The Greystoke Legacy (5 page)

She dropped the pan, intending to help Esmée, but before Jane could take a step, part of a burning roofing plank landed inches in front of her—flipped over and cracked her across the head.

Bright lights flooded her vision and the world around her swam. Jane's legs turned to rubber and she staggered as the cacophony around her grew dim. She stumbled sideways—then something smacked her across the face: a branch. She felt a stab of pain and tripped forward, twisted her ankle, and tumbled flat on her face. There was a blur of movement as the ground escaped from under her and she tasted bitter mud.

For several long moments it felt as if she was underwater—her limbs cycled uselessly until something hard slammed into her chest. The noises around her faded into a void of nothingness.

A
gentle tickle on the arm woke Jane.

The cat, probably.

She pushed it away, her hand brushing wet fur. The patter of tiny feet and the sound of rustling made her eyes flick open in alarm. She was lying on her side, feet submerged in the river, thankfully not face down or she would have drowned.

The previous night's events flooded back. She tried to sit up, but pain racked her body, she gasped in panic.

OK, calm down
, she mentally cajoled.
Arms
. . . she moved her left arm, the one nearest to her face. Her fingers wriggled.
Good, now
. . . she couldn't see her other hand but could feel damp wood under her fingertips.
So far, so good.

She flexed both feet and was pretty sure she could feel them.
No spinal injuries then
, at least, that's what she thought that meant.

Moving slowly, Jane rolled over. Her back ached as she sat upright and examined herself: clothing stained with mud and one bare foot where she'd lost a sneaker. Moving her limbs hurt because of multiple bruises and her head still swayed. Looking around, her heart skipped a beat—she could see nothing but jungle. She recalled her father's dire warning about wandering off and felt her panic return.

Think, dammit. Something hit me on the head . . .

Her hand automatically touched her forehead where the roof beam had struck her. It stung; dried blood revealed a deep cut the size of her thumb at the base of her hairline and her hair was matted with mud and dried blood. The one thing she had paid attention to was her father's safety briefing when they had arrived in the Congo. He'd shown her dozens of pictures of poisonous reptiles, insects, and plants: nature's most deadly list. He'd also stressed the importance of tending to any wound, no matter how small. Out here infection was the number one killer. She considered bathing the wound in the water, but one glance at the swollen river, brown from mud's natural tannic acids, changed her mind.

I tripped . . . slid down a gully . . .

Thick forest surrounded her. There was no incline she could have descended.

Lost!

The word frosted her heart. She involuntarily shivered as a chill spread through her body despite the humid atmosphere.

Her hand suddenly shot to her pocket. Her phone! She slid it out and was dismayed to see the screen was cracked and wet. Her finger moved to the power button . . . then she hesitated. Back in Baltimore, she had dropped her phone in a puddle and thought it was ruined. The clerk at the store had told her not to switch it back on as it would short circuit. Instead, she took it home and let it dry out over several days. When she had turned it on, it worked as good as new. The problem was, she didn't have a couple of days to wait. But then again, she didn't have a signal either.

“Hello?” the words came out as a croak, her mouth parched. She stood, every muscle aching. It was then she realized she'd been lying in the fork of a broken tree limb that had washed up on the side of the bank with her. The branch had saved her life by keeping her afloat as she was borne away from Karibu Mji.

How far?

“Anyone? I'm lost!” A tickle in her throat reduced her words to a dry hacking cough. She needed to find drinkable water.

Think . . . calm down. If I head upstream, the camp's got to be that way. I can't have drifted far and they'll be looking for me.

It was a plan, it was something to cling to. It allowed her to ignore the dark thoughts that threatened to crowd her mind:
If they were looking for me, why haven't they found me already? Surely Robbie would have noticed?

Jane followed the riverbank for several feet before she became aware of movement in the trees. A monkey sat on a branch, watching with black eyes beneath its shaggy brow.

“Do you know which way the camp is?” rasped Jane, desperate for any form of interaction. The monkey scratched its backside then examined its fingers, taking great delight in eating whatever it had found. Then Jane remembered she had pushed something furry aside when she woke. “Was that you?”

The monkey looked at her quizzically, then shuffled along the branch. Jane thought it would disappear into the dense boughs; instead it angled an upturned broad leaf and water flowed into its mouth. Jane was struck by how human the motion was.

She saw the same plant clung to the lower parts of the tree, gracing the trunk right down to the ground. She moved closer, examining the cupped leaves that held clear rainwater. Jane greedily drank the contents of one, and then poured another two. The inside of her mouth came alive. The water tasted a little grassy from the chlorophyll, but it was not unpleasant. She looked back at the monkey.

“Thank you!” her voice had returned.

The monkey scratched itself, looking bored. Evidently the entertainment value of talking to a human had been exhausted. With a quick bound the animal disappeared up the trunk.

Jane felt suddenly alone . . . no . . . not alone. Eyes were still on her. She looked around. The feeling of being watched was intense, the same primal instinct that cautioned a grazing animal that danger was near. Wary, Jane continued upriver.

It was impossible to measure time, especially as the sun would often hide behind the lofty canopy. She kept a watchful eye on the banks, keen to identify the gully she had fallen from. Instead all she saw was impenetrable forest.

She lost count of the number of times the river meandered sharply away. Jane couldn't follow it from the bank as her path was blocked by moss-covered rocks and thick gnarled tree roots. She feared that the simple act of walking around the obstacle would take her away from the river and then she would be utterly lost. The river was life, her lifeline back to camp. She waded into the water rather than lose sight of it. Even close to the bank it came to her knees, other times she was waist deep, forced to cling to overhanging branches in case the bank suddenly sheered away.

An occasional splash or suspicious ripple on the water's surface reminded her that crocodiles were common here. Twice she heard a deep snort, but couldn't pinpoint its location. She could only pray it wasn't a hippo. Esmée had told her how, despite their comical appearance, hippos were aggressively territorial.

The hike was made even harder because of the missing shoe. Mud squelched between her toes one moment, a sharp thorny branch would prick her the next. Jane lost count of how many times she had stubbed her toes on hidden rocks.

The second problem was her rumbling stomach. She was surrounded by lush vegetation, some of which was surely edible. But which? For every edible fruit there was something poisonous, something that would send daggers through her stomach and kill her without mercy in minutes.

Pull yourself together
, she commanded. In her head, she sounded like her father. The sun was almost overhead.
I couldn't have drifted that far
. . . How many times had she convinced herself of that? Yet the riverbanks never parted to reveal the gully she had fallen down. Hours had passed and she was feeling weak, shaking from hunger. She'd kill for a chocolate bar.

Several times she caught movement in the trees and was convinced the monkey was trailing her, although she never saw it. A variety of caws from unseen birds sounded from all around. With every step they appeared to get louder. She couldn't recall the jungle ever sounding so alive.

Jane trudged out of the water for the dozenth time. The riverbank was now broadening out and felt like muddy sand beneath her naked foot. She looked down, noticing her foot was covered with black gelatinous streaks.

Streaks that pulsed.

Leeches.

Jane gagged, watching their slimy bodies expand as they gorged on her blood. Panicking, she tried plucking them off with a sharp tug. They came free, but the parasites' heads still clung to her flesh with hooked teeth. She twisted the bulbous heads off, tearing skin away.

“Get off me!” Jane screamed. “I hate it out here!” she shouted to the trees above. “I wanna go home! I wanna have coffee, a roof . . . somewhere things don't keep biting me!” She was ranting now, venting aloud what she normally kept to her silent emails.

Jane dropped to her knees and cradled her head. She had been through the emotional wringer when her parents had separated and was now determined not to shed a single tear ever again. She was not sure how long she crouched, but finally decided she had to do something. She stood and blood trickled from her feet, tingeing the sand red. With every ounce of willpower, she forced herself on, hoping, praying, that Karibu Mji lay just beyond the next bend.

Minutes stretched beyond incalculable time as Jane followed the wide bank. Birds no bigger than sparrows, sporting fabulous bright-red plumage, appeared in the trees, chirping melodiously and watching her with interest. Esmée had told her they were bar-breasted firefinches. She had seen a couple around the camp, but never so many. There were dozens in the canopy above her. Although pretty, Jane couldn't shake the feeling they were scrutinizing her like hungry vultures.

As she watched the finches she saw that something was not quite right. At first she couldn't figure it out, until she realized the tree line beyond the birds, visible through a natural break in the canopy, seemed to rise upward. The perspective looked wrong. A nearby group of rocks rose to twice her height and provided an easy climb so she could take in her new surroundings.

She was looking at the slope of a steep mountain that wore the rainforest like a cloak. Clouds hugged every contour and blotted out the peak. Cloud forest: Her father had mentioned it when they first flew into the rainforest. Her stomach lurched. It was a mountain that she had never seen before from Karibu Mji. She must be miles from the camp.

Breaks between the trees showed her the river forking in three different directions, each tributary meandering into the distance. She had reached a convergence of three narrow tributaries that flowed into the one single trunk she had been following. Her heart sank—she could have drifted down any of the three tributaries, but which one? The jungle offered no clues.

She jumped from the rocks and sank to her knees on the riverbank. Jane wanted to cry but emotions still refused to surface. Then she sensed something; a primeval instinct told her that something was stalking her. She was flooded with adrenalin the very moment she heard a noise behind her.

She twisted around, her every move appearing slow and sedate. Her hunter was cautiously striding from trees and issuing a sonorous growl that paralyzed her.

T
he jeep's suspension groaned and creaked alarmingly as it bounced down the narrow trail to Karibu Mji. Archie weaved the vehicle around the frequent potholes and rocks, but still the ride was spine-jarring. Clark gripped the dash with one hand, the door with the other. The open windows were the only form of air-conditioning the vehicle had and both men were sweating heavily.

They were fuming over the meeting with the FDLR leader, Tafari, a hulking man who was pure muscle and malice. He had taken umbrage when asked if the FDLR had sabotaged the logging operation. They were more than familiar with Tafari's quick temper but had caught him in an objectionable mood following the death of his brother during a poaching expedition. He scowled at them, his hateful face wreathed in foul-smelling tobacco from the cigar he rolled between his forefinger and thumb. Half his left ear was missing—some said from a shrapnel wound during the last conflict. Others said it was from when he singlehandedly wrestled a silverback to death.

Archie had tried to be tactful; however, Clark's direct manner had inflamed Tafari so much that he had demanded a ten percent increase on their payments for safe passage through the jungle. Surrounded by thirty armed rebels, including Tafari's lieutenant, a bear of a man named Bapoto, Archie was in no position to haggle. However, he had managed to wangle a promise from Tafari that the rebels would scour the area for any rival loggers.

So it was that both men returned to Karibu Mji in a foul mood; financially worse off and with no clear idea who had disrupted their operation the previous day.

The burned-out supply shack was the first thing that greeted them when they entered the camp. Only Robbie, Esmée, and Mister David were in the village and their faces forewarned of more bad news. Esmée wore a thick bandage taped to the side of her cheek and looked exhausted.

“Es, what happened?” Archie asked before he'd even exited the jeep.

“Just caught a burn. I'll live.”

Clark jumped out, his gaze fixed on Robbie. “You OK?”

“I'm fine.”

Clark stared at the wreckage of the shack in despair. “That's the last of our supplies gone. Anyone else hurt?”

“Mister Porter, sir—” Esmée began with a stutter.

“Jane has gone,” Robbie blurted.

Archie blinked, uncomprehending. “Gone?”

“Jane is
missing
,” Esmée clarified. She rushed forward and gripped Archie's hand, her eyes filled with despair. “She was helpin' me douse the fire when somethin' exploded inside. We were all knocked to the ground, that's when I caught this.” She tapped her cheek. “When I looked up . . . she'd clean gone.”