Safari: A Technothriller

by Alexander Plansky

  “I know it’s felt strange these past few days,” he said, seemingly to no one in particular. “With Courtney leaving and Brandon bedridden, our group has certainly felt…smaller. And it came to my attention that another guest, Mr. Richard Jones, has been failing to keep up appearances for the past few days. Well, now we know why.”

  Sydney froze just as she was about to take a bite and looked up. Everyone was focused on Sans except for Chang, but Ramsay looked as if he already knew.

  “We found him last night, or at least, what was left of him.” Sans took a deep breath, glancing at his wine glass. “He’d gone out into the reserve, presumably after dark. There’s no clear reason why he would go out alone, but Richard was always one to stick his nose in other people’s business.” He took a sip, then sat silently drumming his fingers on the wood. “We often forget how dangerous nature really is. All these children’s movies and stuffed animals try to make lions and leopards look so cuddly and harmless. So many conservationists develop a moral high ground where they believe these creatures are hopeless without their intervention, like they’re gods coming down from ivory towers to save the day. They forget that these things don’t need us. In fact, they’re better off without us.

  “I don’t hunt to feel superior. I hunt to remind myself how fragile we really are. That despite all our advances, all of our progress, when I go out into the wild there’s a great chance an animal guided solely by instinct will tear me apart and consume my flesh for energy. I remember that fact every time I set foot out there. Richard, clearly, did not. May he rest in peace.”

  Sans stood up, pushed in his chair, and walked out of the room with his wine glass in hand. After a moment, Ramsay followed him. Chang hadn’t moved, still silently turning the fork over on her placemat again and again and again. Sydney put her utensils down.

  Her appetite was gone.

  As she climbed the stairs, the quietness of the lodge seemed unsettling. It was also dawning on her that she had been the last one to see Jones alive. The image of him vanishing into the forest replayed over and over again in her mind. For him to have been attacked, he must’ve gone outside the electromagnetic perimeter. But what was out there that would make him do something so stupid?

  She and Andy returned to their respective rooms without saying a word. Sydney flopped onto her bed and lay on her back, staring at the wooden ceiling. She thought back to that conversation she’d overheard on Tuesday night, just Chang and Jones alone in the library. Jones had said Sans’s latest project was using up more company funds than originally expected and he’d wanted to take a look around the veterinary labs. There was something about the interns not be allowed to see everything, and some kind of second entrance through a cave out in the reserve.

  The cave. That’s where he must’ve been heading that night. But before he could get there, something killed him. Sans had said they’d found “what was left of him”, and Sydney tried to shut images of bloody human remains out of her mind. She hoped her imagination was worse than what had actually happened to him.

  Something still didn’t make sense. Was the cave entrance outside the perimeter? Why would Sans have an unguarded access point to his labs? Didn’t that defeat the point, or was it a way of releasing animals from the lab directly into the wild? She wondered if the same creatures that had killed the wildebeest and the elephant had gotten Jones. Did that mean they were roaming right near the lodge?

  Sydney stood up. Whenever she needed to clear her mind or think through something, she would often go for a walk. She left her room and went across the hall to knock on Andy’s door.

  He opened it. “What’s up?”

  “Wanna go for a stroll?”

  “Outside? It’s buggy as hell.”

  “I think Sans has mosquito-repellent candles on the pool deck,” she said.

  “Alright,” he said, throwing on some shoes.

  As they walked down the hall to the landing at the top of the stairs, Andy turned and looked at the two double doors with the ferns on each side. “You know, I wonder what he keeps in there.”

  “It’s his trophy room.”

  They turned to see Chang coming up the stairs. “It also doubles as his office and bedroom. He doesn’t allow anyone in there, not even the staff. I talked to them about it. It’s his inner sanctum, the one place he can go where no one can touch him. He wouldn’t dare show me, and I’ve been his friend since grad school.”

  “You both went to Stanford, right?” Sydney asked.

  “That’s correct.” She sighed and looked at the doors. There was a moment of silence, then she finally said, “He hasn’t been the same since she died.”

  “Who?” Andy said.

  “His wife, Jane. Only thing he loved more than her was probably hunting itself.”

  It struck Sydney as odd that Sans hadn’t mentioned her before. And she hadn’t seen any photos of her around the lodge. “She must’ve been into hunting too, then.”

  Chang shook her head and chuckled. “Actually no, she hated it. She was always a big eco-warrior, and I guess he is too, but Billy’s always had this Darwinist grove about things.” She smirked and drew a flask from her pocket. She took a swig and Sydney realized it probably hadn’t been her first this evening.

  “How’d they ever end up together?” Andy said, almost laughing.

  Chang screwed the cap back on. “She saved him from killing himself.”

  Sydney and Andy were silent.

  “What, you thought those colorful sweatbands were some kind of fashion statement?” she said, returning the flask to her pocket. “Back at Harvard, Billy slit his wrists. He’d always had a tough time fitting in. Kids would pick on him for having a speech impediment, and by the time he got it fixed with a therapist, he was behind the curve socially. Jane was just his friend at the time, coming to his room to ask if he’d want to go out with some of her friends that night. He was still pretty socially awkward back then, but she always made an effort to include him. She saw his door cracked open ever so slightly and opened it up to find him holding his hands out over a trashbin, watching himself bleed dry. She called 911, saved his life.”

  Chang glanced at the chandelier hanging above the foyer. “They’d been dating for a few years when I met him and got married shortly after that. Fun wedding.”

  “What happened to her?” Sydney asked.

  “She died of an aggressive form of brain cancer almost five years ago. After that, he started spending more and more time here.” She gestured around the lodge. “The reserve is one of the few things he has that he still seems to enjoy. That, and hunting of course. He’s been here three years now, and I don’t know if he’ll ever leave. Richard sure as hell won’t.” She drew her flask again as she started walking back towards her room. “Have a good evening.”

  Then she vanished around the corner.

  “I want to get in that room,” Sydney said. She was staring into the pool, illuminated bright blue by LED lights under the water, her arms wrapped around her legs as she sat on a lawn chair near the edge. It turned out there was a nice breeze tonight, so they hadn’t had to worry about bugs after all.

  Andy was sitting beside her. “Why?”

  “I feel like there’s an answer in there.”

  “An answer to what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sydney, you’re acting paranoid.”

  “Jones is dead–”

  “And that’s terrible. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but it was an accident.”

  “The night before he went out, I heard him and Chang talking about something Sans wasn’t showing us in the labs. There was some secret entrance to it he was going to check out, and you had to enter it from a cave.”

  “That sounds…,” he began, then seemed to reevaluate his opinion halfway through the sentence, “admittedly suspicious.”

  “They were talking about some new project Sans is working on and how it’s gone way over budget. The board is breathing down hi
s neck. I think that’s the real reason this two-week gig was set up: they needed an excuse to send executives out here in person. When you think about it, for our skill sets, we’ve been doing some pretty menial tasks. I mean, tagging animals?”

  “It’s part of what a zoologist does. Also, you’re getting to handle cutting edge microchips that haven’t hit the market yet. You get to see how they field test things.”

  “But for an entire week? And what have you been doing?”

  “We’ve been reviewing the data sent in. The computer systems map it mostly and my supervisor tells me what to look for, pretty much.”

  “But the labs have some of SansCorp’s best tech, and we’re not being allowed to see it. None of what we’re doing requires that much thought.”

  “It doesn’t matter the reason we’re here, Sydney. At the end of the day, we should be grateful that we got an all-expenses-paid trip to Africa for two weeks and that, major bonus, it happens to look fucking stellar on our resumes. We’ve got another week, so let’s not screw this up like Courtney did.”

  She sighed. There was a moment of silence, save for the water lapping gently at the side of the pool.

  Then Andy got up. “I’m going to sleep. We’ve got a day off tomorrow and then we switch jobs up on Monday, so let’s just take it slow. This is the halfway point, and in a week, it’ll all be over. Just remember that. Good night.”

  He left. She lay back in her chair and stared up at the stars for a few minutes, mulling things over in her mind. Her fever started to come roaring back with a vengeance. It was time for the painkillers.

  Groggily, Sydney got up and went inside. After she turned past the landing at the top of the stairs and began walking down the hall to her room, she suddenly stopped.

  The door to what had been Courtney’s room was ever so slightly ajar. That was odd. She’d been sure it had been closed completely earlier. Looking behind her, no one was around. Out of curiosity, she inched forward and reached for the handle. There was a slight creak of the hinges as she pushed the door open, taking a step into the room.

  Then she froze.

  There was a suitcase on the floor, open with some clothes strewn about. She was pretty sure Courtney had worn that one top on Tuesday. The bed was unmade. A computer tablet sat on the desk. Beyond, the window overlooked the forest on the hillside, barely visible in the dark.

  In that moment, Sydney forgot about her fever and the soreness of her muscles entirely, and darted out of the room to knock on Andy’s door.

  COURSE OF ACTION

  “Now do you believe me?” she asked, standing in the doorway.

  Andy completed a full circle look around the room. “Oh, this is bad. This is very bad.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We go back to my room. Quickly.”

  They stepped back into the hall and Sydney closed the door over very carefully. “Wait, should I leave it the way I found it or completely closed?”

  “The way you found it.”

  “But someone clearly forgot to close it all the way and might think we–”

  “Just leave it.”

  She put the door back in exactly the position she found it. Then she and Andy went into his room and shut the door.

  Andy started pacing again. “Oh shit, shit, shit…”

  “We need to get into the trophy room.”

  “Are you crazy? How?”

  “Once he goes out into the reserve again tonight, we sneak in.”

  “But Sydney, the doors are locked.”

  “There’s gotta be a key.”

  “I bet it’s in his pocket.”

  “Well, what else can we do?” she said.

  Andy ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”

  “One person is dead, another is missing, and they lied to us about her leaving. We don’t even know if Sans was telling the truth about how they found Jones!”

  “Christ, you think they killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

  Andy put a hand to his forehead. “Fuck.”

  Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. “You know how there’s a skylight on the roof?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How come we’ve never seen it from in here?”

  His eyes lit up. “It’s over Sans’s room.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re not thinking…”

  “We could easily climb up to the roof from the balcony. Then we open the skylight and climb down.”

  “What is this, Mission: Impossible?”

  “There’s rope in the garage. I saw it yesterday. You could hold it while I climb down and unlock the door from the inside.”

  “This is a bad idea. What if we can’t even open the window from the outside?” he said.

  “Then we break it. There’s no alarm system and most of the staff will either be out with him, in the lab, or two floors below.”

  “Then they’ll know we’ve been in there.”

  “Andy, do you honestly think Sans is planning to let us leave this place alive?”

  He was silent for a moment. “We need to tell Brandon.”

  “He’s sick.”

  “He needs to know what’s going on.” Andy brushed past her and cautiously creaked the door open. After making sure the coast was clear, he went across the hall and knocked on Brandon’s door as Sydney watched from the doorway. There was silence as Andy waited for an answer. Nothing came. He knocked again. “Brandon? You there?” Dead silence.

  “It’s just us now,” she muttered.

  “Everyone’s dropping like bloody flies around here,” Andy said, storming back into his room. She shut the door. “Okay,” he continued, “we do your idea. But how will that help us get out of here?”

  “What’s the only way off the reserve?” she said.

  “The plane, pretty much.”

  “And who do we know who can fly planes?”

  “Chang,” he said, suddenly recalling.

  “And the only way to convince her is if we get some hard evidence of whatever the fuck is going on here,” she said.

  “You thought of all this?”

  “Just now.”

  Andy paused for a moment. “You don’t think Chang’s in on it, do you?”

  “I doubt it. Sans wouldn’t even let her see his trophies.”

  “Alright,” he said. “We do it. What’s the next step?”

  “Now,” she said, “we wait.”

  TRESPASSING

  Sitting on the edge of her bed, Sydney put a hand to her forehead. She was getting warm again. The two aspirin she’d taken forty-five minutes ago hadn’t seemed to kick in yet. The soreness throughout her body was now a throbbing ache, a pain that seemed to pulse through her. She was, in no circumstances, feeling ready to climb atop the roof of a two-story building and infiltrate a locked room through a skylight like a cat burglar.

  But as she stared out the northern-facing window in her room, waiting to watch two pairs of rear lights vanish into the black of night, she realized she had no other choice. She would either find the answers to her questions or soon enough they would find her, and that potentially meant ending up like Jones or Courtney. Or Brandon.

  “Anything now?” Andy said, lying on the bed behind her.

  “Not yet,” she said, glancing at the clock. 10:57. At this rate, Sans was going to leave later than the night before. Off in the distance, she could see lightning flashes amidst storm clouds. That was rare, she thought. They were currently in the Serengeti’s dry season, but storms still passed through occasionally. Regardless, the clouds were heading their way, and getting close.

  “What if they don’t go out tonight?” he asked.

  “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”

  “At what point to do we start discussing a second option?”

  “After midnight.”

  He nodded. She was starting to feel hungry again. In her dorm room, she always had enough s
nacks lying around–

  There they were. Two Land Rovers, driving off into the plains of the savanna. “They left,” she announced.

  Immediately, they bolted upright and headed for the door. They’d talked through the plan multiple times for the past couple hours. First, they carefully made sure no one was out in the hallway. Then they quietly proceeded past the landing and inched down the stairs. Sydney looked right towards the garage and staff quarters while Andy checked the dining room. They made sure each was clear before proceeding.

  They turned right towards the garage and slowed down as they approached the staff rooms corridor. Sydney peered around the corner. Empty. Then they went into the garage itself.

  Once inside, Andy immediately turned on the lights and grabbed a flashlight off the table to his right. Sydney went to the left and looked at the spools of rope. “This is probably about thirty feet,” she said, examining one.

  “That’s more than enough,” he said. “We don’t know when they’re going to get back. Let’s go.”

  She threw the spool over her shoulder and then opened the door ever so slightly. Clear again. They moved briskly back into the foyer and up the stairs. Then they made a hard left and crept through the eastern wing of the guest bedrooms, finally reaching the glass door to the second-floor balcony.

  Sydney squinted and tried to make out any figures lounging on the chairs. No one. Good, she thought. Smooth sailing so far.

  Opening the door, she led Andy outside to where the railing met the exterior wall of the lodge. Directly above, the balcony overhang connected with the rest of the faux-straw roof. Thunder roared nearby. The storm was getting close.

  “We better move quickly,” she said, putting one foot up on the railing. Then she grabbed hold of a wooden support beam and climbed up, turning to grab onto the roof itself. However, she couldn’t get a good enough of a grip on it to pull herself up alone. “I’m going to need you to lift me up,” she called down.

  Andy leaned over the railing and looked towards the ground. “This is a bad idea.”

  “You got a better one?”