The Delta

by Tony Park

  He had been behind her and as he moved alongside and crouched a little he was within range of her, at last. ‘There …’

  ‘I don’t see a thing.’

  She held the torch out with one hand and rested a hand on his shoulder, as if guiding his gaze to the point she was looking at. As he lowered his head she looked into his gorgeous brown eyes and, as he stared intently at nothing at all she slid the pointed tip of her tongue into his ear.

  ‘Tracey!’

  ‘What’s wrong? Are you gay, Sam?’

  ‘No, I am not gay. Was there anything dangerous out there, really?’

  She smiled, but left her hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s nothing out here except me, Sam, and I am danger with a capital D.’

  ‘That you are.’ He brushed her hand off his shoulder, but she moved in for the kill, pressing her body against his. Despite his protests she felt the bulge of his erection against her belly. She dropped her hand and traced it through his khakis.

  ‘Tracey …’

  She heard the waver in his voice. It was what she was waiting for. Men. They were all the same. Bad. Even the good ones. It was what she loved most about them. She switched the torch off and led him behind the thick girth of a massive mopane tree.

  ‘Tracey, no …’

  She silenced him with her tongue, probing his mouth, which still tasted of red wine. Her fingers found his zip and before he could move his hips in one last pretence of resistance, she wrapped her hand around his shaft, surprised and even more aroused by the fact he wasn’t wearing underpants. He groaned, and she knew she had won.

  Tracey threw back her head and was rewarded with the heat of his breath on her neck, followed by his lips. The head of his cock was already slick and she massaged the slippery fluid into his thickening hardness. She couldn’t close her hand around him.

  She felt his hand under her tank top now, taking one of her nipples between his first two fingers and rubbing the thumb over the trapped tip. She shuddered and pressed herself closer to him, drawing his prick to her, feeling its heat scald her belly.

  Then he let go of her breast and placed a palm gently but firmly on her chest. ‘No.’ He exhaled deeply.

  ‘Enough, Sam,’ she hissed. ‘I know you’re a good guy, OK. It’s why I want to fuck you.’

  ‘Tracey, no …’

  She stood up on her toes and clasped her arms around his neck. She heaved with all her might and climbed up onto him. Reflexively, as she knew he would, he embraced her in those thickly muscled arms of his to stop her from falling, and she wrapped her legs around him. She could feel his hard, wet penis pushing into her and she moved against it. ‘Now, Sam. Fuck me, Coyote Sam.’

  Stirling heard the rustling in the bush. There was no sign of light from a torch.

  ‘Shit,’ he said to himself. He should never have left the table; but what basis was there for a relationship if he couldn’t leave the woman he loved in the company of another man, no matter how famous and supposedly good-looking he was? He thought the American looked like a moffie with his fake tan and his capped teeth and his body builder’s physique. He’d heard all gays worked out in gyms. Still, the way Chapman was carrying on around Tracey – and she around him – gave him little hope that Coyote Sam preferred men.

  The beam of Stirling’s torch was blocked by the big mopane between tents three and four, but whatever was out there in the bush was just on the other side of the tree. By the amount of noise it was making it was probably a porcupine or a honey badger, snuffling about in the carpet of dead leaves.

  ‘No!’

  Stirling stopped and cocked his ear. That was Tracey.

  ‘No, Sam,’ Tracey said, ‘I won’t take …’

  It was all Stirling needed to hear. As he rounded the bulk of the old tree he already had the heavy flashlight raised in his right hand and as he took in the sight – Sam Chapman with his fly undone and his erect penis in his hand, and Tracey, one breast exposed, backed against the mopane – he swung the torch hard into the American’s right temple. Coyote Sam fell to the ground, out cold.

  Tracey started sobbing, and Stirling took her in his arms and she buried her face in his safari shirt. ‘It’s all right, baby. Bastard. I should get my gun and shoot him.’

  Sam laid his aching head against the warm perspex of the helicopter’s window and watched, gratefully, as Xakanaxa Camp disappeared below him. He’d be happy if he never saw the place again, especially crazy Stirling and his psychotic nymphomaniac girlfriend.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Cheryl-Ann’s nasal voice sent a new blast of stereophonic pain through the earphones of the headset he wore. ‘The makeup covers the bruise and there’s no way it will show on camera. We’ll just have to reapply the foundation before you film the pieces to camera, especially if you’ve been sweating.’

  Don’t worry? Was she serious? And did she think a purple bruise on his face was all he was concerned about? Tracey was gone by the time Sam had regained consciousness to find the safari guide standing over him, fists clenched. Sam had rubbed his head and risen groggily to his feet.

  ‘I can explain …’

  ‘Like fuck you can, pretty boy.’ Stirling’s next blow connected with Sam’s chin and sent him sprawling again. Still dizzy, and in no mood to prolong his own personal agony, Sam didn’t fight back. ‘Get up, you fucking snake.’

  Cheryl-Ann had arrived then, and for once Sam had been glad to see her. Dressed in her shorty pyjamas she had bravely put herself between the two men and pushed Stirling away. ‘Cool it, buster!’

  Back in Cheryl-Ann’s luxuriously appointed safari tent, Sam had explained it all to her.

  ‘I knew it,’ Cheryl-Ann said. ‘That little bimbo was coming on to you from the moment we arrived. I could see it and you could see it too, so you shouldn’t have let her get you alone.’

  Sam had groaned in pain and self-pity.

  ‘No use crying over it, though. We’ll talk money to them tomorrow. The network will settle out of court.’

  ‘What?’ Sam was outraged. ‘She came on to me, Cheryl-Ann. You just said yourself …’

  ‘I know what I said, but what’s Tracey going to do? Is she going to tell her big bwana boyfriend that she was trying to jump you, or is she going to say that Mister Hollywood Big Shot tried to leopard stalk her in the dark while she was escorting him home? If she’s got half a brain she’ll already be thinking about selling her story to the tabloids, and that kind of PR we definitely do not need.’

  ‘You talk like it’s a forgone conclusion, that everyone would believe her.’

  She’d stared at him like a school teacher despairing at the dumbest kid in class.

  ‘Relax,’ Cheryl-Ann said in to the helicopter’s radio headset. ‘I’ll sit them both down, individually, when we get back to camp and talk turkey. I’ll find out what Tracey wants and we’ll negotiate. Don’t worry your pretty bruised head about it, Coyote Sam.’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ He stared out the window. On the flight into Xakanaxa the spiderweb of channels and game paths through the alternating patches of dry dusty bush and emerald green islands of reeds and grasses had mesmerised him. Now he just wanted to go home to the States. The wildlife paradise passing below him did nothing to lift his mood.

  A herd of a hundred or more buffalo stampeded at the sound of the descending helicopter. Ray was busy filming through the opening where the pilot had removed the co-pilot’s door, as the bulky black animals sent up silvery splashes of water. Here, at least, Sam registered numbly, there was water. While the buffalo looked like overgrown cows from above he knew from his research that hunters called them ‘black death’. Cape Buffalo were one of the most dangerous animals a human could encounter on foot in the African bush. Them and jealous safari guides, he thought ruefully. He squeezed the bridge of his nose and thought he’d prefer to take on one of those buffalo than see Stirling again.

  ‘Ready when you guys are,’ Gerry said.

  Cheryl-Ann nudged Sam in the
ribs and he looked back into the interior of the helicopter. Gerry was recording the audio direct from the helicopter’s intercom system and Ray had swung in his seat so that now he was filming Sam’s face.

  Sam forced a smile, looked out the window again, then back to the camera. ‘Below me is the untamed wilderness of the Okavango Delta, a wildlife garden of Eden; yet this is a paradise where death awaits the unsuspecting visitor at every turn.’

  He paused and took a breath. He felt queasy from the Scotch he’d downed in his tent to ease the pain of Stirling’s blows and the shame of what had happened. He was paying for it now.

  ‘You OK?’ Cheryl-Ann asked, impatience plain on her face. ‘You look a little green.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m good.’

  ‘Keep rolling, Ray.’

  Sam’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. ‘I’ll be living down there, in the African bush for the next three days, all on my own, with enough food and water for one day. I’ll be using the survival skills taught to me by the original occupants of this part of Botswana, the Khoisan people, also known as the Bushmen. If I haven’t been paying attention, then it might be goodnight, for good, from me, Coyote Sam.’

  ‘Good job,’ Cheryl-Ann said into his headphones.

  ‘Yeah right. Cornball crap and you know it.’

  ‘We can always reshoot it on the ground. Now, you sure you’re all set for the next three days?’

  ‘No.’ He wasn’t sure at all. It had sounded like fun, back in the States, when he and his agent had pitched the idea for a program that combined wildlife documentary with reality show. Sam had spent plenty of time on his own in the Rockies and on the windswept prairies of Utah and Wyoming in search of coyotes, and while he knew enough to keep himself alive in a snowstorm, he was suddenly far from sure he could survive in the swamps of Botswana, where the predators were a lot bigger and more numerous than even the mountain lion he’d once encountered on foot.

  He’d had a four-hour session on finding food in the African bush with a San guide just outside the town of Maun, where they’d acclimatised for a day after flying to Botswana from South Africa. On arrival at Xakanaxa, they’d filmed Stirling briefing Sam on the basics of staying safe around lion, leopard, buffalo and elephant – basically it amounted to staying cool, staying quiet, not wandering far from his camp, and keeping his tent zipped up and a fire burning at night. If he came across a dangerous animal on foot, the cardinal rule was to stand still, and avoid the natural urge to run away. Stirling had reassured him, kind of, by telling him that even tourists camped in unfenced sites in and on the edges of the Moremi Game Reserve and incidents with dangerous game were very rare. Cheryl-Ann, Stirling and the rest of the crew would be on standby if anything did go wrong – Stirling to defuse the situation and Ray and Gerry to film the action. The chartered helicopter would be waiting near Xakanaxa and they could get to him within fifteen minutes of a call, the pilot had assured him. How long, he wondered, did it take a lion to eat a man, and how long would Stirling take getting dressed, loading his gun and strolling to the chopper after what had happened with Tracey?

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Cheryl-Ann chirped. ‘You’re Coyote Sam, remember. You tamed the Aussie outback, so Africa will be a piece of cake.’

  ‘Right.’

  He watched a herd of elephant slow its pace to turn their heads and look up at them. The risks were greater here than in the outback and a big star wouldn’t have agreed to actually camp out in the middle of Africa all alone, even with a helicopter on standby to rescue him. But Sam wasn’t a big enough star. He shook his head.

  ‘Just remember to keep the video camera going, Sam,’ Ray laughed. ‘Get some shots of the chopper leaving you all alone out there, surrounded by lions and leopards and hyenas.’

  ‘Stop teasing, Ray.’ Cheryl-Ann placed a hand on Sam’s arm in an unusual gesture of sympathy. ‘Relax, it’ll be OK. But like Ray says, if you think you’re getting into serious trouble, just make sure you hit the record button.’

  Sam looked at her to see if she was joking, but all he saw was ice in her eyes. The helicopter settled into knee-length dry yellow grass and Ray unbuckled himself and jumped out to stand a short distance away with his camera on his shoulder. When Ray raised his thumb Sam climbed out of the aircraft. Gerry passed out his tent, bedroll, backpack, a five-litre plastic bottle of drinking water, camera bag, machete, a hand-held radio and a satellite phone. ‘Good luck, Sam!’ The sound man, at least, seemed genuine.

  He finished piling up his gear and walked, bent at the waist, across to Cheryl-Ann’s window, from where she was beckoning to him.

  ‘There are going to be a couple of surprises thrown your way. Just go with the flow and keep the camera rolling, OK?’

  He nodded, still feeling dejected. His spirits only sank deeper when he fished the handy cam from its pack and started videoing as Ray climbed back into the helicopter and the pilot took her up into the clear blue sky.

  He switched the camera off to conserve the battery as soon as the helicopter was out of sight. He’d record some corny line, such as ‘Be seeing you guys … I hope’, when his mood improved. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep off the booze and the events of the previous night.

  Sam trudged fifty metres through the grass to a brick-red termite mound and climbed to the top of the earthen insect city, which was taller than he was. From there he scanned the surrounding area. A herd of impala, grazing in a far-off tree line, saw him. The lyre-horned male barked a warning call to his harem of dainty females and they leapt away. There was nothing deadly in sight so he climbed down. Sweat started to pour from him with each step he took in the midday sun. Shelter, as always, was his first priority, so he unrolled the tent.

  In the first episode of the Coyote Sam’s World Survival series, ‘Danger Down Under’, he’d had to build his temporary home out of sticks and bark, the way an Australian Aboriginal national parks ranger had shown him. In the outback, the greatest danger came from snakes but he had been relatively safe from even them by stringing his mosquito net up and tucking it under his bedroll. Here in Africa, with the very real possibility of lions, hyenas and leopards prowling around his camp site, hard-arse Cheryl-Ann had relented and allowed him a tent. Sam unrolled the simple dome-shaped structure of sturdy green canvas and slotted together the two metal poles that would support it.

  He wondered what the obligatory ‘surprises’ would be this time. In Australia, the box of matches he had been allowed to bring had been substituted at the last minute with a packet in which all of the incendiary heads had been carefully snipped off. He’d had to make fire using a pointed stick rubbed against a soft piece of wood and to his – and his viewers’ – surprise he’d been able to do so, after two days of trying. His hands had been rubbed raw until they bled, which Cheryl-Ann said had made great TV.

  Of course, the surprises weren’t always bad. On his third and last day in the outback he had been waiting impatiently to be airlifted back to the luxury resort at Uluru where the rest of the crew was staying. Instead of the sound of a helicopter he had picked up the noise of a car horn blaring somewhere in the distance. Reluctantly, he had taken the camera in hand and set off in the direction of the incessant noise.

  Slogging through the thick red sand had sapped the last of his strength. He’d eaten nothing but grubs and lizards for three days and his stomach had protested vociferously at the physical effort. When he came within sight of the vehicle his heart sank. It was an ageing, rusted four-wheel-drive camper. A young man with long blond dreadlocks was alternating between blowing the truck’s horn and returning to the rear of the vehicle, which was bogged to the axles in sand. With no shovel, the man was furiously trying to scoop loose sand away from the stuck tyres.

  ‘I have become stuck!’ the man called out to him in a German accent.

  Sam dutifully started filming, then turned the camera on himself. ‘One of the first rules of survival in the outback is don’t travel without the correct gea
r.’

  As he approached the stranded motorist the man dropped to his knees. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he cried. ‘I have no water and I am thinking I am going to die out here in the outback.’

  ‘One of the other rules,’ Sam told the camera, ‘is that if you see a fellow traveller in trouble, always stop and see if you can assist.’

  At that moment, the rear doors of the camper swung open. A beautiful tall red-haired Australian girl dressed in denim shorts, a white T-shirt and a chef’s hat climbed from the truck, carrying a covered silver platter. He recalled her immediately – one of the cooks from the resort who had asked him for his autograph after he’d sent his compliments to the kitchen. From further up the sandy road, emerging from behind a red anthill not dissimilar from the one he had just climbed, came the crew. The survival exercise was over and the redhead lifted the lid on a mouthwatering dinner of freshwater crayfish. The German actor shook his hand and reached inside the Land Cruiser for a dew-frosted beer.

  Sam wondered now if there would be a happy ending to this survival program, or if Stirling would be waiting for him with a gun at Xakanaxa Camp. Unbidden, an image of the Australian girl’s milk-white skin below her tan line, on either side of a trimmed strip of red hair, filled his mind. ‘Stop it,’ he told himself out loud.

  As he clipped the canvas dome to the second tent pole he swore. He tossed the pole on the ground and unclipped the other one. ‘Fucking Coyote Sam’s World Survival, my ass.’

  He had forgotten to set up the camera on its tripod. If he finished the three days without some vision of him setting up his tent then Cheryl-Ann would make him do it all over again.

  Uh-roo, Uh-roo.

  ‘Hear that?’ Sam said as loud as he dared, looking into the lens of the camera on its tripod. ‘That’s the King of Beasts, the African lion. They call on dusk, signalling the members of their pride to come together … for the hunt. I just hope it’s me on the menu … aw, fuck it.’

  He started his monologue once more, leaning closer to the camera as he said the last line again. ‘I just hope it’s not me on the menu for tonight.’