Blurry shapes draped in clouded rainbows swam across Ashley’s vision, as her head bobbed back into a sleeping position on a hard ground. Her eyelids were heavy as they continued to shield her eyes. Pain set in as consciousness invaded, and she became aware of her aching body. Her hands were tied tightly behind her back. Pulling at them desperately to free herself, she felt the rope bite into her wrists. She stopped struggling and tried to think clearly. She wriggled gently and felt her feet touch a solid object. Her sore eyes opened to slits and the darkness rushed away. A tree trunk. She was tied up under a tree. And if she moved her arms, her feet would move too. Her hands were bound tightly and then secured to her trapped feet! She was hogtied.
Animals got hogtied, not humans. What type of people did this to a human? Salty tears burned her eyes.
She checked her immediate surroundings, but couldn’t see Alan, Gertrude or Jabulani. The darkness of night pressed into her eyes. She focused on the moving shapes in front of her, and her vision slowly cleared enough that she could see two white men, one with a huge dark beard and dressed in jungle clothes, arguing with the other over something that lay at their feet. Gertrude.
The larger man was speaking in a foreign language and gesturing towards her. The smaller man picked up Gertrude and slung her over his shoulder, much like one would carry a sack of potatoes or a large packet of potting soil, and walked towards Ashley.
Her vision was clearing under her puffy eyelids and she blinked rapidly. He was an albino. So it must be the poachers’ ring that had captured them, as she didn’t think it likely there was more than one albino in the area.
He carelessly dumped the unconscious Gertrude half on top of her with a thud. Ashley screamed in pain, as her body absorbed the weight of the impact.
‘So, layde, yous is awake now?’ The albino spoke with a slight slur, and she noticed that only one side of his face moved as he leered at her. The other side was deadpan, expressionless.
He leant over her and roughly ran a calloused hand down the vee of her shirt. She struggled to get out of his reach, but even as she shrank away from him, he pinched her nipple. She winced and renewed her effort to free her hands. ‘Leave me alone! Get your hands off me!’
‘So yous is Scott Decker’s woman now?’
She stared at him, not sure if she should answer truthfully. Was she Scott’s woman? They had spent a night together. Or should she lie and deny that she knew him at all? She hesitated to answer.
He ran his sun-spotted hand over her hair and roughly pulled the band out of the back. He spread her loosened hair out with his fingers and, bringing a strand to his nose, inhaled the fragrance. She attempted to pull it from his grip by tugging her head quickly.
‘Yous not so sures if you are or not? Yous can’t answer?’ he asked her, taking another breath of her hair. ‘But the bush telegraph says yous are his. So, now I haf his women, what is I gonna to do with yous?’ He shoved Gertrude off her and pushed her out of the way, then moved his hands under her breasts and scrunched them in his foul palms. Quickly his hands descended on the outside of her shorts, over her stomach, and down to her groin. He took a huge hunting knife from its sheath at his hip, and cut the rope that bound her feet.
Ashley couldn’t move. Her body felt like a dead weight and now that her feet were loose, the blood was rushing into them. The pins and needles sensation made her feel sick it was so bad.
‘Kant fook with legs closed,’ he said, and sheathing the knife again, he pinned her legs with his body weight as he sat on them.
He began to unbutton his fly.
Ashley realised now what Scott had told her earlier, about her safety. She had been arrogant, strong-willed and selfish. She had ignored everything he’d said and done her own thing anyway. And now she was facing the consequences. Bile rose in her throat.
There are things worse than death in Africa …
There was no one here to save her, no one coming to her rescue. She was going to be raped. But this was not the cupboard, and she was not a helpless child anymore.
She heard him close to her ear. ‘So yous not going to speak to the albino?’ His yellow teeth showed in a grimace. His spit spattered her face as the garlic smell of his breath made her gag. ‘Is okay. Women who talk and not fook is no fun.’
Adrenaline kicked into her numb body, and she began twisting, bucking and kicking to try to topple him off. Fighting for more than her life now, with every ounce of strength she possessed, she pushed at him. He toppled off. He stood up and came back towards her, more determined.
‘Iz better to heve a women who scream.’ He ripped at her blouse and the top button popped off. He fumbled in the process of trying to get it to part more.
‘Get away from me!’ she screamed. She lashed out at him with her feet and landed a good kick, causing him to fall again.
The dark-bearded white man walked over and let loose a sentence in the foreign language he spoke. He smacked the albino over the top of the head with the flat of his hand and kicked at the unconscious Gertrude. ‘Moenie fok nie!’ he shouted. And although Ashley didn’t understand all the words, she realised he’d saved her from certain rape.
The albino had one more feel of her breast.
‘Woman so sofftt, Meneer, so good,’ he said. Moving as fast as a striking cobra, he pulled out his knife again and slashed at her chest. Searing pain shot through her from above her left breast – real pain that her mind acknowledged.
He’d cut her deeply. Crimson blood oozed out and soaked into her shirt.
‘I said no. Not yet,’ the white man ground out savagely in English. This time his fist flew into the albino’s chest with a dull thud, the force toppling the albino over Gertrude. The white man grabbed the front of the albino’s shirt and pulled him off her and Gertrude, before roughly pushing him aside, away from them.
Ashley heard his words, not yet, and knew she was far from safe. She thanked God for her conscious state. But her troubles had just begun. Her body ached from the explosion, but with the removal of the ropes from her legs, she could feel them responding. Her toes moved, her legs moved, her hands had a little more feeling. Although they were still bound, the tight pressure that had been there before was now gone. Her chest burned as if someone had stuck a branding iron in the fire and placed it on her breast.
She sat up. The white man returned to her and bent down to her level. In a heavily accented voice he said, ‘I is watching you. Your Scott is so busy trying to save the animals, he won’t be able to save you too. Scott and the army, they will learn not to fuck with me. They will learn this reserve is mine. The animals are mine. I decide what lives and what dies.’
‘You’ll rot in hell for what you’ve done. You’re the animal who should be shot.’ Her chest heaved with her outburst.
‘Oh, the little Australian bitch has a temper.’ He laughed a guttural sound deep within his throat. ‘Ugh, shame … and the Australian government is so weak. Typical First World country, they think that saving one citizen is worth it. They will pay your ransom eventually.’ He hacked up phlegm and spat it near Gertrude’s head. Then he looked at the albino.
‘Don’t spoil the booty, Rodney. We need them well. Once we have these pretty fillies on tape in Lusaka, then you can think about what you can do with them. Until then, hands off.’
Jissis, Meneer. You always lets me have de women, but after the vidio camera is tooken pitchers I gonna fook thems?’
‘After, yes. Not now.’
The albino smiled, a manic grimace that reminded Ashley of the Joker from Batman. Only this was real, not a cartoon. And there was no superhero in black spandex and driving a black turbocharged car coming to save her.
He walked away with the white man, leaving them alone. She looked around for Alan and Jabulani, but still couldn’t see them. Her chest hurt. She heard a mosquito buzzing around and was grateful the night was cooler and the flies were not as active as during the day. Remembering one of Scott’s stories about flies and maggots, she blew down on her chest, trying to help her skin crust over faster.
‘Gertrude?’ she called quietly.
Only silence, heavy and quiet.
She wriggled over to Gertrude, trying not to attract the attention of the albino she knew stalked somewhere nearby in the camp. ‘Gertrude.’ She nudged her.
Gertrude didn’t stir.
Ashley slumped down onto her side next to her. Her hands ached, still bound tightly behind her back. Taking large gulps of air, she tried not to panic as she nudged Gertrude again, a little harder this time.
Still nothing.
She concentrated on her surroundings. First she focused on the camp, counting the people present, starting with the white man with the bushy beard, Rodney the albino. There was a big truck sitting off to the side, its back covered with a tarpaulin of sorts, and a net with pieces of rags on it. A small fire burned in the ring of stones at the centre of the camp, and a large black man cooked something in the three-legged cast-iron pot sitting in the coals of the fire. He appeared to hobble around as if walking hurt him. Two other black men dressed in camouflage clothing sat on stools near the fire, cleaning their weapons. One looked like a lanky teenager still waiting to grow into his clothes. Five people in all, that she could see.
She listened to the sounds of the bush, to a cricket greeting the night and the incessant sound of mosquitoes buzzing everywhere. She didn’t know if she was still in the reserve or out if it. The moon was rising over the trees, silver and bright.
‘Scott, help me,’ she whispered desperately into the heavens above her, holding on to his image in her mind as the focal point of her existence. This whole kidnapping was her fault. If she hadn’t been so strong-willed and stupid in insisting that she went out to fight the fire, they wouldn’t have been caught in the ambush and everyone would be safe at Delmonica’s ranch house.
Everyone being hurt was her fault. And the worst realisation was that even if she did get out of this alive, Alan had been right. Scott would put her on a plane back to Australia and she wouldn’t get to spend more time with him. And that was all she wanted other than her life right now: time with Scott. To hold him and not feel the shivers that had always been there before. In just two weeks Scott had crashed through every barrier she had put in place over the years to protect her heart. For the first time in her life she wanted a man’s touch, craved both Scott’s touch and his company. She had ruined the trust before she got to talk to him about the new feelings that were emerging from her cold heart.
The cook hit a spoon on a tin plate, and the poachers gravitated to him for their meal. Once everyone was served, he brought her a tin plate of food and an enamel mug much like the one Zol carried, only this was missing the beautiful beadwork. Just plain, as if no one cared enough to bother decorating it. But it was filled with steaming black coffee.
‘Thank you,’ she said. He didn’t smile back at her, and on closer inspection, Ashley realised that he couldn’t. He had no lips. Just scar tissue, grotesquely covering his skin where lips should have been. As she studied him, she noticed that he had no ears either, just a small stump on the left side of his head and a smooth scar on the right. A sick feeling grew in her stomach.
Who had mutilated this man and why?
He stepped behind her and loosened the rope from around her hands, and as she massaged her wrists, he motioned for her to eat. She looked down at her food. There was a thick wedge of bread, surrounded by a stew of some sort with onions, vegetables and meat, swimming in gravy that had begun to congeal around the rim of the tin plate. She sipped at the coffee, and he again gestured to the food. Slowly she dragged the plate in front of her, realising that she needed to eat to keep up her strength so she could get away. She began to eat, forcing each mouthful down with extreme effort, despite the surprisingly tasty flavour of the stew.
He stood in front of her, watching her as a hawk would a mouse, while he held her ropes in his big hands. It was then that she noticed the tips of his fingers were also missing. The silent cook slowly squatted down while she ate, rocking rhythmically back and forth on his haunches.
‘This is nice. You’re a good cook. Thank you,’ she complimented him, as she gave him the empty plate, mopped clean with the bread. She finished the sweet coffee and returned the mug too. He passed her a tea towel pulled from his apron, and motioned to her chest. She placed it inside her shirt, tying it to cover the cut with the clean cloth and make a pressure bandage of sorts to help stop the slow seeping of blood, protecting it from the flies.
He put the dish and mug on the dirt and rebound her hands behind her back.
‘Please no, please,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t bind me again, please.’
But he ignored her pleas and used a little harder force to hold onto her hands and tie them together behind her back. After testing that they were tight enough, he picked up the crockery and returned to the fire without a backwards glance.
The food sat heavy in her stomach, threatening to return. Violated and stripped of the rights that she had taken for granted, she fought the tears that swelled in her eyes. Blinked them away, clearing her vision. She had to find a way to get herself and Gertrude out of this mess. She’d already survived a night in the bush on the run with Scott and Zol, now all she needed to do was think more like them, like a local, not like a fish out of water.
Ashley sat near Gertrude watching the camp. The glow from the fire illuminated the poachers, sitting drinking beer after their supper. After what seemed like a long time, Gertrude stirred slightly and attempted to stretch.
‘Gertrude,’ she whispered loudly. ‘Wake up.’
Gertrude grunted and then attempted to roll over.
‘No, don’t move. If I can get close enough to you, perhaps I can untie your hands.’ Ashley slowly shuffled on her behind over the dirt, and turned her back on the fire to try to undo Gertrude’s bonds. They were tight, and despite feeling one of her nails tearing painfully on the rough rope, she could not grip it sufficiently to untie Gertrude.
‘Oh, my head hurts. Where are we?’
‘The poachers have us in a camp. I can’t see Alan or Jabulani.’ Ashley knew she was talking too fast, but she couldn’t help it. Better to babble and be alive than silent and dead, she thought.
Gertrude tried to sit up. Ashley watched her grit her teeth and move through the pain. She shuffled on her bottom. ‘How many people in the camp?’
‘Five that I could see earlier.’
‘I’ll try to untie you. Quick, before they notice we’re moving around.’
Ashley sat with her back to Gertrude and, as Gertrude worked on her restraints, a shouting match broke out around the fire.
‘Jissis Rodney, I said nee. No more marks on the women, until after the video. We are taking a big enough chance already, doing this kidnapping behind the investors’ backs. If they find out …’
‘Just one little fook. I promises I not use my knife and cut any thems.’
‘No. Don’t go near them. Vakani, take this 9mm. You sleep, guarding the prisoners tonight. If Rodney goes near those women, shoot him. Understood? But only if he goes near them.’ The voice had a hard warning in it.
The cook tucked the gun into the band of his pants, at the small of his back, where his apron ties crisscrossed before returning to the front. His face was unreadable.
‘That should keep you away, Rodney. You know he despises you and won’t hesitate to shoot you. Give Vakani half a chance and you will be eating lead. Understand?’
Rodney nodded.
‘Yeah right … you had better. Vakani, what have we got for pudding?’
The cook hobbled away to the rear of the truck.
‘Not the albino?’ Gertrude said.
‘Don’t I know it? He was getting close to raping me when that white man stopped him,’ Ashley said, her voice shaking.
‘He’s an animal. We have to get out of here. He cuts everything. During the war of Independence, when they were captured, he cut off Kwiella’s brother’s ears, his lips and his tongue, then he made Kwiella eat them.’
Ashley dry retched. She turned her torso towards Gertrude so she could see the blood-soaked tea towel.
‘Oh, my …’ Gertrude focused on untying Ashley’s ropes again.
Ashley wiggled her fingers. ‘The cook. He has no tongue or ears or lips.’
‘Kwiella never mentioned if his brother survived. You’d think he would have died.’
‘Poor guy. But he’s one of them?’
The last knot on Ashley’s ropes came undone. ‘Got it. You’re free.’
Relief flooded through her. It was just one little part of getting away, and yet having no ropes on her, she felt free. She rubbed her wrists and turned around to get started on Gertrude’s ropes again. This time, she could see what she was doing, but still could not get them undone.
‘Let me try the feet first. Maybe that will let some slack on the hands.’
Gertrude adjusted her weight to give Ashley access to the knots.
‘One down, one lot to go!’ Ashley whispered as she pulled the rope off Gertrude’s feet a few minutes later.
Gertrude rotated her ankles in circles. Ashley knew she was silently enduring the pain of the blood rushing back into her feet, grateful for any sensation in them, rather than none. No longer having the tension of the rope pulling on her wrist knots, Ashley quickly released Gertrude’s hands. ‘There you go.’
The men at the fire dispersed. Vakani, with the 9mm sitting snugly inside his apron band, stoked the fire high with new fuel and inspected around the fireplace, making sure there were no scraps lying around to lure hyena into the camp. The white man and the two black men disappeared into their tents, just out of the ring of light. Rodney sat near the fire. Eventually Vakani walked towards the women, carrying a small three-legged stool.
Gertrude lay down again, as if still unconscious, making sure her feet were tucked away behind her and not immediately visible. Ashley pulled her ropes back onto her hands, in case he checked on her, and lay down. She could hardly breathe. Her heart beat so fast in her chest, she wondered if it would burst. The rush of blood in her ears was loud, smothering all other sounds of the bush around them.
He sat down a little way from them, in the warmth of the fire but close enough that they couldn’t whisper freely anymore. He took the handgun out, stroked it almost lovingly, and then cocked it.
The metallic sound sent shivers down Ashley’s spine. She saw Gertrude flinch.
Vakani lay down on the ground and tipped the stool on its side. Using the sagging canvas for a headrest, he crossed his arms, and the gun, silhouetted by the fire, poked above his broad waist. There he stayed, not moving. Obviously asleep, but on guard.
Rodney slunk towards him. Immediately Vakani raised his arm and pointed the gun directly at the albino’s chest. The small click of the safety being taken off was magnified in the quietness of the night.
Rodney backed away, a sneer on his deformed face. He walked to the tent set furthest away from the women, and the harsh ripping sound of a zip closing behind him was like a door being slammed.
Vakani settled the gun back in its position at his waistband.
Through his tent flap, Rodney watched Vakani. Hatred like hot tar bubbled in his chest. He knew a matching one echoed in Vakani’s fat belly. But having to watch Vakani sleep so close to the women, and Rodney himself not allowed to touch them. Not thrusting his knife into Vakani’s belly and gutting him like a woman after he’d fooked her had been a mistake that had come back to haunt him, even now, twenty years later.
Rodney had still been a freedom fighter the day he sliced up Vakani, and the boss-boy at the Dando’s dairy farm. Together they had tried to stop the freedom fighters from cutting all the hamstrings of the dairy herd by alerting the farmer to Rodney’s presence in the area. Rodney’s signature calling card during this time was naturally associated with his love of knives. He always ensured that the farmers knew which ‘terrorist’ had passed through, spared their lives and those of their families, but not always their incomes and livestock.
Rodney’s first big mistake was in only mutilating Vakani and humiliating his young sibling, Kwiella. He should have killed them both. His second was in thinking that years later the mute man wouldn’t have the courage to come after him with a burning log and smash in half his face, crushing his cheekbone and eye socket. The damage to his facial nerves meant that half his face was useless. Their tolerance of each other sat on a razor’s edge, and it was only Meneer Lawrence who kept the mutual contempt spilling over into more bloodshed.
Vakani was already working for Meneers Lawrence and Joubert in the poaching industry when Rodney joined their operation, so he couldn’t get rid of him then. Anyway, good cooks were hard to find and, in the intervening years, Vakani had somehow learned to cook well enough to be called a chef. Meneer Lawrence kept both of them on a tight leash, making sure neither finished what was started so many years previously.
Both had their strengths and usefulness to the team.
Both men lived with their mutilations.
His penis throbbed with wanting the woman, with hair as light as sunlight and softer than feathers. She’d smelled like softness, her hair so similar to the German’s daughter all those years ago … He needed more blood and a good fook. His body shook with want. He was angry with Meneer Lawrence. For so many years he had given him loyal service, and this is how he was repaid, by not getting to fook the women until after they had crossed over into Zambia.
He would show him soon. He always did …
A lion roared.
Gertrude sat upright. Ashley watched her as she turned around. Gertrude tried to sign to her, but Ashley had no clue what she wanted her to do. Gertrude held both hands palms out towards her, to sign wait. Sit and wait. That one Ashley understood.
A nightjar sang out into the darkness, followed immediately by a lion’s roar. Soon there was an answering roar in the distance, less guttural, but an immediate answer. Gertrude smiled, she understood help was on its way. Even though she suspected it was Zol, she still stared at the fire, which had burned down slowly, the coals glowed red. But she was too far away from it to check if embers dropped from the logs, a trick he’d shown her about how to judge the distance of a lion from your camp. She couldn’t make a decision on the lions, or if they were lions at all.
She thought not.
Within moments a crashing sound came from the left. A lone buffalo rushed into the camp, his large black body silhouetted against the fire. Sounds of the rest of the herd thundered suddenly, following their leader, running for their lives into the night, obviously away from the lions.
Kicking at the loose ropes that didn’t hold her, Gertrude screamed, ‘Run! Ashley, run!’
The mass of moving bodies cast shadows into the far side of the camp. In front of Gertrude, Ashley took off, sprinting into the bushes behind the camp, the ropes from her hands dropping as she gained momentum and moved her arms to get up speed.
Mayhem erupted in the camp behind them and shots shattered the night.
Gertrude didn’t look back. She knew that if she tripped she’d be trampled. She ran blindly into the bush, following Ashley. Their chance to escape had arrived, and together they had embraced it, heedless of the dangerous buffalo herd behind them. Catching up to Ashley, Gertrude saw a large acacia tree in front of them. She thumped her on the back to ensure she got her attention and shouted, ‘There, up the tree.’
Gertrude folded her hands into a lift, and Ashley scrambled up the trunk. She reached down for Gertrude and hoisted her up into the branches, the thunder of the buffalo stampede close by.
‘Climb,’ Gertrude said, as she scrambled up into the safety of the sturdy limbs, ignoring the huge thorns on the tree in her relief to be out of immediate danger.