Megalania

by Robert Forrester

  Both Yates and Franks shook their heads, but Suzanna breathed in deep.

  ‘I think I know,’ she said.

  Everybody stared at her, Franks, his hands clutching his baseball cap, Yates, his bronzed features dirty and caked in dust, and Kruger, who placed his whiskey glass down and leaned forward.

  ‘What?’

  She hesitated, glancing nervously at all three men. ‘I ... I’m not certain but ...’

  ‘Spit it out!’

  ‘Yeah, what the hell is it?’ Franks asked. ‘Cos I ain’t seen nothing like it before and sure as hell I don’t want to see anything like it again.’

  ‘The closest thing I can think of is Megalania priscus,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t speak Latin,’ Kruger snapped. ‘What is that in English?’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t have a common name, not that I’m aware of, but it was a type of giant goanna or monitor lizard, a bit like the Komodo dragon, but bigger.’

  ‘Was?’ Kruger squinted at her. ‘What do you mean was?’

  She bit her bottom lip. ‘It was thought to have gone extinct sometime during the Pleistocene epoch.’

  Kruger leaned back and snorted. ‘Are you trying to tell me it’s a damned dinosaur? That we have Godzilla running around in the forests?’

  ‘No!’ she snapped. ‘The Pleistocene only ended about ten-thousand years ago. And I’m not saying this is a Megalania, just that it is similar. It’s not that hard to imagine. I mean, this place is about the most cut off wilderness on the planet.’

  Kruger turned his attention to Franks. ‘What about you? You saw it?’

  Franks screwed up his cap in his hand. ‘I ... I dunno, chief, I didn’t really get a good look at it. I mean ... it all happened so quick, like ... maybe it was a type of croc, like you say, but I couldn’t say for sure.’

  ‘Yes, you were too busy saving your own ass,’ Yates said.

  ‘Just be quiet,’ Kruger shouted. ‘All of you.’

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. With each day, the lines on the graph on the wall were getting wider and wider apart. He’d lost three of his best men, a fourth was lying in sick bay, and he was going through Papuan worker’s quicker than a dose of the pox. Whatever this thing was, he didn’t care, he just wanted his exploration site back up and running and maybe they’d be able to get what they came here for—find some damned gold.

  He removed his hands from his face and locked eyes on Suzanna. ‘All I want to know from you, is how the hell we get rid of it?’

  She frowned, her eyebrows meeting in the middle. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she said. ‘This is an animal that we either thought extinct or is a totally new species of megafauna. You cannot simply kill it.’

  He slammed the desk with his fist. ‘Just watch me! I’m in the business of gold mining, and this thing is stopping me doing my job. That means it has to be got rid of.’

  She stepped forward and thrust her jaw at him. ‘It’s probably only attacking because you’ve destroyed its territory. You’ve got to stop mining immediately. This animal has to be protected.’

  He stared at her in disbelief. ‘Are you out of your goddamn mind? Do you know how much money is invested in this place? Nothing, not you, not some oversized lizard, is going to grind this site to a halt.’

  Her eyes widened, as if not comprehending what he was saying. ‘This animal is possibly the most valuable natural discovery in over two-hundred years. When the world hears about it, you will have no choice but to stop your activities.’

  He sat back and smiled. ‘The world is not going to hear about it.’

  She stepped back and shook her head. ‘You can’t keep this quiet.’

  ‘I can and I will.’ He leaned forward and locked eyes on her. ‘You are forgetting, there’s no way out of here. That helicopter,’ he nodded out the window, ‘is mine. This satellite phone,’ he lifted a phone on his desk, ‘is mine.’

  ‘You’ll have to let us go eventually,’ Yates said. ‘Or are you planning on frogmarching us out into the bush and putting a bullet in our heads?’

  ‘Don’t give me any ideas,’ Kruger snapped. He then smiled. ‘But don’t worry. I’ll let you go, eventually. By then, I’ll have wiped out all trace of whatever this thing is, so you can go running to whoever you like. Who’s going to believe you?’

  Suzanna’s eyes bulged as she glared at him, but neither she nor Yates spoke, so Kruger turned his attention to Franks. ‘You said that Bud shot it, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, chief. Saw the shells hit home myself.’

  ‘Then there is a good chance it has crawled away to die. First thing tomorrow, I want you in the air. See if you can find signs of it. If you find its body, burn it. I want no trace.’

  Franks nodded, obediently, before catching the eye of Suzanna. ‘She reckons there might be more of ‘em though, chief.’

  Kruger locked his gaze back on her. ‘Is that right?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘She says there was more than one set of tracks at her camp,’ Franks added.

  She shot him a deathly stare.

  ‘No matter,’ Kruger said. ‘We’ll just have to kill them all.’

  Franks fidgeted uncomfortably. ‘How ... how are you going to do that, chief? I mean ... I’m no hunter, I’m a pilot and the locals aren’t exactly...’

  Kruger halted his words with a raised hand. ‘Don’t you worry about that, I know somebody who specialises in exactly this sort of thing.’ He reached for the satellite phone on his desk. ‘How many rifles do we have left?’

  ‘Not many,’ Franks admitted. ‘We lost a fair few at the excavation site. There’s maybe a half-a-dozen or so in the equipment sheds.’

  ‘Well, hand them out. I want 24-hour patrols around the mine and camp, just in case these things come up here before I’ve taken care of them.’

  A knock on his door interrupted them.

  It was Loudon. ‘Do you have a moment?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Bud,’ Loudon said. ‘He’s in a bad way. I’ve done all I can, but he needs proper medical attention. We need to airlift him out. Get him to the hospital in Port Moresby.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kruger said, glancing at Suzanna and Yates. ‘Nobody is leaving until we have dealt with whatever it is that is out there. I’m not risking awkward questions, and Bud isn’t the most discreet of individuals, is he? Before we know it, we’ll have all and sundry down here. No, nobody is going anywhere.’

  ‘But Mr Kruger, sir,’ Loudon said, pushing his spectacles up his nose with his forefinger. ‘I’ve given him a transfusion but his leg is in a terrible mess. I can’t stem the bleeding and I doubt I’ll be able to save it.’

  ‘Then cut it off!’ shouted Kruger.

  ‘But ... I’m no surgeon.’

  ‘Let me look at him. I have some medical training. I might be able to do something,’ Yates said.

  Kruger shrugged. ‘Fine by me.’ He nodded to Suzanna. ‘And you can go give them a hand.’ He picked up the satellite phone. ‘I’ve got a call to make.’

  Chapter 12

  The medical hut contained nothing but two makeshift beds, a refrigerator containing a few bags of blood and some medicines and a small cabinet, through which Yates rifled and pulled out suture and bandages and antibacterial powder.

  Bud was semi-conscious, head lolling side to side with fever and delirium. He was on a drip, a quart of blood slowly replacing some of that he’d lost, but Loudon didn’t think it was enough.

  ‘Each miner has to supply two pints before we ship them out here, but he’s losing it quicker than I can give it him,’ he said, peering down at the blood sodden bandages on the man’s leg. ‘I just can’t seem to stop the bleeding.’

  ‘Let me look,’ Yates said, handing Suzanna an armful of bandages.

  He gently teased back the dressings. He sucked air through his teeth as the wound presented itself. Blood poured from the savaged leg, dripping onto the floor.

&
nbsp; ‘It doesn’t seem to want to coagulate,’ he said.

  ‘The mouths of goannas are full of bacteria,’ Suzanna said. ‘If they don’t kill their prey outright, they usually die with infection in a few hours, but some people reckon they are venomous too.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Yates said. ‘As if that thing wasn’t bad enough.’

  ‘Can you save the leg?’ Loudon asked.

  Yates shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. We could try to cauterize it, but you’ve only got basic antibiotics, and if what she’s saying is true, God knows what toxins are in there.’

  ‘We have to do something,’ Loudon said. ‘If he doesn’t bleed to death, he’ll get gangrene, no question. Infection doesn’t take long out here. I’ve seen people drop dead following even tiny scratches.’

  Yates nodded, and took a deep breath. ‘What surgical equipment do you have?’

  ‘You can’t be serious!’ Suzanna hissed. Not that she feared Bud would hear her. He was too delirious, but the thought repulsed her. ‘You’re not going to cut it off?’

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ Yates said. ‘He’ll be dead by the morning.’

  ‘Then we have to speak to Kruger, make him see sense,’ Suzanna pleaded.

  ‘He won’t listen,’ Loudon said. ‘He is a very stubborn man.’ He glanced nervously towards the hut entrance. ‘He does not value the lives of his men very highly. Even before all this, we lost several local workers to accidents. All Mr Kruger cares about is gold.’

  ‘Then why do you work for him?’ Suzanna asked.

  Loudon grimaced slightly. ‘Money, Dr Howard, what else? This is not America or Britain or Australia. When the choice is working for Mr Kruger or seeing my wife and children starve, I choose the former.’

  He smiled weakly then walked to the medicine cabinet and opened the drawer on the bottom. ‘What you see here is all we have.’

  Yates walked over and took out the contents of the drawer. ‘A scalpel, haemostatic forceps, scissors—is this it?’

  Loudon nodded. ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘We’ll need some sort of bone saw.’

  Loudon chewed his lip for a second. ‘There are some grinding discs in the tool shed that have never been used. We could sterilise one.’

  ‘That might work,’ Yates said.

  ‘Wait a minute! You’re not going to cut his leg off with a Black and Decker?’ Suzanna squealed.

  ‘The amputation will be the easy part, its stemming the bleeding and sewing up the wound that is the challenge.’ Yates turned his attention to Loudon again. ‘Other than Tramadol, do you have any other anaesthetic?’

  Loudon shook his head.

  ‘Then that’ll have to do. Go get the saw.’

  Loudon scurried off instantly.

  Yates placed his hand on Suzanna’s shoulder. ‘I need your help with this.’

  ‘I ... I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘First, I want you to take half a dozen of those Tramadol pills in the medicine cabinet and grind them up into a fine powder. After that, get some boiling water and as many clean towels as you can find.’

  She looked down at Bud. ‘Are you sure there is no other way.’

  Yates shook his head. ‘I wish there was.’

  Chapter 13

  Roger Tanner was old. He knew it. He could feel it. And he was sure as hell certain he looked it. All that was left of his thick blonde mane were a few wispy grey hairs and a life under the African sun had turned his skin into the same texture as a rhino’s backside.

  Despite his appearance, Africa had been good to Tanner. According to his passport, he was British, yet he’d never set foot in the UK. Born in Rhodesia, he’d spent his formative years enjoying the end of British colonial Africa and all the privileges that came with it—an excellent education, a big house, servants, a king’s life on a middle class income. He spent his days hunting in the bush, his nights drinking in the clubs.

  At the time, he thought it would last forever, but Africa changed. When Mugabe took over, he forced the white colonialists out of the country, and Tanner spent the next few decades working in Kenya and Uganda and Gambia and several other African states, taking rich Americans and minor European royals on hunting trips.

  Growing disapproval with big game hunting meant men that he had become as rare as many of the animals he hunted. Few places now allowed elephant shoots or lion hunts, and he’d spent the last ten years working as a guide for the government of South Africa. He hated it, but he had to do something to earn a living. He loved Africa, and as archaic and antiquated as he knew he was, he would do anything to put off the inevitable, which was to leave for good, and rest his bones somewhere in England.

  He wasn’t ready for that, but he was prepared to leave his beloved dark continent temporarily. His ancient skills were in demand again, and for all his aching joints and sun-ravaged features, Tanner felt exhilarated as his taxi arrived at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport.

  This would only be the third time in his life he’d ever left Africa, and as he took out the luggage from the trunk of the cab, an unnerving feeling crept up his spine, as if he were saying goodbye to a lover that he would never see again.

  Kruger had been vague. He’d simply said he needed Tanner to get to Papua New Guinea, a sixteen-hour flight away, as soon as he possibly could.

  He had known Kruger since helping him with a lion problem in Limpopo. A man-eater had savaged several local miners, leading the rest of the black workers to revolt and put down their tools. Tanner had stalked the animal for three days, finally dispatching it with a single shot from four hundred yards. He may have been old and decrepit, but if any man alive was better with a hunting rifle than he was, he was yet to meet him.

  Still, his old friend hadn’t stipulated what sort of problem he had in New Guinea. Tanner’s World Encyclopaedia suggested there were no big cats in the country, so he had no idea what he was being sent to hunt.

  He was taking no chances and decided to take his .416 Rigby Mauser. The elephant gun was nearly a hundred years old, but it had never let him down and it fired as true as it did the day it was made.

  The woman in the check-in desk almost fell from her seat when she spied the long rifle.

  ‘I’ve got papers for that,’ he said as he stared round eyed at him.

  ‘I see,’ she said, her eyebrows forming a vee. She was local, the accent strong, but she looked like a typical airline worker—too much makeup and a fake smile. ‘But I’m afraid I’ll have to get somebody from security before we can check you in.’

  Tanner glanced at his watch as she picked up the phone.

  A few minutes later two burly airport officials arrived, radios at their lapels, guns in holsters on their hip.

  ‘I understand you are checking in a firearm,’ one of the men said.

  Tanner nodded. ‘That’s right. I have a certificate for it.’ He handed the man the sheaf of papers, who studied the documents as his colleague opened Tanner’s gun bag. ‘I see. So you are a licensed hunter?’

  Tanner nodded.

  ‘And you are going to Papua New Guinea?’

  Another nod.

  ‘And the purpose of your visit there?’

  ‘Hunting,’ Tanner said.

  The official handed Tanner back his documents, but then his colleague nudged him, showing him the long rifle.

  The official stared at it. ‘And what the hell are you hunting out there? King Kong?’

  They battled half the night trying to save Bud. They removed his leg, cauterized, stitched and dressed the wound, gave him as much Tramadol for the pain as his blood pressure permitted, but he still died.

  Suzanna felt more angry than upset. After all their work, after helping Yates and Loudon with the gory, bloody operation, after sitting at Bud’s bedside, mopping his brow, ensuring he wasn’t in pain, he went and died on her anyway, leaving the three of them having to clean u
p the medical hut.

  The place looked like a butcher’s shop, blood all over the floor, walls, instruments, and with no air-conditioning, an hour after sunup and it had all dried and crusted, becoming near impossible to wipe clean.

  According to Loudon, they’d exhausted all of their supplies of rhesus O negative on Bud, meaning if anybody opened up a vein at the mine, they were as good as dead, and as she cleaned and sterilised all the surgical equipment, he also revealed they were out of Tramadol.

  ‘There was enough there to knock out an elephant,’ Loudon said, as he and Yates wrapped Bud’s body in some plastic sheeting. ‘He certainly had a tough constitution.’

  ‘Not tough enough,’ Yates said. ‘I really thought he was going to make it.’

  He looked exhausted. His face had lost all its colour, turning an ashen grey and large bags hung underneath his eyes.

  ‘You did all you could,’ Suzanna said. ‘Why don’t you go get some sleep?’

  ‘Both of you should,’ Loudon said. ‘I’ll finish up here. You can sleep in my hut. It is the one next to Mr Kruger’s office. There are a couple of bunks in there. You’ll find it much more comfortable than one of the tents.’

  Suzanna thanked him and the pair staggered from the hut into the blast furnace of the Papuan morning.

  The heat and the cacophony nearly took Suzanna off her feet. She staggered, grabbing Yates’ arm for support, as around them miners and camp workers carried equipment and tools and boxes, and trundled past in trucks and loaders and a thick cloud of dust washed over the camp choking everything and burning Suzanna’s lungs.

  Then huge deafening booms echoed across the camp. Both Yates and Suzanna peered through the fog of dust and saw small mushroom clouds petering away in the distance. Several more booms sounded, the noise reverberating through Suzanna’s ribs.

  ‘They’re not just satisfied with digging up the land, they are blowing it to pieces too,’ she said.

  They made their way across the camp and the dust and noise intensified, as Franks’ helicopter thundered overhead, slowed and turned in the air. Workers fled and scurried out of its way as it hovered for several seconds before descending, kicking up more dust.