Wild Meat

by Newton, Nero

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when he arrived in the logging camp. Like the previous day’s visitor, he correctly guessed that the trailer at the edge of the clearing was where he could find someone in charge. Next to the trailer he saw a black Land Rover, identical to his own, and figured it must belong to the photographer.

  But there were no tents, nothing that looked like a makeshift clinic or a place where food might be distributed.

  The foreman emerged from the trailer and introduced himself, and Hugh asked, “Where is everybody?”

  “Sir?”

  “The relief trucks. The photographer. Why isn’t anyone prepared for the pictures?”

  So the foreman explained, and Hugh started to blow up at him, but only got as far as, “Jesus Christ–” before checking himself. He might need this man’s cooperation.

  In an effort to calm himself down, he slogged off through the mud, following a row of trucks parked in a line along the edge of the clearing. His face was hot. He felt lousy from the couple of beers he’d knocked off during the drive, and a headache was coming on. He needed another vacation already.

  Tomorrow it was back to the load of whatever monotonous crap was in his inbox, including a lot of whining from William about how Hugh had screwed up and missed the photo shoot, as though it mattered. The timber-journal people had probably gone ahead and pasted his face onto a logging scene from a file photo, which should have been their plan in the first place.

  There was nothing to do now except turn around and head back. The return trip was a miserable prospect, but he wasn’t staying here, late as it was. No way. This place stank even worse than the one other camp he’d visited.

  He wanted to go home, have a couple of drinks and some food, and sleep. More than that, he wanted to close his eyes right now and be home when he opened them. He walked back to the trailer.

  “There’s one thing I need from you,” he told the foreman. “A driver. A good one who won’t wreck my jeep. I’ll pay him fifty U.S. dollars, and another fifty goes to you for getting him. I want to sleep on my way back to Prospérité.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then he remembered Mud Woman. “Are you the one who called last night?” he asked. “About an American woman who came to the camp?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hugh felt himself smile. “I think I just saw her on the road about an hour ago.”

  “She’s alive?” The foreman actually sounded pleased.

  “She was dragging pretty badly.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marcel looked at the stock of bushmeat that remained in the freezer next to his trailer. Wilson, the regional production manager, usually sent someone every few weeks to pick up a supply of it, paying more than triple the usual price. There was a rumor about Wilson serving the stuff – sometimes entertaining government officials, and sometimes entertaining himself by serving it to shocked fellow foreigners new to the country. But the impending closure of the camp had disrupted all regular comings and goings. The freezer was filling up, and Marcel needed to make room for more important things. He decided to sell off the meat at a discount to a truck driver, someone who could unload it easily at some street-side market in the city.

  The freezer ran off a small gas generator that also powered a mini refrigerator, from which Marcel now took four bottles of cold beer. He went looking for the old man and, when he found him, said, “I think we might not be lost, after all.” His voice was full of excitement at the idea that had just come to him.

  The old man didn’t reach for the offered beer.

  Marcel tried again. “You know the white man who just came in the Land Rover? It was Hugh Sanderson.”

  After a minute the old man said, “From the family that owns the company?”

  “That’s right. He was supposed to be here almost a week ago, but he got the date wrong. Don’t ask me how it’s possible, but he didn’t even realize that this camp was closing.”

  “A member of that family here in the camp.” The old man spoke quietly, still as full of resignation as he’d been the night before. “Should I be excited?”

  “He is the company’s top man in the country,” Marcel said. “He has the authority to make sure some things are left here when the rest of the camp evacuates. Equipment like the generator and the freezer, and probably whatever else we need. He could even help us expand.”

  “But why would he?” The old man shook his head. “We have nothing to offer him. He doesn’t need money. He doesn’t need anything that we could ever give him….”

  Marcel only stared at the old man smiling, waiting for understanding to dawn.

  The old man frowned, remaining quiet for a moment while he sized up the situation. Then suddenly he was smiling, too, reaching for the beer he’d refused earlier, and fifty years had vanished from his face. “How will we do it?”

  “I think it should be the natural way,” Marcel said. “I’m guessing that will make him more…pliable.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “Maybe a week. Maybe less.”

  “Won’t he be missed?” the old man asked.

  “He will call his office and say whatever we need him to say. And maybe…,” Marcel paused again. “…maybe I can get him to take those two idiots off our hands. Let him pay them off, so we won’t have to anymore.”

  “The guards?”

  “Sure. They’ll be happy enough to go back to the city in style, maybe live with the other servants in that big mansion. If Mr. Sanderson lets them use a company car, they won’t even ask for anything more.” He shook his head in revulsion. “They’re like children. You know that big one? Last night he panicked and shot one of the animals just because it surprised him. Shot it with a regular gun, I mean. I had already put a dart in the thing, and all we had to do was wait. He was in no danger, all suited up in crash helmet and leather, but he saw the thing land on the ground close to him, and he acted like a scared little girl. Now it’s dead, good for nothing but a few kilos of meat.”

  “Hugh Sanderson,” the old man said slowly. “Now, who could have guessed that Hugh Sanderson would be the face of salvation.”

  “Salvation,” Marcel repeated. He cracked a beer for himself and raised the bottle, letting cold foam dribble over his fingers and down his arm.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was nearly sunset when Amy got her first view of the broad lowland outside the basin. The forest canopy looked like a soft cushion of green far below. She wanted to just sleep up here on the ridge, but knew she had no time to spare. Even past this ridge, she was still forty miles from the main highway, and her wounds could not go untreated much longer.

  She’d banged her knee when the big chimp sent her flying; now it was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe and all green-purple-brown. The abrasions on her left arm and side had stung all day from her sweat and the constant movement, and her elbows were darkly bruised from Barrel Guard’s grip. She touched her fingertips to as much of the gash on her back as she could reach, and found that it had become raised and hardened, most likely already infected. Probably as red as embers if she could see it. The claw punctures on her shoulder were swollen and tender. Hours earlier, she’d coated all her exposed skin with mud for protection from the sun, but now parts of her were burned where the mud had worn thin.

  If she made it to the main north-south highway by the next morning, then managed to hitch a ride to the capital, she could be in a clinic within less than twenty-four hours. Then she could head back to Senegal and finish her work there. She was about to hand over a big sum of money to a non-governmental organization that that worked on cleaning up the coastal wetlands; as a result, the runoff that flowed straight into a major sea-turtle breeding area would hopefully be much less toxic. The spying mission she’d sent Robert on had been a very minor side project, and now it had nearly killed her. It might kill her yet.

  As she started down the ridge’s eastern slope, a light breeze chilled h
er sweat-soaked upper body and she shivered for a second or two. She took another step, and then trembled violently for several seconds, the muscles in her limbs contracting with astonishing force. Were these fever chills? Was she that sick already?

  An instant later, she felt another tremor come on, but it subsided with only a yawn. She continued down the road.

  At least walking at night would not be so grueling. Her dashes into the bush to avoid being spotted had gotten steadily less energetic as the day dragged. She had not been able to dash anywhere when the guy in the Land Rover rolled by her on the blasted-out pass. That stretch of road had been flanked by sheer rock walls that she couldn’t have climbed even on a good day.

  She had stared at the Land Rover because at first she thought it was her own, but then saw that the roof rack was different. The driver had stared back through his wrap-around sunglasses, and Amy’s glimpse of that tanned, sharp face had reminded her an awful lot of Hugh Sanderson as he appeared in the company’s eco-friendly PR clips. But how likely was it that he would come out to a nearly abandoned logging camp in person?

  CHAPTER NINE

  The sun was already setting when Hugh Sanderson stretched out in the back seat of his Land Rover. Marcel had recruited two logging hands, teenagers with hard, stringy limbs, wearing sleeveless shirts. One looked about seventeen, the other maybe as young as twelve. They were excited. The younger one opened the driver’s door, pretending he was going to take the wheel. The older one picked him up so his arms were pinned to his hips and toted him around to the passenger side, making siren noises while his captive shrieked with giggles. They were out of their heads at the prospect of handling a late-model Land Rover.

  Marcel leaned in the back window and said, in his halting English, “I just heard that a truck is stopped on the road. Fall over on its side so you cannot get around it. But this one…” he pointed to the younger boy in the front passenger seat “…he know a trail through the bush to go around that place. He comes along to show your driver.”

  Sanderson nodded, then stretched out as best he could in the back seat. The engine started up and he felt the vehicle moving.

  Fifteen minutes or so outside the camp, the Land Rover slowed and turned right, onto a bumpy surface. Some time later they slowed even more, and Hugh sat up to look around. He hoped this meant they were about to turn onto the highway and finally get moving for real. But the headlights illuminated nothing but a two low structures at the side of the trail, like sheds made of ragged sheet metal.

  The driver put on the brake.

  “I hope we’re not lost,” Hugh Sanderson said.

  No one offered an answer. The driver cut the engine and turned off the headlights. The two teenagers stayed mostly silent, occasionally exchanging a few hushed words in some local tongue.

  Then other headlight beams were filling the Land Rover from behind. At the toot of a horn, both the driver and the younger kid leapt out and raced to another vehicle about ten feet back.

  Sanderson opened his door, struggled groggily outside, and looked back to see the youngsters disappear behind the blinding hi-beams. He heard their nervous laughter, then two car doors slamming.

  Out of the light another figure emerged, someone wearing a motorcycle crash helmet and bundled in so many layers of clothing that his arms could not hang straight down at his sides, like the arms of a toddler in a heavy winter coat. The figure came toward Sanderson for a moment, then changed direction and headed for the door of one of the sheds. The person fiddled noisily with something and then pulled a whole wall aside. A stench arose, sharp and nauseating. Something between a horribly maintained public restroom and road-killed skunk. From inside the shed came a sound like a metal chain being dragged.

  The headlights disappeared, and Hugh Sanderson could see nothing but shifting after-images. The dragging sound sped up, then changed to a few leaden chimes, as though someone were dangling a chain, occasionally letting it touch the soft ground and briefly crumple on itself.

  Something slammed into his side. The impact wrenched his neck and sent him through the air. He hit the ground and felt a soft, heavy mass fall on him, something about the weight of a golden retriever.

  Clawed feet scrambled lightly back and forth on his arm. The touch seemed too weak, or maybe too delicate, for whatever had just knocked him over. The stench grew stronger, suffocating him. His face was stinging, especially his eyes, which were now clamped shut. His nose burned as though flooded with seriously over-chlorinated pool water.

  A few yards away, someone said, “Welcome” in accented English, the word muffled inside the crash helmet. Through his shock and confusion, Sanderson could recognize the logging foreman’s voice, and thought he heard a streak of fierce amusement in it. “Welcome to the jungle!”

  When he managed to open his watering eyes, the area was becoming brighter, though not from any headlights. There was a general glow throughout the forest. Sanderson looked around at the foliage, and even as he watched, the trees and vines and undergrowth disappeared, giving way to a subtly shifting luminescence overlaid with a scotch-tweed pattern pulsing with color after color.

  He could smell the perfume of the Australian woman he’d met last week in the islands. For some reason he imagined that the growing light and color emanated from that smell, though he could not identify the source of either. Something seemed to lift him far into the air.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sometime after midnight, Amy hauled herself up the side of a fully loaded logging truck that had slowed to a crawl on a steep incline.

  She fell asleep almost immediately, lying flat on the truck bed under the overhang of an enormous tree trunk. Her first few descents into REM sleep were haunted by dreams in which someone unknown pursued her through a network of dark forest trails. No matter which way she ran, her escape was eventually blocked by an enormous white rabbit that lay on its side, vomiting up rivers of black Jello.

  Well past sunrise, she awoke to find that the truck had left the logging road and was on the country’s main north-south highway, headed north toward the capital. It was slowing down, and she could see people on the roadside ahead. Boys were waving to the driver, who responded with a blast of the air horn. Soon the boys would see Amy, and she had no desire to find out what would happen if they pointed her out to whoever was at the wheel.

  Still under the overhang of the great log, she crawled on her belly toward the rear of the truck in search of a hiding place. The log turned out to be shorter than the truck bed, but the area behind it was completely blocked by a mound of cargo covered with a blue plastic tarpaulin.

  She started to climb up over the mound, heading further back, but then realized that a solution had just presented itself. She backed up, undid a knot in the nylon twine that held down the tarp, pulled aside a flap, and wiggled under. To get the flap back down, she had to displace some of the loose bulk beneath her, burrowing in slightly.

  The air under the plastic was heavy and cloying, and it made a heady, too-sweet taste deep in her throat. She breathed in and out once, started a second inhalation, then gagged and threw up the few grams of water in her stomach.

  She was lying on a heap of dead animals.

  Matted fur itched at her assortment of wounds. Chopped-off bones scraped and poked, and one of them put a long slice in her forearm when the truck lurched. Slimy surfaces made her slide a little with each bump in the road, though the truck was barely moving now. There were cold spots here and there, as though some of the meat had been frozen not long before. At first she tried to make as little contact as possible with the carcasses, but that only made her slip around more, and movement was something she needed to avoid. Reluctantly, she let her weight rest fully on the mess, settling into a position in which she could remain still without bracing herself.

  There came the clunk and grind of downshifting, and seconds later the truck was still. She heard the cab door open and close, then a lot of chatter at the roadside.

  A
ripple of panic hit her as she wondered whether the meat might be the sole reason the driver had stopped here. It wouldn’t sell for as much in the countryside as in the city, but he might be planning to unload some of it now, or maybe just show it off. The voices were coming from her side of the truck. They were still up near the cab, but she began to feel sure the tarp would be pulled away any second. They’d all get a rollicking good shock at the sight of her lying there, looking almost as bloody as the rest of the heap.

  She breathed slowly, trying to relax her neck and limbs, keeping as still as possible. The slightest movement would rustle the tarp. People would think an animal had gotten in and was eating the meat. She pictured the driver whisking away the blue plastic and swinging a machete before even looking.

  The chatter by the roadside dragged on and on while Amy waited, getting woozy from the lack of fresh air. She was almost dozing by the time the voices began to move toward the other side of the road.

  A moment later she peeked out and saw no one. No activity at all, just a fallow field stretching a hundred yards to the edge of the forest. If there was a village nearby, it must have been on the other side of the highway, the sight of it blocked by the truck and its load of timber.

  Amy slid to the ground. Her first thought was to head straight into the trees, but she hesitated. Bushmeat was the main reason she’d sent a spy to the logging operation in the first place, and the heap of it in front of her would surely make for better photos than the ones she’d taken of the hunter’s meager kill back at the camp. Here was proof that Sanderson Tropical Timber was not living up to its promise to stamp out poaching in its concessions.

  She undid the twine that held down the tarp and pulled it back to expose the entire pile of dead things. The heap was about the size of a large home refrigerator tipped on its side.