I looked directly at the one nearest the car, the largest one and with the thickest mane, presumably their leader. Peering deep into its gaze, I thought that I could see intelligence. Low cunning at least. Caution, and a patience that seemed measureless. Had this one kept the others safe for these decades? Kept them hidden and away from harm?
Some of the others were drifting toward me. I came back quickly to myself. Drew a bead on the nearest one, and fired. The glow of its eyes vanished again. But a moment later, I could hear soft stirrings in the brush around me. Fear was dripping off me with my sweat by now.
Petrie’s car door was still hanging open, not too far away.
I swung my weapon left and right, firing a couple of blind shots to keep the cats at bay. Then I was running again. And threw myself into the Assegai, yanking the door shut behind me.
Something slammed against it, on the other side. Claws raked down the glass. Something else landed on the roof, making it buckle slightly.
Steve had left the keys in the ignition, thank the Lord. I fumbled with them till the engine turned. Switched on the lights. And, with one hand on the horn, began swinging the car around in circles, kicking up a cloud of dust.
The creatures on top of and beside me disappeared when I did that, and the others shied away.
People in Binaville began noticing the racket. Blinds were pulled up, and then doors coming open. The green eyes around me vanished again. For good, this time?
I pulled the Assegai across and skidded to a halt next to my own car. Waited a few seconds, satisfying myself that the pride had completely gone. They wouldn’t dare hang around with all this attention.
Then I sprang out, clambering back into my own driving seat. Hugged Josh tightly. And finally got us away from there.
The picture that we made as we went back along the highway? It was a recreation of another scene, from own my past, a long time ago. The grave little boy and his silent, grim-faced father, thinking about what they’d just seen. Except now, I’d turned into Pappy. And Joshua had replaced the younger me.
After a long while, my mind started working properly again. And I wondered what action the authorities would take, when they heard about the lions.
Send people to study them? Round them up for some zoo? No, I figured. They would simply take the straightest, most expedient course, and send hunters in. Or even block up the tunnels, then fill the place with gas.
No muss, no fuss, no more dead farmers.
If I told them.
There were certainly good reasons why I ought. The two girls and the derelicts, Nkomo, and poor Steve. Excellent reasons in each case.
And yet, I was remembering things too.
That far-gone past, when I had been a year younger than Josh was, and the Mukuvisi Woodlands were still there.
That damned giraffe on the Mutare Road. The startling look in its one good eye.
How terrified it had been. And yet, it had kept on struggling, hanging onto its existence right up to the end.
And were these lions any different?
They had nearly killed me, terrified me to the core. And yet, when I’d first seen them clearly, there had been a quality to them that can’t be seen in any of their captive kind. The way they stood, and the way they moved. A strength, a spirit that can only come with freedom. It was something wondrous I’d never encountered before. They had managed to keep going despite all the odds against them. Managed to survive, in spite of everything that modem Africa had done.
And could I, in all conscience, have a hand in ending that?
They were simply marking out their final days, I could see that the more I thought about it. Lack of prey was forcing them further from the tunnels. That was why they’d gone in the Nkomo house. And sooner rather than later, someone else would come across them. Then the men with gas would come.
But I was remembering one other thing too. That expression on my father’s face of something refound, only to be snatched away.
Maybe Manuza was right, and you cannot change what’s deepest in the heart. Whatever. By the time I finally pulled off the road, I had pretty well made up my mind. Whoever betrayed the pride, it was not going to be me.
I held Josh by both shoulders, felt he wasn’t even trembling. I peered down at him gravely and said, “I’m so sorry. Are you all right? You must have been scared.”
“I was a little bit.”
But then he gazed up at me with his eyes full of the kind of wonder I had once been capable of. Then lost, until tonight.
“But I’m very glad I saw the lions. Aren’t you, Dad? Aren’t you?”
No Uncertain Terms
C. J. Harper
When Doreen Martin opened the door that led from the garage to the mudroom, she knew her husband was dead. She sensed it in the dense, whispery silence that closed in on her like a shroud. A silence that made her aware of her own breathing. Of her own mortality.
She knew Tom hadn’t gone anywhere. His cancer had made him a prisoner in his own home. But it hadn’t progressed that far yet. He’d looked thinner this morning when she’d left for the casino, his face more gaunt and more gray than usual, but the death sentence in October had been six months. Only three had passed. How could he be dead?
And that’s when she knew. That’s when Doreen’s heart stumbled and her vision splintered at the edges. When her words came out in a shaky hiss. “That son of a bitch.”
She started toward the kitchen but stumbled over something. She looked down. Tom’s hiking boots lay on their sides like the feet of an invisible dead man. She kicked at them. Kicked at those damned, useless, overpriced hiking boots, the ones he’d bought only the month before for two hundred dollars.
She could feel her anger at him growing, filling the voids and veins and sinew inside her. Filling up more of her being than she thought she had.
When she passed into the kitchen she was hit with the sickeningly sweet smell of cigarettes, cordite, and blood. The sight of him hit her even harder. She began to shiver as if the cold winter air that had followed her inside had become trapped under her coat. Under her skin.
Tom Martin sat in a kitchen chair, his back to the sliding glass door. Blood and bits of brain tissue and bone slid slowly down the giant pane behind him. His head was lolled over to one side. His mouth hung open.
She moved closer to him.
The back of his head was little more than a gaping, oozing, red-and-white divot. His gray curly hair surrounding the wound had become dark and matted with blood. A rust-colored afghan — the one he’d been using to keep warm the last few weeks — covered his legs and feet. The gun lay lifeless on a slack hand in his lap, wisps of smoke still trickling from its barrel.
She looked at the table. A note the size of a full page of typing paper lay next to a fresh cigarette burning in a square, glass ashtray. A thin blue line of smoke floated up from a simmering Marlboro, then rippled into a churning, tangled web.
“You son of a bitch.” It came out in a whisper, but the sound of her own voice in the cryptlike kitchen startled her. Made the anger and irritation and shock unstable. Almost unmanageable.
Doreen took a deep breath to steady herself, then walked to the counter by the refrigerator where she kept her cigarettes, never taking her eyes off what was left of her husband. She scooped up the pack of Mores and fingered out one of the long, thin, dark brown smokes. Both hands trembled as she tucked it between her dry lips and repeatedly thumbed her temperamental lighter. Finally it caught and she lit the cigarette. Then she sat down in the chair across the table from Tom and took long, slow drags. Tried to calm her nerves.