Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) (9 page)

Three times Kayla and I helped load belongings into the small van that smelled of overripe fruit. Each time it rumbled away to be offloaded in the city before returning three hours or so later. I wouldn’t go into Hasa and Kayla chose not to, but there were apparently plenty of family hands to help unload on that side so our aid there wasn’t needed.

Through it all, Kayla hung tough, although it was clear the evacuation was breaking her heart. Never once did she slack in the work, and each time before the long-bedded pickup trundled off behind the van, filled with children and adults clutching their favorite toys or household items, she hugged every one of them closely and exchanged well-wishes in Swahili.

Sefu’s brother showed up with an old-model Range Rover, and we helped his family off too.

Nine hours, three van loads and seven households later, our part was done. The men would return the pickup and van in the morning, but even I could feel just how empty the plantation seemed now. Only two couples remained to watch after the crops, the guineas and the cows. The first was a younger couple who dressed in Western clothes that sported the bright colors of tribal Africa. When the van pulled away for the last time in the early evening, they popped earbuds in and listened to private soundtracks as they walked hand-in-hand back to the curved concrete dome that was their home.

The second couple, perhaps in their late 50s or early 60s wore more traditional tribal clothes—the man in a long, striped, sleeveless tunic over short pants, and the woman in a ground-length, wraparound skirt with row after row of bold geometric patterns. They stood arm-in-arm with brave, patient expressions as the last family leaving left. Perhaps they’d had plenty of practice saying goodbye. Kayla had said their own three children had each left the plantation already to define their futures elsewhere.

“
Leo tunaona, kesho si yako,”
Kayla called to them as we turned back to her house and to preparations for the evening feeding. “We are only seeing today, tomorrow does not yet belong to us,” she translated for my benefit, perhaps even advice, a platitude meant to impart hope and possibility for change. A reminder that the future would come no matter, and it was up to us whether we waited passively for its arrival or met it with aggression.

I asked her which she intended to do.

“Honestly, I’m too numb right now to think about tomorrow. I have contingency plans for floods and crop diseases. But for all the workers bailing at once? Who plans for that?” She batted at a mosquito as the cooler temperatures and slanting sunlight drew them out, and we hurried for the protection of the house. As we collected the bottles we’d filled with milk and left to warm while waiting for the van to arrive for its last load, Kayla frowned into the cabinet where she kept cans and spray bottles of various insect repellents—for the dog, for the cattle and for her. “I’m going to text Mosi and ask him to bring a couple of cans of repellent back with him when he brings the vehicles back tomorrow. Is there anything you need?”

“Another change of clothes would be nice.”

She nodded. “I’ll ask for a few other staples too. Enough to see us through to the other side of elections or whenever you might get a flight out. I’ll have to make my own trip into Hasa at some point, regardless.

It was my turn to nod.

Together we stepped outside and sprayed repellent on each other. Any activity that forced me to focus on Kayla’s lovely olive skin and her pleasing curves was one I hoped to repeat often.

“Are they right to go?” Kayla asked. “Are we the fools to be staying here? Is covering ourselves in
this
”—she shook the can of repellent—“any safer than taking our chances on catching
Subs
?”

“Prolonged exposure to anything effective against mosquitoes isn’t going to do you any favors,” I agreed. “But unless they have some sort of spray program going on in the city, it won’t be any safer there. Leaving the area altogether is going to be the only safe thing to do. That, or get a crop duster to periodically lay down some commercial sprays like I know some U.S. cities in our South do.”

Kayla shook her head. “There’s nothing that will touch mosquitoes that won’t compromise the coffee plants and our labeling as an organic grower. Not to mention the vegetable gardens or the cattle eating grass contaminated by the sprays. Or Tamu and Nyota eating it. What good is keeping us alive if our livelihood is gone? Maybe, in the end, the scorched-earth approach will be the only answer to keep the rest of the world safe, but Sudan, Ushindi, the Congo—what will become of all of us?”

“Vaccines and effective therapies, long-term,” I said, “and programs to ensure everyone exposed gets the preventive stuff for free. Look at dengue fever and malaria. If Nature didn’t have stop-gap preventions of her own, then all diseases should be affecting all regions and populations of the world right now. But these specific types of
Culex
mosquitoes will only migrate so far, and as long as the
Subs
virus doesn’t somehow mutate to where it becomes directly transmissible from person-to-person—which is highly unlikely,” I added quickly, “—it’s going to need to rely on the mosquito as its vector. So the disease is self-limiting that way. And that makes a targeted prevention program both possible and viable given enough time, money and resources.”

“How many of us will be dead by then?”

When I looked into her dark eyes, I didn’t see any fear for herself, but for others. For the ones who had neither the money nor the means to escape right now, or to prevent the bite from a single mosquito that would invariably mean death within a week. The only ray of optimism was that it did have to be the
right
mosquito—and odds so far favored against that.

How quickly those odds might change was anybody’s guess.

As for Kayla’s question, there was only one answer—and it wasn’t for an expat doctor with poor bedside manners to respond.

When I folded my arms around her, it wasn’t as a concerned doctor comforting a distraught patient. It was as a man trying desperately to protect a woman—his woman—and offer a bastion of strength in an unfair world whose only goal seem to be to beat us all down. It was an answer as old as time. The same answer today as it would have been here in the deep dark of Africa two million years ago. There was nothing of those intervening years nor of higher education nor of civilization itself in that answer.

There was only strength and bonding and one heart whispering to another in a language that needed no translation.

It was the answer of the universe, held in each other’s arms.

But was it answer enough?

I tensed at the first touch of Mark’s arms around me. What about me communicated to him I needed patronizing comfort over hard answers?

Only…

What if he had no hard answers? At least none beyond the ones he’d indicated. Hundreds had already died, perhaps thousands, across Sudan and South Sudan and the northern Congo. If it remained a localized disease in the poorest heart of Africa, who would there be to care? If no one was left to harvest the coffee and production was cut which drove prices up or—horrors—left shelf space bare in the stores or in the coffee bars across Europe and America, maybe then we could get attention and resources beyond the handful of doctors who came for a few weeks to satisfy some need to demonstrate a charitable heart to the boards of the professional organizations they wanted to join.

No one—especially no American, I was sure—did anything for nothing in return.

Yet the arms around me didn’t feel like they were there with any expectation beyond comfort. Warm, strong, carefully placed so there was nothing inappropriate about their touch, they weren’t patronizing either. They were just—
there
. A respite. A place for my heart to burrow, to find ease from the past and, for the moments they were there, to not contemplate the future. To just
be
.

Tentatively, I relaxed into those arms and let them envelop me, dispelling past and future and giving over the present me to their embrace.

I didn’t find the answer to my greater concern about the future of Ushindi in those hard yet caring arms.

What I did find seemed to be an answer to a question I had not yet thought to ask.

When I woke the next morning under the tent of mosquito netting and between crisp cotton sheets, it was to the warble of a lone Rwenzori sunbird perched on the eave of the roof outside my window and to the soft snores of Gus drowsing beside me.

Another morning, I would have lain still, absorbing the quiet of such a perfect dawn, letting it fill me with joy and contentment for the blessing of such peace.

This morning, though, there was no blessing in the quiet that extended beyond my bedroom, my window and my gardens. The quiet crept all across Zahur, an eerie quiet that echoed loud with the memory of the eight families that were gone. Disappeared. Their empty homes silent on the mountain.

I lay a moment more, gathering the courage to rise in that thundering quiet, grateful for the sudden distant squawking of the guineas, distressed over something likely as silly as the imminent rising of the sun.

Gus’s head jerked up and his ears perked forward as he stared myopically through the window, straining to hear something I couldn’t in that deep quiet. The rumble of a growl started low in his throat. That should have warned me of the coming sharp staccato barks that fired off like gunfire in my ears, startling me to my feet and to the window that overlooked the general direction of the night corral.

Gus’s barking escalated as he jumped from the bed to the floor beside me, nose pressed to the glass as he carried on with this frantic barks.

Slipping into my safari boots, I grabbed my baba’s rifle hanging on the rack on the wall. It took me a moment to remember in which bureau drawer I’d stored the bullets, but I swept up the box of rounds next to my little-worn bras and hose when I did.

Gus paced frantically between window and door, waiting for me, and alternating between whining, growling and barking to hurry me along.

It couldn’t have taken me more than a minute all told before I put my hand to the door handle and yanked my bedroom door open, but it felt far longer. Gus scrabbled to the living room and I snatched his leash from the peg by the front door, determined that Gus wasn’t going to face down whatever was out there alone. From behind his closed bedroom door, Jengo screeched, demanding to be let out. As I snapped on Gus’s leash, I heard a door click open and noise in the hall behind me, and for an instant I thought the gorilla had figured his way out. I whirled around to shout him back in, and found Mark racing up, then reaching out to take the rifle.

Reluctantly, hating to lose charge but knowing I couldn’t control Gus and shoot if I had to—or at least I couldn’t do both things well at the same time—I relinquished the Winchester to Mark. He nodded, I opened the door and together, with Gus pulling me along, we ran to the paddock.

My rhino and okapi huddled, terrified, at the far end. At the near end, three hyenas paced in front of the electric fence. One propped her paws on the lowest wire that wasn’t hot and stretched her nose up to the topmost wire that was. Either she or one of the others had already tried to go over the fence and had been shocked back. Now they were trying to intelligently figure out a way over.

There was, however, nothing intelligent about the way Gus was obsessed with protecting us. I twisted an extra wrap of the leash around my wrist just as Gus lunged for the hyenas. The momentum of him hitting the end of the leash knocked me off balance. He weighed nearly as much as me, all stocky muscle with a low center of gravity, and it was quickly clear by the way the leash cut into my wrist I was no match for his determination. I flailed as he pulled, right before my feet went out from under me. He dragged me a couple of meters before I could unwind the leash.

Just as he was free, a crack of rifle fire startled us both.

Looking up from the ground, I saw a terrible sight—one of the hyenas flung itself at the fence, ignoring the electricity jolting through its body as it pawed its way up to the top strand of wire and kicked its shortened back legs after. The other two hyenas whirled to face Gus who was scrapping for a fight.

Brandishing the rifle, Mark raced behind, yelling to scare off the hyenas. Realizing he had only one bullet left in the chamber and I had the rest, I pushed myself off the ground and fled after them.

The hyena on the fence went over, shaking itself when it fell to the other side—inside with Tamu and Nyota. My heart lurched. And lurched again when the two hyenas on the outside raced to meet Gus’s foolish attack. I added my yells to Mark’s to no avail.

Mark raised the rifle as he came to an abrupt stop. No wild shot this meant only to scare, he sighted carefully but quickly, aiming at the larger of the two hyenas.

Dammit
! Why didn’t they run? All they had to do to hunt another day was to retreat right now. There was enough death and fear of death looming down on us already. I didn’t want anything out here to die today for whatever reason—not my
watoto
nor the hyenas.

“Go! Run!” I begged them. I meant it to be a shout, it came out a whimper.

Gus lunged the last meter and the largest hyena rose up on his hind legs to meet him. I saw the curled flews and flash of fangs just before the rifle cracked again. The big hyena stiffened as I shoved two bullets into Mark’s outstretched hand.

Gus slammed into the big hyena with a yelp, clearly surprised as his opponent crumpled without a fight.

The second hyena turned tail to run. For a moment, as Gus recovered his composure, it looked like the hyena would have a chance to get away clean. Hyenas were faster than my big Rottweiler could ever hope to be. But she hesitated a split second too long before making the decision to flee, and Gus snapped down hard on her hind leg. She whipped around, and the fight was on.

Gus had a slight advantage in weight and brawn. The hyena had wild instinct and experience on her side. They both had jaws that could crush and kill depending on which of them could get a throat hold or snap the vertebra in the other’s neck first.

Without thought or plan—acting on mama bear reflex alone—I threw myself toward the snarling fray.

A third shot cracked out, the echo of it reverberating in my bones.

“No!” My only thought was that Gus and the hyena were too closely locked for a clean shot. I waited in fear for one of them to fall, and it took a long instant for me to realize they weren’t the target when neither even flinched.

In the paddock, Nyota bleated in distress. From the corner of my eye I saw a gray-and-tan spotted shape crumpled in the middle of the field.

Using the leash as a whip, I brought it down, heavy metal clasp first, on the second hyena’s haunches. Adrenaline flooded her every nerve, though, masking whatever pain either I or Gus inflicted. Her grip on him didn’t loosen. Flecks of blood spraying over my hands empowered me. I swung again, at once horrified by what I was doing and determined to keep on whipping her until she was forced away.

By the hold Gus had on the hyena somewhere between her cheek and throat, however, I wasn’t sure I
could
drive her away. He had to relinquish his hold on her at the same time she released hers.

I struck again, tears nearly blinding my aim.

“
Usifanye hivyo!
” I pleaded to them both. “Let go!”

Then Mark was beside me, rifle cradled in his strong hands. In my mind, I saw the inevitability of what a single bullet fired dead on would do. “Run!” I begged to the hyena. “
Nenda zako!
Run!”

The rifle came down, butt first and hard between the animals. The impressive bulge of Mark’s muscles testified to the force he was using as he pried the rifle between the stubborn beasts. What would happen if they did let go? Would they both turn on Mark? I grabbed the tail nearest me, which turned out to be the hyena’s, and hauled hard on it with both hands, laying back with the effort. I was overbalanced, my hands on her short, thick tail the only thing keeping me from falling, her weight a match for mine.

And suddenly I
was
falling backward, my butt thumping the ground, knocking the breath from me. Letting go of the tail that had been bracing me, I threw the clasp end of the leash behind me to gain the most momentum when I swung, but without leverage, the leash flew too slowly to harm or even threaten. As the hyena whirled in fear, she flashed her teeth mere centimeters from my face, my throat. Breath and heart froze—the only thing in the rainforest with more powerful jaws was the crocodile. She wouldn’t even have to try hard to crush my windpipe and sever my carotids, my jugular.

And still the only word I could find was the one that would save her life. “Run!” I gasped it out, half command, half prayer.

For a split instant, her eyes met mine and she and I were one. Their fire, her pain cut through me right before she gathered her short hind legs beneath her and sprang away on powerful legs. She ran alone, her pack members dead. Her grief overwhelmed me as she lunged past, and I would have collapsed under it if not for the snarling mass of fur and muscle straining after her.

Only Mark, one hand clutching Gus’s collar and the other braced dangerously around his chest, with pure weight and brawn kept the dog from racing off to finish the fight. And by the wild look in Gus’s eye, he was about to turn on the stranger who was keeping him from his prey.

Scrabbling to my knees, I dared his wicked jaws as I threw my arms around him to further block his efforts.

He snarled at me, baring a bloodied canine capable of doing serious damage. Never had he lifted his lip to me before—a revelation that appeared in his eyes the moment I thought it myself. In that moment I was as connected to him as I had been to the hyena. I saw clearly the point where anger turned to profound guilt as he realized who he was challenging.

If he had chosen that moment to attack, with or without Mark there, he could have killed me, easily and with little harm to himself. Knowing that, I still didn’t let him go. Knowing that, he ducked his head and whined—a submissive gesture, an apology. Not because I was his master, because I was never that—could never be that—to him. But because I was something infinitely more dear—his mother, his friend.

I clasped his head against my chest, and my fingers found Mark’s still twined around the heavy collar. Laying my forehead against the top of the Rottweiler’s head in silent communion, I grasped Mark’s hand in mine, including him in the wash of relief and gratitude and, yes, even the love that flowed between Gus and me.

“
Asante
. Thank you,” I whispered, including Mark in that as well.

“
Jumbe! Jumbe!”
Ikeno and Mshindi came running up the slope, rifles in hand, concern on their faces as they searched for any lingering danger.

“
Hai!
” Ikeno aimed his rifle after the distant flick of hyena tail as it was about to disappear into the forest.