‘It must be, and she’s not too far away from here, so let’s hope we’re not too late,’ Ian said with urgency in his voice.
As they talked about what they’d found where Graham had been caged, they discussed Druker, the blue-eyed man whose real name authorities had found out was Blake Caldwell. They told him about his office and the terminals he had, which were monitoring each one of his captives when they were out in the wild.
‘He and his crew also seemed to have good communications in place to make sure they monitored the movement of tourists and other visitors around the area,’ Ian said.
‘Although this Druker guy seemed to own a significant slice of this land, the law mandates that there is free movement of tourists across each person’s property, in order for them to fully enjoy the wonders of this region,’ he continued.
The rangers went on to explain to Graham that Druker had been discovered because one of the men they’d captured was an American tourist game hunter. The place he was staying had reported that he, along with his guide, had not returned from a hunting trip.
A police investigative team with a skilled tracker of their own followed the tyre tracks of the missing Land Rover and found it had been driven into the river. Sharpshooters had kept the crocodiles away while it had been pulled out of the water and identified. Then they followed the tracks of Druker’s vehicle back to his home base, were they found a Winchester Model 70 rifle that had belonged to the neighbouring property owner, Dravin.
The rangers also described how Druker had been bribing the officials at the airport to turn a blind eye to what he was doing.
‘You should have seen his face when we turned up with the police,’ Ian said to Graham.
As they spoke about the twisted men who had kidnapped Graham and he recounted what had happened to him over the last couple of days, the Land Rover jumped and hopped across the bumpy terrain, making it difficult for its occupants to stay seated.
As they finally approached a thicker set of trees and bushes, Jack slowed the vehicle down.
‘We are getting close,’ he said.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
The barking sounds from the baboon troop intensified, as more male baboons joined in the attack. Carly didn’t realise that despite their size, these creatures would readily attack and kill leopards in the same way and sometimes tear them apart. The three lead baboons took it in turns to jump in and tear at her skin, and now both her legs were in tatters, with blood gushing from her wounds.
The noise was almost unbearable and the pain she felt was immense, and although her veins ran with an overdose of adrenalin, the anaesthetic effect was not enough to numb the agony her attackers were inflicting.
‘Get back! Go Away!’ she shrieked.
But the attack was unrelenting, and the baboons came at her from all angles now. They were grabbing at her skin and ripping it apart like she was some kind of rag doll.
‘Leave me alone!’
She had tried to fend off the baboons by screaming at them, then waving her tattered arms. All was in vain. Instead of frightening them away, it seemed to incite yet more anger in the animals, which took her screams as a challenge. She then realised that sitting there and being attacked was futile and attempted to get up to run away, but as she did so, one of the lead bucks jumped on her back and dug its huge canines into her neck.
She screamed out in pain as the animal’s teeth bore into her neck muscle. Reacting instinctively, she reached back to grab the creature and managed to throw if off. But no sooner had she done this than another baboon was upon her and digging its teeth into her bare flesh, too.
Her screams were drowned out by the commotion made by the baboon troop, which now amounted to 50 or more of the enraged creatures. The barking they made, combined with a shrill sound made by others nearby, was so loud that the noise could probably be heard quite some distance away.
Despite how much they’d wounded her, and in spite of how much blood she had lost, Carly managed to stay on her feet, as one baboon clawed into her back, whilst sinking its teeth into the soft skin of her shoulder and the trapezius muscles. Two other baboons tore at her calves, then one sank its teeth into her Achilles tendon at the back of her foot, trying to bring her down to the ground.
Meanwhile, another attacked her knee and sank its teeth right into the knee joint. The pain from this bite alone made her scream even louder. She looked down in terror at the baboon that was biting into her knee, and as she did, it looked up with its orange-coloured eyes. As the creature looked her in the eyes, it was as if it knew where to bite for the best effect to bring her down.
This bite was so intense and painful, she involuntarily dropped to her knees, as it must have severed tendons and muscles in her knee and leg. With her mind reeling, she finally fell over on the ground with a thump, whilst several of the baboons tore at her bare back.
She was now losing blood at a huge rate from the sheer number of tears to her flesh. She knew that some of the bites were right down to the bone, as she could feel it and could even hear the sound of tooth on bone, as these vicious creatures ripped at her torso and limbs.
‘Surely,’ she thought, ‘there must be someone out here to save me. Someone will hear the sound of these creatures and come to my rescue.’ Her mind then managed somehow to drift off to scenes of home. For an instant, she almost could objectify this experience, as horrendous as it was, and question logically how she’d ended up here, being attacked by these wild animals.
But the mental reprieve didn’t last for long.
She lifted her head up from the dirt to see a baboon chewing on a piece of her skin, then another baboon came in and ripped at her face.
The pain from this injury was like she’d been burnt with a red hot poker. The animal jerked at a piece of skin it had managed to tear away from her face, and bit by bit her face was torn away.
Although pretty numb all over from the effects of an overdose of adrenalin, she could also feel another animal sitting on her back, biting into the large latissimus muscle. As it did, her arms were lifted backwards.
Carly had little life left in her, but a final, desperate urge to survive overcame her. She struggled to her hands and knees and tried to crawl away, but as she did more baboons came in from each side, biting at her elbows and at her legs to bring her back down once more. She ignored the almost unbearable pain to stand up, but as she did her legs buckled and she fell back to the ground. She tried one last time, screaming more weakly now, as the creatures came at her in unrelenting waves, like piranhas savaging a piece of meat dangled in the water.
Finally, she began to lose consciousness. Her blood loss had passed the threshold where her body simply had to give up. For a fleeting instant, her mind cast back to what Graham had said. He had told her about being rescued from lions and, even now not fully accepting how bad things were for her, she kept hoping she was going to be rescued at the last second as he had been. Then all went blank. Darkness fell over her mind and the last bit of life drained from her body.
The largest male baboon stood atop Carly’s unmoving form in a strange kind of victory stance and let out a loud, triumphant bark.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
‘Keep your eyes peeled. She’s not moving, which might not be a good sign,’ Jack said.
The bush was too thick for the Land Rover to go any further, so he pulled up and turned the engine off.
‘We need to go on foot the rest of the way. You stay in the vehicle with Kyle, whilst we go and find her.’
‘But I want to go with you!’ Graham protested.
‘No, you’ve been through enough and we’ll be quicker without you,’ Jack replied.
But before he or Ian could protest any more, Graham had jumped out of the vehicle and had joined them.
‘I’ll keep up, don’t you worry,’ he said.
The three of them walked on into the bush, as Jack and Ian accepted that it would be quicker to simply move on than to stand and argue.
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It wasn’t long before the tracker indicated that Carly was only metres away, and then they found her bloodied body lying on the ground, unmoving. But more terrifying than that was the scene they were witnessing, as atop her body were several baboons, with many more around her. Ian lifted his gun and fired a shot across the top of the animals, which all immediately scattered.
Graham was the first to break the silence. ‘No! No, this can’t be!’ he protested. ‘She didn’t deserve this ending!’
Even though he hadn’t known her, he felt that because of what he’d been through himself, and because he’d spoken to her, albeit briefly, he sensed that the two of them had some kind of bond, a deeper connection.
Baboons ran away in all directions as the party drew near. Then, as they stood above her mangled body in silence, the men heard what sounded like the bark of a dog. Jack looked around towards the sound and could still see a few baboons in the low branches only 15 or so metres away.
‘She must have walked into their troop and they got aggressive,’ Jack said. ‘They sometimes do this to leopards and other predators that wander unknowingly into their territory, and when they feel threatened, they will attack like this.’
‘It looks like we were just that little bit too late,’ Ian said.
Graham felt sick as he looked at Carly’s blood-soaked body and then began to cry. His tears were a combination of sadness for her and of relief for being found before he’d suffered a similar fate. He followed slowly behind as the two rangers carried her ravaged form back to the Land Rover.
Once they’d loaded Carly into the back of the Land Rover and covered her over, they began the journey back to the local town, where, once her family had been notified, arrangements would be made to ship her body back to England for burial.
The police were left to finish off at Druker’s place, arresting all the men who worked there and gathering what evidence they needed for a prosecution in court.
When they arrived at the local township, Graham was first of all seen by a local doctor. After he had been given a once over, and his cuts and blisters had been cleaned and/or bandaged, he was taken to a small bed and breakfast so that he could eat and shower. Next day, after a night of exhausted sleep, he was taken to the police station in order to give evidence about his ordeal both at Druker’s place and out in the wild on two harrowing occasions.
After the authorities had collected all the evidence they needed, they had arranged for Graham to return home, which was on a Kenyan Airways flight to London Heathrow. It was the first time that he’d knowingly flown. The officials had told the stewards to look after him and he was flown business class all the way. He was met at the other end by his parents, who he managed to contact and to whom he had explained all that had happened.
The news media, of course, got hold of the bizarre story right away, and Graham, as the lone survivor among the victims, was the subject of numerous interviews and their subsequent stories. He was particularly annoyed by how the ordeals he and his fellow victims had undergone were depicted in lurid fashion by the tabloid press.
It was through the news media, however, that Graham later learnt that Druker was being held on Zambia’s death row in Lusaka. It was through them also that he discovered Zambia still has the death penalty, even though they’ve not acted upon this since 1997.
He was not sure about Druker’s accomplices and what had happened to them. But Graham felt happy that the man leading the whole operation was at least serving a long sentence for the heinous crimes he’d committed and might even be put to death at some point.
Still, his satisfaction about justice being carried out did nothing to diminish the terrifying dreams he had each night about lions chasing him and digging with their razor-sharp claws into his naked back, or the residual aches and pains in his battered body that took months to completely heal.
Later, after seeking counselling for the trauma he’d undergone, Graham had to accept that some emotional scars might never fully disappear. He finally came to understand that the best he could do was to get on with his life by drawing on the compassion that had been awakened in him by poor Carly’s fate.
He updated his CV and began to seriously look for employment, specifically in the health-care industry. His new-found sincerity, and the widespread publicity he had received, helped him to land a job. As a hospital nurse assistant, he soon was recognised for his reliability and willingness to comfort patients in pain whenever he could.
Graham had learnt in the hardest of all possible ways that life only has value when you find a meaningful purpose for living it.
THE END
THANK YOU
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Nothing Left But Fear Page 26