Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1)

by Lars Guignard

  But thankfully, so was the tunnel. The tunnel was it, I thought, Zak’s one chance. The bus sped toward it. I wanted to warn Zak without alerting Rhino Butt, but I didn’t know how. Finally, I just jumped up and screamed.

  “Bug zapper!”

  Everybody on the front of the roof ducked. I ducked praying that Zak knew what I was trying to tell him. That was when Rhino Butt decided to stop playing nice. He lunged at Zak with the knife. And Zak dove down flat on the roof of the bus. Seeing everybody else bent low, Rhino Butt whirled to see the mouth of the tunnel about to take him out. Rhino Butt was no slouch though. Without a moment to spare, he leapt off the roof of the bus and onto the rocky slope of the mountainside.

  I watched as we sailed into the tunnel without him, Rhino Butt sliding down the rocky shale cliffside to the road below. It was dark in the tunnel, the low rock ceiling whipping past inches above our noses, but what was scarier still had been the look on Rhino Butt’s face. It was a mean, nasty look. The look, I thought, of a man who was very, very bad. The bus blasted through the tunnel and five seconds later, we were back under the bright sky, the Himalayas looming ever larger in the distance. Zak watched as the bus passed a fork in the road. Beneath the Hindi lettering, a white stone mile marker read Tatura. I remembered the name from the night before, but given what had just happened, I thought we had more immediate concerns.

  “Wasn’t that our turn?” Zak said.

  I looked backward, but didn’t reply. It wasn’t over yet. Our bus was now being followed by a green army Jeep. Rhino Butt’s men were with him. I recognized them from the airport. One sat in the driver’s seat, Rhino Butt beside him, while the other sat in the back. It was weird, but it looked like the guy in the back was doing something to his teeth, like I don’t know, filing them? Both Zak and I stared at all three of them as the bus sailed down the steep grade.

  “Maybe we can outrun him,” Zak said.

  The Jeep was gone for a moment, but rounded a corner and was that much closer. It was definitely gaining on us.

  “In a creaky old bus? This isn’t a video game, Zak. He is totally going to catch us.”

  I burrowed my way under a heavy canvas tarpaulin.

  “What are you doing?” Zak asked.

  “Hiding.”

  Even I had to admit, hiding didn’t make much sense, but I wasn’t at my most rational right then and there. The bus was really going. Faster than the whole time we had been on it. I closed my eyes and wished I could burrow farther down, right through the metal roof, right though the bus and under the road where I could disappear. But I knew that wishing and doing were two different things and it wasn’t likely that I’d be able to do any of that. I couldn’t do the impossible, so I’d have to hope for the best. Suddenly a strange silence filled the air. I didn’t hear the engine of the bus. I didn’t smell exhaust. All I heard was the wind. I popped my head out from under the canvas.

  “I think the driver cut the engine,” Zak said.

  I knew that it would be awhile before I could drive a car, but why would the driver do that? I'd been driving around since I was in a baby seat and my mother had never turned off the engine while driving. I was pretty sure that was a crazy thing to do. Zak seemed to know what I was thinking.

  “Saves gas, I guess,” Zak said.

  “Holy India,” I said quietly. I had caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye. Something I wasn’t sure I had actually seen.

  “I know, isn’t this place nuts? We should travel without our parents more often.”

  “Holy, insane, crazy India.”

  I wasn’t a hundred percent certain my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Because I saw elephants — lots of elephants. We snaked around a corner and the elephants disappeared for a moment, but then they were back again and bigger than ever. A huge, long line of them blocked the entire road. There was no way the bus could stop in time. About the only thing that could save us would be the elephants sprouting wings and flapping away. Or the bus could transform into a flying fighting robot. But I didn’t see either of those things happening. Not in this life anyway. We were close enough that I could stare the lead elephant straight in the face. The elephant had a red flower painted on its gray forehead and soft, kind, watery eyes. I grinned, but I was terrified. We were headed straight for it. That’s when I heard the bus’s brakes screech to life. I felt my body leave the roof of the bus as I was hurled forward. Wind in my hair and the sun in my eyes, I rocketed through the air convinced that I was about to die.

  11

  AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS

  I flew forward over the roof of the bus for what felt like forever. The brakes screeched in my ears. But that crazy elephant luck was on my side. I slammed into the toothless farmer at the front of the bus, stopping cold. Toothless was roped to the roof rack, so he didn’t move much, but Zak wasn’t so lucky. He missed Toothless and sailed straight through the gap over the front of the bus. I couldn’t believe it. One minute Zak was there and the next he was gone.

  I heard a loud crack over the squeal of the brakes, but I couldn’t place it. What I did notice, however, was the silver tip of Zak's whip, Stryker, wrapped around the front bar of the roof rack. The bus lurched to a stop and I peered over the front of it. Holy India! Zak hung there, holding Stryker’s handle in both hands as he dangled in front of the cracked windshield. He must have somehow been able to crack his whip in the nick of time.

  “You OK?” I asked.

  “Yeah, great.”

  “Lucky you had Stryker.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  I watched as the big bull elephant sniffed Zak from behind. The elephant was eye level with Zak as he dangled there. He looked at Zak apologetically, as if he understood that Zak was in a difficult position but he also needed to get by. Then the elephant lifted his trunk and trumpeted. It sounded like a fog horn going off in a coat closet to me. I can only imagine how loud it was to Zak. Then the elephant rubbed his trunk up Zak's back. It looked like he was either going to squeeze him or kiss him to death.

  The elephant kissed him. As Zak hung there, the elephant put the end of his snotty trunk on Zak’s head and blew. I could barely watch it was so gross. It looked like the attack of the snot monster or something. I ducked my head lower, praying that the elephant wouldn’t see me. My strategy worked. The elephant ignored me completely. He removed his trunk from Zak's head and the bus started its engine. The bus then backed into a turnout next to the rock wall giving the elephants just enough room to squeeze past if they walked single file.

  Zak continued to hang there by his whip as we backed up. Looking past him, I could see that a short, middle-aged man with dark hair and wise eyes rode just behind the head of the first elephant. That would be the mahout, the Hindi name for an elephant driver. I hadn’t noticed him earlier, maybe because I was preoccupied with the fact that I was about to die. The mahout wore a small cotton sack around his neck. The rest of the seven or eight elephants were roped together behind him, pigs and chickens and snakes living in the wooden pots and cages lashed to their backs. I guess Zak was getting tired of hanging there because he reached up for the roof rack, pulling himself up onto the bus's roof. Once he was up top, he sprawled out alongside a sack of apricots.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I think so,” Zak said.

  “I’m pretty sure we need a plan,” I said.

  “Follow me.”

  Zak looped a shoulder bag around his neck and grabbed me by the arm. I don’t know where his second shoulder bag was, but he didn’t seem overly concerned. I grabbed one of my shoulder bags too. Everything had gone flying to the front of the roof in that crazy stop and I saw no reason to leave it there, even if I couldn’t find the other bag. I looked down at the giant beast struggling to get past the bus.

  “An elephant is not a plan, Zak.”

  “Neither is staying on this roof.”

  Zak had a point. We leapt from the top of the bus to the bac
k of the lead elephant. We almost fell off as we landed several feet behind the mahout. There was all kinds of stuff tied there: a chair with a broken leg, a steering wheel from an old car, a padded vinyl bar stool, but mostly goats. Five goats, all in a big bamboo cage. There was also a crocodile. It was in another cage on the other side of the goats and it looked like it wanted to eat us. Zak's foot slipped through the bamboo slats of the crocodile cage as he fought to get his balance back. The crocodile’s jaws snapped shut, narrowly missing Zak's sneaker. Zak pulled his foot out of the cage and hunched down with me on the other side of the elephant, behind the goats.

  I heard the bus drive on without us. We didn’t find cover a moment too soon. The Jeep came to a screeching halt in front of us. Zak and I were hidden behind the goats, so we could only peek though the bamboo cage, but what we saw was scary. Rhino Butt reached over from the passenger side and pounded down on the horn of the Jeep. What was strange was the calm in his driver’s eyes. It looked like he was challenging the elephant, one wild animal to another. The driver stared down our elephant, our elephant not giving up an inch. Then our elephant snorted and the driver did the same thing. Finally, our elephant tapped his foot. Zak and I could feel the elephant’s movement from where we huddled. Rhino Butt’s driver revved his engine as if to answer the elephant. I was getting worried. Where would a duel between a Jeep and an elephant go? Our elephant had tusks, but the Jeep had spiked hooks on its bumper. Whatever happened, it would be ugly.

  But instead of charging, our elephant stood up on its hind legs. We scrambled to hang onto the bars of the bamboo goat cage as our elephant trumpeted, its deep call echoing through the hills. Tumbling goats licked our fingers from inside their cage.

  “This isn’t fun,” I whispered through clenched teeth.

  “You think?” Zak said.

  Our elephant continued to trumpet. I felt the burn in my arms. I didn’t know how much longer I could hang on. The elephant’s hide was scratchy and rough. It smelled like moist earth.

  I heard the Jeep’s engine rev loudly again, but this time, there was a hum, like it was going backward. I struggled to keep my balance as our elephant lowered himself back down onto all four feet and plodded slowly ahead. We were hidden behind the goat cage, but not well enough that someone couldn’t see us if they were really looking. It didn’t matter though. There wasn’t a lot we could do now. I could see Rhino Butt in the Jeep. Our elephant was walking right past him. I crouched there with Zak, between the crocodile and the goats. I could see the driver as well as Rhino Butt and the guy in the back seat who had been filing his teeth. Both the driver and the guy in the back had the same scary, half-asleep, watery gleam to their dark eyes. That gleam and their sharp yellow teeth sent a chill down my spine. Peeking through the bamboo bars, I watched as the driver cringed away from the swinging charm around the mahout’s neck.

  We remained absolutely still as we plodded past. Even the goats seemed to back away from the Jeep in fear. Then I felt our elephant stop. Rhino Butt was staring straight at us. I was so close to Zak that I smelled the elephant’s sickly sweet snot-slobber on his head. I held my breath. Zak did the same. Rhino Butt just stared. I could see him in his Jeep. Then one of the goats moved and I couldn’t see anything but dirty white fur. I felt movement and our elephant started walking again. A moment later I heard the roar of the Jeep’s engine as it pulled away. After that all I heard was the gentle breathing of our elephant. Nothing else.

  “Is he gone?” I asked.

  Zak peered out from between the goats. “I think so.”

  “You think so or you know so?”

  Zak looked behind us and then in front of us. I raised my own head. There were a few tiny run-down stalls up the road in the distance, but no sign of Rhino Butt or his Jeep anywhere.

  “He’s gone,” Zak said, breathing a deep sigh of relief.

  Our elephant stopped at the stalls. The stalls were made of stone capped with rusted tin roofs and inside of them, men drank steaming chai from tall glasses. I looked over the backside of the elephant. It was a long way down to the ground below. Zak, never one to dally, took one look and slid right down the elephant’s butt. He landed in a crouch, but he was OK, so I followed him. It was my first chance to have a really good look at Zak since the bus top. The elephant slobber on his head had dried, causing his hair to stick out in crazy directions like he’d put in too much hair goop. I would have taken a picture, but I held my nose instead. Zak stank. Whatever was in the elephant snot, it did not smell good.

  “You stink like a bag of snot,” I said.

  “Be nice. We both owe that elephant.”

  “You’re right.” I patted the side of the elephant. “What are we going to do, Zak?”

  “Ooh.”

  Zak looked away. I was confused until I saw what he was staring at. Our elephant was taking a poop. Make that a giant poop. I kid you not, the poop was the size of a basketball, or more accurately, basketballs. There were more than one of them. The huge round poops steamed as they dropped to the ground at our feet, pieces of straw poking out from inside of them.

  “Eww!” I said holding my nose and looking away.

  “What did you say?” Zak asked.

  “I said gross.”

  “No. You were asking what we were going to do.”

  “Rhino Butt tried to kill you, Zak.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he was just mad.”

  “He was more than mad. He was insane.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “I think we should give him the map, Zak.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly,” Zak said. “That’s why we need to keep it.”

  I looked around. There were donkeys tethered outside the tea stalls. They had thick, colorful blankets on their backs like saddles. Our big elephant kneeled down and the mahout stepped off its head.

  “What do you think that guy’s called?” Zak said. “He’s not like a race car driver or a truck diver, he’s an elephant driver. Do you think elephant drivers get their own name?”

  “A mahout,” I said. “They call him a mahout.” I made a note to myself that I should finish reading that last book about India that my mom had given me. I hadn’t gotten through the whole thing yet and I was worried that pretty soon, I wouldn’t be able to answer Zak's questions.

  “Cool,” Zak said. “When I grow up I want to be a mahout.”

  The mahout stepped toward us. He smiled and took out a knife. Both Zak and I stepped back. Our experience with knives had not been positive so far. But the mahout didn’t try to attack us, he just bent down and cut a small slice out of the steaming pile of elephant dung.

  “Double gross,” I said quietly.

  The mahout ignored me. “The Vanara is evil. Elephant knows,” he said.

  The mahout took a small cotton sack out of his pocket. The sack was off-white and exactly the same as the sack he had hanging from a black cord around his own neck. I recognized the cord as elephant hair. It was thick, like leather, and they sold it at the jewelry-making shops back home that I sometimes went to with my mother. The mahout opened the sack and stuck the steaming elephant poop inside of it. Then he tied it tight with a second black elephant-hair cord. The mahout reached toward me.

  “No, no, no,” I said, ducking away, back toward the elephant.

  Unable to reach me, the mahout turned to Zak with the elephant-poop necklace.

  “Easy now,” Zak said.

  The mahout looped the stinking charm around Zak's neck. Zak checked it out. I swear, he seemed to like it. I guess it didn’t smell too bad. Not compared to his own head. The mahout then reached into his pocket and pulled out an old, brightly colored postcard. The postcard was creased and worn, but it showed what looked like a warrior or soldier fighting off an evil-looking Monkey Man under a fiery orange sky. The monkey and soldier looked kind of like what Mukta had shown us in the brass pot. Not only that, but the
warrior wore the same sort of yellow yak-hair hat with jingling bells that Zak had bought back at the bazaar.

  “Follow the way, Mud Devils,” the mahout said.

  Mud Devils? That was weird. How did he know Mukta had called us that? The mahout bowed his head and put his hands together, his fingers pointing upward, just as the other people we had met had. Then he walked away.

  I walked toward the stalls. I wasn’t really hungry, but I was curious. The stalls looked like they mainly sold chai, the donkeys with thick blankets on their backs tethered outside.

  “Want anything?” Zak asked.

  I shook my head as Zak wandered inside one of the stalls. I stayed outside and paced. I guess maybe curious wasn’t the best way to describe how I was feeling. I was wired. I felt like I was still on that rooftop flying through the air at a million miles an hour. My heart was still racing and I knew I need to slow it down. If I didn’t, it would probably explode. I looked around. The road ended a few feet from where I stood, a path continuing between two towering rocks. I guessed we were in Tatura. Mukta had said that where the road ends, the way to Tendua Tibba began. What I really wanted, which I hadn’t told Zak, was a minute to compose myself. I took a deep breath to try and slow my racing heart. Though I hoped that the guys in the Jeep were gone, I wasn’t counting on it. That would be too easy and nothing about this trip had been easy so far. I took a deep breath, in and out, in and out, my heart slowly calming. Not long after, Zak came back out pulling two donkeys on a rope behind him. He held a handful of samosas in his open palm, one already in his mouth.

  “You have to try one. It’s a samosa,” he said. “Potato and spices in this triangular shell. They’re like a three-dimensional corn chip. They’re great.” Zak finished chewing. “I rented these donkeys. The guys inside say they know the way.”

  I was silent while Zak shoved the samosas into his mouth.

  “It’s really simple. We pull the donkey’s tails to get them to go. Pull again and they stop.”