Kalahari

by Jessica Khoury

  He pointed at the heart, then made an exaggerated glance from Joey to Avani, and then wiggled his eyebrows at me.

  I smiled at the thought of mortal enemies falling for each other and shook my head at him. He shrugged and smudged out the heart. I watched his finger, my pulse settling like a leaf that had been caught up in a dust devil.

  Of course he didn’t mean that for me. He doesn’t even know me. No one does.

  That last thought struck me unexpectedly, like an arrow, leaving me slightly breathless.

  No one does.

  No one except Dad, now that both Mom and Theo were gone.

  I’d never really thought about it before, but now that I had, it invaded my mind: I was alone. I’d never been on my own like this before. Sure, Sam and the others were here, but in a few days they’d leave Africa and I’d probably never see any of them again. I’d just become part of a story they’d tell their friends.

  What if Dad was really gone? What would I do? Where would I go? Who would even want me?

  I’d end up like Sam, I guessed. I had another year until I was eighteen. Maybe I could go to college early. I could just stay in Botswana, find work as a tour guide or something in Maun or the Okavango.

  Why am I even thinking about this? I had to believe he was alive. Had to, or there was no way I could continue.

  “What about you?” asked Sam.

  It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me. “What about me?”

  “What happened to your mom?” He asked the question gently, without meeting my eyes.

  My thumb immediately went to my bee tattoo, rubbing it absently. “She died.”

  His gaze lifted to mine. They all waited quietly, and it was the silence that probed deepest, like a knife wheedling open a clamshell, more effective than any spoken questions could have been. And suddenly, I wanted them to know. I hadn’t told anyone this story, hadn’t spoken of it in months. Now something inside me seemed to release, and the story poured out of me.

  “It happened four months ago,” I began. “She left on a short trip to study the local beehives. Bees were her special area of interest. She was the only person I knew who was actually fond of the ‘killer bees’ that infest this area in the warmer weather. Then last summer she noticed a big drop in the native population of hives. So she set off to gather some data in hopes of finding out what was going on. She was afraid that the same mass disappearance of bees that was plaguing developed countries like the States was now happening here. We knew that the hives she’d previously documented were spread across a wide area, so we didn’t really worry when she didn’t return for four days.” My voice turned husky as I recalled the memories, pulling them from the deep corner of my mind where I’d tried to hide them. Now I realized that effort had been as pathetic and effective as trying to hide the sun behind your hand. “We figured she’d stumbled on some clue. My mom was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and if there was an emergency, she had the satellite radio. When she didn’t call after a few days, Dad guessed she left the spare batteries behind—something she was notorious for doing. My mom was brilliant but also very scatterbrained about practical things like batteries when she was focused on one of her projects.”

  Looking back, I wondered how much fault in her death lay with my and my dad’s casual dismissal of her extended absence. If we’d gone looking for her sooner, would we have saved her? But then again, maybe we wouldn’t have found her at all. Because maybe she hadn’t run out of batteries but was actually at the Corpus compound. I recalled the bees we had found in the freezer. Suddenly it didn’t seem possible that it was a coincidence.

  “When Dr. Monaghan said her name to me, I realized she must have been there. I think that in searching for the bees, she came across the Corpus compound. Remember the hive we found in the freezer? There has to be a connection. Maybe she was studying a swarm that led her to the lab. She would have been furious by the cruel treatment of the animals there, and I know without a doubt that she would have done everything in her power to expose the project. We’d assumed she’d died in a car crash, after being attacked by a bee swarm—when we found her, she’d been stung hundreds of times. Now . . . I’m not so sure.”

  I had a lot of unanswered questions about my mom’s final days. I’d unfolded the memory countless times, taking it out like an old photograph, reliving the details, asking the same questions, getting no answers or comfort in reply. Then I’d try to push it all aside, pretend somehow it had all happened to someone else, some other Sarah. I tried to sever the past from the present, but it always seemed to come drifting back.

  For a moment, I shut my eyes, trying to quell the rising storm of pain and regret that rioted within me. When I opened them again, I drew a shuddering breath. “There was nothing to indicate where she’d been or what had happened. Only that she was covered with beestings, and she’d written some words on her arm. The bees are a fail.” I slid back my sleeve, exposing the honeybee tattooed there. “That was it. Just another field note. They decided she’d been attacked by the very bees she’d set out to save. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  The crackling of the fire rose to fill the silence. We all watched the sparks spiral upward in a funnel of smoke, rising as if they aspired to join the ranks of stars above. Purged of my story, I sank into physical and mental lassitude, wearied in every sense.

  Miranda, looking lost in her own thoughts, idly reached up to scratch her nose. Instantly everyone locked horrified eyes on her.

  “What?” she said, sounding confused. Then her eyes widened and she stared at her fingers. “No! No, it’s not like that! I just—I’ve been thinking so hard about not scratching that it made me itch all over! I didn’t touch anything infected, I swear!”

  “I believe you, babe,” said Kase, but I noticed he’d scooted slightly away.

  “We’re all paranoid,” said Sam. “If any of us were infected, we’d have noticed by now, surely.”

  “Yeah, totally,” said Miranda, attempting to be light, but her shaking tone gave her away.

  The fire was getting low. I reached behind me for the supply of sticks, and my hand closed around something long and slender—and definitely not made of wood. It was cold and smooth and it writhed in my grip.

  I yelled and let go, jumping to my feet. A sleek black snake slithered through my legs and around the fire. One by one, the others screamed and scrambled up. Avani tripped and fell on her back, her eyes wide as the snake streaked toward her.

  “Mamba!” I said. “Don’t—”

  Suddenly Joey was there. He snatched the backpack full of cans and swung it at the snake, diverting its attention away from Avani. The snake whirled and hissed angrily, then slithered toward him. It reared, its mouth gaping open to reveal its fangs. The snake glittered like obsidian in the firelight, eyes cool and lidless, fixed on Joey. It rose higher, its head level with Joey’s waist, as high as I’d ever seen a mamba go. When its head drew back, I thought with dread, This is it.

  The snake struck like a flash of lightning, faster than the human eye could track—and sunk its fangs into the backpack Joey held in front of him. Then, so quickly it was but a blur, the mamba sank to the ground and sped into the grass, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

  No one moved or spoke. I let out a long, shaky breath. Then Joey slowly dropped the bag, his face flushed. It clanked by his shoes. He was smiling inanely.

  “That,” he said, “is the coolest thing I have ever done.”

  “You idiot!” Avani yelled, rising to her feet. “You stupid, brainless boy! That was a black mamba, the deadliest snake in Africa! If it had bitten you, you’d be dead before morning! What were you thinking?”

  Joey looked at her the way the rest of us had looked at the snake: healthy fear mingled with shock. “But I . . . saved you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to save me!” she replied. “I didn’t ask you t
o do anything! I didn’t ask to be out here, starving and thirsty, chased by some crazy hit man! You want to share life stories? You want my sob story? Well, I don’t have one, sorry! I have a mom and a dad and a baby brother and I may never see any of them again! I just want to go home.”

  She sobbed into her hands, tears winding down her arms and dripping onto her knees. We all stared uncomfortably at our shoes, the ground, anything except Avani.

  I felt someone should say something, so I said gingerly, “You probably shouldn’t cry. You need to conserve your water.”

  Avani lifted her head and stared at me as if I’d cursed at her, while Miranda said, “What is wrong with you?”

  “Huh? I didn’t mean—”

  “Can you possibly be more insensitive?”

  “I—I’m sorry.”

  Their lives were so different than mine. So far, everything I had said to them had seemed wrong or silly or odd. I was the one who’d dragged them out here. I was the one who’d nearly gotten them killed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and was surprised to hear myself say it aloud. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . I don’t know.”

  They stared at me, all except Avani, and my face began to burn.

  “I’m going to get some grass, for us to sleep on,” I said, rising to my feet and leaving the fire, ignoring Sam’s call for me to wait. I didn’t want his help. I didn’t want him to see me cry.

  ****

  We saw no sign of Abramo that night, to my surprise. I thought that surely he’d be after us while the trail was still warm, but maybe finding more goons would take longer than I’d thought. I had the last watch of the night, and at dawn I woke everyone and built up the fire. It was still dark enough that the smoke wouldn’t give us away. I’d dug up bi roots from around the camp, and I offered them to the others.

  “It’s all we have,” I said. “You don’t want to dehydrate out here.”

  I showed them how to scrape the white tuber with their nails to gather a handful of shavings.

  “Hold it above your face,” I said, demonstrating. “Point your thumb at your mouth and squeeze.”

  White liquid ran out of the shavings and down my thumb to drip onto my tongue. It was bitter and left my mouth feeling dry, but it was full of valuable nutrients and would ensure, at least, that we didn’t dehydrate.

  “Ugh,” Miranda said, spitting it out. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Drink, babe,” Kase said. “It’s better than nothing.”

  She made a face but squeezed more of the pulp.

  “Mm!” Joey rubbed his stomach. “I love me some root juice in the morning. Enlivens the senses!”

  The “root juice,” as Joey called it, took me back to my first year in Africa, when Theo used to take me on long walkabouts and teach me the survival skills of his ancestors. His father’s generation had lived off the land, using the same techniques the San people had been using for thousands of years. They had been the last living remnants of the Stone Age, hunter-gatherers untouched by the modern world. All of that had changed in the last fifty years, when the few remaining tribes of Bushmen were displaced to make room for game reserves in southern Africa. Now all that remained were scattered, fractured groups who made a living by demonstrating their ancestors’ ways to tourists or, like Theo, by tracking game for researchers or hunters.

  The bitter taste of the root left me with bitterer thoughts about my friend’s death, and I turned away from the others so that they wouldn’t see the tears stinging my eyes. I wiped them off and steadied myself by naming the birds whose songs I could hear from the bushes and grass: guinea fowl, korhaan, pale chanting goshawk, crimson-breasted shrike . . . It was a trick I’d picked up when Mom died, a way of distracting myself from my own thoughts.

  The traps were empty, though one of them had been sprung by a mongoose from the look of the tracks around it—that, or the mongoose had made off with whatever the trap had caught. Disappointed but unsurprised—trapping was hardly a reliable source of food—I instead turned to more brutal methods. We had to eat. There was no way we could keep walking without sustenance, and we needed something more hydrating than crackers.

  I found a bent stick about as thick as my wrist and tossed it experimentally into the air, then nodded to myself.

  “Okay, guys,” I said. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. Hear that chirping?”

  “You mean the sound like a turkey?” asked Joey.

  “It’s a flock of guinea fowl.” I pointed in the direction of the noise. “Two of you sneak up on them—don’t worry, they’re pretty dumb and they won’t notice until you’re right on them. Scare them into the air and then duck.”

  “Duck?” asked Sam.

  “Duck.”

  He shrugged, and he and Joey crouched into the grass and headed for the flock. I motioned for Kase, Miranda, and Avani to stand back. They did, watching warily and yawning. The morning was chilly enough that I could see my breath in the air. I bounced on my toes, trying to warm myself so that my arm would be steady enough to throw.

  Suddenly the guinea fowl burst from the grass, their wings flapping frantically as they cawed and chirped in alarm. Joey and Sam stood and waved, scaring the last of them into the air, and I yelled, “Duck now!”

  They dropped back into the grass and I slung the stick as if it were a boomerang. It whistled through the air in a beautiful arc that would have made Theo laugh with pride.

  The stick took out two of the fat birds, stunning them out of the air. They fell near Sam and Joey, who ran and picked them up. The boys turned to me, each holding a dazed bird, and their mouths fell open.

  “Holy McNugget!” said Joey. “You are badass!”

  “That was completely barbaric,” said Miranda.

  Despite Miranda’s jab, I couldn’t help smiling a little. It was nice to be appreciated.

  I could have sworn I heard Theo’s laughter rippling through the grass—musical, wild, completely uninhibited, drawing profound pleasure from the hunt. The first time I’d successfully brought down a bird, my mom had lectured me for an hour about unnecessary slaughter of the wildlife and the destructive ramifications of sport hunting. All the while Theo had stood behind her, safely out of her line of sight, giving me thumbs-ups and smiles as he plucked the birds in preparation for roasting them. Such a wave of sadness hit me then that my satisfaction was washed entirely away.

  Guinea fowl was monstrously tough meat. I’d have much preferred a korhaan or a nice, fat kori bustard, but guinea fowl were the easiest to hunt and they were found in abundance. I had to snap the birds’ necks to kill them, a task I definitely did not relish, but I did it quickly and got it over with. Then I plucked the birds, wishing I had the tools to properly prepare them. Sam rigged a spit out of sticks over the fire, and soon we had the birds roasting nicely. They wouldn’t taste great, but they smelled divine, like roast chicken, and soon we were all huddled around the fire salivating. Even Miranda looked at the birds hungrily, but she swore she wouldn’t touch them. Instead, she had more root juice and some berries she found nearby.

  “I’ve been thinking about the Cruiser,” said Sam as he slowly rotated the spit. “Should we go back and try to get it out of the sand?”

  I mulled it over, then reluctantly shook my head. “The bushfire’s in that direction. It may have already reached the truck, and anyway, now that those goons have a chopper, it’d be too easy for them to spot us in the Cruiser. We’ll have to go on foot from here.”

  “How long?” asked Kase.

  I squinted at the fire, doing the math. “A week? Depends on how much food and water we can find, and if we stay in good condition.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “We can do it,” I said. “We just have to take it a day at a time.”

  I watched the sky, listening closely for any sounds of helicopters and trucks, and sent out
a questioning thought: Where are you, Dad? If only he’d pop out of the bushes and yell “Surprise!” I might be able to believe my own positive assurances.

  “Um, so guys . . .” said Joey, when the birds were almost finished cooking. He scooted closer to the fire and glanced at Avani; she was perched on a termite mound a short distance away, struggling to open one of the soup cans again. He dropped his voice to a whisper and leaned in conspiratorially. “So I have a confession. I’m kinda into Avani.”

  Miranda arched one eyebrow. “I don’t know who I feel sorrier for, her or you.”

  “Do you guys think she likes me?” he asked. “I mean, I know she pretends she hates me and all, but girls are always doing that.” He sighed. “They just like me for my . . .” He made a vague gesture at his torso. “My body, you know? I just wonder if she sees me as a person.”

  “Breakfast is done,” I announced, and he brightened, his romantic woes seemingly trumped by the announcement of food.

  “Canada!” he called, and then he lapsed into full-throated rendition of the Canuck anthem. “Oh, Canada! Something, something-ish in French . . . Time to eat!” To the rest of us: “How do you say ‘time to eat’ in French?”

  But Avani didn’t come. She was peering inside the box of crackers as if she’d lost something inside.

  “Um, Canada?” Joey called uncertainly.

  She looked up, her eyes fixing on me. “I found something.”

  “What?”

  Walking over, she upended the cracker box. The remaining packages of crackers slipped out—along with something small and black.

  “It was down at the bottom. I didn’t see it last night, but I was going to open another pack and when I reached into the box, I grabbed this instead. What is it? And why was it in the cracker box?”

  I barely heard her. My ears were roaring as if I were standing in a hurricane. I stared at the little device, no bigger than a cell phone, and swallowed.

  “What is it?” Avani asked in a softer tone, staring uncertainly at my stricken expression.