Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Natalie wanted to look up, to see if anyone was coming for her, but her main worry was crocodiles. While she was hanging on to her thorn bush and the massive bull wildebeest was between her and the water, he would surely be the crocodile’s easiest prey. But if he were to be taken …

Steam and mud slithered past her. Someone was coming.

As she thought this, the horns of the dead wildebeest rocked from side to side as the animal’s head was pulled into the river, until only its hindquarters were left above water. There was only one explanation for that.

Natalie tried hard to crawl further into her thorn bush but she was no more than six feet from the water’s edge. The riverbank was steep but she simply had no idea whether that would deter a crocodile.

A moment later mud cascaded on her head, lodged itself in her eyes, wedged itself in the corners of her mouth. She spat it out. She could feel her hair caked with yet more mud and grit, some of the mud already drying.

She was engulfed in shadow. Then she cried out, a despairing gasp. Something—or someone—hit her hard and knocked her out of the thorn bush, down towards the river. She shouted but her shout was stifled as a hand grabbed her by the back of her collar, and the front of her shirt was pulled up against her throat, blocking her windpipe, choking her, so that she coughed and coughed again.

But at least her fall towards the river was broken.

She felt an arm worm its way around her abdomen. It pulled at her shirt so that the skin on her stomach was exposed and she felt thorns scratching her flesh. She was gasping, almost crying, but she felt another arm going round her, and wedging itself under her armpit. She was pulled upwards, then the arms went all the way round her chest and closed over her breasts. She was held in a tight embrace.

Her legs had slithered down the bank. The heels of her boots were in the river.

Still the wildebeest stampeded in the threshing water, still the squeals and whinnies bounced off the steep walls of the riverbank, still the stench of dung and blood polluted the air.

The heels of her boots were in the water.

The hands of whoever had come for her tightened over her breasts.

“Okay! I’ve got her. Pull!” shouted a voice, Jack’s. “Quick, pull !”

Off to Natalie’s left, animals were still blundering into the river, still sending showers of muddy water over everything.

There was the sound of a gunshot.

“One less to worry about,” murmured Jack. Then he shouted again, “Pull!”

Suddenly, she felt her body jerk upwards. The flesh on her back where her shirt had been pulled free of her trousers scraped against the thorns of the bush she had lain in and she could feel that yet more blood had been drawn. She tried not to call out, but failed. Sweat and tears mingled in her eyes, her nose was running—but her boots were no longer in the river.

“Again!” shouted Jack. “Pull!”

Another jerk, another rise of a couple of feet.

The smell of Jack was hardly better than her own. He’d been straining all night, in the mud, wrestling with one newborn wildebeest after another. He was covered in as much dung as she was.

Another jerk, another thorn bush, then a sharp rock, hard and jagged, which scraped against her already-raw shoulder. She cried out again.

Her hair was plastered to her face, it was in her mouth, mud had slipped down inside her trousers where her shirt had been pulled free.

The glare of the game light was very bright now. She could hear other voices.

“Careful!” “Hold that rope!” “ Watch it doesn’t slip! ”

She could see the scratches and lines of blood on the backs of Jack’s hands that were held over her breasts in the tightest of squeezes. She could now make out the blood and mud and dung on her own trousers and boots.

She felt a hand grab the collar of her shirt. Other fingers were inside her belt and, suddenly, with a heave, she was lifted through the air and then soft grass was under her. Jack was next to her, his arms still wrapped tightly about her.

They both lay there for a moment, exhausted, breathing heavily. In the weird contrasts of the Land Rovers’ headlights, she was aware of shapes standing over her.

“Are you all right?”

“Any bones broken?”

“You were lucky you hit that dead animal. We had to shoot that croc. He was taking an interest in you.”

She was too winded to offer any reply. Tears and sweat mingled in her eyes.

Jack too was breathing heavily but he loosened his grip and propped himself up on one elbow. He noticed the blood on her wrist and leaned over, pulling a short branch of thorn from where it was lodged between her shirt sleeve and the flesh of her arm.

“Nearly lost you there,” he said softly.

“That would have solved a lot of problems, eh?” she managed to say.

He gave a hard laugh. “It would have suited my mother—I suppose, you’re right.” He wiped the blood from her hand with a handkerchief. “But it wouldn’t have suited me.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Oh no.”

He gently turned her head towards him with his hand.

“That button on your shirt, the one you didn’t do up on the flight back from Nairobi,” he said, kissing her cheek a second time. “It’s come undone again.”

Natalie crouched over a patch of soil-sand, feeling the high sun on her back. Her eyes were aching, her spine complaining, her knees sore. Sweat coursed down her face, seemingly intent on searching out her eyes and stinging them. For the moment, paleontology had lost its allure.

For about a week now, Daniel and she had been searching the wall of the gorge for any more remains of the skull she had spotted. Experience told Eleanor that such fragments could be no more than the size of a fingernail, and that the only way to distinguish them from the surrounding rock was by small gradations in color and texture. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack that was on fire. And nothing more had been found.

Natalie decided to take a break and straightened up. Her spine complained again. There was no breeze today, it was airless in the gorge, and as always the faint smell of herbivore dung tweaked at her nostrils.

She stretched. She could feel the damp patch of her shirt down her spine. She rubbed the muscles in the back of her neck. The base of her hairline was damp too. How many more days like this? she wondered. They were getting further and further away from where the skull remains had been unearthed. But then the skull and knee joint had been found some yards apart.

She felt in her pocket for her bottle of water. Then she remembered she had left it in the shade of a tree, hoping it might keep cooler there than if she had left it in her pocket. She turned and made for where she had hidden the bottle.

She had gone barely ten yards when she heard a voice.

“Miss Natalie, stop!”

Despite her repeated requests, Daniel still referred to her as if she were the daughter of a plantation owner in the American Deep South and he was a slave.

She stopped, turned, and said, “What is it, Daniel? And please call me Natalie.”

He smiled and nodded. “Don’t go near that tree, Miss Natalie.”

“But I left my water there. What—?”

“Drink my water.” He stepped forward and he took a bottle from his pocket. “But don’t go near that tree—it’s what we call a sausage tree and there’s a leopard sleeping in the branches. Leopards like sausage trees.”

Natalie turned to look again at the tree, only more closely. She was already walking back to where Daniel stood.

Reaching him, she took the bottle and drank lustily, all the while searching for the leopard in the tree. Finally, she found it, spread out in the angle of a branch about twelve feet off the ground.