The Child's Elephant (30 page)

And then the torch moved and the children were plunged back into darkness. Above them, a board creaked. The searcher, unseeing, had stepped over the gap through which they had slid. He was climbing up to the cabin. The door scraped open. Footsteps struck upon boards. The light from the torch filtered down through the cracks.

‘They must be here.’ It was Lobo who was now speaking.

‘We’ll find them,’ the ranger said.

Something was noisily kicked. They heard the flick of a lighter; they smelled cigarette smoke. ‘There’s
nothing in here, sir,’ came a shout. ‘It’s empty. Just a couple of old boxes.’

‘Damn them!’ The curse rang out across the clearing.

Two pairs of boots were clattering from the hut. They moved off, the beam of the torch bouncing, darting to and fro, prying into bushes and glancing off tree-trunks.

‘They must be hiding in the bush, sir,’ Lobo shouted. ‘Shall we go after them?’

There was no answer, but the pursuers seemed to be moving ever further away. They were returning to the jeep. The children heard a door slamming. For the first time they began to dare believe they could hope.

‘Hey, over here!’ It was the ranger. ‘Over here! Bring a torch. There’s a gap under the hut.’

A fresh wave of fear swept hope away on its flood. The children lay motionless. It was as if somehow, if they kept still enough, they could stop this all happening, freeze this last precious moment until it lasted for ever. But they knew at the same time that their luck had run out. It was over. They were about to be discovered. They would be dragged from their hiding place, helpless as a litter of kittens. It was just as Gulu had first told him, Bat thought: once you had joined the army, there was no way out; you just came round in circles; you were caught in a trap. The noose was tightening about him. It closed round his future. He clamped his lips on the scream that now rose to his throat.

A beam of light slid towards them. They heard someone grunting. It was Lobo who was looking. His torch
cut through the darkness. It poked into the far corner and fiddled about in a pile of old leaves; then, sweeping across the middle, it came to rest upon Muka. Bat heard her stifled gasp. She stared frozen with terror into the blinding glare. Her lips moved to shape words but only silence came out of them. The cicadas shrieked louder and louder in the bush.

‘What is it?’ The cry of the Leopard rang out across the clearing.

There was no answer.

‘What is it?’ the cry came again.

‘Nothing,’ called Lobo.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing, sir.’ Lobo’s voice was flat.

The Leopard cursed. There was a rustling of movement. Footsteps retreated. The torchlight bounced about.

‘We can’t afford to waste time on them,’ they heard the Leopard saying. ‘Let’s go!’

Slowly, ratchet by minute ratchet, the children let out their breath. What had happened? Were they safe now? Had Lobo seen them? He must have. So why had he lied to the commander? Was he playing some cruel trick? Or had he decided that he would not betray them? The thought fell like a burning spark into Bat’s head. He felt a new hope inside him beginning to kindle. He strained the night for a clue. The door of the jeep creaked. They were leaving. Any moment now, the engine would roar into life.

‘They’ll be there.’ A hard blunt voice stamped down on his hopes. It belonged to the ranger. ‘They’ll
be there for sure,’ it said. Bat reached out across the blackness for Muka. It might be the last time he ever touched her, he thought. The end was now so near. The torchlight was streaming back into the crawlspace. Beside him, he heard Gulu shift. He was edging forward on his elbows, holding his rifle. The barrel was trained straight out into the black. The beam of the torch came to rest directly upon him. He stared like a rat in a trap back into its glare.

There was a deafening crash and a sudden sharp cry. The torch bounced. Its light blinked once and went out. And then there was silence. It rang like the report of the gun in their ears, a strange quivering stillness that hummed and vibrated about them, rising and falling like the trilling of a million forest insects.

‘Come out!’

The Leopard’s cold order cut through the silence; but none of them moved.

‘Come out now or we’ll burn down the hut.’

Still the children lay there. The blackness around them was complete, but Bat could feel Muka trembling beside him. She was squeezing his hand so hard in her own that it hurt.

‘Stay,’ hissed Gulu. ‘Stay where you are.’ His voice was harsh as a threat. He was a soldier now. He knew how to deal with it. He had gone back to the army and he had been trained for this.

Inching his way to the edge of the crawlspace, he threw out his gun and then started to clamber out himself. With hands raised in the air, he walked across the clearing, coming to a halt only when he was standing
directly in the head-beam of the jeep. He waited, a frail outline against its harsh light.

‘And your friends?’ the Leopard spat.

‘They went that way,’ Gulu said. ‘My foot was too bad. They left me behind.’ He must have pointed towards the forest because a torch beam leaped briefly in the direction of the bush.

‘They left you?’ The question was disbelieving. From under a peaked cap, a pair of sharp eyes prowled around Gulu’s face.

‘Guard him!’ the Leopard ordered, darting a glance at Lobo.

In a few quick paces, he crossed to the hut. The dark shape of the ranger lay slumped by the entrance of the crawlspace. He prodded it casually with the toe of his boot. There was no movement. The man was dead. Calmly, he stooped to retrieve his dropped gun.

‘You’ll soon be wishing you’d died as quickly,’ the Leopard spat. ‘We’ll be making a lesson of you,’ he growled as, returning, he gave Gulu a kick that sent him crumpling without a cry to his knees. ‘We’ll cut you up into bits as big as a grasshopper.’

Then, raising his head, he turned his attention once more to the cabin. ‘You two can come out from that hole now,’ he said coolly.

Neither Bat nor Muka moved. Was he bluffing? Did he know they were there?

‘I’m losing patience,’ he snarled.

Still, the two children waited. They were shaking so hard they could hardly have got up if they had wanted to. A cigarette lighter flared. They smelled smoke. A
bundle of smouldering grasses was carried over to the cabin.

‘We’ll fume you out like stuck porcupines.’ The sneer curled through the dark. The first tongues of flames flickered out of the kindling. They started to lengthen and lap at the wood.

The smoke began to filter down into the crawlspace. Muka coughed and clamped a hand to her mouth. The dry leaves were curling, crackling in the heat. This time nothing could save them. The two terrified children crept out of the hole. And the Leopard was waiting. His eyes were no more than dark holes in his face.

A blow on the back of the neck sent Bat staggering. He fell to the ground. It felt as if his skull had cracked. His thoughts were leaking like water from a broken clay pot. He lay completely still. He couldn’t tell for how long. It felt like time had stopped. When he opened his eyes again he didn’t know where he was. Had he fallen asleep beside a forest pool? The trees seemed to be floating upon mirroring depths. Where’s Meya? he wondered blearily. Where was his little elephant?

Suddenly, he felt himself seized round the ankle. He was being dragged along, an arm twisted painfully underneath him, his head bumping and thumping over the hard ground. He dug his nails deep as he could into the earth; but there was nothing to catch hold of, nothing to keep him. Fistfuls of grasses tore away in his clutch. The whole world wheeled about him. Fire
and sky spun in a whirl of dark and light, and suddenly everything that for so long he had kept locked up tight inside him was escaping. He had so much fright in him that he could no longer stop it coming out. ‘Help!’ he screamed at the top of his voice. The cry hardly sounded human. It spilled from his lungs like the shriek of an animal in a snare.

‘Help!’ The plea rang through the darkness. It echoed through the trees. ‘Help! Help!’ he yelled.

A boot thumped down on his back. There was a low dry laugh. ‘There’s no help here,’ the Leopard growled.

And Bat was back in reality. His cries, swallowed up by the forest, slowly faded as his last struggles died in the Leopard’s ruthless grip. A picture flashed onto his brain. He was watching the crickets that, as a herd-boy, he used to see among the grasses, flailing pathetically in clumps of poisonous foam, their serrated legs sawing ever more faintly and feebly until eventually they slowed to a final stop. It was strange how images popped into his mind at such inappropriate moments, he thought.

Yanked back to his feet now, he stood legs akimbo to try and control their shaking. He needed time to knit his nerves back together again. Muka was pushed over beside him. The tears ran down her cheeks but she made no attempt to hide them. They gathered on her eyelashes and dropped glittering down her cheeks. Gulu stared stonily. He looked as if he would never feel anything again.

The Leopard lounged back against the bonnet of the jeep. He gazed at his prisoners: three ragged children blinking blindly into the headlights, Lobo
behind them, holding them at gunpoint. ‘Well, well,’ he said coolly. ‘So here we all are again.’ He lit a cigarette. Its tip glowed red as the eye of a demon in the night. He inhaled and then puffed the smoke back in their faces.

‘Let’s get going,’ he said eventually. ‘It’ll soon be dawn.’ He took a last glance at the body of the dead ranger. ‘The jackals can have him,’ he muttered. ‘He’s no good to us now.’ And then he laughed. ‘At least we have his jeep,’ he said and, pivoting on the heel of his boot, he swung himself into the driving seat. ‘Throw them into the back,’ he commanded. Turning the key, he started the engine up.

‘Move!’ Lobo shouted. His eyes skidded from their faces. He found it far easier to keep his gun at their backs. Bat stumbled forward. His kneecaps cracked against metal as he was shoved into the back of the jeep. ‘This is the last little trip you’ll be making,’ he heard the Leopard snarl.

The door slammed behind them. A lock was yanked into place. With a lurch, the vehicle was off, bumping down the track. The children clung tight to the roof struts as the incline suddenly steepened. The engine groaned with the effort; the wheels spun but couldn’t grip. The commander swore loudly as he rammed down through the gears. Bat peered through the wire-meshed partition. The pale light of the dawn was creeping into the sky. He glanced back at his companions. Muka, head dropped between her shoulders, hung limp as she clenched her two fists round a roof bar, while Gulu, one foot braced against the wheel arch, was lost in a far
distance that lay deep within himself. They were almost at the end of their journey, Bat thought.

The Land Rover braked sharply to a halt. The windscreen turned dark. The next thing Bat knew, the vehicle was squealing and groaning and sliding backwards. The children were thrown against the tailgate in a bone-jagging heap.

They heard Lobo yelp as they jolted to another abrupt stop but they couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Bat heard a furious scream. It sounded, he imagined for one moment, like an elephant. But how could it be? His mind was playing tricks. Then, through a hole in the smashed windscreen, he glimpsed for one fleeting moment a huge animal thundering towards them, trunk coiled and ears flapping, amid a cloud of red dust. It
was
an elephant, he realized in stunned amazement. Was he dreaming? Then the bonnet of the vehicle bore the full brunt of the charge. The jeep skidded backwards with a demented howl.

The next thing Bat knew, the entire vehicle was lifting. It was about to turn over. The children were hurled across the back. They landed in a stunned tangle. A bottle of alcohol had broken. Its giddy fumes filled the air.

Clawing at the mesh that partitioned off the cab, Gulu gazed up. A single great eye was looking down upon him. The monster was using the full weight of its head to flatten down the roof. He heard Lobo shrieking as the metal crumpled like paper. The cab’s whole structure slewed. Letting go, Gulu slid down the tilted bed of the vehicle, hurling his body with all its force at the lock.
It was already damaged. The bent door was gaping. The catch snapped under the strain. The tail-gate clattered open, spilling the three children down the slopes of a mountain. They skidded and scrabbled. Gulu grabbed at a tree root and snatched out for Muka who, in her turn, stretched out a desperate hand for Bat.

For a moment they hung. The drop plummeted away below them. Then, little by little, spread-eagled against the incline, they scrambled their way back up. Plants came out in clumps where the soil was crumbling; rocks dislodged by their feet bounded away out of sight, but eventually they hauled themselves back over the lip where, scuttling for the safety of a nearby bush, they clung to each other in a terrified dazed heap.

Through the leaves of their hiding place they could see the avenging animal, Lobo squirming below it in the flattened cab. He was wriggling his way out of an open window. He collapsed in a tangle on the track. Blood was pouring from his head. Sitting up unsteadily, he glanced about, frowning and smiling simultaneously. Then, staggering to his feet, he started to lope off.