by Peter Tonkin
There were men out there in the forest who had done this thing. Men perhaps close nearby. To her feeling of horror was added a new one: terror.
She found herself beside the Land Rover and knew that she had run away. Holding herself still, holding every quivering muscle of her body still by the same exercise of mental power which had enabled Harry to hold the Land Rover upright when he had swerved to avoid the first body, she made herself stand there. Her stomach clenched agonisingly as though she had contracted the most virulent food poisoning. She needed the toilet urgently. She needed to vomit again. Instead, she stood absolutely still while she willed her heartbeat to slow down. After a time, she thought it might be safe to move. She tore open the door and reached inside for her carry-all. She ripped it open, pulled out a roll of film and reloaded her camera. Then she took a deep breath. Turning round was the bravest thing she had ever done. Walking back took so much courage it was worth a Congressional Medal of Honour.
Harry looked up as she returned. There was profound respect in his eyes: he had never seen terror more ruthlessly overcome. Ann noticed nothing of this. ‘I want to get the sequence right while I still have the light,’ she said. ‘A series of pictures in the right sequence to show what order it happened in.’
‘They came out of the forest and through the torn stockade,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they used vehicles. Just large numbers and automatic weapons. There were only old men and boys here.’
She framed the distant forest with the sun glinting off tall trunks and eyes and teeth in the lower shadows. She framed the pathetic pile of tumbled thorn bushes. The untidy jumble of riddled bodies. A withered hand still holding a carved club. A young fist holding a shattered spear.
‘Then they wiped out all the old women and the children.’ Robert took up the story as she finished recording the single-bullet executions made so much more simple when the babies were clutched to withered breasts and a brain shot became a heart shot and carried on right through. ‘Then they rounded up the young good-looking ones and took their time. Did some raping and played a couple of games.’ He was worrying more nubile bodies out of the centre of the pile and placing them beside the ones Ann had already photographed. Time after time the strange pattern of wounds was repeated.
‘Tell me,’ Ann demanded, alerted by the tone of his voice.
‘Target practice.’ He rolled one of the bodies over gently and the pattern of wounds on the front immediately made its own obscene, horrific sense. ‘Stand them against a wall. Restrain them if necessary,’ said Robert, his voice dead. ‘Use six bullets. Got to be quick. Accurate. It’s a sort of ritual. Only a certain kind can do it.’ Robert pointed distantly, his whole body as far away from the dead N’Kuru girl as he could practically get and still be clear in his explanation. ‘One shot through the pubic bone, one through the belly button, one for each nipple and one for each eye.’
Ann’s knees buckled and she found herself kneeling by the ravaged corpse. Her camera dangled at the end of her numb arm, the last vestige of its fictitious protection gone. What she really wanted to do was scream and scream.
‘And these poor girls stood there? And allowed them to do this?’
‘They’ll have let some off, maybe taken them with them,’ said Robert. ‘Held the rest in place with ropes tied round their wrists.’
‘And those who refused got an alternative.’ Harry gestured to the pile of corpses he had been dealing with. The strange wounds in their upper chests, shoulders and faces made all too much sense now. They were all exit wounds where bullets had torn out. There were no entry wounds. No obvious entry wounds at all. ‘That’s what happens,’ said Harry quietly, incongruously, as though he was talking of gardening or cricket. ‘That’s what happens when you’re raped with a rifle.’
Ann went out then, as though she had been clubbed over the head. It was simply too much for her to handle. Her brain shorted out like an electric machine on overload. She pitched forward into a bundle on the ground, seemingly as dead as the rest of the women in the compound. Harry reached over and pushed his hand under the scarf covering her neck. His fingers, thickly crusted with dried blood, felt the powerful surge of her pulse. ‘She’ll be OK. Put her in the Land Rover, would you?’
Robert picked her up with the same tenderness he had shown the corpses. She had left the back door of the Land Rover open and so he had no difficulty in lying her along the back seat, using her hold-all as a pillow. He twisted her legs enough to allow the door to close so that she would not get covered by flies before she came to. The last thing he did was to take her camera.
As the western sky, hill of red dust from the dry farms, went the same colour as the blood leaking from the pathetic pile of corpses and the short sharp tropical evening closed down upon them, they finished sorting the corpses into some kind of order. Robert used the last of the light to complete the series of photographs that Ann had begun. Made ruthless by the depth of his outrage, he spared the potential viewer nothing, filling the viewfinder with close-ups of faces with their eyes blasted out of their sockets. Of heads riddled from beneath soft chins by point-blank automatic gunfire.
Then, as the whole landscape around them seemed to sink in a sea of blood, the two men stood back, knowing that the darkness had beaten them in the end.
‘I counted two hundred,’ said Robert.
‘About that. Two hundred women, children and old men. I wonder where the warriors have gone.’
‘The word in the camps is “taken by the Lions”.’
‘Taken as in recruited? Or kidnapped? Or killed?’
‘Christ knows.’
‘I think we’re going to find out, though. Soon.’
‘Yeah. No way round that.’
‘Still. . .’
The first lion, made brave by the thickening shadows, leaped over the ruined thorn stockade, like the vanguard of a new army.
‘Time to go,’ said Robert as the sound from the forest swept towards them like the charge of a screaming horde.
They walked slowly back to the Land Rover, their eyes everywhere, knowing they were relatively safe because they were surrounded by so much easily taken food, but concerned that sudden movement might trigger some reaction from the blood-crazed animals around them.
In the Land Rover, they peeled off the crusted gloves, then sat, side by side, too stunned and emotionally drained for decision or action. Mercifully, the night came quickly and, although there were stars, there was no moon due until much later. It was a mercy that they could not see the sights which accompanied the cacophony of sickening sounds with which they were soon surrounded. Like corpses propped up on the Land Rover’s seats, they stayed for an uncounted period of time, and it was not until a leopard charged up onto the bonnet, making an escape with its prize stolen from an angry group of hyenas, then leaped up onto the roof to feed, that the men were jolted out of their shock. The vehicle rocked forward as the big cat leaped up, then the heavy canvas roof sagged dangerously beneath it as it settled just above Robert’s head. The eyeless head and burst torso of one of the girls who had been used for target practice slammed face down across the windscreen mere inches from the black man’s eyes and he jumped awake with a scream. Harry exploded into wakefulness beside him. ‘Go!’ screamed Robert. Harry fired up the ignition and the Land Rover quivered into life. He stamped on the clutch and shoved the big old gearshift into reverse. Robert slammed the Remington’s barrel up into the snarling softness above his head. ‘Go!’ he screamed again and pulled the trigger, so that when the Land Rover leaped backwards towards the opening in the stockade behind them, the cat and its meal were blasted up into the air to tumble back down upon the flat bonnet and away. As the vehicle shot backwards, both of Harry’s hands upon the wheel, Robert leant forward and hit the lights. Twin beams of brightness wavered wildly over the unspeakable feast going on there but all that could be seen clearly was the group of thwarted hyenas moving in around the headless leopard. Over the sound of the shrieking eng
ine, the mad cackle of their victorious laughter followed the horrified humans into the night.
~ * ~
Ann jumped awake. She was inside a long box being thrown around like a die in an energetic game. Her legs were twisted so that each movement of her body hurt her knees. There was absolute darkness nearby but a kind of a glow above her illuminated the head and shoulders of a man a metre or so away. She couldn’t remember what she had been dreaming about but the terror of the nightmare filled her with an almost uncontrollable dread. Somewhere, perhaps in her fleeing dream, a group of creatures were laughing the sort of laughter she had always imagined Jack the Ripper must have laughed when he was at work upon the bodies of his victims. Whatever she was lying on came up and smacked her in the back of her head.
The head outlined against the darkness turned to profile and faced another, smaller, head outlined beside it. ‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going, Harry? This isn’t the way back.’
‘We’ve still got to find my askaris, Robert.’
‘Are you out of your mind? Out here? In the dark?’
‘There’ll be no dangerous animals in the forest for miles around. We’ll be safe if we’re careful. And the moon’ll be up soon.’
‘The moon?’
‘Full moon tonight. It’ll be as bright as day.’
‘You’re out of your fucking ...’
Abruptly the two figures in the front were wrestling together. The box Ann was trapped in really began to get thrown about. Her stomach rebelled and she felt her throat flood with burning liquid. She jerked upright, choking. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said urgently. ‘Harry, I’m going to be sick now?
The Land Rover juddered to a halt and she threw the door open just in time, hurling herself forward to hang over a pool of darkness into which she emptied what little was left in her stomach. When she was finished, she just hung there, feeling the stillness wash over her. Stillness and, apart from the rumble of the engine, silence.
A wind stirred and leaves whispered peacefully far above. ‘We’re in the forest,’ she observed dreamily and pulled herself up to look around.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Robert, turning to look at her, his face invisible in the shadow except for a flash of teeth and a gleam of eye. ‘You were out cold for more than an hour.’
‘Fine, I guess,’ she answered. ‘But bits of me won’t stop shaking, and other bits of me really want to know if there’s a john around here.’
‘Behind every bush,’ said Harry. ‘But take a torch and look out for scorpions, spiders and snakes. If you can hold it steady enough.’
‘I think I’ll cross my legs just for the time being, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself.’
Harry engaged the gear and the Land Rover rolled forward again. Ann was sitting up now and she could see that they were following a wide beaten track through a forest of tall trees. On either side, framed by the shadows beyond the headlight beams, the low scrub gleamed palely. Every now and then there came a scurry of movement and a flash of reflected light. Up in the shadowy canopy above, dark shapes fluttered, and occasionally the power of their song broke through the monotonous grumble of the engine.
‘This is quite a road,’ said Ann, after a while.
‘It’s an elephant track,’ explained Harry. ‘Shortest way from the grassland down to the Blood River.’
‘And you’re sure they came this way?’ Robert still wasn’t happy to be following the lorry full of Harry’s askaris.
‘They didn’t stop at die village for long,’ answered Harry tersely. ‘This is the way they were coming.’
‘But what’s down here?’
‘The river. Dry now. Congo Libre beyond. No border guards or checkpoints for a couple of hundred kilometres in either direction. That’s about it. The message must have told them that whoever did the killing would be down here too.’
‘You wouldn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to be sure that it’s the likeliest bet,’ growled Robert.
The elephants came running out of the darkness dead ahead straight into the headlight beams just as Robert said ‘bet’. The lead animal was a huge male, trunk high and ears spread. His tusks reached out in two yellow bows two metres long from jaw to rounded tip. To Ann’s startled eyes he looked to be four metres at least to the shoulder and another one and a half to the top of his head. He was on top of them at once and Robert, yelling, leaned across to help Harry wrench the wheel over in a kind of power steering. The game warden’s right foot went flat on the floor, perhaps in reaction to the shock, and the vehicle spun sideways out of the monster’s path to crash into the undergrowth at the side of the track. Ann half fell, half jumped out of the door, to see the long legs and high flanks of the rest of the little herd flash by. ‘Get back in here,’ Harry was yelling. ‘Get back in here, you stupid bitch!’
She stood, entranced, watching as they vanished through a sudden patch of moonlight into the impenetrable shadows behind them, silent as a dream.
A hand fell on her shoulder and she jumped. Turning, she saw Robert. There was moonlight further down the road but only darkness here. The Land Rover’s headlights were pointing directly into a thick bush and one of them was broken. It was impossible to see the expression on his face. ‘Get back into the Rover now, at once,’ he said. His voice was calm, but even more compelling than Harry’s fulminations. ‘Elephants are incredibly dangerous. We were lucky those ones didn’t trample us. If they smell you, it’s a fair bet they’ll come back and tear you to pieces.’
Numbly, she climbed into the back of the vehicle. Harry had got a grip on himself now, but it was clear that he had had more than enough today. The atmosphere was thunderous as Robert climbed in the front.
‘Are you both all right?’ he asked quietly.
‘Yes,’ snapped Harry as he reversed out of the bush.
‘Yeah, I guess,’ answered Ann. ‘Why?’
‘I think I cracked my ribs. My side hurts like a son of a bitch.’
Harry grunted. ‘If you start to cough blood, tell me about it.’
‘If I start to cough blood, I’ll tell the world about it.’
Harry drove more carefully now.
It must take something fairly big to panic a herd of elephants, Ann was thinking. And whatever panicked them might still be down here.
‘I’m just going to switch off the lights and roll forward in neutral,’ said Harry suddenly. ‘It’s all downhill to the river from here and we don’t know what’s waiting down there.’
As the Land Rover rolled down the incline, the forest canopy fell back and the bend of a wide, shallow, dry river valley was slowly revealed. The moon had risen during their drive through the forest and it was as bright as Harry had said it would be - easily bright enough to illuminate the scene in front of them. The river bed curved away like the leg of a giant, slightly bent. They were approaching the curve of the knee where a little promontory jutted, like a kneecap above the dry ground. Here Harry braked and they came silently to a stop.
The solid mud was as grey, cracked and wrinkled as elephant hide in the silent moonlight, and it stretched away on either hand north to the arid source of the dry river and south to the solid sandbar which stopped the lake in the game reserve from draining back down here. On the far bank of the mud channel lay more shadowy forest, belonging to the People’s Marxist Republic of Congo Libre. On this bank, at the foot of a cliff which must have been carved by a current in happier times, lay Harry’s lorry, twisted, burned out, on its side. The marks just up ahead told their own grim but simple story. In the middle of the track, dead ahead, was a crater, such as a land mine might make. This side of the crater was marked with tyre tracks. The far side showed gashed impressions such as a vehicle tumbling end over end might make and circular scorch marks such as might result from a petrol tank igniting. The bankside vegetation was blackened; it had obviously ignited as the blazing truck slid past and then mercifully burned itself out without starting a forest fire.
&
nbsp; Harry opened the door. Stepped down. Took one step. Took another. He moved jerkily, like a robot in an old science fiction film. Robert, however, was liquid grace and speed, out of his door and up behind the little man to catch him by the shoulder and pull him up short. ‘Harry. You don’t know what did that. There might be mines, for heaven’s sake. You understand, Harry? Mines!’
Harry stook looking up at the intense, dark face. ‘What is going on here, Robert?’ he asked. He sounded old, plaintive, confused.
Robert looked back at Ann, his face in the moonlight desperate. She moved to help him at once, sliding out of the Land Rover and onto the solid mud. The night air was cool. A light breeze eddied from behind her, full of forest fragrances. Then the wind changed, and so did the smell. The stench brought back too vividly the sights and sounds and emotions she had felt immediately before she passed out in the village. She screamed at the top of her lungs and turned to run away.
‘Ann!’ The desperation in Robert’s voice brought her up short. Whimpering like a terrified child, she turned to look at him, unaware that she was continuing to back away. ‘Stay here!’ he called urgently. ‘If you go off alone you’ll die. You’ll die, Ann. I promise you!’
