, Eric touched a brand to the string-fuse then tossed the stick aside. Naru led them at a trot down a kudu track, with Khamko taking up the rear.

  At two hundred yards the first truck exploded. Eric looked back to see an orange and black mushroom cloud appear over the camp then quickly dissipate. A moment later, the second truck exploded creating a second brief mushroom cloud. He had left the gun and ammunition in the second truck and soon the shells began to cook off, making loud pops over the crackling fire.

  Then the four of them turned and trotted on. For the first time in his life, Eric felt like warrior, as a man who had completed a hard mission. Here he was, moving through the bush with his war party, the fire of their destruction billowing black smoke behind him, signaling to all who might look upon it as irrefutable proof of their lethality.

  When they returned to the camp, Karuma was waiting for them. He ran and hugged his mother, then Eric, then his grandfather. “Did you stop them, Grandfather?”

  “For now,” Khamko said. “For now.”

  That night they ate much of the meat. The children happily gnawed on the fingers.

  Later, Eric lay awake thinking about the poachers. It was plain to see that the Sān way of life could not survive if it was always being invaded by the modern world. And this beautiful life could not exist for much longer. As the modern world expanded, as it needed more and more resources to sustain itself—whether that be gold or copper or timber or elephant tusks—it would slowly and inexorably consume the resources the Sān needed to survive. It was a simple truth. An irrefutable equation. If something wasn’t done to change the equation. They were doomed.