“Do you see them?” Ramsay asked, looking through the scope.
Even without her binoculars, Sydney could. They were about three hundred feet up ahead, a herd of gazelle grazing amongst the grass.
“They haven’t noticed us?” she asked.
“Electric vehicles don’t make much noise and we’re downwind. Besides, they don’t usually care. Until this happens.” There was a pfft and the gun buckled. Off in the field, she saw one of the gazelle abruptly stop grazing and run around before collapsing. The rest scattered, fleeing farther out into the prairie as Ramsay rapidly loaded another dart into the chamber.
Brandon ducked down and came back up with a pair of binoculars to watch them run while Ramsay lined up another shot.
“Do you need to be closer to–?” she began.
The gun jolted again. Brandon peered closer into the lenses for a moment, then said, “It’s down.”
Ramsey brought the weapon down and turned to them, a smile on his face. “It’s more fun out of the car. And with real bullets.”
He lowered himself back into the driver’s seat and moments later the Land Rover was cruising towards the first of the two sedated animals, each marked by unmoving red dots on the screen while the rest had fled out of the viewing area.
About ten feet away from the first gazelle, Ramsay stopped the vehicle, grabbed the case from the floor beside him, and got out of the car. Sydney and Brandon followed suit. She could see the rising and falling of the creature’s chest as it lay on its side. It was barely over three feet long, had two horns on its head relatively close together, and most of its body was covered by brown fur; however, there was a horizontal black streak around the middle of each side that gave way to a white underbelly. A tranquilizer dart was embedded in its neck.
“Good shot,” Brandon noted.
“Thank you.” Ramsay crouched beside the animal and opened the case on the ground, then held up the injector. “Who wants to go?”
Brandon stepped aside and gestured for Sydney to come forward. “Ladies first,” he said, spoken like a true Southern gentleman.
She crouched down beside Ramsay as he held up one of the chips for her to see. It appeared to be a smaller, more advanced version of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags they placed in household pets, although those were inserted with special syringes. Most field researchers used collars or directly-attached transmitters for wildlife tracking due to concerns that the signal strength of implanted GPS chips were affected by the animal’s body mass, but Sydney knew that SansCorp had spent the last several years marketing advanced RFID tech with bolstered signals. She also knew Simba Kishindo was used as a private testing ground for the company’s new zoology tech and guessed the Mark VII devices were still prototypes.
“You insert it into the injector like this,” Ramsay was saying, feeding the chip into an opening slot at the top of the gun. There was only room for one chip at a time and he slid a flap over the chamber after the tiny cylinder clicked in. “Then you find the base of the neck.”
With his left hand, he felt around the top of the animal’s shoulders. Then his hand froze in position and brought the gun around, as if prepared to inject the syringe of the device through a patch of skin between his thumb and his index finger. However, he stopped short of doing so and handed it to Sydney.
“Now you do it,” he said.
She took the injector into her hand. It was no bigger than the size of an average pistol and weighed only a few pounds. Ramsay moved back a few feet but still leaned in to supervise. Brandon came around to the other side as her left hand stroked the back of the gazelle’s neck, drifting gently down towards to shoulder blades as she felt along the vertebrae. Then, picking a spot, she placed her thumb and index finger about an inch apart to spread the fur and readied the injector.
“One last thing,” Ramsay said, raising a finger. “Make sure the chip doesn’t directly go into the spinal column.”
“That would probably be bad,” Brandon joked.
Sydney carefully moved the injector into position against the animal’s skin and pulled the trigger. There was the sound of pressurized air being released and she briefly saw something silver fly down the clear syringe tube and burrow itself into the flesh. When she moved the device away, she saw a tiny wound no more than a quarter of an inch wide.
“Excellent,” Ramsay said.
“How long before the tranquilizer wears off?” she asked.
“About half an hour.” Ramsay looked off in the direction of the other gazelle, about a hundred feet away. “Brandon, you’ll do the next one.”
As the hot sun beat down from above, they walked over through the tall grass and repeated the procedure on the second animal without any complications.
“There,” Brandon said, standing up. “All in a day’s work.”
Ramsay laughed. “See those?” He pointed to the remaining eight RFID chips in the case. “Those are all just for today.”
He told them that they would go after some wildebeest next. He explained that Sans wanted to roll the Mark VIIs out slowly in a just few members of each species, making sure everything was working before completing an entire sweep of the reserve. After that, they would break for lunch with some sandwiches that were packed in a cooler in the trunk. They started driving towards the northeast and soon arrived in an area where a cluster of unmoving GPS signals sat on the display.
And that was when Sydney spotted the carcasses.
REMAINS
“What the hell?” Brandon said as Ramsay brought the Land Rover to a halt.
Through the windshield, the remains of seven horribly mutilated wildebeest were strewn around a fifty-foot wide area. Several hyenas were currently feasting on the leftovers, but some of them turned their heads toward the vehicle to look at the new arrival, blood dripping from their jowls.
Ramsay reached for the glove compartment and pulled out a revolver. He held it up through the sunroof and loosed off two shots into the air. Frightened, the hyenas scattered. Keeping the gun by his side, Ramsay opened the door.
“This is the side of nature zoos don’t show you,” he said, climbing out of the car.
An unsettling feeling gripped Sydney as she exited the SUV and closed the door behind her. All was quiet save for the wind as she proceeded towards the gruesome slaughter. She stopped next to where Ramsay was crouching to examine the ground. Brandon came up behind them.
She looked around. The animals were torn open and missing varying amounts of flesh, shredded innards distributed along the ground. Clouds of flies danced around the carcasses and a rotting odor wafted into Sydney’s nose, making her stomach feel queasy. She was glad she hadn’t eaten lunch yet.
“What did this?” Brandon asked. “A lion?”
Ramsay was still scanning the ground for tracks. “No.”
Sydney racked her brain for knowledge of anything like this. It didn’t remind her of any predator behavior she’d ever studied before. Hyenas were known to occasionally hunt in packs, but they weren’t capable of something like this, so those ones had certainly been scavengers. Cheetahs didn’t seem likely either. The wounds had clearly been inflicted by a big animal – several, more likely. The only thing she could think of was lions. But with prey as large as a wildebeest, lions would usually single out a weak member of a herd and work together to bring it down. It was just like that display of the two lionesses attacking the buffalo in the museum. That didn’t fit this M.O. either.
The others had walked out into the midst of the carnage while Sydney pondered the scene. Brandon beckoned her closer. “Take a look at this,” he said.
She came over and bent down to see a series of imprints on the ground. The creature that made them had four toes and paws almost half a foot across. Glancing around, she saw several different bloodstained trails moving around the bodies.
“Well, we’re not going to be tagging these,” Ramsay said, starting to walk back to the car.
“We can’t
just leave yet,” Brandon said. “We don’t know what did this.”
“It was most likely lions,” Ramsay called back over his shoulder.
“But you were sure it wasn’t,” Sydney said. Ramsay didn’t hear her. She turned to Brandon, who was still looking around. “You heard him say that earlier, right? I mean, these couldn’t have been lions. The behavior’s all wrong. Could they have been crazy or infected with some kind of rabies?”
“Or on hard drugs,” Brandon said, scratching the back of his head. “Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this.”
“Are you two coming?” Ramsay’s voice shouted. The driver’s side door was open and he already had one foot in the car.
She heard buzzing and slapped her neck, her hand coming away with the broken body of a large fly. There was blood on her palm and she grimaced.
Brandon took one final glance around, then started back for the Land Rover. Wiping her hand on her shorts, Sydney joined him. Once they were seated in the second row again, Ramsay turned the wheel and the vehicle set off in a different direction. Sydney looked out the back window for a while, staring at the crimson-stained grass and the motionless figures until they dwindled from sight.
LIBRARY
Late in the afternoon, Sydney walked into the lodge’s library ready to curl up on one of the leather sofas with the Michael Crichton novel currently tucked under her arm. It had been a tiring day, but nothing else unusual had happened after the discovery of the carcasses. In total, she and Brandon had implanted chips in six more animals from giraffes to an elephant.
Ramsay had decided it was enough for the first day even though there were two left in the case. Besides, it had been getting hotter to the point where just standing outside the car had made everyone break into a sweat. It was supposed to be a similar temperature tomorrow, which she wasn’t exactly thrilled about.
She was about to open to the last page she’d read as she moved towards the sofa, when she spotted the titles on the nearest bookshelf and, feeling curious, decided to take a closer look. At first, she saw some classics of science fiction from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau. The titles got more modern as she looked down the shelves from Ray Bradbury to William Gibson.
But the next bookcase over was dedicated entirely to works on Africa and hunting. Names of adventurers like Selous, Roosevelt, and Stanley were written on the sides of volumes worn with time and use. She even recognized John Henry Patterson’s The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, about two killer lions whose bodies were now preserved at the Chicago Field Museum. There had been a Val Kilmer movie based on it called The Ghost and the Darkness, which she’d watched several times as a kid.
Sydney also noticed numerous works by a Peter Hathaway Capstick. She pulled one off the shelf titled Death in the Long Grass and looked it over, slipping her Crichton book back under her arm. It was hardcover and a male lion partially obscured by tall grass stared at her from the front flap. The back displayed the black and white photo of a man in safari attire seated next to jungle foliage. A hunting rifle rested in his lap and a fedora dangled from his hands.
“That’s my favorite by him.” Startled, she abruptly spun around to see Sans standing on the other side of the room.
“Oh, I’m sorry if I’m not allowed to–”
Sans put up his hand and walked over, eyeing the book as he went. “No problem at all. This place isn’t off limits.” He tapped the photo of the man on the rear flap. “Interesting character. Capstick started out as a stock broker, of all things. Pretty successful at it too. Then one day he decided enough was enough and dedicated his life to his passion. He went everywhere from the African savanna to South American rainforests, serving as a guide and a big-game hunter. Then he retired to Florida and continued to write about it. May I?”
“Sure,” she said, realizing how soft her voice sounded as she handed him the book. Other than a few tears on the jacket, it was in good shape.
“This was my father’s copy,” he said, turning it over. He opened the front cover and pointed to a name written in neat black pen: Gerard Sans. “If you think I’m into hunting, you should’ve seen him. Old bastard must’ve thought he was the next Frederick Selous. In his last days, I think he’d even had fantasies of dying during some epic Serengeti escapade.”
“What happened to him?”
“Lung cancer,” Sans said. He didn’t look up but there was a more measured tone in his voice. “Got him fairly early at age sixty, but he puffed a pack a day no matter what continent he was standing on. It’s why I don’t smoke. Never have, never will. Then my mother died a few years later of liver failure. She’d always been a heavy drinker. Evidently, vices aren’t my family’s strong suit.” He managed a smile.
Sydney felt glum. “I’m sorry…”
“Thank you, but they died in the 90s, nearly thirty years ago.” He opened the book and flipped through a few pages. “Ah yes, the beginning passage here is my favorite. It’s a true story about this big-game hunter on his final expedition. He’s in Zambia, the Eastern Province, and his tent is far away from everybody else’s. It’s three AM, and while he’s sleeping, this starving lioness creeps up through the darkness, sensing him in his slumber. And when she finally gets him, we reach the best line: ‘For Peter Hankin, one of central Africa’s most experienced professional white hunters, the last safari is over’.”
Sans savored the words for a moment. “I still remember that sentence from when my dad read it to me for the first time. I was seven. He taught me everything I know about this sport. That line, he said, is what he lived for. The idea that hunting returned us to the natural world, a place where death could come at a moment’s notice – and that’s just the way it was. It was the feeling that your number could be up at any given second that made you feel the most alive.” He paused, clearly thinking about something.
Then he handed the book back to her and she noticed he was wearing an orange sweatband around his right wrist today, as opposed to black the day before. “Feel free to read anything in here that you like.”
And he walked back out the way he came.
After dinner, Sydney fetched the novel from her room and headed back down stairs. She’d spent the time after Sans left reading through some of the hunting books and before she’d known it, Ramsay had come in and asked her to come to the dining room. Now though, she wanted to do what she’d originally gone to the library for; she’d stopped reading at an interesting part.
But as she approached the corner that led into the library, she heard something and stopped in her tracks.
“…little project of his is blowing through funds faster than we can afford,” Jones was saying. “And where are the results?”
Now Chang’s voice: “Billy knows what he’s doing. He’s gotten the company out of tight spots before.”
“But Ellie, we don’t have time. The board’s patience for him is wearing thinner by the day. In their mind, all he ever does now is fuck around out here.”
“They can’t touch him. He’s the CEO, Chairman, and the largest single shareholder.”
“Yes, they can,” Jones said. “They can force a board vote. SansCorp’s future is at stake, here.”
“The company has its fingers in many pies. Revenue has been stable. And soon enough this venture will pay off, too. You don’t know Billy like I do. He has…unique methods, but he always pulls through.”
There was silence for a moment. Sydney pressed her body tightly to the corner and leaned towards the open frame of the entrance as much as she could without letting her head be visible to them inside.
“I don’t know…,” Jones finally said. “It just feels like he’s not telling us everything. I’d like to see what goes on at that laboratory building, the stuff he doesn’t let visitors see. I looked at the blueprints back in D.C., there’s some kind of entrance to it from a cave about half a mile into the reserve.”
Suddenly, the book slipped from Sydney’s
fingers and landed on the wooden floor with a thunk.
“What was that?” she heard Chang say.
Sydney quickly scooped the novel off the floor and slipped back towards the foyer as fast as she could.
HEAT
It must have been nearly ninety degrees as Sydney stepped out of the Land Rover the next day, but she’d been burning up long before she set foot outside. Her forehead had been hot to the touch from the moment she’d woken up, her body feeling tired and sore. Not wanting the anyone to think little of her, she took a refreshingly cold shower and drank several cups of coffee at breakfast.
That made her feel better for a short while, but the fever returned full force as she rode out to the plains with Ramsay and Brandon for another day of tagging. And the damned heat certainly wasn’t helping.
Walking around to the back of the vehicle, she opened the trunk. Ramsay had placed the injector case in here today, next to several first aid kits in the event of an emergency. Sydney briefly thought about opening one up to see if it had aspirin or Tylenol or just about anything that would make the fever go away.
She pulled the silver case out, accidentally knocking over one of the kits in the process. It tumbled to the ground.
“Watch what you’re doing,” Brandon said, coming around the other side. “This shit’s expensive.”
“Sorry,” she said, picking it up and putting a hand to her forehead. “I’m not feeling well.”
“Are you sick?”
“I think so.”
“Christ, then don’t touch the case.” He grabbed it out of her hand. “You’re gonna infect all of us,” he muttered, storming off.
What the hell is his problem? Sydney thought. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today…
At that moment, she was more concerned with whatever she was coming down with. It was strange. She was unmistakably sick but had no cough, sore throat, or runny nose. There was just a painful ache creeping through her body that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. And a splitting migraine. Could it have been a side effect of the vaccines, or the medicine perhaps? Something else?
Safari: A Technothriller Page 4
