Kalahari

by Jessica Khoury

  “What is this place?” breathed Sam.

  I had no idea. It was a complex of some sort: several low, windowless buildings; a few collapsed tents; and what looked like earth-boring machines—hulking cranes with long, twisting drills. The buildings were made of the whitewashed, adobe-style construction common in Botswana, except these buildings had solar panels attached to their thatch roofs and massive generators lining their exteriors. Whoever was here, they needed a lot of electricity.

  I saw no vehicles and no people, which was odd. No one would go to the trouble of building this place only to abandon it—the solar panels alone were worth a small fortune. Nor had it been sitting long, or the panels would have been stolen by now.

  What was this place? Why had I never heard of it? I thought I knew every village, every airstrip, every abandoned hut in the central Kalahari.

  There were signs that this place hadn’t been here long—maybe no more than two years. Still, word traveled fast in Botswana, particularly between those of us out in the wilderness. We had to know who our neighbors were, because we never knew when our lives might depend on them or when we’d need to alert them if a bushfire sprang up. Surely Matthieu had heard of this place or at least seen it from the air, but he’d never mentioned it to us.

  I sighed and stood up, my exhaustion weighing on me. We were all dripping wet, but it wouldn’t be long before the dry air sucked all the moisture from our clothes. I pulled the dream catcher from my pocket and held it on my palm to let it dry out; the feathers were bedraggled and pathetic looking, but it was the only real possession I had left.

  Kase began cursing and kicking the ground, sending up small whirlwinds of dust. I looked over in alarm and asked what was wrong. His head reared up and he gave me a wild glare.

  “My camera, that’s what’s wrong! It’s still down there!” He pointed down the hatch.

  “So’s my phone,” Miranda wailed. “All my music is on it!”

  They stared at me with their eyebrows slanting angrily. I looked from one to the other, then caught on.

  “You want me to go back down there?” I asked in disbelief.

  Kase’s eyes slid haughtily away. “Well, unless you want to replace six thousand dollars worth of equipment . . .”

  “No one’s going back down there,” said Sam. “Dude, it’s ruined anyway.”

  “No, it was waterproof.”

  “My phone wasn’t!” Miranda cried.

  My temples throbbed painfully and I pressed my fingers to them, wincing. “I’m sorry about your camera and phone, really! My backpack is down there too, with my—”

  “Did your backpack cost six thousand dollars?” Kase asked. “You dragged us out here with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no tents, no gear, and now you want me to give up this?”

  That did it. “Everything I own has been destroyed! My friend is dead, my dad is missing, and every possession I had is gone! So excuse me if I don’t exactly feel sorry about your cameras and phones!”

  His mouth clapped shut, while the others watched in dead silence. Miranda took Kase’s arm and pulled him back, whispering in his ear. I let out a heavy sigh and pulled the band out of my hair, letting it fall loose and dripping. I twisted it between my hands, squeezing out the excess water. The movements calmed me a little.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” said Avani. “You’re right. You’ve lost more than we can imagine, and we haven’t even asked how you’re doing.”

  I slowly tied my hair back into its usual low ponytail. “It’s just things,” I said hollowly. “They can be replaced. I just want to find my dad.” I looked toward the building. “Let’s see if anyone’s here. At the least, there might be something to eat.”

  Everyone brightened at that, except for Kase, who was either ashamed or still angry, judging by his red complexion. We trudged to the nearest building. The door was cracked and creaked ominously when I opened it.

  Inside was a laboratory. What exactly it was for I didn’t know—but the place was unmistakably some kind of high-tech research facility. Long, low counters were cluttered with beakers, microscopes, computers, minifridges, and cabinets. The room looked as if it had been evacuated while everyone was in the middle of their work: Vials had tipped over, spilling liquid onto the counters. A Bunsen burner was still going in the corner, though it had to be nearly out of fuel. One of the minifridges was hanging open, and the samples inside—collected in neatly labeled plastic and glass containers—smelled spoiled. Whoever had been here, they had left in a hurry. The lights were even still on, one of them flickering and popping. But most noticeable of all was the heavy odor of smoke that soon had us coughing and our eyes watering. I quickly found the source of the smell—several metal wastebaskets filled with ash.

  “What do you think happened?” asked Sam.

  “Looks like paper, mostly, and computer parts.” I picked up a scalpel from one of the tables and stirred it through the ash, revealing melted microchips and bits of paper that weren’t entirely burned.

  “They were destroying the evidence,” said Joey.

  “What?”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve seen CSI!”

  I gave him a blank look, and he sighed. “Right, you’re probably more of an Animal Planet type. Look around. There are no notes, none of the computers work, these bins are full of ash. They were burning their research. Getting rid of it.”

  “Until something interrupted them,” said Avani thoughtfully. She was recovering quickly from her panic in the lake and had been mostly quiet since we had surfaced. “This isn’t cheap equipment. Strange to leave it like this.” She picked up a microscope that had fallen on the floor and placed it respectfully on a table.

  I studied the room more closely. Joey was right. Anything that might have held notes, research documents, or data had been burned. I knew enough about research to know you recorded everything; our camp was—had been—flooded with notebooks and lists and loose papers. Whatever was being researched here, apparently someone had taken pains to hide it. And I suspected Avani was right, and that they’d been interrupted before they could finish the job.

  “Did you know them?” asked Sam.

  I shook my head. “That’s what bothers me most. If they were out here doing research, they’d have surely sought us out. We know this area better than anyone around—so why hide from us?”

  Because they were certainly hiding. I didn’t doubt that for a minute. I also knew that everything that had happened to us in the past few days was somehow linked to this place: my dad, the lion, the poachers.

  I turned to the others. They were all staring at me, as if waiting for an explanation.

  “Look around,” I said. “We might find a clue about my dad, or that lion, or something. They left in a hurry, so they might not have had time to burn everything.”

  Everyone seemed reluctant to touch things, but they spread out and began opening cabinets, looking through the samples in the fridges, and sorting through the detritus on the floor. There wasn’t much to be gleaned from broken glass and dusty microscopes. I tried to focus on anything that seemed out of place or missing. I stood still and let my eyes rove the room, considering each detail.

  “It looks like they were studying rocks,” I said.

  “I’m getting the same thing,” said Avani. “Look at these.” She dumped over a box filled with rough, porous stones.

  “There are no rocks in the Kalahari,” I said.

  “Yes, but did you see those big drills outside? They dug them up from beneath the sand. This was some kind of geology project.”

  I nodded. “If they created a weak point by drilling, fissures could spread out from it and weaken the crust over the caverns. But what were they looking for? Water?”

  Avani tapped her lip thoughtfully and picked up the empty box. Then she slammed a finger onto a small s
cribble on the side. “Look! W!”

  I gave her a blank look.

  Avani sighed and pointed aggressively at the page. “W! It’s the atomic symbol for tungsten. They were gathering samples of it.” She began moving around the lab, setting up microscopes and digging through boxes. The rest of us watched, dumbfounded but hopeful that she’d somehow find meaning hidden in the chaos. After a minute, she stopped and looked at us. “What are you doing just standing there? Look around! There have to be more clues.”

  Thus bidden, we began a methodical search of the lab, finding more rock samples but little else of significance.

  “Whoever they were, they haven’t been gone long,” Avani noted. “There’s hardly any dust on the counters and the minifridges are still cool, even though they were unplugged. This place was trashed two, maybe three days ago, I’d guess.”

  “Right around when my dad disappeared,” I murmured.

  “What confuses me—among everything else,” said Avani, “is why scientists would destroy what was obviously a pretty expensive, well-established project like this one? It looks like they’d been here awhile; I mean, this place doesn’t look brand-new. No matter what they were working on, even if it was illegal or dangerous, they wouldn’t just burn everything. I’m not saying they’d be publishing their work all over the place, but at the least they’d save their notes.”

  “Maybe they did. Maybe they took stuff with them,” I suggested.

  “Or maybe it wasn’t them who did this,” she returned. “Maybe someone else deliberately destroyed their research.”

  “Then where are the scientists now?”

  She shrugged. “We’re just guessing in the dark, really.”

  “We should search the other buildings,” I sighed. “Maybe they didn’t have time to sweep them all.”

  “Or we could just leave,” voiced Miranda. “Why do we care what this place is? It’s creepy!”

  “If this place is linked to that lion we saw or my dad’s disappearance, then I want to figure out why. Anyway, they might have a radio or a phone we could use to call for help.”

  The ordeal was almost over, at least for the group. I still had to find Dad, but with the help of some soldiers or police and a plane, I didn’t doubt that we’d find him soon. My only worry now was what state he would be in when we did find him. Please, just let him be alive.

  Everyone split up to explore different buildings. I headed for the one farthest away, which was about as large as two trailers placed end to end. I made it only halfway before I heard a scream. I immediately ran toward the building it had come from—the middle one—reaching the door at the same time as Sam and Joey.

  Inside, we found Miranda on her knees, her face white and eyes stretched wide, her lips open in horror.

  ELEVEN

  The walls were lined with cages. Inside were the bodies of animals, most of them dead, and from the look of them, they’d been shot point-blank. Monkeys, squirrels, meerkats, smaller felines like caracals, lynx, servals, and more—almost every mammalian species of the Kalahari was represented, with the exception of the bigger animals like zebra and kudu. The stench was overpowering. I leaned over, my hands on my knees, retching. Toward the back of the room, hidden in the reeking shadows, the still-living animals screeched and howled and rattled their cages, raising a hellish racket. I didn’t know which was worse: the stink or the sound.

  Sam opened the door to let fresh air in, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Kase helped Miranda to her feet and took her outside; she was sobbing. I heard Joey go after them, muttering, “I can’t, I just can’t. . . .” I could barely hear him over the racket.

  “Sarah,” said Sam. “Come on. There’s nothing here.”

  I shook my head. I was a zoologist—or practically was one. I didn’t flinch at death, though it always turned my stomach. I’d seen a lot: piles of elephants slain for their ivory; dead rhinos poached for their horns; colonies of birds poisoned by polluted water; entire ecosystems thrown out of sync because of human waste, deforestation, and greed.

  This was one of the most horrifying things I’d ever seen.

  “You go,” I managed to choke out to Sam. “I’ll look around.”

  He stayed with me anyway, though he looked ill. Together we walked down the aisle separating the cages, and I held my collar over my mouth and nose to try to block out some of the stink.

  “Sarah.”

  “What?”

  Sam was a few steps ahead of me and he wordlessly pointed. About halfway down the aisle, the animals began to turn silver in varying degrees. Some of them were half-normal and half-covered in a metallic sheen. One baboon had silver hands while the rest of him was brown fur; he’d been shot like the others. At the very far end of the horrible room we found the animals that were still alive, as if whoever had come in here to execute them had been interrupted before he or she could finish the job.

  These last animals were entirely silver.

  They looked like the lion, and some of them had died not from a bullet, it seemed, but from fits of madness, judging by the state they were in. There was a silver owl whose cage was littered with shining metallic feathers after it had beat itself against the bars. The animals who were still living reminded me of the lion, how they shook themselves and scratched and yowled and chattered and screamed as only animals can.

  I didn’t realize how close I was to fainting until Sam put his hand on my back to support me.

  “It’s some kind of infection,” I said. “Some kind of disease.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “Nothing even close. Who would do this? And why?”

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the largest cage. The door was hanging at a crazy angle, as if it had been ripped open. Silver hairs mixed with tawny ones were scattered around it. I bent to inspect the tracks in the dust on the floor.

  “The lion,” I said. “He must have escaped and chased away whoever did this.”

  “Maybe he chased away all of them.”

  My mind raced like a mouse in a maze, turning corners, hitting dead ends, doubling back, and struggling to find sense amid this nightmare. “Henrico said someone had reported poachers chasing a white lion,” I said slowly. “So suppose instead, it was these scientists chasing the silver lion. They were in the middle of destroying their research—which includes these poor animals—when the lion escaped. They knew they had to capture or kill it before someone saw it. So they went after the escaped lion and instead they found my dad and Theo.” The pieces began to fall together now, like a line of toppling dominoes. “After they found Dad and Theo, they found our camp and realized there were more of us.”

  “So now they’re out looking for us,” said Sam. “We’re loose ends.”

  “Right.”

  “But obviously they’re not finished here,” he said, gesturing at the cages. “There’s still more to clean up. . . .”

  I met his gaze and saw my own horror mirrored in his eyes. “Sooner or later, they’re coming back,” I whispered. “To finish the job.”

  “We should hurry,” he said gravely.

  I nodded.

  Sam sighed and scraped his fingers through his hair, then turned and slowly surveyed the room. I looked down to my left to see a porcupine scratching at the metal mesh of its cage, its quills as silver and gleaming as giant sewing needles. I knelt and—keeping my distance—looked at the pitiful creature with tears beginning to well in my eyes.

  “Why would they do this to you?” I whispered. “I am so sorry.”

  I felt almost ashamed to be human at that moment, to look so closely at the pain that my species had caused its fellow creatures. Ashamed . . . and outraged. I wiped away my tears with the inside of my wrists and stood up.

  “Sarah.”

  The edge to Sam’s tone caught my full attention. I turned away from
the cage and looked to the corner on the opposite wall, where Sam was staring. There was a body, a young Indian man slumped against the wall, his eyes open and his face frozen in a rictus of pain. He wore a lab coat and latex gloves, so I guessed he was one of the researchers. The wounds on his chest and neck spoke plainly of how he had died.

  “The lion,” I said grimly. Sam had his hand over his mouth, and he turned away, nodding his head.

  There was a revolver locked in the man’s hand. So he’d been the one putting the animals down, before the lion broke loose and killed him. Where were his colleagues, that they’d left him like this? He hadn’t been dead long, but surely someone would have come back for him by now. I knew I should feel angry at him for what I was seeing, for the horrors this building contained, but I could only look at him with pity.

  Whatever the metal substance was, it had infected these creatures—and it looked as if it had spread, cage to cage, from one end of the room. If the animals hadn’t been killed, would it have spread all the way? Was that why the dead scientist had been shooting them, one by one?

  “It’s contagious,” I whispered, and Sam nodded.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  This time I didn’t argue. I’d seen more than I could stomach already, and as soon as we stepped into the sunlight, I hit the ground, retching violently, but nothing except water came up.

  I stared at my hands, trembling in the sand. Were we already infected? How did it spread? Had I killed us all by leading us here? Was there a cure? My head spun with questions until I could barely see straight.

  I turned to smile weakly at Sam, who looked as sick as I felt. “Some trip, huh? Bet you wish you’d never left the States.”

  He seemed to mull that over, then said softly, “No. I don’t.”

  “Guys!” Joey was standing at the next building, waving for us. “Over here!”

  Great, now what? I couldn’t possibly bear to see more infected, massacred animals or dead scientists. I reluctantly stood up and followed Sam to the next building.