The Next World

by Gerry Griffiths

  THE NEXT WORLD

  Gerry Griffiths

  Copyright 2017 by Gerry Griffiths

  DEDICATION

  For the boys,

  Harry and Frankie

  1

  Chimola sat alone while the others huddled around the campfire at the base of the dry riverbed. He could hear their whispering voices under the crackling of the burning wood. The steep walls of the gully were high enough so that the fire could not be seen from afar.

  Even though they were miles from the national park, there was always the threat of discovery by heavily armed park rangers out on extended nighttime patrols.

  A poacher laughed and the others joined in. Chimola knew they were mocking him though he doubted if Duna, their boss man, saw any humor in what had happened during their latest kill. After they had downed the rhino, it had been Chimola’s job with the chainsaw. Into the first cut, Chimola had angled the rotating blade wrong and the link had snapped on the chain, rendering the critical equipment useless.

  Duna had been furious, as they were forced to resort to their axes and machetes, strenuous and messy work in the blistering African heat.

  Even though Chimola sat fifty feet away from the truck, he could smell the rotting flesh still attached to the rendered horn under the tarp on the flatbed.

  Chimola picked up his plastic bottle of waregi, the Ugandans’ word for “war gin,” and chugged another swig of the rotgut moonshine. By the sound of the other poachers, they too were sharing the village-made hooch and would soon be passed out.

  Chimola leaned back on his blanket and gazed up at the immense nightscape of stars. A green streak shot across the sky. For the past few nights, he had seen more of the green flashes darting past the stars and disappearing into the horizon.

  He reached over and took another gulp of the waregi.

  His eyelids began to droop as the quick-acting alcohol pulled him into a body-numbing slumber.

  Chimola had been sound asleep for two hours when the giant tsetse fly alighted on his bare chest and folded its wings on its back. The fly’s head and thorax together were as big as a football. As soon as the insect bit into Chimola’s neck, microscopic trypanosome parasites immediately entered his bloodstream—like newborn tadpoles discovering the wonders of a pond—and the sleeping sickness carriers swam freely throughout the man’s body.

  The enormous fly raised its two front legs, fitfully cleaned its proboscis, and flew off into the night.

  At daybreak, the poachers packed up the truck.

  Duna ordered one of his men to roust Chimola, but no matter how hard the man tried, Chimola would not wake up.

  Still angry and not wanting to waste any more time, Duna decided to leave Chimola behind, and they all got in the truck and drove off.

  Chimola continued to sleep through most of the morning, even when three male lions wandered down into the coulee. The big cats paced around Chimola’s still body then moved in and lay on their bellies to feed on the sleeping man.

  It was early afternoon when the lions left, and the patiently awaiting vultures in a nearby tree descended to pick at the carcass.

  By nightfall, a clan of hyenas found Chimola’s skeletal remains and chewed up his bones.

  Come morning, Chimola was nothing more than wind-blown dust on the savanna.

  2

  Frank Travis peered out his portal window and watched the wildebeest as the plane passed over the stampeding herd. He pressed his cheek against the glass and could see the tiny structures of the Tomie Private Wildlife Reserve and the dirt airstrip, just a few miles ahead.

  “We’re just about there,” Frank said as he turned to his wife, Wanda, seated across the narrow aisle of the ten-passenger Beechcraft.

  Wanda glanced over. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

  “Can you think of a better place to spend our anniversary?”

  “Uh, yeah. Plenty.”

  “Trust me, you’re going to love it.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  “Hey, this is a great opportunity for Ally,” Frank said. “I wrote Dr. Tomie and she is more than glad to take Ally under her wing.”

  “Thank God, Ally got her athletic scholarship. UC Davis isn’t cheap.”

  “No, but they do have one of the best veterinarian programs in the country. That and I now have a ride-along in the commuter lane.”

  “Any idea when they might offer you the position?”

  “Head of the Entomology Department? Soon, I hope. Can’t wait to move into that corner office.”

  “Don’t you mean stodgy bottom-floor cubical?”

  “Well, it does have a window.” Frank glanced out and saw they were descending. “Looks like we’re getting ready to land.”

  Wanda glanced over her shoulder at the seat behind Frank. “How are you doing, Dilly?”

  Eight-year-old Dillon Rafferty looked up from his DC Comic. “What?”

  Wanda had to raise her voice so she could be heard over the thrum of the twin turboprops outside. “We’re just about there, honey.”

  “Can we eat?” the boy shouted back.

  “Soon,” Wanda promised. She leaned over the armrest and looked back at her teenage daughter, Ally, sitting two seats back, and gave her a little wave.

  Ally smiled and reached across the aisle, nudging her twenty-one-year-old brother, Ryan.

  They both leaned out and looked at their mother.

  “Looks like we’re about to touch down,” Wanda told them and they both nodded.

  In less than ten minutes they were on the ground. The uniformed pilot exited the cockpit and smiled as he squeezed down the aisle to the rear of the plane. He opened the hatch door and lowered the stairs. “Hope you enjoyed your flight. See you all in a week,” he said as Frank and his family grabbed their luggage and disembarked the plane one at a time.

  Once everyone was off the plane, a large safari Jeep with three rows of passenger seats rolled up. An African man wearing a tan shirt and cargo shorts stepped out from behind the steering wheel to greet them.

  “Hello. I am Isoba.”

  Frank walked up and shook the man’s hand. “I’m Frank Travis and this is my family.” Frank took a moment to introduce everyone and they graciously exchanged handshakes.

  An African woman wearing similar attire as the driver climbed out of the safari Jeep from the front passenger seat.

  Isoba turned and said, “This is my oldest daughter, Adanna.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Adanna said. She took a moment to shake everyone’s hand.

  “So, what it is you do here?” Wanda asked when she noticed that Isoba and his daughter were both wearing sidearms.

  “Our job is to protect the reserve,” Isoba said.

  “And to ensure your safety,” Adanna added. “That way we hope you will enjoy your stay with us.”

  “My wife, Wanda, is also in law enforcement,” Frank said proudly.

  “Is that so?” Isoba said with great interest.

  “I’m just a sheriff in a sleepy town; nothing special.”

  Isoba nodded and then gestured toward the Jeep. “Come. We will show you to your cottages.”

  3

  “This is nice,” Wanda said as she stepped inside the cottage. The circular room had an overhead fan mounted on a beam stretched under the high-domed ceiling and decorative sconce lighting on the plastered beige walls. A crème-colored settee faced a recessed fireplace. A bedspread with a zebra pattern covered the queen-size bed.

  There was a sitting area with two armchairs facing a sliding glass door that looked out on a patio and, beyond, the sprawling savanna that stretched for miles.

  Frank came in and put their travel bags next to a small dresser positioned under a la
rge framed photograph of antelopes leaping across the grassland.

  “What did you call this little adventure of ours again?” Wanda asked.

  “A working vacation,” Frank replied, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Originally, I was going to book one of those fancy safari packages. That was until Dr. Tomie came to the campus and gave a powerful speech about wildlife conservation and how more people should get involved in protecting the planet.”

  “Well, I’m all for that.”

  “Besides, I know how you hate just sitting around, doing nothing.”

  “Oh, you mean like on a beach, sipping a strawberry daiquiri on some Hawaiian island.”

  “Definitely not your style.” Frank got up and unzipped one of their bags, but Wanda’s hand on his arm stopped him.

  “How about we unpack later. I’d like to go meet the doctor.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Frank and Wanda walked out, turned left, and followed the stone steps that led down a pathway in front of four other similarly designed cottages. Each had a tiled roof with a white railing porch and a window on each side of the front door.

  They stopped at the second cottage. The door was open.

  “Hey, you guys,” Wanda called out. “We’re going over to the animal hospital.”

  Ryan and Dillon stepped out onto the porch.

  “I’m hungry,” Dillon said.

  “Here, eat this.” Ryan handed his little brother a packet of peanuts.

  Dillon eyed the small bag like it was a plateful of vegetables.

  “Come on, we’ll grab some food in a bit,” Wanda said, not giving Dillon a chance to protest.

  Ally was already waiting outside the next cottage.

  “Where are we going?” Ally asked.

  “Time for the grand tour,” Frank said.

  They headed to a larger building and saw Isoba standing by the entrance.

  “Hello. Do you like your rooms?”

  “Oh, yes, thank you,” Wanda said.

  “Come inside.” Isoba opened and held the door for everyone as they stepped through.

  A tan woman wearing a denim shirt and jeans was there to greet them. “Welcome. Frank, I’m so glad you and your family could come.”

  “Dr. Tomie, nice to see you again. Let me introduce my wife, Wanda.”

  “How do you do, Doctor.”

  “Please, call me Gayle.”

  “Okay,” Wanda said with a smile. She turned to her children. “This is my oldest son, Ryan; my daughter, Ally; and my boy, Dillon.”

  “So happy to meet you all,” Dr. Tomie said. She looked at Ally. “Your father tells me you’re studying to become a veterinarian.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was just on my way to surgery. How would you like to assist me?”

  “Sure!” Ally replied excitedly.

  Dr. Tomie looked at Frank. “You’re all welcome to watch.”

  “Should I stay out here with Dillon?” Wanda asked, thinking the surgery might be too graphic for an eight year old.

  “No, no. He’ll be fine,” Dr. Tomie said with a grin. “We’re only pulling a tooth.”

  Dr. Tomie led the way down a short corridor and opened a door into a large room with an examining table and a sink in a countertop. Cabinets with glass doors and shelves stocked with medical supplies were mounted on one wall.

  There were cages of different sizes staggered about the room, some with injured birds like the vulture with the bandaged foot and the parrots with the splints on their wings. A baby antelope was curled up on a blanket. Two wide-eyed lemurs sat at the back of a cage, each missing a limb. A litter of wild dog pups wrestled, spilling water out of their dish.

  An African woman stepped into the room. She wore jeans and a scrub top with different types of birds. “Hi, I’m Dayo.”

  Everyone gave her a friendly smile.

  “Dayo is a big help to me in the clinic and will one day make a wonderful doctor,” Dr. Tomie said. “And she is Isoba’s daughter.”

  “Oh, so Adanna is your sister,” Wanda said.

  “Yes, but I am the fun one,” Dayo replied. “Adanna is always too serious.”

  “Dayo, show Ally where she can wash up. She will be assisting us with Sasha.”

  “This way,” Dayo said, and Ally followed.

  “You don’t mean the Sasha?” Frank asked.

  “Yes, the very one,” Dr. Tomie said proudly.

  “Who’s Sasha?” Wanda asked.

  “Come and see.” Dr. Tomie walked into the adjacent room and stood at a glass partition that faced an operating room.

  Wanda gasped, “Oh my God!” when she saw the white-coat lioness lying on the operating table. “That’s Sasha? She’s enormous. How much does she weigh?”

  “Well, we just weighed her so we knew how much anesthesia to give her. Would you believe five hundred twenty-three pounds?”

  Ally and Dayo entered the operating room through a side door. Ally was wearing a scrub top with tiny elephants. She looked through the observation glass and smiled as if to say Can you believe I’m really doing this?

  Dayo went over to a cart next to the operating table. She beckoned Ally over and began showing the teenage girl the surgical instruments laid out on a tray. Ally was only a foot away from the big cat’s head. Sasha’s large fangs protruded out from under her curled upper lip.

  Wanda looked at Frank with concern.

  “She’ll be fine. Sasha’s heavily sedated,” he assured his wife.

  “I had no idea female lions got that big,” Wanda said.

  “Sasha’s quite the celebrity,” Dr. Tomie said. “She just made the last issue of National Geographic. White lions are quite a rarity. Not to mention one as big as Sasha.”

  “She’s pretty remarkable,” Wanda said.

  “That she is,” Dr. Tomie agreed. “Sasha’s one of a kind.”

  4

  Billionaire Tyrone Vane sat in his thousand-dollar-a-day hotel suite and stared at his latest acquisition on the king-size bed.

  Made of Damascus steel, it was a thing of beauty meant exclusively for royalty—not a crook that made his fortune ripping off naive first-time homebuyers by conning them into low-interest mortgages on over-valued houses. Every time the foreclosure crisis flooded the market, Vane swooped in and bought up every property he could get his hands on and flipped them for the next wave of gullible families wanting to live the American dream of owning their very own home.

  And now he had more money than he knew what to do with.

  Which was why he had no qualms buying the most expensive hunting gun in the world—the VO Falcon rifle.

  So what if it cost him $820,000; that was nothing to him.

  He poured another flute of champagne from the $3,500 bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay and toasted the empty room. He took a sip, glanced over, and saw his reflection in a full-length mirror on the opposite wall. His thick, black hair was slicked back into a ponytail, his gray beard trimmed close to the jaw line. He thought he looked a little paunchy the way he was sitting and sat up straight.

  Still admiring himself in the mirror, Vane reached inside the top pocket of his tan safari jacket and took out a thin box of cheroots. He plucked a slim cigar from the box and lit the tip with a gold-plated butane lighter. Taking a drag, he blew out a steady stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

  A knock sounded on the hotel door.

  Vane got up and strode across the elegant room. He opened the door and waved to the waiter standing in the hall to come in. The man pushed a white linen cart with metal serving dishes into the room and strolled up to a small dining table.

  While the waiter set the table and arranged the food dishes, Vane sat back in his chair and looked at pictures from his hunts on his electronic tablet.

  The exorbitant lunch consisted of a ten-ounce Wagyu ribeye steak, a miniature tin of Almas Iranian caviar and, for dessert, a Golden Opulence Sundae in a Harcourt crystal goblet and an 18-karat gold spoon with which to eat
it.

  Once he was done, the server stepped back to await the rich man’s approval.

  Vane kept flipping through pictures and saying, “Oh my... Now there’s a beauty...Will you look at that.” Vane glanced up and saw the man waiting. He got up from his chair and walked over to the waiter to show the man the screen.

  The waiter politely watched as Vane scrolled from one snapshot to the next.

  There was Vane, holding his rifle, standing next to a dead elephant.

  Vane kneeling beside a dead moose.

  Vane showing off the dead tiger he had killed.

  Vane gloating next to a dead grizzly bear.

  Vane grinning with one foot on the back leg of a dead rhinoceros.

  Vane and a...

  “Sir, I really must get back to the kitchen,” the waiter said, averting his eyes from the morbid images flicking across the screen.

  Vane looked at the man and scowled. “Then I suggest you get going.”

  The waiter turned, knowing he’d just been stiffed for a tip, and wheeled the cart across the room. He opened the door and disappeared into the hall.

  The door closed slowly.

  Vane tossed the tablet on the bed, which landed next to an open suitcase.

  He leaned down and took out the National Geographic magazine that he had recently purchased. An enormous white lioness was on the cover with the caption: Sasha—Super Cat of the Savanna.

  As Vane studied the picture he gazed into those amber eyes, imagining he was staring at them down the front sight of his VO Falcon rifle.

  5

  All precautions had been made to ensure Sasha’s procedure went off without a hitch. She was hooked up to an IV of saline and a plastic tube was inserted just inside her gaping mouth so that oxygen could be pumped into her lungs.

  Dr. Tomie wore a headlamp on her head so she that she had plenty of light to see inside of the big cat’s mouth. She glanced over at Ally. “We were hoping we could salvage the tooth, maybe perform a root canal, but there’s too much decay.”