Zambezi

by Tony Park

  Precious had decided she would do what she could to earn some foreign currency from the new American. She had cut some wildflowers from down near the river and put them in an empty half-litre gin bottle that one of the South African fishermen had left on the dining table. When she replaced the tablecloth she had set the flowers in the middle. She was glad the men had gone. They were loud, drunken and uncouth, and they had left the lodge in a disgusting mess. She had collected two bin bags full of empty beer cans and one of the men had let a cigarette burn down on the armrest of a lounge chair. She had reported the burn mark to the head ranger, but she doubted anything would come of it.

  Precious knew how desperate the park was for guests, so the authorities would do nothing to penalise the fishermen, even if they were pigs. They hadn’t tipped her either.

  After making the beds with fresh linen she had polished the concrete floors with Cobra wax until they gleamed. The lodge was old and had seen better days, but no one could say it was not clean. Her work finished, she had grabbed her fishing rod and one of the discarded plastic supermarket bags the South Africans had left behind in the rubbish, and set off to do her fishing. One nice thing the Boers had done – the only nice thing in nine days of drinking and singing and fishing – was to leave their worm box behind.

  Precious had employed the worms to catch some small bream and, using the still-squirming fish as live bait, she had caught her tigers. Yes, she thought, the walk upstream had been worth it. The current in that particular spot was running well and the speed of the water had made the dying fish seem that little bit more alive. She had fooled the wily tiger and turned the tables on the hunter. She sang to herself as she walked up off the sand. The grass was cool on the bare soles of her feet after the sunsoaked riverbank.

  Mashumba licked his lips in anticipation. He lowered himself into the grass as the woman walked up the sandy bank towards him. He would take her by complete surprise, just as he had taken the paleskinned one. He felt a slight breeze coming down the valley, from behind him, and the wind ruffled his long hair.

  The woman stopped and looked around. She raised her nose slightly in the air and sniffed.

  Mashumba grunted. It would be a close-run thing.

  Precious knew that odour and she was instantly terrified. She smelled his scent in the bushes, but did not run. Slowly she turned her head, scanning the dry yellow grass from left to right, looking for him. She looked down on the ground and cursed her stupidity His footprints were there for her to see, if she had taken the time to look down instead of daydreaming. Her heart beat faster and sweat beaded her broad ebony forehead. I must not move, she told herself, although her legs wanted to break into flight. She wondered if she could make it to the river before he caught her. Stupid girl, she chided herself silently The river was full of crocodiles and hippos. Death awaited her at every turn.

  Mashumba saw his prey was alert now. The time for stealth had passed. He stood, raising himself to his impressive full height. The breeze caught his hair again. He took a step forwards, then another.

  Still the woman did not move. Mashumba was annoyed and he yelled at her, wanting to scare her. It was the way it should be – she must fear him and run from him. Without the chase it was not right.

  Precious stared into his cold, emotionless eyes and doubted she would ever see her little boy and girl again. She was so scared she began to sob. Her knees started to shake from the fear and the urge to run, but everything she knew – taught and inherited – told her to stand her ground against the fearsome bully.

  Mashumba shook his head and yelled at her. He told her to run, in fear, from him, to leave his place. But she defied him. So be it. He started walking towards her, but still she held her ground.

  Precious kept her eyes on him, hardly daring to breathe as he stopped, no more than twenty metres from her. Sometimes the men, when faced with a bully, would make a noise or scream at him and often as not the troublemaker would back down and run away But the men had rifles to back them up.

  She had only her fishing rod and her tigerfish.

  He yelled at her again and her whole body seemed to vibrate from the noise. The tears rolled over her full cheeks, carving rivulets in the dust that had settled on her during the minutes that she had stood motionless.

  The bully started towards her again and she was more scared than she had ever been in her whole life. She wondered again if it was worth risking the river, hoping that the crocodiles were asleep and the hippos not close to shore.

  ‘You will run! I am the one in charge here! You will run and I will chase you. That is the way of things, the way it should be.’ The white one had run. He had caught her and he had played with her and he had killed her. His life had changed, but at least the white one had done as he had expected.

  Precious raised the plastic bag above her head and started to swing it. Round and round went the heavy fish. Her arm moved like a windmill, faster and faster. She could see the confusion in his evil glassy eyes and this gave her courage.

  She shouted at him. ‘Go away! Go away! You will not have me today, you bastard! Go away and leave me!’

  Mashumba stopped in his tracks and blinked at the strange sight. He was not scared – just confused.

  The woman let go of the bag and it sailed towards him. He dodged to one side to avoid the missile. The bag thudded into the ground next to him and skidded along the dirt, giving him a fright.

  He spun around and retreated a few paces. He sniffed it. It was quite pleasant, but it could be investigated later. He turned his head and looked back at the woman.

  Precious had summoned the last of her courage to throw the bag. Her heart had leaped at the sight of the foul bully running from the flying fish. She did not wait around to see if the heavy missile hit his big scarred forehead. She dropped her fishing rod, turned and ran. Precious didn’t feel the sharp rocks and prickles, nor the heat of the sand as she reached the riverbank. She nearly stumbled, but regained her balance in a heartbeat. Her dress rode up her thighs as she ran, exposing slim, muscled flanks. Her arms pumped like an athlete’s and she felt the breeze from the river on her face. The shimmering water was so close and she could see no dark humps of the hippos’ backs, no furrow in the bank where a crocodile had dragged its lethal tail.

  She would make it. Once in the water she would be safe, because everyone knew he could not swim. Everyone knew the hated one feared the water. Twenty metres, ten … She could do it. For her son and her daughter, she would do it. Precious risked a glance back over her shoulder.

  She screamed, louder than she had ever screamed in her life. ‘SHUMBA! SHUMBA!’

  Not that it would do her any good. Not that anyone would hear, but if there was, maybe, a fisherman, or a tourist, or a ranger within earshot they might come and save her. She cursed herself for running – she knew she should have stood her ground.

  At last, she was running from him. It was as it should be. Mashumba lowered his head and charged. Christine Wallis was no stranger to the Zambezi Valley – the broad, shimmering river; the stagnant, reflective pools surrounded by wildlife; the quaint old-fashioned lodges; the scenic campground; the man-made dirt roads and the timeless game trails. She knew them all, the same way other people know the route from their home to their office or the stops on a subway.

  Chris had devoted half her working life to the preservation of wildlife, but she could shoot almost as well as a professional hunter. The rifle was as familiar a tool to her as the pen or word processor.

  She didn’t think twice about picking up the ranger’s AK-47 assault rifle when she heard the woman scream. She pulled back on the cocking handle with her right hand, chambering a round, flicked the selector to semi-automatic, and raised the scarred wooden butt to her shoulder.

  The running woman suddenly burst into view and Chris followed her flight through the open sights.

  Chris shifted the aiming mark a little to the left, looking for the real target. This was not how it should be,
damn it. Killing an animal went against the grain, against everything Chris stood for and had worked towards. But the woman’s life was clearly in danger.

  Lloyd, the uniformed park ranger, burst from the bushes, hastily pulling up his green trousers.

  ‘What are you doing, Professor?’ he asked in alarm. ‘Put down the rifle, please!’

  ‘Shumba.’

  ‘I heard the scream too,’ Lloyd said, fumbling with his fly buttons. ‘Where?’

  ‘God, I don’t want to do this,’ Chris said. She aimed just in front of the lion’s big head, leading him a little.

  ‘I see him! Shoot, Professor. Shoot now! It’s her only chance. He is nearly on her.’

  Chris pulled the trigger.

  Precious screamed as she felt him grab her. In the same instant she heard the shot. She fell, face first into the sand, his huge weight on her.

  Mashumba had her, just as he knew he would. But as he grabbed her he felt something slam into his right flank, knocking him sideways. He took the woman with him as he landed and rolled in the sand.

  He yelled in pain and the valley heard his bellow.

  She wriggled and writhed in his grip and he thrashed in the sand to make the pain go away, but he did not want to lose her. It was all wrong. It had never ended like this before. He shook his big head, but still the pain was there.

  Precious beat at him with her fists and screamed again when she saw her blood on the sand. She had never known such pain and he would not let go of her. He had her legs pinned, but she was able to twist her body to one side to stay away from the big shaggy head and the long yellow teeth.

  Chris jumped down onto the sandy riverbank and ran towards the struggling woman and her attacker.

  ‘Finish the job, or give me the rifle – now, Professor!’ Lloyd barked. He liked the American woman, remembered her from her previous stays in the park, but by snatching up his rifle and firing it she had broken too many rules to count. The only way either of them would get out of this without a fine or worse was if Precious Mpofu escaped with her life.

  Chris walked closer, stopped, took a deep breath, and aimed carefully. She did not want to hit the woman by mistake. Chris pulled the trigger and the copper-jacketed lead projectile smashed a path through the lion’s brain.

  Mashumba lost sight of his valley forever.

  Chris shrugged off her daypack and unzipped it. She pulled out the bulky first-aid kit and found a plastic bottle of iodine. As she squirted the antiseptic into the crying woman’s wounds, tears welled in her own eyes. She had come to Africa to save, not to kill, and she would have given anything not to have destroyed the beautiful creature lying beside her.

  ‘You had to do it, Professor,’ Lloyd said, reading her thoughts.

  Chris nodded. ‘It’s OK, you’re going to be fine,’ she said to the woman as she bandaged her leg.

  ‘I have radioed for the Land-i Rover, Professor. Help will be here soon.’

  ‘We’ll have to take her to Kariba.’

  ‘What about the lion? We have to -’

  ‘I know what we have to do,’ Chris snapped. She was sorry as soon as she saw the look on Lloyd’s face. He was a good man. She softened her tone. ‘Lloyd, I know what we have to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me.’

  ‘If he is the one, then you do not need to feel sorry for him, Professor,’ the ranger said as he helped her bandage Precious’s wounds. ‘If he killed Miss Miranda then it is against the natural order of things. We cannot have a man-eater on the loose in the park.’

  God, but I need a drink, Chris thought. She hadn’t known what she would do if they did finally find the lion they thought responsible for Miranda’s death, but it looked like the decision had been made for her. It was only a theory that the old male was the killer, but the tragic irony was that the only way to prove his innocence was to kill him and cut him open. The rangers and their families in the staff village had no doubt he was the one, and they wanted him dead because of his increasingly dangerous forays around their homes. Chris had wanted to capture him alive – to dart him – and to take a blood sample and compare his DNA with evidence from the scene of Miranda’s disappearance. It would take time and there were no guarantees that it would work, but she would have gone to any lengths to save the life of this magnificent beast.

  Chris brushed a bang of coppery hair from her eyes and looked over her shoulder. A green National Parks Land Rover was swaying down a rutted game path towards them. Now that the adrenaline rush was subsiding, Chris thought again of Miranda. She dreaded what grisly remains might be found in the belly of the big battle-scarred cat at her feet, but she had to find out, one way or another, what had happened to her, no matter how gruesome the truth. She had known as soon as she had received the message in the Kruger National Park that the news from the US embassy in Johannesburg would be bad. The voice on the end of the line had told her that Miranda was missing, presumed killed by a lion. Chris had packed her bags the same day and travelled to Mana Pools in two hard days of driving. The police were being obstinate, not letting her have access to Miranda’s personal effects and research equipment, which actually belonged to Chris, as she was not a family member. Such were the vagaries of African bureaucracy They also said, as had the embassy, that Miranda’s father was on his way to Zimbabwe.

  Two African rangers climbed out of the Land Rover’s cab and, together with Chris and Lloyd, lifted Precious into the rear of the truck.

  ‘Give me a hand, fellas, we’ve got to take him with us too,’ Chris said, pointing to the magnificent bloodied beast on the sand.

  Mashumba’s brother crouched in the long golden grass and watched the Land Rover depart.

  He had always been the smarter of the two, if not the larger. Between them they had ruled the pride for many years until a triumvirate of younger, stronger males had ousted them and set them on their uncertain path.

  Mashumba’s brother had initiated the hunt against the white woman, but instinctively he knew this type of prey was trouble. Humans, he had learned, were easy to catch, and reasonably good to eat, but he had grown cautious following the first one. He remembered how the noisy machines had come in the wake of that easy meal, how he and Mashumba had had to walk for days to escape the two-legged hunters. He sniffed the air and padded across the dirt to where the bag of fish lay He ripped the plastic with his claws, scoffed the tasty morsels inside and licked his lips. Not as good as half of a two-legged creature, but enough. He was the smart one. He was still alive. He would hunt again.

  Chapter 5

  Harare International Airport was a gleaming white elephant. The new terminal was all chrome and glass and white walls, but the place was empty. There was only one aircraft parked on the tarmac: the one Jed had arrived on. The other air bridges were all empty. A dozen customs men leaned against a wall watching the forty-odd passengers pass through immigration and collect their bags from the carousel. Jed did the math and thought it pretty likely he would be stopped and searched.

  ‘Over here, please,’ a customs man said as Jed approached.

  He laid his suit bag and pack on the burnished aluminium tabletop and said nothing as the man and a female colleague emptied his possessions.

  ‘These look like military trousers,’ the man said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Are you a soldier?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a soldier. I may be doing some hunting. That’s why I brought those old trousers.’

  The man looked dubious. ‘You must not give or sell these trousers to any Zimbabwean. Do you agree to this?’

  ‘I’d look a little silly walking around the bush in my underpants.’

  ‘This is a serious matter.’

  ‘I understand. I promise not to give away my pants.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Waldorf Astoria. Penthouse suite.’

  The man nodded. ‘Is that in Harare?’

  ‘It’s on the cheap side of town.’

  ‘Be c
areful then,’ the man said with a smile.

  An overweight European man with thinning grey hair combed over a sunburned pate was holding a sign with Mr Banks written on it.

  ‘That’s me,’ Jed said.

  ‘Lawrence Howie.’ The man grabbed Jed’s hand in a sweaty greeting. ‘Welcome to Zimbabwe.

  Business or pleasure?’

  The man looked to Jed like a talker. ‘Neither.’

  Howie frowned when Jed said nothing more. ‘Very well. This way’ He led the way out of the terminal.

  Jed squinted in the glare of the morning sun. The fat man took him along a row of parked cars, finally stopping next to a dark-green Land Rover Defender.

  ‘Don’t come much tougher than this,’ Howie said. ‘Are you going hunting?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Well, this vehicle will get you anywhere in the country.’

  ‘Where’s the rooftop tent?’ The vehicle, according to the travel agent who had made the booking, was equipped with all the camping gear he would need for a protracted stay in the bush, including a fold-out rooftop tent.

  ‘South Africa,’ Howie said.

  ‘Long way for me to go to sleep.’

  ‘I ordered four of them three months ago. Thought they’d be here yesterday Sorry.’

  ‘Let me guess … still in the mail?’

  ‘Nothing works in this bloody country any more. I’ve thrown in a canvas dome tent – no extra cost.