Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1)

by Lars Guignard

  Of course it also occurred to me that might be the idea all along. Maybe they planned to hook a parachute onto the trunk and dump it out the door at ten thousand feet. Or worse, throw the trunk out with no parachute at all. All kinds of crazy things like that went through my mind, and the whole time Zak just lay there, quietly eating his sunflower seeds. I can still hear him chewing them, then spitting them out. True, he couldn’t really talk, because we heard a lot of voices outside the trunk, but was the constant chewing and spitting really necessary? It went on like that for about two hours: maybe half an hour of driving and at least an hour and a half of flying. I had to pee, I was angry, I was hungry, I was thirsty, and I couldn’t even believe any of it was happening. What was I going to tell my mom, Anu the rent-a-nanny, anyone? The whole situation was insane. Mostly though, I was mad. I was mad at Zak for getting us into the whole thing.

  Just when I was about ready to leap out of the metal box and throw myself at the mercy of whoever had snatched us, I felt the plane began to descend. My ears popped and I knew we were landing. I glanced at Zak and I think he was thinking the same thing I was. This had gone on for far too long, but we had a chance. At least we were almost back on the ground. Once we landed, we were going to have to seize the moment and get out of there. Finally, the plane touched down with a thump, one wheel setting down way before the other, and we taxied to a stop. It wasn’t a regular airport, I knew that right away, because as soon as I heard the propellors spin down, everybody just got out. There was no waiting around for the jetway to be connected or anything.

  “Get the trunk,” Rhino Butt said, over the creak of the propellors.

  I assumed he was talking to whoever had been carrying us around, because once again we got lifted, first by the rear of the trunk and then by the front. That none of them had bothered to check why a supposedly empty trunk weighed as much as it did with us in it, I don’t know. I guess we weren’t really that heavy: not by adult standards. Besides, I suppose the guys carrying us didn’t know what was inside the trunk anyhow. We were carried down a staircase and put down on the ground. It was dark out there and only a very little bit of light came in through the holes in the lid.

  “Wait with it,” I heard Rhino Butt say. “I’ll be right back.”

  I heard the first big, juicy drops of rain hit the lid of the trunk, but I also heard footsteps. It sounded like whoever had been carrying us was stepping away. We lay there waiting for a while like that; me having to go to the bathroom and Zak still chewing on his sunflower seeds. I have to say, I was even madder than before. The driving raindrops were as loud as rocks falling from above. To make matters worse, Zak was still smiling. I saw his grin from the blue night light on his watch which he kept pressing. It was like the whole thing was a big game to him. He spit out a sunflower seed and I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Would you cut it out?” I hissed.

  “Cut what out?”

  “The seeds. Stop chewing the seeds. We need a plan.”

  The rain was coming down harder now.

  “The plan is that we get out.”

  “You heard him. They’re watching us.”

  “You want to stay? Stay,” Zak said. “I’m getting out.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  “Wait a second.”

  Zak rummaged around on his side of the trunk. He was arranging something, but I couldn’t tell what. We had put the blankets underneath us for some cushioning, but there wasn’t much in the trunk besides the crossbow and the small metal box. I was quickly figuring out that Zak wasn’t the kind of guy to think about stuff too much before he did it. Or to offer any warning. No count down from three or any of that. He simply lay flat on his back and pushed up with both hands. I hated what he was doing because we had no idea what was out there, but I also knew that we had no choice. We had done nothing for long enough. I pushed my hands into the lid too, if only to prevent Zak from dropping it.

  A little more light entered the trunk as we slid the lid slowly back. It was a weak yellow light, probably from a street lamp, because it was night now. A waft of fresh humid air immediately blew in. The next thing I felt was a giant raindrop breaking on my cheek. The fresh air felt great, but I wasn’t sure about anything else. I didn’t know where the men who were watching the trunk were. All I could see was a thick mist in the night sky.

  “Let’s do it,” Zak said quietly under his breath.

  Zak jumped up and I followed right behind him. The first thing I saw was the tail of the big orange airplane. Then, turning to my left, I saw the two men under the cover of an old building’s eave. The men weren’t tall, but they looked strong. Put it this way, I wouldn’t have wanted to fight them, even if I was grown up, which I wasn’t. I couldn’t make out much more from my quick glance though. The men paced silently, their eyes downcast.

  I immediately pulled Zak back down into the trunk. The lid was still balanced off the end of it, meaning that so far we had avoided making too much noise.

  “We crawl,” I whispered.

  Zak nodded and we climbed back out of the trunk and began to belly crawl slowly across the tarmac using the trunk as cover. The rough pavement was warm and wet, little rainbows of oil visible in the street light. We got about five feet when I thought that we should have slid the lid shut again on the trunk, but it was too late now. I ignored the oily little rainbows and concentrated on getting away as silently as possible. Shuffling forward on my belly, I risked a glance back. So far, so good. The men were still pacing at the side of the building. There was high grass just a few feet from us now and as we got closer, I heard what sounded like the bustle of the street. There were horns honking and Hindi music playing. I saw a chain-link fence about a hundred feet away and what looked like a couple of cows on the other side of it. We were both in the tall grass, light from a street lamp somewhere above casting its pale glow.

  Zak stared over at me with this inquisitive expression on his face. “What’s that on your hand?” he asked.

  I looked down at my hand immediately expecting the worst, some kind of gross bug, or a big gaping cut or something, but I didn’t see anything at all.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “That,” Zak said, pointing at the right side of my hand.

  I couldn’t help but sigh. Really? Was this the time he chose to notice it? The thing is, I have a birthmark. There are five brown spots in a rough oval on the side of my right hand. Kind of weird maybe, but nothing to interrupt our getaway for.

  “It’s nothing, it’s just a birthmark,” I said.

  “It’s cool.”

  “Never mind,” I said, casting a glance behind us. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Let’s run,” Zak said.

  “Crawl.”

  “Run.”

  Zak and I compromised by getting up on two legs and running through the tall grass in a crouched position like we were getting out of a helicopter. That’s when I heard the first man scream behind me. I glanced back in spite of myself and saw that he was looking into the trunk. The man picked something up and stared. It was Zak's bag of sunflower seeds. I felt a little stab of anger that Zak had left it there. Wasn’t it enough that he had gotten us into this mess? Did he really need to advertise our presence with his litter? A moment later the second man came running toward the trunk. They weren’t stupid, that was for sure. I think it took about two seconds for them to spot us in the grass. They started to run after us. I pulled Zak up by the arm. If we were going to run, we’d have to run all out now. The fence was still a long way away and I didn’t know what we were going to do when we hit it. Climb over? I could already see the barbed wire at the top and the men were gaining on us. Whoever they were, they were fast.

  That’s when I heard the roar. I can’t put it any other way. It sounded like it might have been a car engine, or a plane taking off, but I’m pretty sure it was an animal roar. Looking back on it now, it kind of makes sense, but then, at the time, I didn’t know what to
think. It was like the field of tall grass had come alive and something huge was rushing toward us. I didn’t actually see what it was, all I saw was the tall grass moving around it and that it was coming straight for us. There was an incredible rush of wind, and the low persistent sound of animal panting, and whatever it was, was almost on top of us.

  “Duck,” I screamed.

  Both Zak and I hit the dirt, the invisible thing, whatever it was, leaping above our heads. I tasted the moist dirt in my mouth. I had actually dug my teeth into the ground. I was just glad I hadn’t bitten into a rock. Rock salad is not a favorite of mine. I glanced behind me again and could only see that the two men had stopped running toward us and were instead running away in fear.

  “What was that?” Zak said.

  “How should I know?”

  “I’m not sure you should. I’m just asking in case you do.”

  How could he be so calm at a moment like this? “Get up, Zak!” I screamed.

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Get up and run!”

  The low animal panting still hung in the air. I yanked up on Zak’s T-shirt and we continued to sprint for the fence. When we finally hit the chain link, we got back down on our bellies to slide underneath. We weren’t the first ones to do it. The earth was dug out from under the fence as though it was a popular route. Zak and I squirmed underneath the chain link, the spectral panting still ringing in our ears. And then, when we got back on our feet on the other side of the fence, we were in different world.

  5

  HELLO INDIA!

  On the other side of that airport fence was a place I couldn’t have imagined existed just the day before. I had read about India, but so far all I’d really seen of it was the auto-rickshaw ride from the airport. For the rest of the time, I’d been either in the hotel or in that stupid trunk. Now I was on the street in the real India and I couldn’t help but notice how totally different it was from America. For one thing we were on a city street, but it was crazy crowded — crowded like I had never seen before. There were people absolutely everywhere, and not just people, there were cows too. India has this thing about cows being sacred and there were a lot of them everywhere.

  For another thing, even if I ignored the cows, everything I saw was completely off the wall. Even though it was dark out, men and woman still ran around with things on their heads like trays of food, and brass jugs, and even bales of hay. There were carts of leather shoes, vegetables, and spices, and I was pretty sure I saw a camel. From the looks of it we were in some kind of outdoor market or bazaar. Incense filled the air with a sweet smell, like fruit mixed with nuts and smoke. Long rolls of bright yellow, orange, and red fabric sat in bundles. And it was raining. It was raining like I had never seen it rain before. Already the street was beginning to flood.

  The rain wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst of it was that I was mad. Really mad. Mostly mad at Zak, partly mad at myself, and even a little bit mad at my mother for leaving in the first place. I didn’t further discuss whatever had just leapt over us in that grassy field with Zak. I didn’t discuss it for the same reason that I hadn’t discussed the talking elephant at the bottom of the pool, or the weird dreams; because I didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like either of us knew what we had just seen. All I knew was that I was freaked out, I suspected Zak was freaked out, and I hoped, for the time being at least, that was the end of it. Of course, things don’t always turn out like you hope. They do, however, sometimes turn out like you dream, but I didn’t know that then. What I knew was that whatever that roaring, panting thing was, it didn’t matter for the time being. We had a whole other set of concerns.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  “We just got here,” Zak replied.

  “We are going to get into so much trouble when we get back.”

  “Not if we don’t tell anyone we were gone.”

  I leaned back against a lamppost. Already I was soaked to my skin in the heavy rain. Litter and trash floated past my ankles as the street flooded. I saw signs written in letters I couldn’t understand and goats and people going about their business like it was the middle of the day, even though it looked like the middle of the night. I’ve got to admit, at that moment, what I was experiencing was a nightmare. There was no other way to put it. A few hours ago, I had been in a beautiful hotel. Now I was in the street in the middle of some city that I didn’t even know the name of, hungry, soaked to the skin, and I really needed to go to the bathroom.

  The more I thought about our predicament, the worse it got. We had no money because my allowance was back at the hotel and I’d forgotten to change it into rupees anyhow. I didn’t have any contact info for my mom. My hip hurt from spending the last three hours lying on my side in a hard steel box. And that was without even dwelling on whatever panting thing had jumped over us in the field. The thing that really got me though, the worst thing about it, was that Zak seemed to be enjoying himself.

  I admit that at that moment, I began to cry. I don’t know why. I don’t know if I’d just been holding it all in for too long, but I broke down and began blubbering away like a baby. The hot tears ran down my face with the rain. I felt myself begin to hyperventilate as I tried to get ahold of my emotions. I’m not a person who cries a lot. I like to be in control. But I don’t know, something about everything that had just happened just begged to be released. I blubbered on like a baby for at least a minute. I’m not sure if Zak saw me. I couldn’t see him.

  Through my tears I saw a cow splash by, followed by a man pedaling a three-wheeled bicycle with an empty seat in the back. I knew that the three-wheeled bicycle was another kind of rickshaw, but I didn’t pay it much attention. An old lady with golden hoops in her ears and deep lines on her face came up to me. I didn’t know exactly what she was doing, but I thought she might be begging for money. Of course, I didn’t have any. I’d be joining her soon.

  “Sorry I don’t have money,” I said between gasps. “I really don’t have anything.”

  As the words left my mouth, a light blue butterfly with black spots on its wings fluttered by. The old lady smiled and moved on, and the rickshaw driver turned to us. I didn’t know where she had come from, but I now saw a beautiful woman wearing a royal-blue sari sitting in the back of the rickshaw. The crowd was moving quickly though. In another moment the beautiful woman had disappeared from my sight and another woman, this one blind in both eyes, approached. There were sewn-up black holes where the woman’s eyes used to be. I had to look away because I wanted to scream. India was turning out to be much more than I had been prepared for. I took a deep breath, struggling to get ahold of myself. I turned my head and this time I saw Zak, a little farther off in the crowd. Typical boy I thought to myself. Not worried about a thing. He seemed to be having a blast.

  “Hello India!” Zak screamed into the rain.

  I slouched lower against the lamppost and ran a hand over my tears. We needed to get out of there. We needed a plan.

  “Do you have place to stay for the night?” I overheard a woman’s voice say.

  I glanced back through the sea of arms and legs to see Zak speaking to the beautiful woman in the back of the rickshaw. The woman’s hair was long and dark and there was something luminous about her, her bright eyes sparkling in the night.

  “Not yet,” Zak said.

  “Well, if you’d like, I can help you with that.”

  “Can I drive?”

  “Ask him.”

  Zak motioned to the driver, a little man with deep bags under his eyes wearing a cloth skirt for men called a lungi. The lungi really wasn’t much more than a cotton sheet tied around the waist, or so I had read, but I guessed that in a hot place like India, it was comfortable. The driver seemed to understand what Zak wanted because he got into the back seat. Thinking back to my reading, I was pretty sure that the rickshaw driver was called a wala. Basically, wala was a word for someone who did something in India, so it made sense that th
e driver would be called a rickshaw wala. Zak hopped onto the front seat of the bicycle rickshaw and started to pedal, ringing the bell like he was driving a bus. He pulled up right in front of me.

  “Staying there?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I said, hoping that he couldn’t tell I’d been crying.

  “Then get in.”

  “You’re the reason we’re in this mess. Why should I come with you?”

  The blind woman pushed forward, extending her hand to me. Then she removed her long checkered scarf, a gumcha I think they call it, to reveal a scaly pinkish snake she had coiled around her neck. My heart skipped a beat and I jolted backward as the snake slithered down her arm and into her hand toward me. I’ve got to say right now: I hate snakes. I don’t know why, but they just creep me out, like circus clowns, and rats. There was only so far I could go to get away though. I backed right into a wall. The pink snake looked nearly translucent in places, its forked tongue tasting the air.

  “Please come,” the woman in the rickshaw said. “It is not safe here.”

  Really, it’s not safe? Imagine that. Did she think I wanted to stay? Without warning, the blind woman placed her bony fingers over my eyes. I couldn’t believe it was happening. The snake was close to my face now. Close enough that I could hear it hissing in my ear. I pulled my head away from the woman’s bony grasp.