He was out cold.
Abele pulled the Kalashnikov from over the guard's neck, then detached the ammo belt, moving quickly because he knew it would not be long before the burning hut served as a beacon to his accomplices. His hands were still shaking, and the rifle felt heavy in his hands. He aimed it at the man lying unconscious on the floor. One squeeze of the trigger was all it would take; one squeeze, and the man who would have killed him without a second thought would be with the ancestors.
Suddenly, though, the image of Ben popped into his head. The look of shock and horror that had crossed his face when he realized that Abele intended to kill the bandit who had attacked them the day he arrived.
Abele's lips curled into a sneer. He turned and left the man lying there.
It was a struggle to find the road that led into the village. Abele couldn't understand it – it wasn't like he didn't know the area well enough, but somehow he couldn't focus on where he was. He stopped for a moment and looked down at his arm. It was burning with an intense, white pain, and he could see a series of ugly burn blisters appearing along its length. As he looked at it, though, he felt his head spinning and a wave of nausea crashed suddenly over him.
The road, he told himself. I have to get to the road.
He looked around in confusion. 'That way,' he murmured under his breath.
By the time he reached the road, the nausea was allconsuming, making him forget even about the burns on his skin. He staggered along for perhaps fifty metres before he realized he could go no further. By the side of the road was a small copse of trees. He would be hidden there, so he stumbled towards them.
Immediately he was under their protection, though, he felt his legs buckle underneath him. He tried to take a deep breath, but he felt as though his airways were blocked. He coughed. A dreadful, racking cough.
A cough like the one he had heard coming from Russell Tracey, only a few hours before.
Ben awoke with a start.
For a couple of moments he looked around, not fully understanding where he was, confused by the ringing of the rainforest's early-morning noise in his ears. But then it all came crashing back.
Halima was stirring too; she opened her eyes and smiled at Ben, who was massaging a knot out of his neck and trying to forget about how hungry and thirsty he was. 'Bacon and eggs, anyone?' he asked with a sigh.
Halima looked puzzled. 'What is bacon and eggs?' she asked.
'Never mind,' Ben told her. 'Come on, we'd better get moving.' He consulted the compass and pointed in the direction they needed to go.
By mid-morning Ben started to notice that the foliage was thinning out a bit, and he had even seen a few stumps where trees had been hacked down. He gestured at Halima to stop. 'I guess this means we're getting close to an inhabited area,' he whispered. 'And we're less hidden now, so we need to be extra careful.'
Halima nodded her agreement. 'I do not think it is far to the river now.'
They continued to walk, their eyes darting all around them as they kept a lookout for Suliman's men. Soon, through a gap in the trees, Ben saw the twinkling blue of the river. He and Halima nodded at each other, then hurried towards it. As they reached the bank, Ben looked to the other side. Rising from the trees, a little distance away, he could see tendrils of smoke.
The village.
The place they were trying to get to; and the last place Ben wanted to be.
This time round, Ben knew better than to obey his body's urge to rush to the water's edge and drink. There were no animals sipping on the bank, and in any case there was less of a shoreline here, more of a mossy, treacherous bank forming a sheer drop down to the water. The river itself seemed stiller, calmer than it had further along; for some reason that just served to make Ben more nervous.
But as they stood there looking across, a horrible realization dawned on him. They had been so caught up in their desire to get to the river that they had not considered how they were going to cross it. Surely they couldn't swim – who could tell what dangers lurked beneath that still surface?
As though echoing his thoughts, Halima spoke. 'We need to find a boat.'
Ben looked left and right. There was no sign of anything. 'How are we supposed to do that?' he asked.
Halima shrugged. 'By looking.' She strode off along the river bank, with Ben following behind.
They spent the next half-hour searching along the bank for a boat. It was treacherous work, as they kept losing their footing on the mossy boulders, and all of a sudden the humidity had seemed to double in intensity. 'The rains,' Halima murmured at one point. 'We need to cross before they come.'
'Fat chance,' Ben said, knowing that he was sounding a bit surly. 'Look, Halima. Everyone lives on the other side of the river. Why would they leave a boat here-?'
He cut himself short as Halima looked at him triumphantly. There, a metre or so below the high bank on which they were standing, water lapping against its sides, was a small wooden boat. It was an insubstantial thing, rickety and unimpressive, but it was a boat nevertheless. Ben grinned as he felt relief surge through him.
It was short-lived. The instant his eyes fell on the boat, he heard a shout behind him. He spun round and, a sickness rising from his stomach, saw the sight he had been dreading: Suliman's men, twenty metres away, emerging from the forest, their guns pointing in his direction.
'The boat,' he yelled at Halima. 'Get in the boat! Now!'
His shout was punctuated by the sound of gunfire. Half expecting that he had been hit, Ben grabbed Halima and they jumped into the boat. It was barely big enough for the two of them, and as they hit the decks it wobbled precariously, water sluicing in and settling in the bottom of the hull. There was one oar there; Ben grabbed it and used it to push against the bank as hard as his strength would allow. The boat shot out a few metres into the river before slowing down to a gentle drift as the pair flattened their bodies into the bottom of the vessel, vainly attempting to hide from the onslaught of bullets as Suliman's men fired at them from the river bank.
But the sound of bullets never came. Instead, there was a short, muffled scream.
Gingerly, Ben looked over the side of the boat towards the bank. What he saw, he knew he would never forget as long as he lived.
One of the men – the smaller of the two – was already down, floored by an enormous silverback gorilla who had evidently attacked them from behind. Now the gorilla was dealing with the taller man. With one swoop of his enormous arm, he sent him crashing to the ground. The man weakly tried to get up and gain control of his gun, but he was too slow; the gorilla was beside him, raising both hands into the air, then thumping them down with brutal efficiency onto the man's chest. Again and again he beat him, roaring deeply each time he did so and inflicting the blows so hard that blood started to explode from the unconscious man's mouth and stick to the animal's long fur.
The gorilla continued his work long after it was clear to Ben that the man was quite dead.
When he had finished, the silverback turned his attention back to the smaller man, pummelling him repeatedly to make sure he would never get up again either. And then, without even seeming to acknowledge the presence of Ben and Halima, he turned and disappeared into the bush, growling deeply as he did so.
Maybe Ben was fooling himself, but he almost thought the animal seemed satisfied with his work.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ben and Halima sat up in the boat in shocked silence; the rainforest itself seemed hushed after that horrific display. Ben watched in distaste as three vultures, silently swooping down as though surfing on an invisible tide of misfortune, settled on the bodies of the dead men and started pecking small, red gobbets of flesh from their faces. He turned away, sickened, and tried to focus on something else.