The Next World Page 5

  Tyrone Vane kept a keen eye on the truck below as it drove away. For a minute, Vane was worried that the man observing them with the binoculars might signal the driver to head up the slope. If that had happened, Vane was ready for any altercation. He tucked his Desert Eagle .44 Magnum back into his shoulder holster and instructed his driver and guide, Gwala, to put away his gun.

  “Did you recognize the truck?” Vane asked.

  “Yes,” Gwala said. “It is from the Tomie Reserve.”

  “Will they be a problem?”

  “No, sir. There is only a father and daughter that patrol, and that was them.”

  “Good. This might prove easier than I thought. As long as we know where they are at all times, we can avoid detection.”

  Vane looked out through the passenger window. “Let’s set up a day camp here for awhile and then we can go look for the pride.”

  “Yes, Mr. Vane.” Gwala got out of the Land Rover and walked around to the back of the vehicle. He opened the cargo door.

  The first task was to set up the outdoor surveillance system. Gwala strategically placed eight wireless infrared sensors hooked on mounting poles around the campsite. If any intruder—animal or human—were to pass through the invisible beams and break the connection, an ear-piercing alarm would be triggered.

  Gwala took a couple minutes and erected a shade canopy between two trees. He then set up a chair and a small table.

  He went over to the Land Rover and brought back a large cooler—personally packed by a master chef at the five-star hotel where Vane was staying—which he placed on the ground under the canopy. He opened the lid. Inside was a double magnum of Armand De Brignac Brut Rose champagne packed in dry ice along with specially prepared containers of smoked salmon, gourmet cheeses, artisan breads, chocolate-covered strawberries, and an assortment of delectable sweets.

  During the time Gwala prepared the temporary day camp, Vane pensively smoked one of his cheroots while standing on a crest that overlooked the sprawling savanna…

  Ruminating about the trophy white lioness.

  21

  Adanna drove around to the rear of the clinic and stopped the truck in front of the closed gate. She honked the horn for someone to let them in, expecting Gatura to come over, but he was nowhere to be seen, so she opened her door and climbed out of the cab.

  Samson bolted out after her.

  Walking over, she unlatched the gate and pushed it open. Samson raced into the compound. Adanna got back into the truck and drove into the compound. She parked in front of a stucco animal enclosure with a jail-like door.

  Isoba pushed Duna down off the tailgate. The man fell to his knees as his feet were still bound. He scowled up at Isoba. “You are making a big mistake.”

  Isoba stood over Duna and pulled out his knife.

  Duna’s eyes grew wide as he stared at the blade glinting in the blazing sun.

  Isoba pointed the sharp knife and leaned down. Duna tried to scoot back, only to fall on his side. The keen blade cut through the rope binding Duna’s ankles.

  “Get up,” Isoba ordered, slipping his knife back in the sheath, and aiming his rifle at Duna’s chest.

  The boss man got to his feet.

  Isoba stuck the muzzle of his rifle barrel into Duna’s lower back and shoved the man forward. Adanna went over and opened the door with the jail-like bars. Once Duna was inside, Isoba told him to sit on the ground, and he tied the man’s ankles.

  Stepping out, Isoba closed the door and secured it with a large padlock.

  He heard voices and turned.

  Dr. Tomie stepped out through the rear doorway of the clinic. Frank and Wanda followed her. Isoba wondered why Wanda’s arm was in a sling.

  “We caught him and he is locked up,” Adanna said to Dr. Tomie.

  “You have Abrafo?”

  “No, I’m sorry. It’s Duna,” Isoba said.

  Dr. Tomie’s face reddened with rage.

  Frank looked at the angry doctor. “Gayle, are you okay?”

  Instead of replying, she turned and stormed back to the rear door.

  “Why did she get so upset?” Wanda said.

  Isoba waited until the doctor went inside then said, “Duna and his brother, Abrafo, have been poaching our reserve and the national parks for years. They are evil men.”

  “And now you have one in custody,” Wanda said. “Good for you.”

  “We can only hold Duna for the park rangers,” Isoba said.

  “But he’ll do some serious prison time, right?”

  “It is very doubtful,” Adanna said.

  “He has connections with very rich people in the black market,” Isoba explained.

  “So, you’re saying he might not even go to trial.”

  “That is right.”

  “Duna and Abrafo are like slippery eels,” Adanna sniped.

  “Well, Dr. Tomie should be somewhat relieved,” Frank said.

  Isoba had a glum expression on his face. “I think she’d rather we had captured Abrafo.”

  “And why’s that?” Frank asked.

  Adanna looked at the door where Dr. Tomie had disappeared. “Abrafo killed her husband.”

  22

  “Thank you for doing this,” Dr. Tomie said. “Gatura is in no condition to walk back to his village.”

  “Well, I’m here to help out in any way I can,” Frank said. He was sitting behind the large steering wheel of an old-model Willys Jeep that was no doubt a military issue leftover from the Second World War. He glanced over at Gatura, sitting up front in the passenger seat. “So how far is your village from here?”

  “Ten miles,” Gatura replied.

  “You mean to tell me you walk that distance back and forth so you can help with the animals?”

  “Yes, every day.”

  “In this heat?” Frank figured the temperature had to be one hundred ten degrees, if not more, and there was little or no shade on the savanna.

  Gatura nodded.

  “Gatura and the others are quite dedicated,” Dr. Tomie said.

  “If we do not save the animals,” Gatura said. “Who will?”

  Frank smiled and put a hand on Gatura’s shoulder. “The world needs more people like yourself.”

  “Try and stay off the leg for a couple days,” Dr. Tomie instructed Gatura.

  “But what about tomorrow?”

  “We’ll manage,” Dr. Tomie said, but when she saw the hurt look on Gatura’s face, she added, “Heal quickly as the animals will miss you.” That brightened Gatura’s spirits as he gave her a smile.

  They heard loud voices beyond the corral.

  Ally, Dayo, and five other volunteers were cheering the one-eyed ostrich as it trotted away onto the prairie, having recuperated from its surgery.

  Even though the ostrich was to blame for Gatura’s injury, he too smiled, seeing the large bird returning back to the wild.

  “Is it okay if we come along?” Ryan asked, approaching the Jeep. Celeste was with him, carrying a small black case.

  “Sure, we have room,” Frank said, pointing to the small bench seat butted up against the spare tire mounted over the rear bumper. He looked at Celeste’s bag. “What do you have there?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d bring my computer. As I’ve been tracking the meteor showers, I thought we might end up in the vicinity where one might have landed.”

  “Well, that might be a possibility.” Frank glanced over at Ryan. “How’s your mom doing?”

  “She’s lying down.” Ryan boosted Celeste up so she could step into the back of the Jeep.

  “Your wife is very brave,” Gatura said to Frank.

  “That she is,” Frank said, somewhat saddened that she couldn’t be with them. He looked over at Dr. Tomie. “Well, Gayle, I guess we’re off.”

  “You should visit awhile when you get to the village,” Dr. Tomie said. “I understand there is an event happening there that should interest you.”

  “Is that right,” Frank said. He started th
e ignition, slipped the transmission into gear, and they headed out onto the sweltering flatland.

  23

  The village was only fourteen homes. Most of the dwellings were made of bleached-white mud, some with clay brickwork, and all were circular. The thatched roofs were low-pitched and conical with extending branches forming eaves.

  Frank saw a large group of people congregated a hundred yards away from the outskirts of the village. The men, talking and sitting in a semi-circle on the ground, wore loose-fitting button shirts and dust-covered trousers. The women’s attire was quite the contrast to the men’s drab garb, as the fabric of their long dresses was vibrant red, purple, green, blue, and just about every other color in the rainbow.

  Everyone was gathered under the scorching sun despite half a dozen crudely set up lean-tos nearby.

  “How come they’re not in their homes?” Ryan asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “They do not want to be eaten,” Gatura replied and smiled.

  “Eaten? By what?” Celeste said.

  “You will see.”

  Frank drove up and parked next to a makeshift livestock pen. Rocks had been piled up to form posts and crudely honed tree limbs served as railings. There were about a dozen sheep, but mostly the enclosure was packed with goats.

  He scooted off the driver’s seat and helped Celeste down from the rear seat. Gatura got out on his side and Ryan climbed down.

  A few of the men greeted Gatura and he waved back. When he started to limp around the front of the Jeep, a tall woman in a canary yellow dress rushed over and put her hand on his arm.

  “No worry. My leg will soon heal,” Gatura said in their language and gave the woman a reassuring kiss on the cheek. The woman smiled and walked over to an area where some of the children were playing with the village dogs, while others kicked a soccer ball back and forth in the wretched heat.

  Gatura hobbled over to one man standing next to a wire mesh coop. Inside were free-range chickens. Frank was surprised to see them in the coop; he’d thought they would be foraging for food around the village. Gatura exchanged a few words with the man before coming back and joining Frank, Ryan, and Celeste.

  “They are almost done,” Gatura said. “Please, this way, but watch where you step.”

  The first thing Frank noticed when they entered the village was the tiny skeletons everywhere: mostly rodents and birds. The bones had been picked clean.

  “What in the world?” Celeste said.

  Frank scanned the small carcasses and saw a large mass moving along the ground, down between two of the dwellings. “Here, this way.”

  As they got closer, Ryan said, “Are those ants?”

  “Army ants, to be more concise,” Frank said. “Looks like a migrating colony. They’re often called the Mongol horde.”

  “And what, they just decided to march through these poor people’s village?” Celeste said.

  “It’s not that bad,” Gatura said. “The ants rid our village of pests, like cockroaches and rats.”

  “Actually, army ants consume everything in their path—vegetation, insects, animals, and even us if we don’t get out of their way,” Frank said. He looked down, spotted two specks on the ground, and bent over. He picked up the two stragglers and put them in the palm of his hand. He stood and showed Ryan and Celeste.

  “The bigger ant is a soldier. Check out the ice-tong mandibles. They use those to serrate their prey. The other one is a worker ant. They carry food and serve the queen.”

  “You mean the queen ant is in this bunch?” Celeste asked.

  “Sure, and heavily guarded. At night after a march, the soldiers will form a protective shield around the queen and her eggs with their bodies. A single queen can produce an entire colony.”

  “And how many ants is that?” Ryan asked.

  “Could be twenty million.”

  “From just one queen?” Ryan said with astonishment.

  “That’s right. If you were to weigh all the ants in the world, they would weigh as much as all the humans on the planet. Remember, we’re talking ten thousand trillion... Ouch!”

  “What happened?” Celeste asked.

  “The soldier bit me,” Frank replied and brushed off his hands.

  A woman let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  “What the heck?” Celeste said.

  Men began yelling joined by the bleating sheep and goats. Even the chickens were cackling.

  “What’s going on?” Frank said. He rushed toward the mayhem followed by Ryan and Celeste, with Gatura limping behind them.

  As they got closer, Frank could see the horrified expressions on the villagers’ faces as they backed away from the livestock pen.

  Frank couldn’t blame them when he saw what was attacking the livestock. Neither could Ryan and Celeste.

  “What in the hell,” Ryan blurted.

  24

  The army ant’s pale-orange head was the size of a beach ball.

  A small goat was impaled between the tips of the giant insect’s mandibles, elevated a foot off the ground like a block of ice being carried by a pair of tongs. Crying and kicking, the goat struggled to get free, but the ant’s appendages were too strong. The jaws closed, and the goat’s abdomen ripped open. Blood and entrails spilled onto the heads and backs of the other livestock.

  Four more ants were either climbing over the railing or coming around the other side of the corral. They were enormous. Their segmented bodies—the head, thorax, and gaster—had to be eight feet long. The ants stood on their long, spindly legs over the frightened livestock, as tall as any person in the village.

  A railing was knocked over, collapsing a pile of stones when another ant entered the pen and attacked a ewe. The sheep fell on its back with its hooves in the air. The ant lowered its head and thrust its mandibles into the soft belly of the animal.

  “We have to stop them,” Frank yelled.

  “But how?” Ryan asked. “We don’t have guns.”

  “Maybe the villagers have weapons,” Celeste said.

  Gatura and two other men appeared with machetes they had retrieved from the dwellings.

  Frank saw more men returning from their homes, each with a spear or what looked like a wooden pitchfork. It was obvious that they were not going to let their livestock be slaughtered without a fight.

  A villager tried to thrust his spear into an ant’s head, but the tip broke on the thick exoskeleton—about as useless as stabbing a football helmet with a pencil.

  A man with a machete ran up to one of the ants and swung the blade, lopping off an antenna. The ant rushed the man and shoved him to the ground. It lowered its head and placed its mouthparts over the man’s face. His muffled cry could be heard as the ant excreted a tissue-dissolving solution and sucked the man’s liquefied flesh from his skull.

  Frank ran over. He grabbed the machete off the ground. The ant was too busy feeding on the dead villager to notice Frank stepping around its flank.

  Raising the machete over his head, Frank brought the blade down swiftly, and chopped through the narrow waist that connected the main body of the thorax to the gaster, the segment that housed the creature’s stomachs and digestive system.

  Green gunk spurted out of the gaster as it fell off onto the dirt and lay motionless.

  Reacting to the pain of suddenly been cut in half, the ant raised its head and stepped off the dead man. It staggered on its six legs like a drunken circus performer on stilts as more life-sustaining fluids poured out of its wounded body.

  One of the ants had trampled the coop and was attacking the chickens. The cackling birds were flapping their wings and colliding into one another trying to escape the huge ant snapping its mandibles like sickles and ripping apart the flock.

  Frank heard the Jeep start up. He turned and saw Ryan behind the wheel, and Celeste sitting up front. Before he could call out to them, Ryan spun the four-wheel vehicle around the corral.

  That’s when Frank saw two of the giant ants chasi
ng three brightly clad women, who were screaming as they ran.

  One of the women fell.

  She turned and gazed at the monstrous ants racing toward her.

  The front grill of the Jeep smashed into the ants, sending one flying in the air and over Ryan and Celeste’s heads as it landed on the ground. The other ant was crushed under the tires and squashed to death.

  Ryan turned the Jeep around and raced toward the ant struggling to get up.

  The quarter-ton vehicle mowed over the creature, snapping off legs and flattening its head with a loud goosh!

  Frank saw Gatura and another man hacking away at one of the ants as it converged on them, but they were having little success in killing the thing.

  “Gatura! Go for the petiole!”

  Gatura shot Frank a puzzled look.

  Frank pointed to his midsection. “The waist!”

  Gatura said something to the other man, and they outflanked their heinous attacker, staying clear of the deadly mandibles and lunging with their machetes, cutting through the ant’s narrow waist.

  A group of men stood around the final ant they had collectively slain. The ground was littered with feathers and bloody chickens. Most of them were dead, some still twitching.

  Frank walked over to the Jeep. “Nice work, Ryan,” he said, complimenting his stepson for his quick thinking.

  “Thanks. What now?”

  Frank looked over at Gatura. “If you like, you can burn them. Just leave us one that we can take back and examine.”

  “Our people are afraid and think they are evil spirits,” Gatura said. “Demons!”

  “No, I’m afraid they’re real.”

  “Do you think our village will be safe?”

  “I wish I could say yes.”

  25

  Tyrone Vane indulged in another flute of champagne and sat back in the folding chair under the canopy. He patted the belly of his shirt straining over the bulge over his belt, relishing his lavish meal. From where he sat, he could see across the great plains of the savanna, the magnificent view stretching as far as the naked eye could see.