Fever Dream (4 page)

The tracker crouched and signaled for the others to do likewise—the visibility in the bunch grass was better closer to the
ground, where they had a greater chance of seeing the tawny flash of the lion before he was actually on top of them. They
slowly entered the fever grove, inching along at a crouch. The dried, silty mud was baked hard as rock and it retained no
spoor, but broken and bent stems told a clear tale of the lion’s passage.

Again the tracker paused, motioning for a talk. Pendergast and Helen came up and the three huddled in the close grass, whispering
just loud enough to be heard over the insects.

“Lion somewhere in front. Twenty, thirty yards. Moving slowly.” Mfuni’s face was creased with concern. “Maybe we should wait.”

“No,” whispered Pendergast. “This is our best chance at bagging him. He’s just eaten.”

They moved forward, into a small open area with no grass, no more than ten feet square. The tracker paused, sniffed the air,
then pointed left.
“Lion,”
he whispered.

Pendergast stared ahead, looked left, then shook his head and pointed straight ahead.

The tracker scowled, leaned to Pendergast’s ear. “Lion circle around to left. He very smart.”

Still Pendergast shook his head. He leaned over Helen. “You stay here,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ears.

“But the tracker—”

“The tracker’s wrong. You stay, I’ll go ahead just a few yards. We’re nearing the far end of the
vlei
. He’ll want to remain in cover; with me moving toward him he’ll feel pressed. He might rush. Be ready and keep a line of
fire open to my right.”

Pendergast signaled for his gun. He grasped the metal barrel, warm in the heat, and pulled it forward under his arm. He thumbed
off the safety and flipped up the night sight—a bead of ivory—for better sighting in the grassy half-light. Nyala handed Helen
her rifle.

Pendergast moved into the dense grass straight ahead, the tracker following in frozen silence, his face a mask of terror.

Pushing through the grass, placing each foot with exceeding caution on the hardpan ground, Pendergast listened intently for
the peculiar cough that would signal the beginning of a rush. There would be time for only one shot: a charging lion could
cover
a hundred yards in as little as four seconds. He felt more secure with Helen behind him; two chances at the kill.

After ten yards, he paused and waited. The tracker came alongside, deep unhappiness written on his face. For a full two minutes,
neither man moved. Pendergast listened intently but could hear only insects. The gun was slippery in his sweaty hands, and
he could taste the alkali dust on his tongue. A faint breeze, seen but not felt, swayed the grass around them, making a soft
clacking sound. The insect drone fell to a murmur, then died. Everything grew utterly still.

Slowly, without moving any other part of his body, Mfuni extended a single finger—again ninety degrees to his left.

Remaining absolutely still, Pendergast followed the gesture with his eyes. He peered into the dim haze of grass, trying to
catch a glimpse of tawny fur or the gleam of an amber eye. Nothing.

A low cough—and then a terrible, earthshaking explosion of sound, a massive roar, came blasting at them like a freight train.
Not from the left, but from straight ahead.

Pendergast spun around as a blur of ocher muscle and reddish fur exploded out of the grass, pink mouth agape, daggered with
teeth; he fired one barrel with a massive
ka-whang!
but he hadn’t time to compose the shot and the lion was on him, six hundred pounds of enormous stinking cat, knocking him
flat, and then he felt the red-hot fangs slice into his shoulder and he cried out, twisting under the suffocating mass, flailing
with his free arm, trying to recover the rifle that had been knocked away by the massive blow.

The lion had been so well hidden, and the rush so fast and close, that Helen Pendergast was unable to shoot before it was
on top of her husband—and then it was too late; they were too close together to risk a shot. She leapt from her spot ten yards
behind and bulled through the tall grass, yelling, trying to draw the monstrous lion’s attention as she raced toward the hideous
sound of muffled, wet growling. She burst onto the scene just as Mfuni sank his spear into the lion’s gut; the beast—bigger
than any lion should rationally be—leapt off Pendergast and swiped at the tracker, tearing away part of his leg, then bounded
into the grass, the spear dragging from its belly.

Helen took careful aim at the lion’s retreating back and fired, the recoil from the massive .500/.416 nitro express cartridge
jolting her hard.

The shot missed. The lion was gone.

She rushed to her husband. He was still conscious. “No,” Pendergast gasped.
“Him.”

She glanced at Mfuni. He was lying on his back, arterial blood squirting into the dirt from where the calf muscle of his right
leg was hanging by a thread of skin.

“Oh, Jesus.” She tore off the lower half of her shirt, twisted it tight, and wrapped it above the severed artery. Groping
around for a stick, she slid it under the cloth and twisted it tight to form a tourniquet.

“Jason?” she said urgently. “Stay with me!
Jason!
”

His face was slick with sweat, his eyes wide and trembling.

“Hold that stick. Loosen it if you start going numb.”

The tracker’s eyes widened. “Memsahib, the lion is coming back.”

“Just hold that—”

“It’s coming back!”
Mfuni’s voice broke in terror.

Ignoring him, she turned her attention to her husband. He lay on his back, his face gray. His shoulder was misshapen and covered
with a clotted mass of blood. “Helen,” he said hoarsely, struggling to rise. “Get your gun.
Now
.”

“Aloysius—”

“For the love of God, get your gun!”

It was too late. With another earsplitting roar, the lion burst from the cover, sending up a whirlwind of dust and flying
grass—and then he was on top of her. Helen screamed once and tried to fight him off as the lion seized her by the arm; there
was a sharp crackling of bone as the lion sank his teeth in—and then the last thing Pendergast saw before he passed out was
the sight of her struggling, screaming figure being dragged off into the deep grass.

T
HE WORLD CAME BACK INTO FOCUS. PENDERGAST
was in one of the
rondevaals
. The distant throb of a chopper sounded through the thatch roof, rapidly increasing in volume.

He sat up with a cry to see the DC, Woking, leap out of a chair he’d been sitting in at the far side of the hut.

“Don’t exert yourself,” Woking said. “The medevac’s here, everything’ll be taken care of—”

Pendergast struggled up. “My wife! Where is she?”

“Be a good lad and—”

Pendergast swung out of bed and staggered to his feet, driven by pure adrenaline. “My
wife
, you son of a bitch!”

“It couldn’t be helped, she was dragged off, we had a man unconscious and another bleeding to death—”

Pendergast staggered to the door of the hut. His rifle was there, set in the rack. He seized it, broke it, saw that it still
contained a single round.

“What in God’s name are you doing—?”

Pendergast closed the action and swung the rifle toward the DC. “Get out of my way.”

Woking scrambled aside and Pendergast lurched out of the hut. The sun was setting. Twelve hours had passed. The DC came
rushing
out after him, waving his arms. “Help! I need help! The man’s gone mad!”

Crashing into the wall of brush, Pendergast pushed through the long grass until he had picked up the trail. He did not even
hear the ragged shouts from the camp behind. He charged along the old spoor trail, thrusting the brush aside, heedless of
the pain. Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen—and then he burst into the dry pan. Beyond lay the
vlei
, the dense grass, the grove of fever trees. With a gasp he lurched forward across the pan and into the grass, swiping his
weapon back and forth with his good arm to clear a path, the birds overhead screaming at the disturbance. His lungs burned,
his arm was drenched in blood. Still he advanced, bleeding freely from his torn shoulder, vocalizing inarticulately. And then
he stopped, the ragged incoherent sounds dying in his throat. There was something in the grass ahead, small, pale, lying on
the hard-packed mud. He stared down at it. It was a severed hand—a hand whose ring finger was banded with a star sapphire.

With an animalistic cry of rage and grief, he staggered forward, bursting from the long grass into an open area where the
lion, its mane ablaze with color, was crouching and quietly feeding. He took in the horror all at once: the bones decorated
with ribbons of flesh, his wife’s hat, the tattered pieces of her khaki outfit, and then suddenly the smell—the faint smell
of her perfume mingling with the stench of the cat.

Last of all he saw the head. It had been severed from her body but—with a cruel irony—was otherwise intact compared with the
rest. Her blue-and-violet eyes stared up sightlessly at him.

Pendergast walked unsteadily up to within ten yards of the lion. It raised its monstrous head, slopped a tongue around its
bloody chops, and looked at him calmly. His breath coming in short, sharp gasps, Pendergast raised the Holland & Holland with
his good arm, propped it on his bad, sighted along the top of the ivory bead. And pulled the trigger. The massive round, packing
five thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy, struck the lion just between and above the eyes, opening the top of its head like
a sardine can, the cranium exploding in a blur of red mist. The great red-maned lion hardly moved; it merely sank down on
top of its meal, and then lay still.

All around, in the sunbaked fever trees, a thousand birds screamed.

PRESENT DAY

St. Charles Parish, Louisiana

T
HE ROLLS-ROYCE GREY GHOST CREPT AROUND
the circular drive, the crisp crunch of gravel under the tires muffled in places by patches of crabgrass. The motorcar was
followed by a late-model Mercedes, in silver. Both vehicles came to a stop before a large Greek Revival plantation house,
framed by ancient black oaks draped in fingers of Spanish moss. A small bronze plaque screwed into the façade announced that
the mansion was known as Penumbra; that it had been built in 1821 by the Pendergast family; and that it was on the National
Register of Historic Places.

A. X. L. Pendergast stepped out of the rear compartment of the Rolls and looked around, taking in the scene. It was the end
of an afternoon in late February. Mellow light played through the Greek columns, casting bars of gold into the covered porch.
A thin mist drifted across the overgrown lawn and weed-heavy gardens. Beyond, cicadas droned sleepily in the cypress groves
and mangrove swamps. The copper trim on the second-floor balconies was covered in a dense patina of verdigris. Small curls
of white paint hung from the pillars, and an atmosphere of dampness, desuetude, and neglect hung over the house and grounds.

A curious gentleman emerged from the Mercedes, short and stocky, wearing a black cutaway with a white carnation in his
boutonniere.
He looked more like a maître d’ from an Edwardian men’s club than a New Orleans lawyer. Despite the limpid sunlight, a tightly
rolled umbrella was tucked primly beneath one arm. An alligator-skin briefcase was clutched in one fawn-gloved hand. He placed
a bowler hat on his head, gave it a smart tap.

“Mr. Pendergast. Shall we?” The man extended a hand toward an overgrown arboretum, enclosed by a hedge, that stood to the
right of the house.

“Of course, Mr. Ogilby.”

“Thank you.” The man led the way, walking briskly, his wingtips sweeping through the moisture-laden grass. Pendergast followed
more slowly, with less sense of purpose. Reaching a gate in the hedge, Mr. Ogilby pushed it open, and together they entered
the arboretum. At one point he glanced back with a mischievous smile and said, “Let us keep an eye out for the ghost!”