Zambezi Seduction (9 page)

NINE

They rounded a tight blind bend and there in front – on the road and among the trees on both sides – were elephants, huge ears flapping, plate-sized feet lifting and lowering as they moved.

Chad swore aloud.
Somehow he managed to prevent the car from slamming into the Land-Rover as both vehicles skidded to a halt.

The first thing Kerry noticed was the
Matabele holding his rifle in the firing position.

The elephant herd was about twenty strong, young and old. Most had already crossed the road, moving right
to left. An adult female was still on the tarmac directly in front of the park’s vehicle, and following her an immense beast – a bull in his prime – waited to cross. The rangers were paying the bull their undivided attention.

Trumpeting loudly and crashing through the underbrush, the herd took off in their deceptive, shuffling run. The cow moved on, following the herd into the trees, sometimes swinging her head round to look back at the bull. He stood his ground, suspiciously testing the wind.

“Looks like his mind is on something else,” Chad said softly.

“What’s wrong with his . . . thing?”
Kerry gasped.

“Try to get some pictures.
My camera. No sudden movement. We’re much too close.”

While Kerry slowly reached for the camera, he leaned nearer and told her about
musth.

“Adult bulls periodically produce massive amounts of testosterone. It induces a sexual high: semen and urine drip from the penis. You can see it on this one. It used to be thought some kind of venereal disease. The hormone boost makes the bull dominant – also aggressive and unpredictable. After a month or so the testosterone level returns to normal. Then it happens to another bull and for a while he becomes the local stud.”

Kerry interrupted. “It’s nature’s way of preventing inbreeding.”

The South African dragged his eyes away from the elephant for a second.

“You’re very well informed.”

Kerry smiled. “There was an article in
National Geographic
on inbreeding among lions in Ngorongoro.” She snapped a couple more pictures. “The girls at work will
love
these.”

Chad’s face took on an amused look. “The shape of the penis, by the way, is normal. The upward curve at the end is necessary for it to reach the female’s opening, which is forward of the hind legs.”

Kerry thought for a moment. “And her teats?”

“Between the front legs.”

“Mmm, interesting animal, the elephant.”

“My favourite.”

“You get no idea from TV films how
big
they really are.”

The bull elephant was a magnificent looking animal – twelve feet tall at the shoulder and weighing several tonnes. His huge ears flapped slowly and his trunk moved about testing the breeze. He had average-sized tusks, one pointed lower than the other. Kerry knew there were few big tuskers left in Africa. Chad had mentioned that South Africa had some of the best. The record pair of tusks, each over eleven and a half feet long, w
as locked away in the British Museum. What a place Africa must have been before the coming of the gun.

The bull elephant appeared to have forgotten the cow that shortly before had so obviously inspired his lust. For some minutes only his ears, trunk and eye moved. Kerry and Chad had fallen silent, each willing the great beast to move on. They were too close. The worry was if he charged they would be absolutely helpless – sitting ducks – shackled as they were to the other vehicle and dependent on it for movement.

Then the great legs moved and the huge elephant completed the crossing of the road – his air domineering, lord over all he surveyed – the rear view reminding Kerry of a grossly obese schoolboy in baggy pants.

The nervous tension in the car had been almost tangible. The
Land-Rover’s engine rose in pitch and the slack cable was taken up.

“Maybe now he’ll slow –” Chad was saying when Kerry screamed a warning.

She had been watching the bull, wondering with a woman’s curiosity in matters of love why the female who had roused his desire had deserted him, and seen him, at the moment the engine noise had increased, whirl round lightning quick. Now, great legs eating up the ground in that fast shuffling run, he was charging, trunk high, ears wide, immense, grey and unstoppable.

What followed seemed to happen in slow motion.

The Matabele recovered from the shock and pulled the stock of the rifle to his shoulder. To Kerry, who knew nothing about guns, the old bolt-action rifle didn’t look enough gun to stop a charging elephant. The ground seemed to shake as with each passing millisecond the enraged elephant closed, growing in enormity as it came.

At some point it dawned on Kerry that this was no mock charge. Why were they stopped? The driver seemed paralysed, shocked out of his wits. The same thought troubled Chad.

“Christ’s sake, man,” he yelled. “Move!”

A shot rang out.

The elephant stumbled but did not go down. It slammed into the side of the Land-Rover as the black warden worked the bolt of the rifle.

He never got to fire a second shot.

The elephant’s trunk whipped out. It lifted him as easily as a child lifts a doll, holding him struggling, helpless, before slamming him to the ground. The wounded beast stood swaying; then its front legs gave and it collapsed, shunting the Land-Rover sideways.

Kerry had difficulty believing what she had seen. Chad reacted quickly.

“Stay inside,” he shouted.

He scrambled out of the car and cautiously inspected the fallen elephant, now reduced to a dusty grey mound of flesh. Kerry saw the driver emerging white-faced from the Land-Rover. She saw Chad shake
his head which told her there was no hope. She watched him scan the bush. The other elephants were distant shadows in the baking hot Mopani woodland. They would return to investigate. Elephants did that: tried to help their sick or wounded regain their feet, touch and sniff at their dead until fully satisfied they would never rise again.

***

The rifle lay where it had fallen. Chad picked it up and checked it over. Standing close, he aimed the rifle at a point behind the elephant’s ear and pulled the trigger.

Of the two men, it should have been the surviving warden who took charge. But until Chad’s shot he had look
ed lost, as if his logic and power of thought had deserted him. Now partly revived, he walked forward on unsteady legs to view the gory scene.

Chad felt empty inside. “You’re the one in big trouble now,” he said.

“An accident . . .”

“The authorities can decide on that. They will be informed of your speed.”

“Speed? What do you –”

“Come on!” Chad exploded, venting his pent up anger.
“Twice the park’s speed limit. How do you think it was for us, having to eat your dust for miles?”

The warden’s look of defiance and hostility dissolved and was replaced by an empty blankness.

“I’m not going to stand here arguing.”

“Go to camp and report this,” Chad told him. “Leave me a few rounds in case the herd returns. I’ll warn off any curious motorists.”

The warden shook his head. “I’ll radio in, get some people out.” Authority was back in his voice.

A
n uneasy truce prevailed until the first vehicle, another Land-Rover, arrived. Soon the scene was full of park rangers, all wanting to know what had happened.

Kerry and Chad got away eventually, towed behind the first vehicle returning to Main Camp. As they began to move, the South African pointed upwards.

Kerry saw the specks in the sky, circling patiently.

“Vultures
. As the adventure began, so it ends,” she said sadly.

TEN

At reception Chad picked up the key to their lodge and asked that word be sent to the duty mechanic to look at the Fiat as a matter of urgency.

While he unloaded the car, Kerry could do little more than sit staring out the window. Where he found the reserves of energy, she didn’t know.

Africa had lost its magic.

She could not rid her mind of the sight of the two bodies on the road. The warden had been a good, brave man. What of his widow and children? Would they be forced to move? Would there be a pension? The elephant too had been brave. Driven by the hormonal changes in his body, he had done what his kind had done down through the millennia when they felt threatened.

Chad went off to give a statement to the chief warden.

An hour later he returned to find her still in the same position.

“It’s all been a big shock,” he said, rather stating the obvious. He had brought back cold beers from the camp store. He snapped open a can and offered it to Kerry.

“Not for me, thanks.” Kerry could hardly believe her own words. Before the tragedy the thought of a cold beer had been a driving force that had kept her going.

Chad looked at her for a long moment. “You blame me, don’t you?” he said flatly.

Kerry met his gaze. “That silly chase after the zebras and . . . the breakdown. If it hadn’t been for that, the warden would be alive.”

“Kerry –”

“I’m sorry,” she fought to control her voice, knowing she was close to sobbing. “I’ve tried to move on, clear my head of it, but I can’t.”

The South African scratched at his unshaven chin.

“You’re upset – it’s natural. I’m upset. Everyone’s upset. In the store just now they knew. You’re the guy had the breakdown, they said. Sipho was a good man. I got nothing but cold angry looks.”

Chad broke off and took another swig of lager. Again he offered her one. This time she was unable to resist. Her throat was so parched, talking was difficult.

“The zebra chase was idiotic,” Chad resumed. “Childish – and that’s not like me. I’ve always been one for playing it safe. I was doing it for
you
, Kerry. We’d just seen lions. Grandstand view. We were on a roll – I wanted to show you more. The breakdown . . . you can never plan for something like that. Yes, you can blame me for it. But that didn’t kill him. It wasn’t
me
who drove slap bang into the middle of a herd of bloody elephants.”

Kerry tried to pull herself together. “Is the holiday finished now?”

Chad gave her a sharp look. “No way! We haven’t done what we came to do. If I have to rail the car back to Jo’burg, we’ll hire one and carry on.”

The chief mechanic arrived. He was pessimistic about the chances of obtaining spares locally. Chad was not surprised. The car was an unusual model: there were few on the roads in South Africa, never mind here in rural Zimbabwe.

A lift was arranged in a park’s vehicle. It dropped Chad and Kerry at the Safari Lodge, an upmarket hotel outside the reserve’s boundary. Chad hired a small Datsun at the Hertz desk. Next stop was a garage in Hwange recommended by the mechanic.

While Chad talked to the owner, Kerry remained in the rented
Datsun. To her horror, she felt unwell. She had said nothing to Chad – not wanting to add to his woes. What had started as a headache and flushes – heat exhaustion, she’d assumed – had intensified to its present level where the pain throbbed mercilessly inside her head and her body was consumed by fever. As if that wasn’t enough, her right leg near the ankle was inflamed and itchy. In her misery she was unable to stop rubbing and scratching it.

When Chad returned he was smiling. It seemed an age since Kerry had last seen him happy.

“Good news. My car may be an unusual model, but its engine is similar to one used in the Fiat saloon car range. We phoned a spares store in Bulawayo. They have the timing belt. They’re sending one up by road. There’s still surgery to be done to the engine, but he reckons they can handle it here. Let’s hold thumbs on that.”

Kerry knew that holding thumbs was the South African equivalent of crossing fingers. She wanted to
share in his relief, but she could not. She could no longer hide her condition from him.

He listened
, looking at her with concern.

Kerry slumped forward, head in hands.

***

The young doctor in the hospital’s crowded casualty room stuck a thermometer under her tongue and examined her leg.

“Tick-bite fever, almost certainly,” he pronounced. “We’ll keep you in, run some blood tests, put you on a course of antibiotics.”

“How long,” Kerry asked. She had only vaguely heard of the condition and had no idea of the recovery period.

“You should be on your feet again in a few days,” the doctor said. “But we’ve got to get that fever under control.”

Kerry could remember little of the drive to the hospital. She remembered Chad had run back into the garage to get directions. She had protested mildly during the drive, but he had overruled her saying, “Best let the experts take a look.”

Now she was thankful for his quick thinking. She was in the best possible place; and the doctor was the type who inspired confidence.

“Lucky I took out insurance against illness and medical care,” she managed as they waited for her to be taken to the ward. “I’m thankful you brought me straight here. I feel awful.”

“I have to return to the game reserve,” Chad said. “Find someone to tow the car out to the garage. Don’t worry; they’ll look after you here. I’ll be back this evening.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze in farewell.

Kerry thought of asking him to bring her makeup case and perhaps her pink
nightie. But it would embarrass them both to have him go through her things.

Sh
e had no way of knowing that three days would elapse before she saw Chad again, or how her feelings for him would alter dramatically in the interval.