Zalika’s laugh was derisive, contemptuous of his stupidity. ‘It wasn’t rape. It was the most glorious moment of my life. I’d been in love with Moses since I was a little girl. I was willing to do anything, endure anything if it meant being with him. Finally, all my dreams were about to come true. Plain little Zalika, Mummy’s problem child, the girl who wasn’t pretty enough, or sweet enough, who couldn’t get a boyfriend, who had to spend her whole life being compared to her wonderful, handsome, charming older brother… Finally I was going to get my man. And that’s when Uncle Wendell’s hired hooligan has to come charging through the door… And look what you did to him! Moses was so beautiful. He was like a God. But you took all that away from me. You bastard! I hate you! Every night we were together, I only got through it by telling myself I was doing it for him.’
She was unravelling, thought Carver. All the secret resentments she’d stored up for years were pouring out, toxic delusions that had driven everything she’d ever done.
‘For Christ’s sake, Zalika, listen to yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ve fallen in love with your captor. It’s normal, the Stockholm Syndrome – happens to hostages, kidnap victims, even people who’ve been tortured. But we can get you help.’
‘Help? I don’t want help!’ she screamed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’
‘He killed your family,’ Carver said, emphasizing each word.
‘Yes, he did. He killed my bitch of a mother and the brother I hated.’
‘He killed your father, too. Did you hate him?’
For the first time he saw a sign of weakness in the wall of loathing and self-pity she’d built round her soul. ‘My father… my father was a thief,’ Zalika said. ‘He owned land stolen from the people. He got rich by keeping Malembans poor.’
‘Mabeki told you that, did he?’
‘He explained it to me, yes, but-’
‘And that was a good enough reason for your father to die?’
‘There was no choice. That’s how it had to be. I didn’t like it, but Moses explained it and I believed him. I loved him. I still love him. And he loves me. He wants me by his side when he fulfils his destiny. He was born to rule Malemba. I was born to be his woman.’
‘You deluded little bitch. You had everything and you threw it away. You betrayed the people who loved you, and for what? If you think Moses Mabeki loves you, you’re as mad as he is. He just wants to fuck you. Fuck your family, fuck your class, fuck your race… it’s not exactly subtle, is it? And once he’s done it, he’ll kill you, just like he killed the best of your people. Count on it.’
‘You’re wrong! You’re wrong! He’s coming for me now. Then I’m giving you to him. I’m going to watch him take you apart, piece by piece. And then we’ll be together, the two of us, and-’
The sentence ended there. Zalika had seen something beyond Carver. She smiled, her whole face transformed by an expression of pure delight… and then the joy was replaced by shocked surprise as a burst of semi-automatic gunfire hammered out, puncturing her body with a three-shot ellipsis of wounds that flowered diagonally across her chest, exited explosively out of her back and flung her to the floor of the little ravine.
‘She was deluded,’ said Moses Mabeki, walking past Carver and stopping when he reached Zalika Stratten’s body. ‘A useful idiot who had outlived her usefulness. It would have been amusing to have had her, of course – had her again, I should say. But there are some things more satisfying than mere sex. I had total control of her. I determined whether she lived or died. Far better.’
It was then that Carver truly hated Moses Mabeki: hated him for the way he had perverted, exploited and then discarded a girl whose only real sin was to have loved him – or rather, loved a dream of what he might once have been. Carver hated himself, too, for not finishing this when he first had the chance. So much suffering could have been avoided, for the want of one more bullet.
‘She was right too, though,’ Mabeki said. ‘I will take my time killing you. Get to your feet.’
Carver began to move. And then he frowned. There was something else moving out there, coming towards them down the same path Zalika had trodden. But this shadow was much larger.
Carver raised a finger and pointed past Mabeki. ‘Behind you,’ he said.
Mabeki raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘Please, don’t insult my intelligence.’
And then there was a roar so loud that it seemed to reverberate inside Carver’s body, liquefying his guts and filling him with a primal caveman terror that overrode all his years of training and combat.
Mabeki’s eyes widened. He spun round. And the old lion Lobengula summoned up the remnants of his strength, leapt from fifteen feet away and hit Mabeki with the full force of his massive body.
99
Moses Mabeki screamed as the lion clamped his foreclaws on either side of his stomach, holding him tight in a terrible dance of death. Then his mouth opened, and even where he lay Carver was engulfed in the hot, fetid stench of rotten meat that hung on that carnivore breath.
Frantically, Carver rolled to one side, then scrambled away as the lion drove Mabeki to the ground, the gun falling from his hand as his outflung wrist snapped against the rock that had been Carver’s shelter.
The massive, savagely regal head lowered over Mabeki whose screams rose to an even higher pitch. The great curved fangs tore into his shoulder and the base of his neck, ripping and gnawing at his flesh while the fur round the old lion’s mouth became matted with hot, fresh blood.
From the far side of the rock came the sound of men shouting. Mabeki must have gone on ahead, wanting his own, personal moment of triumph. Now the rest of his people were catching up. More shots were fired. Carver heard the ricochets of bullets against the rock walls of the defile.
The lion paused for a moment, raised his head and looked with perfect feline night-vision towards the source of the disturbance. Again he roared, and now the men’s earlier bravado was replaced by cries of panic and the sound of running feet as they raced one another to escape the presence of the man-eater.
The lion returned to his long-awaited feast. Mabeki’s screams were now just barely audible whimpers. Carver looked on, mesmerized. This was the same beast that he had encountered less than ten minutes earlier. He could see the fresh bullet wounds in its flank and haunches.
And then, just a couple of feet beyond its twitching, hairy-tufted tail, Carver noticed his gun, lying discarded on the ground. He had to reach it without catching the lion’s attention. With infinite care, keeping his movements as slow and imperceptible as possible, Carver wriggled his way across the ground.
Lobengula had switched his attention to Mabeki’s right arm. Placing his front paws on Mabeki’s chest, to keep it still and give himself some leverage, he dug his teeth in just above the man’s elbow and shook his head to wrench the limp, unmoving arm out of the elbow joint, growling contentedly to himself as it did so.
Carver kept moving. He was almost there. Slowly, slowly, he reached out his hand and felt his fingertips touch the stock of the gun.
The lion’s tail gave another impatient twitch, the brushy end swishing by just inches from his outstretched fingertips. Carver tightened his grip and gently pulled the gun towards him.
Lobengula was relishing the taste and feel of fresh, blood-warmed meat. His wounds were forgotten. There was nothing on his mind but the feast he had in store.
And then, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something moving by the tip of his tail. He raised his head from his meal and looked round.
Carver didn’t wait to be attacked himself. He just switched his M4 to automatic fire and emptied an entire magazine into the lion’s body and head. There was a part of him that felt sad, almost ashamed at the slaughter of such a magnificent beast. But there was another, far greater part of him that had no intention whatever of being the second course. There was a horrible moment when it seemed that even this might not be enough, when the lion’s fighting spirit was so great that he attempted to charge through the torrent of bullets. But just as he seemed to be gathering himself for one last leap a round must have hit his heart, for his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell, stone dead, to the ground.