The Vanishing Tribe

by Alex Archer

  When Balanka finally came to a stop facing a particularly nasty-looking section of dense and thorny undergrowth, Annja felt that hope slipping away.

  The young tribeswoman smiled, pointed at Annja and then pointed at the undergrowth.

  Annja looked at her in disbelief. “You want me to go in there?”

  The tribeswoman pointed again, this time more forcefully.

  Annja shook her head. “No way,” she said, “not a chance. How do you think I could get through that, anyway?”

  Balanka said something sharply and stomped over to where Annja was standing. She got directly behind Annja and peered over her shoulder. Balanka let out a short “ah” sound and reached up to turn Annja’s head a few degrees to the left.

  Just like that, a route through the trees came into view. It wasn’t a narrow trail, either. This was a full-fledged thoroughfare by nature’s standards, a pathway wide enough to let something the size of an elephant pass through it without difficulty.

  At the thought, Annja let out a cry, spun around and hugged the other woman. The entrance to the elephant graveyard!

  Balanka hugged her back, chattering excitedly in Annja’s ear despite the fact that neither of them understood a word the other was saying. It didn’t matter to Annja, though; she’d found the next piece of the puzzle.

  The particular combination of sunlight and shadow had created an optical illusion that made the thicket ahead of her appear as dense and overgrown as everywhere else. Unless you were standing in a certain spot and looking at it from just the right angle, you would never know the pathway was there unless you stumbled into the opening by accident.

  It was an amazing piece of natural camouflage.

  Perhaps too good.

  Struck by a sudden suspicion, Annja walked forward until she passed through the outer edge of the undergrowth and then turned to look back the way she had come.

  From this viewpoint, the ruins of the arch forming the opening she’d just come through were clearly visible. So, too, were the remains of the low wall that ran out from either side of that arch and formed the outer edge of the thicket of trees that she and Balanka had just been following. Maybe the vegetation had simply grown out of control since the structure had fallen into ruin or perhaps it had been planted like that intentionally. Either way, the structure was all but hidden by dense undergrowth.

  Annja retraced her steps and tried to get the San tribeswoman to join her.

  Balanka, however, refused to set foot beneath the arch.

  Annja did her best to reassure her that everything would be fine, a not-so-simple task when hand gestures and facial expressions are all you have to work with, but Balanka steadfastly refused. In the end, Annja was forced to go on alone.

  She found the first piece of bone about twenty feet beyond the archway. A flash of white caught her eye, and when she walked over to it, she discovered an elephant skull partially hidden in the long grass. It wasn’t very big, no larger than that of a wildebeest or water buffalo, and she might have mistaken it for a skull of one of those animals if it hadn’t been for the protuberances where tusks had been. After examining it, Annja suspected it had belonged to a juvenile that had died far from its prime.

  As she continued on, she spotted bones with increased regularity. It wasn’t long before she was walking through a landscape dotted with rib cages, thigh bones and massive skulls the likes of which she’d never seen outside a museum exhibit for prehistoric mammals. Many of the bones were yellow with age, some so old that when she brushed against them they crumbled apart.

  To know all of these majestic animals had found their way here when their time had come was both eerie and somehow beautiful at the same time. Annja warred with her emotions as she tried to come to grips with the place. It was overwhelming.

  As she squatted down beside a particularly oversize skull, hoping to get a better look, she was distracted by something flapping at the base of a bush several yards away. She couldn’t tell just what it was from that distance, but the smooth surface and even design made her think it wasn’t natural but rather man-made. When she walked over to investigate, she discovered a beat-up old fedora trapped between the branches of the bush, fluttering back and forth in the light breeze.

  She felt her pulse racing as she turned the hat over and looked inside. There, on the hatband lining the interior, were a pair of faded initials.

  RH.

  Robert Humphrey.

  Just to be sure she pulled out the photograph of Humphrey. In the picture, the famed explorer gazed out at the camera from under the rim of a dark fedora.

  Annja stood there, overcome with a feeling of déjà vu. She’d known, intellectually, that Humphrey had come this way. After all, it was his trail she was following to discover what happened to him. But knowing something intellectually and standing there with a piece of physical evidence in your hand, particularly an item so personal in nature, was something else entirely.

  She carefully folded the fedora and slipped the hat inside her pack for safekeeping.

  Rising, Annja felt a presence at her back. Thinking her guide had decided to join her, after all, she turned around to thank her for bringing her to this place.

  The comment on her lips died before she could give voice to it. It wasn’t her guide at all.

  Far from it, in fact.

  23

  The largest bull elephant Annja had ever seen stood roughly a dozen feet away, beneath the sheltering boughs of a eucalyptus tree. It was at least twice her height and probably weighed twelve or thirteen thousand pounds. Its tusks were enormous, a good three feet or more long and at least as thick as her thigh.

  The tusks alone would make this an attractive target for any poacher in the vicinity, but where most elephants ranged from light to battleship gray, this particular specimen was white as a ghost, from the tip of its trunk to the end of its tail.

  Annja stared in wonder even as her mind got busy cataloging and identifying what she was seeing. Clearly the elephant suffered from hypopigmentary achromia, or albinism, a congenital disorder that was caused by a partial or, in this case, complete lack of pigmentation in the skin. That it had survived to adulthood was astounding. Body parts from albino animals were highly prized in African society. Witch doctors in particular believed they lent added potency to potions or spells. She remembered a case from just a few years ago in nearby Tanzania where an albino child was kidnapped, his body dismembered and the parts sold. Who knew what kind of price an animal of this size would bring?

  As if sensing her thoughts, the elephant grew agitated. It shifted from foot to foot, shaking the ground.

  “Easy there, Tantor,” Annja said in a calm voice, hoping to soothe the big animal.

  But the sound of her voice seemed to do just the opposite. The elephant began to swing its trunk back and forth, smashing the vegetation on either side of it with what, from Annja’s perspective, appeared to be purposeful intent.

  Annja was growing more concerned by the moment and when the huge animal lifted its head and trumpeted its anger in a loud voice she was convinced that it was about to charge. She was seconds away from drawing her sword, just to have something in hand to try to protect herself should the animal lose control, when the words of Humphrey’s last clue drifted through her mind.

  In the place where Tantor goes to die,

  Ahab’s bane trumpets his call.

  They say that music soothes the savage heart,

  And makes allies of us all.

  Music.

  Without hesitation Annja began singing the first song that came to mind in a crisp, clear voice. She was surprised to find herself singing a simple children’s song she’d learned from the nuns at the orphanage in New Orleans. A song that she hadn’t sung in almost two decades.

  “Sur le pont d’Avignon, On y danse, on y danse, Sur le pont d’Avignon, On y danse tout en rond. Les beaux messieurs font comme ça, Et puis encore comme ça.”

  No sooner had the first few
words left her mouth than the elephant’s anxiety began to subside. It gradually stopped stomping its feet and lashing its trunk.

  Astounded at the change in the animal, Annja kept singing.

  “Sur le pont d’Avignon, On y danse tout en rond. Les belles dames font comme ça, Et puis encore comme ça...”

  The elephant’s trunk began to swing gently back and forth in time with the music. It took a few steps forward, bringing it out from under the shade of the eucalyptus tree and for the first time Annja could look into its eyes.

  Its all-white eyes.

  Annja’s song faltered for a half beat before she recognized the milky cataracts for what they were and understood that the elephant was blind.

  The elephant hesitated in midstep, one massive foot held up in the air like at a circus performance. Annja was quick to pick up the tune again, however, and that seemed to reassure the great mammal. It continued forward until it stood directly in front of her as Annja finished her song.

  For a moment the two of them stood nose to trunk and Annja got the sense that the massive animal was sizing her up. She had been around elephants in the past, so she had some expectation of what might be considered “normal” behavior. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for what happened next.

  The elephant lifted its trunk and, with a gentle, featherlight touch, explored the features of her face.

  Annja closed her eyes and held perfectly still. She could feel the animal’s soft breath on her cheek and could smell the eucalyptus leaves it had been eating before her arrival. More important, she could sense the elephant’s innate intelligence. Perhaps it hadn’t simply been luck that had kept it safe from poachers for so long.

  The elephant huffed in her face and then withdrew.

  Annja opened her eyes to find it standing a few feet away, waiting.

  “Aren’t you amazing,” she said softly.

  She felt as though she’d passed some kind of a test, but a test of what, exactly, she didn’t know. Still, she had the definite sense that the elephant—Tantor, she decided to call him—wouldn’t hamper her search going forward.

  All she had to do now was figure out where Humphrey had left his next clue.

  She began moving in the same direction she’d been headed before Tantor had interrupted her, but she’d only taken a few steps when the elephant let out a short cry.

  Annja turned to find it looking at her.

  It’s not really looking at you. It’s blind, remember?

  She made herself turn away.

  But Tantor trumpeted again, louder this time, the minute she lifted her foot to take another step.

  The elephant clearly wanted something.

  It waved its trunk at her when she turned once more and then, quite deliberately, did it again when she was too busy staring at it to respond.

  She tried to tell herself it was just coincidence, but she didn’t believe it.

  The elephant wanted her to go the other way.

  The elephant trumpeted once, much more softly, and then turned and headed back the way it had come.

  Annja stood there dumbfounded to find herself seriously considering following a blind albino elephant deeper into the ruins. She knew elephants were smart, but wasn’t this taking it too far? Did she really trust that an elephant knew what she was doing there?

  When she found herself following in the elephant’s wake, she had her answer.

  24

  The sun was still making its way over the mountains in the distance when Porter and his men arrived at the San village. Excited to have more visitors, the children scurried out to greet them. But as the men got out of the vehicles with guns in their hands, the children raced back the way they had come with cries of fear and shouts of warning.

  Today’s visitors, it seemed, were very different from their guest of the night before.

  Bryant and his men rounded up all of the people they could find—man, woman and child—and forced them to assemble as a group in the center of the village. Porter stepped forward and brandished a pistol to get them to quiet down. “I’m looking for a white woman, alone and on foot. She would have come through here last night or early this morning. Has anyone seen her?”

  The villagers didn’t say a word. From the expressions on some of their faces, Porter wasn’t sure they understood him.

  He turned and gestured to Dr. Crane, who reluctantly stepped forward. Several of the villagers called out when they saw him, but Porter didn’t know if they were reacting to the man’s presence or the fact that his hands were bound securely in front of him, indicating that he, too, was a prisoner. Frankly, Porter didn’t care either way. All he wanted the doctor to do was translate what he said.

  “I know you speak that damned language of theirs,” Porter snapped. “Tell them I want to know where the American woman went.”

  Crane turned to the assembled villagers and spoke to them in their own language. There was a pause and then a man of about twenty-five stepped to the front of the crowd and addressed Crane. The two conversed for a moment.

  “He says that they’ve only recently set up camp and haven’t had any visitors from the tour companies yet,” Crane translated. “They haven’t seen this woman you are asking about.”

  Porter took in the well-built huts, the lived-in look to the village, even the amount of what looked to be recent ash in the fire pit. The man was lying. Just how stupid did they think he was?

  Without a word Porter lifted his pistol and shot the young man in the chest. He went down like a sack of bricks.

  For a second the only sound that could be heard was the echo of the gunshot and then the moment was shattered by cries of grief and horror. A few of the men surged forward but were quickly knocked back with hard, sharp blows from the ends of the assault rifles Porter’s men carried.

  Porter didn’t want the villagers to have any time to think, so he stepped forward, grabbed a woman who was too slow to shrink back out of reach and pulled her upright in front of him with one arm locked around her neck. As the shouting and screaming continued, he raised his pistol in the air and fired again.

  The sound of the shot brought silence in its wake.

  Staring out at the crowd, Porter put the pistol to the head of the woman and addressed himself to Crane.

  “Tell them I’m going to kill someone for every minute that I don’t have the information I’m looking for, starting with this woman right here.”

  Crane’s jaw dropped. “You can’t do—”

  “Shut up and tell them, Doctor, or I’ll do it right here, right now!” To emphasize his point he ground the muzzle against the woman’s skull hard enough to draw blood.

  Crane bit back what he was going to say and turned to the crowd, speaking quickly but clearly.

  All he received in turn were hard stares.

  Porter wanted to laugh. Did they think he was kidding? No way in hell would a group of desert rats like these get the better of him. He’d waste them all if that was what it took to get the answer he wanted. He was all but certain that Annja had come this way and he intended to get the information he needed one way or the other.

  So be it.

  He let go of the woman’s neck and then kicked her knees out from under her so she ended up on the ground at his feet. He pointed the gun at her and began counting. “Five...four...three...”

  An old man in the middle of the group slowly stepped forward. Several of the others tried to stop him, but he shook them off, glared at Porter and said something to him.

  Dr. Crane translated without being asked. “He says his name is Mmegi. He is the village elder.”

  “I don’t care if he’s the president of Botswana,” Porter snarled. “I want to know what happened to Creed. Can he tell me?”

  Crane ignored the remark, continuing to listen to Mmegi’s slow but steady speech.

  “He says there is no need for violence. The woman you seek is not here nor has she been here. They have not had visitors for many days.”<
br />
  Porter couldn’t see any fear in the old man’s eyes, just calm acceptance of whatever was to come, and for some reason that caused a shiver of unease to run through his frame.

  “Perhaps he’s forgotten that the man with the gun is the one in charge. Tell him that I’m only going to ask one more time and then I will show them the consequences of defying me, and trust me, they will not be pretty.”

  Crane dutifully relayed the message but Mmegi was shaking his head before he’d even finished. “No woman! No violence!” he said in accented but clear English.

  So the desert rat can speak English, after all, Porter thought.

  He raised the gun and pointed it at Mmegi’s face.

  “Last chance...”

  Commotion to his left caught his attention and he glanced that way just as Bryant came around the side of one of the huts, shoving a boy of about ten or twelve ahead of him. The kid stumbled and fell but Bryant grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back to his feet.

  Mmegi jerked as if he’d been slapped and an expression of dismay flashed across his face. The old man recovered quickly, but not quickly enough. Porter had seen the look.

  “Caught him eavesdropping from behind the hut over there,” Bryant said as he dragged the boy over to Porter and pushed him to the ground at his feet.

  “I see,” Porter said. The elder was too old to be the boy’s father. Grandfather, perhaps?

  “I was just about to put him in the group with the others,” Bryant said, “but then I saw that he had this.”

  Bryant held up a baseball cap.

  A New York Yankees baseball cap.

  It didn’t take Porter more than a moment to make the connection. He had seen the exact same cap on Annja Creed’s head less than twenty-four hours before.