“Steve! Speak louder!”
“There’s something... the fields. Halfway to...”
I could hear enough to tell that he was genuinely frightened.
“Abe, what... do? There’s... moving out there!”
“Stay there! Do not get out of your car, Steve! I’m coming out...”
But the connection had gone dead.
I phoned both my neighbors, but they were not at home. When I stuck my head out onto the street, most of the windows around me were dark. The parade, I understood. I even tried calling Mathilda, but I just got her machine.
Ten minutes had passed since Petrie’s call, and he’d sounded so desperate. And I hated what I was about to do, but I could see no other choice. I hurried Josh into his coat and shoes, and literally bundled him into my car. Belted him in tightly, before speeding back toward the highway.
He looked fascinated, and as pleased as Punch with the excitement.
“Where are we going?”
“Just a job I have to do.”
“Are you going to shoot some bad guys?”
I hadn’t even bothered putting on my jacket — he was staring at my gun.
“No!” I told him sternly, concentrating on the road. “That’s just on the web-vee. You must be quiet now, okay?”
Good as gold, he did what I asked.
Steve’s car was not visible when we arrived at the Nkomo place. By this time, I was sweating. Lord Almighty, was I crazy, bringing my son here? I swung the nose of the Impala out toward the wasteland again, putting my beams on full. And yes, more than halfway out toward the mountains, there was Petrie’s Assegai Victor, the driver’s door wide open. I could make out no sign of the man.
Inwardly, I cursed him for not listening to me. And myself, for not getting here sooner.
We bumped out across the scrub till we were some thirty meters from the other car. There I stopped. Got out carefully, my hand on my Walther. I told Josh, as sternly as I’d ever told him anything, “Lock all the doors and stay here. Do you understand? Do not let anyone in, unless it’s me.”
He nodded, not the slightest bit worried. Perhaps he thought that this was simply a game.
I waited till he’d shut himself inside, then went across to Steve’s car. The young Caucafrican was nowhere to be seen. There was a flashlight in his open glove compartment. I clicked it on, swung the beam around me. Then looked back at where I’d parked, with my stomach flipping slightly. Josh was peering back at me through the dark windshield, looking very small indeed. I held up a finger, indicating he should stay exactly where he was. Then I began to search the ground around me much more thoroughly.
The beam of my flashlight soon alighted on another gun, just lying there on the hard earth. Steve’s. I picked it up and sniffed it. It had not been fired.
Just three meters further on, I found a pool of blood.
It was fresh. My heart was pounding, and I could hear my own breath in my nostrils. There were drag marks, leading off from here toward the silent, shadowed mountains. Thunder kept on rumbling overhead.
This was going to take me even further from Josh. And I hated that. But what if Steve was still alive? I stared back, making sure that my boy was okay. And then I drew my pistol and followed the trail at a crouch, expecting to be confronted by — what? — at any moment. A crazed Tribalist with claws strapped to his fingertips? Or perhaps even a catlike ghost.
I was at the foot of the mountains before too much longer, was in front of a huge bush. Except that the trail led inside it.
I parted the branches, shone my beam. And finally understood.
Behind it, there was an opening carved in the rock, doubtless to the old uranium mine. This entrance must have lain abandoned for the best part of fifty years. How long had it been since any light had shone in it at all?
How would Josh feel, as he watched me disappear? I was angry with myself, feeling like the most negligent of fathers. But I went inside.
Before too much longer, the main corridor started to branch off into more tunnels. I recalled the place’s history. People thought they’d really struck it rich here, half a century ago, and had been grievously disappointed. There was only one medium-sized seam, which had been mined out in the first two years. That hadn’t stopped them looking though, trying to find another one. This whole place had to be a warren. And... what exactly was happening down here now?
A thin trail of blood across the rock floor led me deeper, till my nose screwed up. An awful, pungent stench was growing stronger by the second.
It was mostly decayed human flesh — in my job, you become familiar with that. But there was something else as well. A heavy, choking, animal stink, like all the zoos in the world in a heat wave. A smell that churned my stomach, and made something in me want to run.
I didn’t. I needed to find out what was really going on. So I went forward. To find myself in a wider section, virtually a cave.
There they all were, piled up in a corner. Only one of the cadavers wasn’t decomposed. Parts of both legs and the face had been chewed away. But there was blond hair — it was Steve Petrie. A lump formed in my throat.
As for the rest, they were merely bones with mold on them. Some of them were dogs and little antelope, and a strange, fanged skull that I supposed might have belonged to a baboon. But the rest were human. Two of the skulls were child-sized, the vanished little girls. Others were of adults. There were scraps of ragged clothing mixed in. My beam alighted gently on the remains of a gingham frock.
Why wasn’t Simon Nkomo here, then? Why had he been left halfway? The distance, I realized. Whatever had killed him hadn’t been able to drag him the entire way from the farmhouse.
But what kind of wild animal could have survived down here, hidden in this way? And what kind of beast had the intelligence to leave its victim on an anthill?
I turned around on the spot very slowly, waiting for a snarl, a leaping carnivorous shape. Nothing came.
And if the creature wasn’t here, then where...?
I stiffened
Josh!
Running, back up the tunnels. Through the bush. Back across the wasteland, faster than I’d run in years, every fiber in my body propelling me onward. I could see the car before much longer. Could make out Josh standing up on his seat, turning round and round and staring.
There were large, dim shapes on the move, outside my vehicle.
“Josh! Keep the doors locked!” I was bellowing now.
Large heads turned toward me, in the dimness. I could make out glowing eyes. I stumbled to a halt ten meters from Petrie’s car, my gun held out. And, at that moment, a bolt of lightning finally flashed over our heads. The creatures hunkered down, closing their eyes. They were obviously used to living in the dark, and didn’t like this sudden brightness. But, for a moment, I could see them very clearly.
And I could have sworn, in that first instant, I was looking at Manuza’s Spirit Lions. There were twelve of them. An entire pride.
I think I went very rigid at that point. Except for my heart, which slammed around my chest like a wild animal.
There was hardly any yellow in their fur, the pigment bled away until they were the selfsame color as the shadows. They seemed a touch smaller than the lions in the zoo, their legs shorter, their bodies lower slung. And their paws seemed overly large, adapted to padding over rock perhaps?
The brilliance faded. Darkness claimed the landscape once again. And from that point on, all I could make out were blurry shapes.
Their eyelids slid back open. They were unnaturally large eyes, glowing a faint luminous green.
I could smell them. A low growling began. And... they were making the grass crackle with their tails. These were not ghosts.
My thoughts churned furiously. For how long, how many generations, had this pride lived in the old uranium mines? How in the world had they managed to escape attention?