Fever Dream (3 page)

“Very well,” said the DC with a frown. “Mr. Wisley?”

Wisley nodded reluctantly.

“We’ll meet tomorrow morning at five,” Pendergast went on. “I’m quite serious when I say we’ll need a very, very good tracker.”

“We have one of the best in Zambia—Jason Mfuni. Of course, he’s rarely tracked for hunting, only for photographers and tourists.”

“As long as he has nerves of steel.”

“He does.”

“You’ll need to spread the word to the locals, make sure they stay well away. The last thing we’ll need is a distraction.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Wisley. “Perhaps you noticed the empty villages on your way in to the camp? Except for us,
you won’t find a single human being within twenty miles.”

“The villages emptied that quickly?” Helen said. “The attack only took place yesterday.”

“It’s the Red Lion,” the DC said, as if this were explanation enough.

Pendergast and Helen exchanged glances. For a moment, the bar went silent.

Then Pendergast rose, took Helen’s hand, and helped her to her feet. “Thanks for the drink. And now, if you will show us to
our hut?”

The Fever Trees

T
HE NIGHT HAD BEEN SILENT. EVEN THE LOCAL
prides that often tattooed the darkness with their roars were lying low, and the usual chatter of night animals seemed subdued.
The sound of the river was a faint gurgle and shush that belied its massive flow, perfuming the air with the smell of water.
Only with the false dawn came the first noises of what passed for civilization: hot water being poured into shower-drums in
preparation for morning ablutions.

Pendergast and his wife had left their hut and were in the dining shelter, guns beside them, sitting by the soft glow of a
single bulb. There were no stars—the night had been overcast, the darkness absolute. They had been sitting there, unmoving
and silent, for the last forty-five minutes, enjoying each other’s company and—with the kind of unspoken symbiosis that characterized
their marriage—preparing mentally and emotionally for the hunt ahead. Helen Pendergast’s head was resting on her husband’s
shoulder. Pendergast stroked her hand, toying now and then with the star sapphire on her wedding band.

“You can’t have it back, you know,” she said at last, her voice husky from the long silence.

He simply smiled and continued his caresses.

A small figure appeared in the shadows, carrying a long spear and wearing long pants and a long shirt, both of dark color.

The two straightened up. “Jason Mfuni?” Pendergast asked, his voice low.

“Yes, sir.”

Pendergast extended his hand. “I’d rather you didn’t ‘sir’ me, Jason. The name’s Pendergast. And this is my wife, Helen. She
prefers to be called by her first name, I by my last.”

The man nodded, shook Helen’s hand with slow, almost phlegmatic movements. “The DC want to talk to you, Miss Helen, in the
mess.”

Helen rose. So did Pendergast.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pendergast, he want it private.”

“What’s this all about?”

“He worry about her hunting experience.”

“This is ridiculous,” Pendergast said. “We’ve settled that question.”

Helen waved her hand with a laugh. “Don’t worry about it—apparently it’s still the British Empire out here, where women sit
on the veranda, fan themselves, and faint at the sight of blood. I’ll set him straight.”

Pendergast eased back down. The tracker waited by him, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“Would you care to sit down, Jason?”

“No thank you.”

“How long have you been tracking?” Pendergast asked.

“A few years,” came the laconic reply.

“Are you good?”

A shrug.

“Are you afraid of lions?”

“Sometimes.”

“Ever killed one with that spear?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“This is a new spear, Mr. Pendergast. When I kill lion with spear, it usually break or bend, have to get new one.”

A silence settled over the camp as the light crept up behind the bush. Five minutes passed, and then ten.

“What’s taking them?” asked Pendergast, annoyed. “We don’t want to get a late start.” Mfuni shrugged and leaned on his spear,
waiting.

Suddenly Helen appeared. She quickly seated herself.

“Did you set the blighter straight?” asked Pendergast with a laugh.

For a moment, Helen didn’t answer. He turned to her quizzically and was startled at the whiteness of her face. “What is it?”
he asked.

“Nothing. Just… butterflies before a hunt.”

“You can always remain back in camp, you know.”

“Oh, no,” she said with vehemence. “No, I can’t miss this.”

“In that case, we’d better get moving.”

“Not yet,” she said, her voice low. He felt her cool hand on his arm. “Aloysius… do you realize we forgot to watch the moonrise
last evening? It was full.”

“With all the lion excitement, I’m not surprised.”

“Let’s take just a moment to watch it set.” She took his hand and enclosed it in hers, an unusual gesture for her. Her hand
was no longer cool.

“Helen…”

She squeezed his hand. “No talking.”

The full moon was sinking into the bush on the far side of the river, a buttery disk descending through a sky of mauve, its
reflection rippling like spilled cream over the swirling waters of the Luangwa River. They had first met the night of a full
moon and, together, had watched it rise; ever since it had been a tradition of their courtship and marriage that no matter
what else was happening in their lives, no matter what travel or commitments they faced, they would always contrive to be
together to watch the rise of the full moon.

The moon touched the distant treetops across the river, then slid down behind them. The sky brightened and, finally, the gleam
of the moon vanished in the tangle of bush. The mystery of the night had passed; day had arrived.

“Good-bye, old moon,” said Pendergast lightly.

Helen squeezed his hand, then stood up as the DC and Wisley materialized on the path from the kitchen hut. With them was a
third man, hollow-faced, very tall and lanky. His eyes were yellow.

“This is Wilson Nyala,” said Wisley. “Your gun bearer.”

Handshakes. The bartender from the previous night came from the kitchen with a large pot of lapsang souchong tea, and steaming
cups of the strong brew were poured all around.

They drank quickly in silence. Pendergast set his cup down. “It’s light enough to take a look at the scene of the attack.”

Nyala slung one gun over each shoulder, and they walked down a dirt path that ran along the river. Where it passed a dense
stand of miombo brush, an area had been marked out with rope and wooden stakes. Pendergast knelt, examining the spoor. He
could see a pair of enormous pug marks in the dust, next to a puddled mass of black blood, now dry and cracking. As he looked
about, he reconstructed the attack in his mind. What had happened was clear enough: the man had been jumped from the brush,
knocked down, bitten. The initial reports were accurate. The dust showed where the lion had dragged his thrashing victim back
into the brush, leaving a trail of blood.

Pendergast rose. “Here’s how it’ll work. I’ll stay eight feet behind Jason, slightly to his left. Helen will be behind me
another eight feet, to the right. Wilson, you float just behind us.” He glanced over at his wife, who gave a subtle nod of
approval.

“When the time comes,” he continued, “we’ll gesture for the guns—bring them up with safeties on. For my rifle, detach the
strap—I would rather not hitch it up on brush.”

“I prefer my strap on,” said Helen curtly.

Wilson Nyala nodded his bony head.

Pendergast extended an arm. “My rifle, please?”

Wilson handed him his rifle. Pendergast broke the action, examined the barrel, dunked in two soft-point .465 nitro express
cartridges—big as Macanudos—closed it, locked it, made sure the safety was on, and handed it back. Helen did the same with
her rifle, loading it with .500/.416 flanged soft points.

“That’s a rather big gun for such a slender woman,” said Woking.

“I think a big-bore weapon is rather fetching,” replied Helen.

“All I can say,” Woking continued, “is I’m glad I’m not going into the bush after that brute, big rifle or no.”

“Keep the long-triangle formation as closely as possible as we advance,” said Pendergast, glancing from Mfuni to Nyala and
back again. “The wind’s in our favor. No talking unless absolutely necessary. Use hand signals. Leave the flashlights here.”

Everyone nodded. The atmosphere of false jollity quickly evaporated as they waited in silence for the sun to come up enough
to fill the underbrush with dim blue twilight. Then Pendergast motioned for Mfuni to proceed.

The tracker moved into the bush, carrying his spear in one hand, following the blood spoor. The trail moved away from the
river, through the dense thorn scrub and second-growth mopane brush along a small tributary of the Luangwa called Chitele
Stream. They moved slowly, following the spoor that coated the grass and leaves. The tracker paused to point with his spear
at a brake of flattened grass. There was a large stained area, still damp, the leaves around splattered with arterial blood.
This was where the lion had first put down his victim and begun eating, even while the victim still lived, before being shot
at.

Jason Mfuni bent down and silently held up an object: half of a lower jawbone with teeth, gnawed around the edges and licked
clean. Pendergast looked at it without speaking. Mfuni laid it down again and pointed to a hole in the wall of vegetation.

They proceeded through the hole into heavy green bush. Mfuni paused every twenty yards to listen and smell the air, or to
examine a smear of blood on a leaf. The corpse had bled out by this point, and the spoor grew fainter: all that marked the
trail were tiny smears and spots.

The tracker stopped twice to point out areas of broken grass where the lion had put the body down to shift its fang-hold and
then pick it up again. The day was coming up rapidly, the sun breaking over the treetops. Except that, save for the constant
drone of insects, this particular morning was unusually silent and watchful.

They followed the spoor for more than a mile. The sun boiled over the horizon, beaming furnace-like heat into the brush, and
the tsetse flies rose in whining clouds. The air carried the heavy smell of dust and grass. The trail finally broke free of
the bushveldt into a dry pan under the spreading branches of an acacia tree, a single termite mound rising like a pinnacle
against the incandescent sky. In the center of the pan was a jumble of red and white, surrounded by a roaring cloud of flies.

Mfuni moved out cautiously, Pendergast, Helen, and the gun bearer following. They silently gathered around the half-eaten
body
of the German photographer. The lion had opened the cranium, eaten his face, brain, and much of the upper torso, leaving
two perfectly white, unscathed legs, licked clean of blood, and one detached arm, its fist still clenching a tuft of fur.
Nobody spoke. Mfuni bent down, tugged the hair from the fist, shaking the arm free in the process, and inspected it carefully.
He then placed it in Pendergast’s hand. It was deep red in color. Pendergast passed it to Helen, who examined it in turn,
then handed it back to Mfuni.

While the others remained near the body, the tracker slowly circled the pan, looking for tracks in the alkaline crust. He
placed a finger on his mouth and pointed across the dry pan into a
vlei
, a swampy depression during the wet season that—now the dry season was advanced—had grown up into an extremely dense stand
of grass, ten to twelve feet high. Several hundred yards into the
vlei
rose a large, sinuous grove of fever trees, their umbrella-like crowns spreading against the horizon. The tracker was pointing
at a slot bent into the tall grass, made by the lion in its retreat. He came back over, his face serious, and whispered into
Pendergast’s ear. “In there,” he said, pointing with his spear. “Resting.”

Pendergast nodded and glanced at Helen. She was still pale but absolutely steady, the eyes cool and determined.

Nyala, the gun bearer, was nervous. “What is it?” Pendergast asked in a low tone, turning to him.

He nodded toward the tall grass. “That lion smart. Too smart. Very bad place.”

Pendergast hesitated, looking from the bearer, to the tracker, to the stand of grass and back again. Then he gestured for
the tracker to proceed.

Slowly, stealthily, they entered the tall grass. The visibility dropped to less than five yards. The hollow stalks rustled
and whispered with their movements, the cloying smell of heated grass stifling in the dead air. Green twilight enveloped them
as they moved deeper into the stand. The drone of insects merged into a steady whine.

As they approached the grove of fever trees, the tracker slowed; held up his hand; pointed to his nose. Pendergast inhaled
and caught the faint, musky scent of lion, overlaid with the sweetish whiff of carrion.