Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“Hold it there, Ted,” gasped Jack, almost out of breath.

He jumped in the Land Rover, switched on the engine, and threw the four-wheel traction into reverse. Slowly, he moved backwards as the animal was dragged up the riverbank.

Ted whoever-he-was peered over the lip of the riverbank and motioned for Jack to continue.

Jack reversed the Land Rover away from the lip of the bank, his wheels spinning in the mud, and Natalie watched, transfixed, as the wildebeest was hauled steadily and reluctantly into view. It thrashed for a moment, squealed, reared up, and then slumped into a sullen stillness. Then it writhed again and called out. Then it lay still again, moving its head from side to side, looking for someone to blame.

As it reached level ground, however, Ted backed away, as Jack killed the Land Rover’s engine and got down. “Watch out!” he yelled as he disengaged the rope from the metal hook.

With the smaller animals, as Natalie now knew, several men would lie on the newborn wildebeest while someone else unwrapped the lasso from around its neck, so it could be used again. But this creature was too big for that. What was going to happen this time?

Sensing level ground, the wildebeest got to its feet and looked around. Steam escaped from its nostrils, rose in clouds from its wet haunches; mud clogged its legs, dripped from its horns. The creature’s eyes stared wildly, it was angry and bewildered at the same time. The animal shook its head, swirled its tail, and kicked out with its hind legs. Then, lowering its head, it rumbled forward. It was in a panic, understandably enough, entangled in rope, and it charged straight ahead.

Towards Natalie.

“Watch out!” cried Jack again. “Get out of the light!”

The wildebeest picked up speed surprisingly quickly and Natalie was disconcerted to see how wide apart the tips of its horns were. She stepped back.

Still the animal seemed to be making for her. She was still in the shaft of light from the Land Rover’s headlamps. She stepped back again.

On to nothing. There was nothing behind her. Without knowing it, because outside the light beams it was deadly dark, she was on the very lip of the riverbank and had stepped over the edge. She cried out as she fell, dropping her mug with the soup in it, and slithering down the mud of the near-vertical bank, smelling its wet smell. She dug her fingers into the earth, feeling them slither through the mud, encountering small stones but nothing she could hold on to. Her body kept going.

Suddenly her hand encountered something substantial but she immediately cried out. It was a whistling thorn bush and the spikes punctured her flesh and drew blood. Her face scraped the riverbank, her hair sluiced through the mud, mud caked her eyes, she tasted it on her lips. It clogged her nostrils. Again she dug her fingers into the mud. Again, all she encountered were stones and thorns, too sharp and too quickly gone to hold on to. Still, her body kept going.

She hit a rock and cried out, her clothes snagged on thorn bushes but didn’t break her fall. Thorns scored the flesh of her arms as she went by and she called out again in pain.

Her skin was wet, wet with mud, wet with sweat, wet with blood. Like the wildebeest she’d been so close to, the sweat was steaming off her.

How far had she fallen? How far was she going to fall? Was she going to end in the river, a river of sand, mud, blood, all manner of excretable substances and fluids, and the natural habitat, as Jack had pointed out, of crocodiles.

Despite the taste of mud on her lips, the hot streaks of pain where the thorns had scored her skin, the grit in her eyes and clogging her nostrils, she reached out, hoping to hit a branch, a firm rock, something—anything—that would stem her fall.

Nothing. Just mud and thorns, sharp rock that buffeted her shoulder, pummeled her hips, bounced off her skull. Thorns ripped into her neck, sliced into her wrists, drew blood from her cheeks, tore at her shirt. How much further was the water?

Suddenly she hit something, and immediately stopped falling. What she had hit was firm, solid, but not stone-solid—and it was warm. She had, she instantly realized, landed on the newly dead, drowned carcass of a large adult wildebeest, half in and half out of the river. All around were thrashing, writhing, vast contorted bodies of animals still alive, still panicking, still squealing and moaning, still kicking, still biting, their twisted, bayonet-sharp horns slicing through the night air, gouging the eyes, necks, and bellies of other animals.

The smell of wildebeest was overpowering, the stench of their hot, panic-stricken breath even worse. The dead animal that had broken her fall was being kicked, knocked, pummeled in the mayhem.

How long would Natalie remain safe? What could she do? No one could see her. The lights were shining elsewhere.

She had hit the wildebeest’s rump. It was, she realized, lathered in mud and fresh, wet, warm dung. In its panic it had defecated. But she wasn’t yet in the river and she had something to hold on to, the animal’s tail.

Blood was caking her cheeks, she felt it running across her arms where her wrists had been torn, her hip hurt, and her head, where she had bounced off some rocks on her way down.

The way she had fallen, she was looking at the river. The light from the four-wheel-drive vehicles was mainly upriver of her, but she could make out the dense shadowy form of one wildebeest after another, flailing and kicking and twisting in the water. Then she saw—or thought that she saw—a smoother, more sinuous, far more controlled form as it whipped out of the river and, in no time, smoothly slapped back into it. No more than a second passed before she realized she had seen a crocodile swoop on a young wildebeest—one they had obviously not rescued—crush the animal in its jaws, and drag it back down, under water.

What if a crocodile came for the dead animal under her?

Instinctively, she tried to crawl up the riverbank. After two steps, she slithered back down again, till she came to rest on the warm, dead wildebeest.

She had to get away. That much was obvious.

Holding the wildebeest tail with one hand, she shook herself free of one half of her jacket. Transferring the tail to her other hand, she shook herself free of the other half.

Another wildebeest blundered against the dead one she was holding on to, and she dropped her jacket. It disappeared into the night.

Crying out, she searched frantically with her free hand.

Her fingers found the woollen sleeve and she snatched it to her. It was lathered in dung.

Holding the wildebeest tail and her jacket in one hand, she took one step up the riverbank and reached upwards. Her hand struck a thorn bush and she yelped in pain. But now she reached down, snatched at her jacket, and threw it over the thorn bush. Then she scrabbled for a branch to hold on to, her flesh protected from the needle-sharp thorns by her jacket.

She found a branch, her fingers closed over it. Her jacket did its job and her flesh was spared the thorns. She pulled herself clear of the wildebeest and lay on the bush, in the bush, her hand gripping the branch. She pulled her knees up to her chest. Her clothes were plastered in mud, blood, dung, and sweat.

She saw all this more clearly, she now realized, because the light had suddenly changed. A game light must at last have found her and was playing on her shape.

She could now see clearly the animal that had broken her fall. It was dark, almost black, a huge bull wildebeest whose carcass was mostly in the water, though its massive horns poked up out of the river into the night air. At least two of its legs were broken and its belly was bleeding where another animal’s horns had ripped deep inside, penetrating its heart and killing it. Maybe its back was broken too.