James Patterson - Zoo

I HELD THE rifle and the bullets high in one hand to keep them dry and waded back into the river.

I emerged beside the sideways Land Rover with my eyes on the rim of the riverbank where I’d last seen the lions. All I had to call a plan was this: get back to the safari camp where Abe and I had landed, figure something out from there. Brilliant, wasn’t it?

I searched the crashed truck for my things: I’d left my bigger bag back at the camp and taken a small canvas backpack with me. There it was, one strap stuck on the busted gearshift. I disentangled it and shouldered the pack. As I gave the truck another once-over, I spotted something curious. In the backseat, on the ground, was a little pinpoint of glowing red light.

I knelt in the silt and retrieved my Sony camcorder. I’d forgotten about it. I mean, I’d had a lot on my plate for the last hour or so. The thing was splattered with mud and the lens was scratched half to hell, but not only was it still working, it was still on.

I stopped the recording, rewound it, and watched the footage on the view screen. After the crash, the camera had lain on its side in the mud and had accidentally filmed the rest of the attack. No, it hadn’t been a nightmare. The lions filled the screen, manes flaring and eyes burning as they swarmed the Rover. It was a mess of snouts and teeth and paws.

Thing was—adversity aside, Abe’s death aside—I had actually done it. I’d gotten what I’d come to Africa for.

Here was video evidence of inexplicable, hyperaggressive, aberrant animal behavior.

The footage was incendiary. This footage had the power to change the conversation. This was a cute story to tell at a Molotov cocktail party. The scientific community wouldn’t be able to wrap their minds around this footage. Or be able to explain it.

It wouldn’t be just the scientists, either, I thought. My gears were turning in double time now. The world would have to listen—they would have to start to realize that some sort of widespread environmental disaster was already underway.

Your first job now, Oz: survive long enough to get this thing back to civilization. That means not getting eaten. That means getting the hell out of here, now-ish.

I powered off the camera and zipped it up in the backpack. I checked the clip in the Mauser. Four rounds left. Bad news.

It didn’t matter. I’d have to figure it out. This was bigger than me. I needed to make it out of here with this tape so the world would know what was happening. Ten-hut, Oz. Let’s rock.

I glanced up at the sky: vultures were dropping to earth from their gyres. Back on the river islet where the dead lion lay, a peppering of flies already tickled the carcass, the sound of their wings reverberating in the air. A couple of marabou storks pranced daintily around the lion, piercing its flesh with their beaks now and then. They jostled for real estate with a smattering of African white-backed vultures. Speckles of blood flew as their rosy wrinkled heads bobbed up and down to beat the band, their beaks ripping delicate threads of tissue from the body and catching them in their throats.

Ah, the circle of life. The rivers flow into the sea and yet the sea is never full and all that. Death becomes a meal ticket. Death was the modus operandi out here in the African bush.

Now if I could only avoid becoming part of this regularly scheduled programming: I had to get back to humanity with an important message.

BACK UP ON the tall grass clearing where we’d been attacked, I hunched down and watched the other Land Rover, parked beneath the sausage tree, for a time.

I listened carefully. Nothing. The wind hushed the grass in rippling waves. Birds reeled in circles high overhead in a punishingly empty blue sky. I guessed it to be late afternoon. I debated going back to see if the truck was still working. Had the keys still been in it? I couldn’t remember. What with all those lions leaping for my throat, I’d forgotten to check. Though it was a nice day, I definitely would have preferred to drive. A wide expanse of grassland the length of a football field stretched flat between me and the parked truck, which seemed deserted.

But it was almost too quiet.

At last I decided against it. It was too risky. It would be foolish to go toward the lions. Though they were nowhere to be seen, that didn’t mean anything. This was their neighborhood, and besides, there was no way to predict their unstable behavior. They could be on their way back right now. I knew I had to go in the other direction, on foot, back toward the camp.

I kept as low as I could as I skirted the glade. I found the rutted tire trail we’d driven in on and began following it back to the safari camp. Glumly I glanced up at the sun, which was starting to descend toward the salt flats on the horizon. It would be dark in a few hours. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

I picked up my pace. The camp was only about five miles away, but I was looking at five miles through a zoo without cages, where some of the animals seemed to have gone schizoid.

The sun dried my clothes to a crust and then I got soaked again as I waded back through the river ford. I was hot and exhausted and starting to get thirsty, but decided not to drink the water for fear of parasites.

I walked for an hour or so before I spotted the river dock where we’d picked up the Botswanans at the other end of a grassy field. They and their canoe were gone. After almost getting eaten, I didn’t blame them for pissing off. They’d known how wrong things were in the environment. How important it was to get out while there still was a chance.

I headed toward the dock to see if there might be another boat. That’s when I noticed a sudden movement in the trees off to my right. Though there was no breeze, the trees seemed to be waving—undulating—ever so slightly. They also seemed to glisten, as if they were slathered in oil.

I felt something crawl up my ankle.

It was an ant. And not just any ant. It was a Dorylus : an African driver ant. By its badass mandibles, I knew it was a soldier. Some indigenous tribes actually use the driver-ant soldiers themselves as makeshift sutures: their bite is so strong that putting one of them on each side of a gash will hold it together.

That’s what was covering everything: the trees, the grass, the ground. Millions upon millions of driver ants swarmed through the field in a loose black column. It had to be at least a mile long and six feet wide. The ants were the size of a baby’s fingers and the color of red wine.

I flicked off the bug and squashed it under the heel of my boot.

Now, I love animals as much as the next biologist. But I do not like bugs. They don’t do it for me. My subcortex says: Ick. Get ’em off me . I’d always known that entomology was not my bag. And the Dorylus is an especially nasty customer.

The frenzied column of ants connected two dark masses in the field. I realized they were Cape buffalo calves. My guess was they’d wandered into the path of the ants and been overwhelmed. Already dead, with most of their hides stripped, they were now in the process of being consumed by the living sea of bugs.

The Dorylus, or siafu , as it is called by the Bantu, can sometimes have colonies of fifty or sixty million. Like a foraging army, the colonies live on the march, attacking anything they come into contact with, including animals and sometimes children. Death often results from asphyxiation—when the flood of bugs crawls down the victim’s throat. I cringed as I looked at the shiny, squirming black carpet extending into the distance. It was truly incredible.

Then I turned away and went to the river.