Amie in Africa Box Set 1

by Lucinda E Clarke

  Amie gasped. She hadn’t realised it was a black mamba, they usually preferred to stay on the ground, but she knew that Kirk was doomed. Even after one bite, his fate was sealed.

  He was rolling around screaming, lashing out with his arms and legs. It would probably take less than thirty minutes for him to die, the time for his nervous system to shut down.

  For a few moments Amie stood there in horror then she dashed to the Land Rover to see if there was any anti-venom, but she couldn’t find anything. Maybe there was a kit in one of the tents. She dived into the nearest one throwing open boxes, pulling clothing out of backpacks, tipping out the packed foodstuffs and anything else she could find. There was no sign of any first aid box at all which told Amie this hunting party was either incredibly careless and ignorant, or not a hunting party at all.

  A loud drumming noise caused her to pause in her frantic search and she rushed outside to see a small plane flying low overhead. She waved her arms and screamed at it, but in a matter of seconds it was gone.

  Amie ran over to look at Kirk. Already his face had gone white and he was having trouble breathing. He was salivating badly and then he threw up.

  “H ... help me,” he gasped, reaching out to her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Amie cried. “There’s no anti-venom. I’ll try washing the bite area but I can’t even bandage it properly. It got you on your face.”

  Kirk tried to touch his cheek but he couldn’t move his arms properly. His head lolled to one side, the sweat dripping off his chin. He made a feeble effort to hold his stomach and curl up into a foetal position, but could only groan and rock feebly from side to side.

  Amie knew he wouldn’t last much longer. He writhed a few times, jerking spasmodically, shuddered and then lost consciousness. She tried to make him more comfortable by putting a rolled-up blanket under his head, but she had never felt so helpless in all her life. It had happened so fast. In a little over half an hour, he took his last breath.

  Amie closed his eyes. Death surrounded her in every direction. The whole episode had shaken her. At worst she’d only wanted to give Kirk a fright, the last thing she’d expected was that the snake would kill him. The area on his cheek around the bite marks hardly showed at all. How could she even prove he’d died from snake bite without a full autopsy? Could she be accused of murder?

  17 AMIE CUTS LOOSE

  Amie put her head in her hands and sighed. Now what? The so-called hunters weren’t going to be happy when they came back to find their mate dead. Would they believe her when she told them what had happened? It might be better if she made herself scarce, especially when they discovered she had rifled through their belongings.

  With no one to guard her, Amie had a quick look through the stuff in the tents. She needed to keep moving, do something to keep herself occupied and stop herself thinking about Kirk and the way he’d died. If she didn’t, she would just curl up into a little ball and cry. She must stay sane and at the same time she might find something which would give her a clue why she and Simon were here. He didn’t strike her as a big game hunter. No, this meeting had a different agenda.

  Amie ducked into one of the tents and examined everything she could see. She was about to leave when she spied a small case under one of the cots. Dragging it out she was surprised to find it unlocked, but all it contained was paperwork. She skipped through the pages, some written in what looked like Chinese and others in a Cyrillic script. She could make neither head nor tail of it until she came to some diagrams. These she understood. The drawings showed rocket launchers, grenades, assault rifles, bazookas and some weapons she couldn’t exactly identify. Were they here to buy or sell weapons? She grabbed her cell phone and took photographs of each diagram before replacing them where she’d found them.

  She ran over to the remaining vehicles and peered inside, nothing out of the ordinary in either of them. No stash of arms matching the pictures she’d just seen.

  Amie dithered. Stay or go? She was loath to take off alone across unfamiliar territory, but her fate might be far worse if she hung around.

  More explosions shook her out of her daze. Something was going on, and she was damn well going to find out what it was, it didn’t sound too far away. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, she found in the Land Rover she set off in the direction of the blasts.

  The going was easy there would be no wildlife lurking after all that noise. The explosions continued every now and again, guiding her in the right direction. She slithered down a steep slope into a narrow donga, and scrambling up the other side she peered cautiously over the top of the bank.

  Both helicopters were standing off to one side, and she counted at least twenty men talking in groups. Was Simon with them? A little way off, three others – Amie thought they might be the men from the camp – were setting up a gun on a tripod and loading it. As she watched, they set it on automatic fire and bullets spewed out at the targets about a hundred metres away. The cardboard, cut-out figures were obliterated in seconds.

  The three men returned to the larger helicopter to fetch more armament boxes which they then prepared for demonstration.

  Amie grabbed her cell phone and fired off shot after shot. She didn’t think that any of them would be very good, even with the latest computer enhancement software. They could hardly blame her; they’d never given her a super spy camera. Even with the naked eye it was difficult to see who was who, and the boxes looked like any old boxes. She wasn’t even sure the weapons would be easy to identify either. But it was the best she could do and she wasn’t going to risk her life by going any closer.

  Amie had seen enough. It was time to get the hell out of there; and out of the camp as well. If they found the pictures on her phone she’d be in big trouble. She had to get away before Simon and the men returned.

  She slithered back down the bank and clawed her way up the other side of the dry river bed. The adrenalin coursing through her body made the return journey much faster, and she arrived back at the tents hardly puffing, but covered in sweat from the heat.

  She grabbed anything she considered useful and made for the Land Rover. A quick look told her that Simon hadn’t left the keys in the ignition and neither had they been left in any of the other vehicles. They weren’t that stupid. Amie eyed the Land Rover. It looked quite new and she doubted she’d be able to get it started, but one of the other trucks looked a lot older so she’d have to try that one – another lesson from her days at the Residence was how to hotwire a car.

  She threw her belongings on the back seat, then helped herself to several water bottles and three containers of food. She was ready. She paused to listen, but couldn’t hear anyone approaching so in a final act of decency she fetched a blanket from her tent and covered Kirk’s body. She could only hope that it wouldn’t be attacked before the others returned. He was lying under the fateful tree so perhaps the vultures would miss out on this meal, for the moment. Without the smell of blood, it would possibly be a few hours before any predator approached although the insects were already busy running up his nose and crawling into his ears.

  It had crossed Amie’s mind that she might be safer escaping on foot. The party might think she’d been a victim of wild animals, and not even bother looking for her. But then what would she say when she pitched up back at the office in Durban? What if they found her on foot? She could never escape that way. The thought of walking for hundreds of miles through the bush was not very appealing either. She’d done it more than once and had no desire to repeat the experience.

  She found a screwdriver in the glove compartment of the oldest vehicle and wrenching off the plastic casing covering the steering column, she yanked out the wires, stripped the ends off the red ones, joined them to the starter wires and jumped when it sparked. The engine sprang into life, but when she settled herself behind the steering wheel, she found it wouldn’t turn.

  Amie swore, looking around again fearfully in case the hunters had returned. It was well into th
e afternoon by now and she was running out of time. Scrabbling on the floor she retrieved the screwdriver and hacked at the ignition lock until she’d worked it loose. To her relief the wheel gave way. She was ready to go. Like a rally driver she reversed, spun the wheels onto the dirt road and put her foot down. Just before the camp site disappeared from view, she thought she saw movement behind her, whether it was animals or men she couldn’t tell.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” screamed Amie. The one thing she should have grabbed, the most important thing of all, was the satnav. But it was too late to go back for it now. She swore as she drove like an escaping convict over the ruts and potholes on the winding road.

  She noticed there was a compass stuck to the dashboard, so that would be a help, but right now, she had no options; there was only the one road out. She was barely aware of a pair of giraffes that stared at her as she shot past, muttering prayers to a God she’d not spoken to in a long time. Please no rhinos or elephants. She was going much too fast to stop and if she had to sit and wait for anything too large to jump out of the way, she would be in big trouble.

  Around the next corner, a troupe of baboons was sitting in the road. Amie put her hand on the horn, but it didn’t make a sound. Steering with one hand she fiddled desperately with the other switches wondering what else wouldn’t work. Had she disabled other car components when she hacked at the wires? Would the headlights work? She shuddered, and cast a quick glance at the setting sun, it was going down so fast and twilight only lasted for a short time in Africa.

  She battled on, swerving round the largest of the potholes where there was room, and attempting to slow down a little when there wasn’t. So far, she’d not had a choice in roads to take and she knew her tracks would be easy to follow. It would even be a waste of time to stop and brush the tyre marks away, it wouldn’t delay anyone for very long.

  Half an eye on the compass told her she was still travelling south. She gripped the steering wheel to stop herself from shaking while the sweat poured down her face and her back, making her clothes stick to her like a second skin. Every few seconds she wiped away the stinging perspiration that was dripping into her eyes. Her hands slid on the steering wheel but it wasn’t caused by the heat of the African sun, now sinking over to her right, but fear. She knew if the men caught up with her, she was as good as dead. Simon was not who he seemed. How had she got herself into this mess? A weekend of romantic game viewing had turned into a nightmare. She could only guess what was going on. What had she done? Was running away a good or a bad decision? She’d witnessed a gruesome death, and unless the fang marks on Kirk’s cheek told an obvious story, she could be accused of killing him. She’d witnessed what looked like an illegal arms deal and to cap it all, she’d stolen a car. Was her overactive imagination working overtime, again? Had she overreacted? It was too late to reconsider now. Once again, Amie was on the run.

  She battled on, peering through the gloom as the light began to fade. For now, the trees and bushes either side of the road were acting as boundary markers, but she was forced to slow down. She was constantly checking the rear-view mirror to see if they were following her, they would be able to move much faster with functioning headlights. So far there was no sign of them, but as the road undulated the view behind was limited.

  The car shuddered over a pothole and Amie fought to keep it on course, she was being thrown around like a rag doll as the terrain deteriorated and she realised that she must have left the dirt track and was now driving across open bush. She peered at the compass but couldn’t read it in the dim light. It only indicated a general direction anyway and the road had twisted and turned several times.

  She slowed right down realising that it was stupid to continue in the dark. The lights on the vehicle barely illuminated the surroundings and she guessed that only the side lights were working. Occasionally, she saw eyes reflected in the moonlight but there was not enough to see the creatures that observed her frenetic flight. To drive yourself at night in the park was forbidden, people normally booked drives after dark with one of the established tour companies that hired qualified drivers. That’s another rule I’ve broken, she thought ruefully, although it might not apply in Mozambique, and am I even still in a game park?

  All of a sudden, the Land Rover slipped sideways she must have driven over the edge of a donga or slid into a very deep rut. She cursed and wrenched the wheel in the same direction, but it continued downwards. She prayed she hadn’t tipped into a dry river bed; she’d never be able to dig herself out. The car shook and juddered as it rolled over stones, tree roots and then hit a small acacia tree which threw her off to the right. For a few seconds the wheels screamed as they fought for purchase, then it leapt forward again as the land flattened out.

  I am going to have to stop, this is madness, thought Amie but the decision was made for her as she came to an abrupt halt. There was something large and immovable in the way. Amie accelerated but the wheels spun. The car was going nowhere. Whatever she’d hit, it wasn’t moving, but it didn’t seem to be alive. She sat there for a moment with the engine ticking over and then nervously climbed out to see what the obstruction was. She grabbed the torch, but it slipped out of her grasp, dropped on the ground and she couldn’t find it again in the dark.

  She slowly approached the obstacle and her hands reached out, hitting a metal fence at least twelve-foot high topped with razor wire – a border fence. Was she still in Mozambique? Was this the South African border? There was only one thing to do and that was to wait until it was light enough to see where she was going. She couldn’t reverse in the dark; she might end up back in the ditch. She’d been driving cross country for a considerable distance, so her pursuers would be unlikely to track her in the dark. She also had her doubts about how familiar they were in the wild; they’d not struck her as being particularly bush-savvy.

  She rummaged around on the back seat, found the water and the food she’d brought, then wrapped herself in a blanket and settled down to get some sleep.

  Something bumping into the Land Rover woke her up. It was still dark, no sign yet of the pre-dawn light. She froze, straining to hear any other sounds. She felt quite safe in the vehicle, unless it was a particularly inquisitive elephant or a bad-tempered rhino. She’d only left a little gap open at the top of the front windows and had locked all the doors. She could smell a scent that she couldn’t place. Her heart was pounding and she struggled to keep her breathing even.

  For several moments there was nothing, and then to her horror she heard something try to open the door next to her. She bit her lip. Was it true that baboons and monkeys had learned to open car doors in the hope of tourist food? But what were they doing out at this time of the night?

  Next, someone or something jiggled the handle on the other side of the car, and now that her ears were tuned in, she could hear more noises, murmurs and a cough, a rustling that seemed to be coming from all round the car. She didn’t think it was Simon or the other men, they wouldn’t be creeping around; they would be screaming at her. No, this was something else and she couldn’t make out what it was. A whole troop of inquisitive monkeys? They were no threat except they might cause damage to the car, rip off wing mirrors, windscreen wipers or smash in the lights, not that any of those were working properly.

  A bright light from the lost torch illuminated the interior of the car, a face appeared in the window and Amie shrieked. The new arrivals were not animal they were human, and she had no idea if they were friend or foe. If they wanted to, they could easily break a window and get into the car, and when she heard one of them pulling on the tailgate, she decided it was time to get out and try to make friends with them.

  She threw aside the blanket, opened the door and stepped out. There were seven of them, three men, two women and two children, one of them still a baby carried on its mother’s back.

  “Siyabonga. Jambo sana,” she paused, “Habari?”

  They stared at her then nodded and replied in a language Amie d
idn’t know. Her attempts in Zulu and Swahili had failed.

  “You speak English?”

  They said nothing for several seconds, and then it dawned on Amie why there were people out here in the park on foot after dark. This was a border fence. They were trying to get from Mozambique into South Africa. Thousands tried it every year in the hope of a new life and better living conditions. Several were killed by wildlife while crossing the Kruger Park so she could only guess they’d seen the car as a refuge.

  Nervous looks passed between the families, then a few more sentences in what Amie guessed to be Portuguese or another African language, and then one of the men reached behind her, unlatched the back door and opened it. They all piled into the front and back of the Land Rover leaving Amie standing outside. She clambered back in behind the wheel again. In dismay, she watched them rifling through her meagre supplies. In true African tradition it was time to share.

  Amie felt sorry for these poor people taking such a risk, but she was also worried they would finish all the food and water. The baby whimpered and its mother swung it onto her lap and pulled her dress down to offer it a nipple. It suckled contentedly making little slurping noises, but the odour from the nappy it must have been wearing for days, made Amie’s eyes water.

  The uninvited visitors settled down for what remained of the night and there was nothing Amie could do about it. She’d been hijacked. Accepting the inevitable, she pulled the blanket round herself and closed her eyes.

  She was woken by the baby’s fretful cries. It was the pre-dawn and at last she could see the huge fence which towered above them. Amie stepped out and noticed immediately that the winch mechanism had got caught in the wire mesh. No wonder she hadn’t been able to free the car.