Kalahari

by Jessica Khoury

  As if my thoughts had summoned them, the others came walking through the bush. I heard twigs snapping and sand crunching and whirled to see them all making their way toward me. Frantically, I gestured for them to get down. Avani caught on first, and the rest followed suit, bewildered. When they reached me, I wordlessly pointed at the ransacked camp and the cluster of poachers standing across it, out of earshot but still visible. Their eyes all grew wide and their faces a bit green.

  “Our stuff!” Kase whispered in a strangled tone. “They burned it! Those—those criminals!”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Avani. “Sarah, what’s going on? What do they want?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Did you see your dad?” Sam asked.

  “No.” Then I added thoughtfully, “But if they captured him for some reason, he might be in one of their trucks.” If they’d caught Dad, would they have coerced him into giving away the location of the camp? Surely Dad wouldn’t do that. But the thought left me shaken.

  Sam gave me a knowing look. “It’ll be dangerous, going after him.”

  “You know I have to try.”

  “Are you getting a weird vibe about these poachers?” Sam asked.

  I was, but I wanted to know what he was thinking.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, isn’t this a crazy lot of trouble to go to? I mean, why murder Theo and trash the camp if they’re just after a lion? What if they’re not poachers at all?”

  “But who else would do this?” I asked. “It’s not like we have enemies, and Botswana is one of the most politically stable countries in the world. If we were in Libya or Uganda or a place like that, we could chalk it up to terrorists or a rebel group or something, but not here.”

  Sam shrugged and turned to watch the men. I couldn’t shake his questions. There was something wrong here, something I was missing. I felt a rush of guilt, as if my inability to understand the situation was causing it to spiral even more wildly out of control.

  “Sarah.”

  I turned to Sam, blinking away the mist of my thoughts. He was holding out one of my dream catchers, the smallest one I’d had. It had gotten tangled in a bush, maybe while the poachers were piling all of my worldly possessions into a bonfire. Sam placed it in my open palm and I closed my fingers over it, a knot rising in my throat. After a moment, I put it carefully into my pocket.

  It was time for me to stop mourning. We were in more danger than ever, and I had to keep myself together. I could fall to pieces after this was over. For now, I forced all my feelings into the back corner of my brain, trapping them like angry bees beneath a cup.

  Kase, who’d been quiet and thoughtful this whole time, suddenly said, “I’m going to talk to them.”

  “What?” I stared at him, aghast. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “It’s not like we’ve got better options out here! No food, no water, no gear . . . Look, I know they shot your friend—and my sympathies for that—but they can’t just shoot us! I mean, for heaven’s sake, that’s barbaric! I know how these guys work. All they care about is money. Well, I happen to have a lot of it. Or my family does, anyway. They’ll pay whatever it takes for us to get out of here, and if I offer it to them—”

  “Kase.” I spoke between my teeth. “They will shoot you. This isn’t about money anymore; it’s about hiding whatever they’ve done. They killed Theo and they know they can’t afford to have any witnesses. The only things worth more to them than money is their freedom and lives, and they’ll lose one if not both if we survive to tell what happened here. The punishment for murder in Botswana is death by hanging. They won’t risk that, not on the chance your parents will ransom you.”

  His brow furrowed in uncertainty as he digested this. Surprisingly, it was Miranda who brought him to his senses.

  “Don’t go out there,” she pleaded. “Kase, please. Don’t risk it.”

  He looked irritated but nodded sullenly.

  “We have to leave,” I said. “And we have to move quietly. They know we’re out here somewhere and they’re definitely looking for us.” I told them what I’d overheard the Afrikaners saying, and the faces around me turned even greener.

  If there were any trackers among them, then it was only a matter of time before they picked up our prints. If we got enough of a head start, I could throw them off by obscuring our trail, the way Theo had taught me. The thought of the poachers roaming the bush, intent on finding and killing us, dulled my grief and sharpened my mind. I could feel my body growing stronger with adrenaline as my survival instincts kicked in.

  “Go back to the truck,” I whispered. “I’ll meet you there soon.”

  For once, no one argued or complained. They nodded and turned, making their way back much more slowly and quietly than they’d arrived. I watched them go, then turned, drew a deep breath, and set off to my right. It took a solid ten minutes to circumvent the camp without attracting attention. I stayed just outside the bare sand of the firebreak and kept low, feeling like a rabbit sneaking past a sleeping lion.

  When I found the row of Land Rovers parked on the firebreak, my heart sped up. Was Dad in one of them? The windows were damnably tinted, so there was no way of telling. A half-dozen more men were clustered around the vehicles, talking and smoking. I couldn’t get close without being seen.

  On a sudden whim, I crept away and then darted across the firebreak as soon as I was out of their view. I went as close to the burned camp as I dared, then turned and stepped deliberately back toward the bush, leaving enough prints to account for five or six people. Keeping a careful eye out for the poachers, I worked my way outward from the camp, leaving a trail that pointed in the opposite direction of the one I and the others would take. Once I reached the bush on the other side of the firebreak, I continued for about a quarter mile into the foliage before deciding it was as good a false trail as I had time to lay. Then, taking care to hide where I stepped, I returned to spy again on the men at the trucks, hoping for one last chance to find out what had happened to Dad.

  “Hey, boss!” called one of the men, emerging from the camp, “I found their trail!”

  My heartbeat suspended. Which trail? I couldn’t breathe again until I saw the man point toward my fake tracks. Dizzily relieved, I allowed myself a small smile of triumph.

  The leader—I figured him to be the Abramo the Afrikaners had spoken of—waved everyone into the vehicles. About six men, including the blond and the redhead I’d first seen, stayed behind—to ambush us, I supposed, if we returned.

  I strained to see inside the Land Rovers as the men opened the doors and climbed inside. Dad could have easily been inside one and still escaped my view. It was maddening, to think he could be so close and yet so unreachable.

  The Rovers took off eastward, following my false trail. When they lost the tracks, as they inevitably would, I hoped they’d continue in that direction, anticipating us to have headed for Maun or one of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve guard stations.

  I lay flat as the Rovers rumbled past me, then began painstakingly creeping back the way I’d come. I was moving so quietly that I practically tripped over a mother warthog and her piglets who were napping in the shade. They squealed and darted away, their tails vertical, and when they crossed the firebreak the men who’d been left behind began shooting wildly. I dropped, hands over my head, as the bullets pinged the sand, but none of them came near me. The shots didn’t last long, and by the disappointed murmuring, I took it they had failed in dropping one of the warthogs. Thankfully, they hadn’t seen me—but it had been close.

  When I reached the Land Cruiser, the others were frantic with worry, having heard the gunshots. After calming them down, I told them what I’d seen, then bent down and traced a circle in the sand. “This is us. And this is Ghansi.” I traced another circle northwest of the camp, then a line leadi
ng south from Ghansi. “This is the nearest road. If we drive west, then we can take the road north to town. It’s opposite the direction the poachers went, so we’ll have a head start.”

  “How long will it take?” asked Kase.

  “Depends on the conditions. There’s not a road from here to there, so we’ll be driving through total wilderness, and the trip will be over a hundred and twenty miles. We can make it in one or two days.” I didn’t tell them that that would require an inordinate amount of luck. It was inevitable that the Cruiser would get stuck multiple times, and there could very well be damage to the car I didn’t know about as a result of the crash. In the likely event that something happened to Hank, we’d have to walk to Ghansi—which could take a week or more. The poachers could hunt for us at their leisure.

  I had to keep them optimistic. So I forced a smile onto my face and assured them everything would be fine. None of them looked very convinced, Sam least of all. His face was grave and his eyes constantly searched the horizon. Miranda looked dazed, as if she’d mentally checked out of the situation, and I wondered how she’d hold up. If she slipped back into a state of shock, I wasn’t sure I could keep her moving, and the others might follow her. They all looked as traumatized as I felt.

  “We’ll starve to death out there,” Kase intoned, his gaze wide and distant. “We’ll die of dehydration. Or we’ll—”

  “Stop it,” I said sharply. “We’ll make it.”

  He blinked, his eyes refocusing on me. “We’re in the middle of a desert.”

  “Semidesert,” Avani and I said simultaneously. Joey groaned.

  “Look,” I sighed. “I know it sounds bad. It is bad. But if we stick together and be smart about this, we can make it. Will you trust me?”

  I looked at each of them, hoping none of them would see that I barely trusted myself. But they nodded reluctantly.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s load up.”

  Everyone climbed into Hank and we set off. It was almost sunset by then, and we drove deep into the bush before stopping in a nondescript thicket far from the ruined camp. We decided the girls would sleep in the Cruiser tonight, and we’d switch with the guys the following night. The day after that—if we were lucky—we would reach Ghansi.

  We were starving. I searched in vain for tsama melons, tubers, anything edible, but darkness fell quickly, and my efforts turned up nothing more than a handful of shriveled berries.

  “Great,” said Joey tonelessly, staring at his meager share.

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?” Sam said.

  “For now.”

  “Shut up, man,” snapped Kase. “We’re doing the best we can. We don’t need your whining to make things worse.”

  “My whining? It’s your girlfriend who’s complained nonstop since the airport.”

  Kase, who’d been relaxing against a tree, stood up then. “Watch it, dude.”

  “What?” Joey shrugged. “Everyone’s thinking it.”

  “Leave him alone,” said Miranda. “He just wants attention.”

  “I just want attention?” He gave her an exaggerated look of offense. “Oh, the irony! This coming from our own Kim Kardashian. Here’s an idea—why didn’t someone bring a satellite phone with them? Huh? Geez, what I’d give for one right now. Why didn’t your Daddy Warbucks send one with you, huh?”

  Kase swore at him, but it was Miranda who jumped to her feet and slapped Joey full across the face. He staggered back, eyes wide in surprise, but then he blinked at her and laughed.

  “You slap like a girl.”

  “Dude, you need to take a walk,” said Sam softly.

  “Oh, yeah, here comes Mr. Strong and Silent. Did you stop to think we might not be in this mess if it weren’t for your girlfriend?”

  “What?”

  Joey threw out an accusing finger at me. “Your dad left us in this mess. Honestly, who runs off to God knows where and leaves a bunch of kids on their own in the wilderness with fricking lions and homicidal maniacs for company?”

  In the distance, a chorus of jackals began their nightly howling. The sound was so natural that I usually didn’t even notice it, but tonight, it made the hair on my neck stand on end. The others stared with shocked round eyes from Joey to me.

  “You don’t know anything about it!” I said. “If it weren’t for you, I could have found my dad by now! But no, I have to babysit a bunch of incompetent city kids while my dad is hunted by a bunch of murderers and my only friend lies buried in the sand!”

  I regretted the words even before I said them, but Joey had touched too many nerves tonight and I was burning with anger. How dare he blame my dad? I wanted to slap him myself.

  “Guys, stop!” Sam said, standing up and holding out his hands. “This is ridiculous. We need to sleep so we can get started early in the morning. Look, I’ll take first watch, okay?”

  I said nothing, but turned my back and walked away, trembling with anger. It would make more sense for me to take first watch; I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. My stomach was too empty and my brain was too full. We were all ticking time bombs, like kettles growing hotter and hotter with stress and fear.

  I went back to the camp and told Sam to sleep, that I’d take the first watch. He didn’t argue, but I didn’t think he was sleeping either. None of them did, for a while.

  It didn’t help at all that about an hour into the night, somewhere in the darkness a lion began to roar.

  EIGHT

  We set out early the next morning but made it only a mile or two before the truck came to a full stop in the sand. Holding back curses, I climbed out and took stock of the situation.

  The tires were half buried, all four of them sunk. It would take a while to dig the truck out, and from the look of the land ahead, it was just going to get worse. We were in an old dry stream bed; thousands of years ago, this area would have been a paradise of rivers and lakes and grass. All that remained of those golden days of the Kalahari were these dry depressions, like the skeletons of a lost world. The stream bed was a sort of natural road, leading us in the right direction with fewer bushes and trees to navigate around—but with the unfortunate side effect that it was composed of deep, soft sand that sucked at the wheels like mud.

  I sighed and suggested that we begin scouting around for pieces of wood to lever the wheels out. Then I would have to drive out of the bed and follow it from above if possible.

  A pair of stately giraffes watched me with disinterest as I beat through the bushes. The rest of the group spread out in all directions, halfheartedly searching, probably as distracted by hunger as I was.

  When I returned to the truck a half hour later with an armload of logs and branches, everyone was sitting in the shade, close to Hank. Sam looked up apologetically. “We heard lions.”

  I sighed and dropped my armload of wood.

  “Where?”

  The chances of them attacking us were about one in a thousand—if we were in the Cruiser. But if a pride got curious about us and decided to settle within sight, then we would be trapped in the vehicle.

  Sam pointed in the direction they’d heard the pride, and I nodded.

  “We have to be quick,” I said.

  But it seemed the more we tried to dig Hank out of the sand, the deeper he sank. The wood we wedged under the tires simply snapped or was buried, and it wasn’t long before I heard the roar. One lion, from the sound of it. I thought of the mystery male who’d been following Dad and Theo, and I wondered if it could be the same one. Was it the white lion? The one who’d started all this mess?

  We worked feverishly while Avani and Miranda took turns watching for the lion. I wasn’t too worried about it; if it was indeed a loner, it would almost certainly make a wide berth around us. I was familiar with three different prides in the area, and there was one male who roamed between each of them. He was skittish and shy, ne
ver giving us trouble, but if this loner was one of the younger males that had been pushed out by its mother, it might be desperate for a meal.

  Still, I was more focused on getting the Cruiser unstuck, seeing it as our bigger problem.

  That was my mistake.

  “I think I saw it!” I heard Miranda call. Immediately Joey, Avani, and Miranda jumped into the Cruiser, and Kase whipped out his camera. Sam looked excited, and I didn’t blame him. This would be their first real wild African lion.

  I stood on the top of the tailgate, held a hand up, shielding my eyes from the sun, and scanned the bush. The lion’s tawny hide was perfect camouflage in the yellow grass, so it could have been anywhere.

  “Binoculars,” I gasped, holding out a hand. “Somebody give me binoculars!”

  “I have this,” said Kase, offering his camera.

  I took it and climbed back onto the Cruiser, bracing myself better this time. Pressing my eye to the viewfinder, I roved the bush. Then, my hand shaking slightly, I twisted the heavy lens and zoomed in.

  My breath stuck in my lungs. I couldn’t understand it. It was like my mind rejected what I saw, telling me it was too impossible, too strange. It had to be a trick of the light, or some kind of prank.

  “Sarah?” Sam asked again. “What do you see?”

  What do I see? I had no idea. I could have seen a ghost, and it would have made more sense than the creature hovering in the lens of the camera.

  It was a lion. Or at least, it was something shaped like a lion.

  But it wasn’t tawny or golden or even white, like the one the poachers were rumored to be hunting. It was like no lion I had ever seen.

  This lion was silver.

  Not silver as in silver gray or silver white. It was silver, from nose to tail, as metallic and gleaming as mercury. It moved slowly through the bush, twitching its silver tail and shaking its silver mane.