Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 1 & 1, January/February 2012

The Very Edge of New Harare Tony Richards

I can still remember seeing my first ever free giraffe.

I must have been about, oh, six years old at the time, and was driving back from the town center with my father, along the Mutare Road. Do you remember that old urban wildlife area that used to be there, with the observation platform, and those woods, the Mukuvisi Woodlands, at the back of it? It’s all a Zim-World Shopping City these days, of course. It was a process that was already in full swing back then, but... Africa has become fully modernized since I was a young child.

Anyway, we were driving past the north of it, just talking and laughing, when this... shape, it didn’t register as anything more than that, at first. This spindly, skinny, totally unworldly shape comes stumbling out from between the trees, and runs across the railroad tracks and then through the municipal campsite. And almost tripping on the crash barriers, staggers out onto the road, which was already a six-lane freeway by that stage. Steps out right in front of us.

I begin screaming my head off, you see. I was perfectly convinced that the aliens had landed. But my father? I can still conjure up, with exact clarity, the look on his face, the huge disparity between what his eyes were doing and what the rest of his features did. I’d never seen his eyes so wide, so totally astonished. But the rest had set itself into that grim, determined hardness that I certainly had seen a hundred times before, when a heavy job around our house needed doing, or when I came home with a less than perfect school report.

He practically leaned over sideways as he swung the wheel around. I realize now that he was going into a controlled skid, the way we are trained in the police. And we skewed away from this apparition, almost clipping it, and wound up at a dead halt on the hard shoulder, with our car turned back-to-front.

We were still looking at the creature, therefore, through our windscreen. And I could see in an instant how far from dangerous it actually was. How pathetic, lost. I stopped screaming at that point, and asked, “What is it, Pappy?”

He murmured, in a voice so awed, so dreamlike I can still hear it quite clearly, “It’s a giraffe, Abel.”

I had not been taken to the zoo, at that age. Nor to any of the few nature reserves that still remained — the nearest, Lake Chivero, had been closed for redevelopment the same year I was born. But there was a photo of a giraffe pasted to the window of my classroom. You’d never have believed that this thing and the creature in the photo were of the same breed.

This thing? The colors of its hide looked faded, as if they’d been slowly bleached away. It had mange, and even gray patches of fungus, and one of its eyes was blind. So skinny it could barely stand. Its long neck was so chronically bent that you wondered it could still lift its tiny head at all.

It was still a living thing, however. And still trying to remain alive.

Its good eye stared around at its surroundings. All the thousands of cars around it, all the smoke and noise. It seemed uncertain what to do. The sensible thing would have been to head back to the woods. But it had already come from that direction. Had it been hiding there for years, now? Was it trying to escape?

Nearly all the cars behind us, in our lane, had done the same thing as my father. The next lane, and the ones beyond that, though? The traffic was still moving fast, cars wobbling as they went by.

When the giraffe tried to get further across, then, the inevitable happened.

It only got three paces before an Assegai Roadster hit its front right leg, smashing it so brutally that you could see the shattered bone. The giraffe looked like it might stay up on three legs, for a few seconds. Then, it toppled over like a big, unbalanced pile of twigs.

I remember it trying to lift its head from the pavement. And can still recall the miserable look in its good eye. I suppose it would have died of shock before much longer. But the next vehicle, a massive truck, went straight over its neck.

I looked away as the airbrakes shrieked.

And my father...?

My father was ever so quiet during the rest of the drive home. And solemn the remainder of the evening. Even at that early age, I sensed that it was because he felt that he had... what exactly?

Lost something. Or rather, been given something back for a few seconds, only to have it snatched away again.

That’s the story. I should wind it up. Dad died three years later, his great frame devoured by cancer, leaving just my mother to finance me through school, college, and finally the Academy. Then twenty-six years later, history repeated itself back-to-front, when my wife died of the same disease, leaving me with my own small boy to bring up.

I never visit Zim-World Shopping City, which is a shame because my neighbors tell me they have wonderful bargains there.

And that’s my first — and my last — free giraffe.

There’s plenty to keep a homicide lieutenant of the Zimbabwe State Police Division busy in today’s New Harare. We have a crime rate comparable to Greater Los Angeles, which means, not terrible, but it could do with some improving. And my jurisdiction covers the entire Highveldt Province, which means on top of liquor store shootings and gangland hits, I have to deal with housewives who’ve done in their faithless husbands in the sticks. I was entering the details of one such into my sat-com, when Captain Maalu came walking toward my desk and asked me, “Hard at it, eh, Enetame?”

“Always,” I said, without looking up at him.

He threw a thin file down beside my screen. “Something might have happened out at Binaville.”

Right out by the Mvurwi Mountains. That’s about as far-suburban as this city gets.

“One of those little farms out there. The owner lives alone. This morning, his neighbors notice that his door is hanging open. He’s not there, but there’s blood all over the hallway and the porch.”

“Could have just got drunk, bashed his scalp, and gone wandering off?” I suggested.

“In which case, this will be one of those all too rare assignments with a happy ending. Go out there and give it a look. Take Petrie with you.”

Which was fine by me. Steve Petrie’s a Caucafrican, which is to say, of distant European origin. There are a few of them on the force, and they’re hardworking although generally unimaginative detectives. I put on my jacket, got him from his office, and we went down to the parking lot, where my brand-new toy was waiting for me.

An Impala Terrain ZF 400, semi solar-powered, and as sleek and quiet as a well-groomed cat. Within minutes, we were on the Julius Jones Elevated Highway, speeding out toward the suburbs.

Petrie — blond, broad shouldered, and seven years my junior — kept on calling me “sir” until I told him to drop it. I didn’t know too much about him personally, and so I asked about his home life.

He’d been married eighteen months, as it turned out. Had a baby boy, just three months old. And he grinned massively when he conveyed that information, which made me rather like him.

“You’ve a son, too, so I hear?”

“Oh, yes,” I nodded, still watching the road. “Joshua. He’s seven.”

Petrie’s whole manner became a little awkward at that point. Everyone at the station house knew about Kissi’s death.

“It must be tough, bringing him up on your own?”

I could feel my shoulders hunching up, but I had got used to questions of that kind.

“It can be. But when you have no choice, you simply get on with it.”

Petrie turned his attention to the windshield and said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I could cope. I’d be completely lost without my Trish.”

Which told you all everything needed to know about the fellow. Loyal, affable, and decent, but not particularly driven or bright. Exactly the way I like my subordinates, in fact. It makes me feel less guilty, assigning them the dull jobs and the donkeywork.

Massive, gleaming skyscrapers whizzed by us. And then the lower buildings of the light industry zones. Then finally, an uninspiring mosaic of fast-food joints and mini-malls, car showrooms and discount superstores, and geometrically laid out rows of houses.

It was four-thirty in the afternoon by the time that we reached Binaville. Something might have happened here, the captain had informed me. But it looked to me like, if anything ever did, half the inhabitants would die from the surprise of it.

We were on the very edge of New Harare. Less than two klicks in the distance was a thinly forested section of the Mvurwi Range. Most of the houses around us looked the same, single-story affairs with verandas and flower gardens and low wire fences. But there were a few small, semi-urban farms here too.

It was as quiet as a church, and the sun-baked earth clunked under our footsteps. We made our way over to the house, where a few local cops and some civilians were waiting.

Nowhereville, I thought. Except that just before we opened the gate Petrie looked around sharply, seeming to remember something.

He piped up. “Isn’t this where those two girls disappeared, about a year ago?”

And yes, I realized, he was absolutely right. My respect for him went up a notch. Yes, Bridget and Marie Makabe, eight and ten years old. They’d been out playing in the fields one evening, and had never come back home. It had been headline news for almost four months, and the search for them had been a massive one. How had I forgotten that?

No trace of them had ever been found. Well, maybe Binaville was not quite such a dull place after all.

A uniformed sergeant came over to greet me as I walked towards the porch. “Lieutenant...?”

“Abel Enetame. Could you show me where the blood was found?”

He led me up to the doorway. I could see dark stains immediately on the porch and the soil beyond it. Then I looked inside and cursed silently. There was plenty of blood spattering both walls. And loads more, still partially viscid, on the tiled floor. Except several people had walked right through it. The neighbors, I supposed, going in to try and find the occupant. So the whole scene had been compromised.

Still clearly visible, however, was a large drag mark leading out through the door. And so... a body had been moved. Alive or dead, though?

“Who was it who lived here?”

“Simon Nkomo, 54, a bachelor. Pretty much a loner. Kept himself to himself, so far as we can tell. Just unassuming, quiet.”

“Can I talk to the person who first found this?”

I spent the next half hour talking to bystanders. Did they hear anything? Or see anyone suspicious? All of their answers were in the negative, as they usually are. By then, a forensics team had arrived and was getting busy.

“You reckon we’ve got a homicide here?” Petrie asked me.

“There’s about a quart of blood in there,” I told him. “If Mr. Nkomo’s still alive, I’d say he’s starting to feel pretty lightheaded right about now.”

My eyes followed the drag marks as they went across the porch’s splintered edge. There was more dried-in blood beyond that, and much thinner scuffmarks on the hard earth for about twenty meters, till they reached an area of grassland and low brush and disappeared.

“You’d better start rounding up a search team,” I told Petrie glumly. “This is looking to be a long afternoon.”

And a pretty dull one. Somewhere around forty uniformed men turned up in the next hour. I stood by the gate, watching, as they formed a line, and started picking across the fields and wasteland. The descending sun beat down on me, and flies buzzed in the heat. Every so often, my attention wandered off in the direction of the mountains.

This section of range is one of the few truly wild places left in Highveldt Province. Acid rain has taken its toll on the trees. But people used to spot small antelope around its edges. And I’ve even heard there are a few baboons living up there. You’d think that rich people would clear the area and build some mansions there. But, fifty years ago, a seam of uranium was found in that part of the Mvurwis. It’s been mined out long ago. But no one who has a choice in the matter lives where there’s been radiation.

I took in the fact I’d be late home. So I called my housekeeper, Mathilda, on my cell phone. Yes, Josh was already back from school. She’d be happy to stay till I returned, and did I want her to cook supper? I thanked her, but told her that there was no need.

There was a shout from the fields. My head came up. A circle of blue uniforms had gathered by the time I’d run across. Faces were screwed up. There were disgusted hisses.

I pushed my way through, then came to a frozen stop.

A lieutenant of homicide — in circumstances such as these — expects a body for his efforts. But whatever this shrunken and shapeless thing was, it had been left on top of an anthill. Was entirely carpeted with moving, shiny, red-brown dots. I gawped at it for a little while, then regathered my wits. Pulled a clump of twigs from a nearby bush and, using them as a brush, flicked away as many of the insects as I could.

There was no full-sized cadaver here. Just bare ribs, a few ragged strips of skin. Part of the head was either caved in or gone. It could have been roadkill, except roadkill doesn’t wear shoes.

I turned again to the sergeant. “Is there a medical examiner for this district?”

“No. The nearest one’s in Morning Ridge — Dr. Alice Sususa.”

I knew her. “Get her out here, then. Tell her that she needs to bring dry ice.”

I stared back at Mr. Nkomo, if this was him, registering that whoever had killed him had been very smart. His body hadn’t been dumped here accidentally. Most forensic evidence had been chewed away.

The sun was already setting by the time Alice arrived. We greeted each other, then I left her and the local boys to the unenviable task of picking up the pieces. They were setting up floodlights as I left.

I dropped a weary-looking Petrie off at a midtown subway station, then headed home, stopping at my local Rockin’ Rooster on the way. Picked up a jumbo bucket of fried drumsticks, potato chips, and spicy coleslaw, Josh’s favorite meal.

And opened my front door to... wailing police sirens, squealing tires, and gunshots. Josh was with Mathilda in the den, watching his favorite web-vee show, Nairobi P.D. I paid Mathilda, giving her an extra five. And then I settled down next to my son, and we ate fried chicken with our fingers and watched Sergeant Zak Ngengi hunting down yet another vicious drug baron.

During the final, stunt-filled shoot-out, Josh asked me, “Do you ever do that?”

“Oh, yes,” I smiled. “Almost every day.”

But he knew that I was lying, and he punched me on the thigh.

A news update followed. Mr. Nkomo got a brief mention, and then Summer: Cape Town High. A bevy of cute starlets gossiped in their locker-room, then went to party on the beach.

“Which one do you like?” I asked Josh.

“That one!”

He pointed to a very dark-skinned Venus with an hourglass figure. He already had good taste, for one so young. But I still asked him, “Why?”

“She’s got a nice smile,” he said, very seriously.

At which I burst out laughing, and then hugged him till he got embarrassed, squirmed out of my grip.

“Bedtime now,” I told him.

And he didn’t argue with me. Never has, ever since those terrible first six months after Kissi died.

I could hear the faucet running upstairs when the phone started to ring. It was Alice Sususa, and she sounded pretty unhappy.

“Can you come here, Abel?”

“Now?” I glanced at my watch. “I’m with my kid.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. But there’s something here you ought to see. I’d rather not tell you on the phone.”

I was exasperated, but she seemed entirely serious. Fortunately, my neighbors were in.

“How do you fancy spending the night with Manzi and Tessa?” I asked Josh.

“Yay!”

The highway was much quieter as I sped back down it. I arrived quickly at Morning Ridge. The mortuary was set behind a wide grass strip, and there was some movement visible on the neatly mown turf.

If you want to see Zimbabwe’s remaining wildlife, outside of the reserves, the suburbs at night are the best places to find it. Small monkeys rustle through the trees. Jackals and caracals have adopted the same survival trick as Western foxes, moving into built-up areas. And we’ve never been able to get rid of every single snake.

The building’s front door was unlocked. I went through to the examination theater. Alice was beside one of the stainless steel tables, gazing down at the collection of bones and ripped skin on it.

“Is it Mr. Nkomo?”

“Dental records confirm it.”

“Thank God the ants can’t eat enamel,” I opined.

She looked up at me, squinting unhappily. “I think something might have fed before they did.”

“Meaning what?”

“Did anybody tell you? There’ve been several cattle mutilations in Binaville the last couple of years.”

I waited.

“There’s a dairy farm about half a klick from the Nkomo place. Three times that I know of a cow has been badly maimed. One actually had its throat tom out. No one’s ever found out what did it.”

“Feral dogs?” I suggested. “Even those baboons up in the mountains?”

“Baboons don’t attack cattle.” She grinned, amused by my city-dwelling ignorance. “But come here, look at this.”

She indicated some deep gouges on an exposed clavicle. “What would you say these were?”

They didn’t look like knife, or even chisel traumas. “Teeth marks?” I attempted.

“Absolutely. There are more on the femurs, and the pelvis, and the ribs. Pretty big ones.”

“Okay, so...” I still couldn’t understand what she was so concerned about. “Once the corpse was dumped, some dogs, even some wild hyenas, fed on the remains before the ants finished it off”

“I thought so too. But here we have something a little different.” Her attention drifted to the stripped right arm. “Do you know what these are?”

There were three narrower and shallower indentations, running parallel. I shrugged.

“They’re claw marks. Dogs, even hyenas, don’t have claws like these.” She frowned. “I thought at first, buzzards. I had to check back through the records quite a way before I found something that really matched. And when it did...”

Her voice faltered. Her entire manner became stiff, embarrassed. “The only marks that match this, Abel? They came from a cat.”

“A big cat?” I almost laughed out loud.

Alice looked perfectly serious, however. Serious enough to make me want to check it out.

I called Police Plaza. Had any big cats escaped from a zoo in, say, the last couple of years? I asked them. Or from the wildlife reserves, although the latter was highly unlikely. Every large animal in the reserves has a tracer implanted. Besides which, the nearest park with big cats is Hwange, more than three hundred klicks away.

I was shaking my head when I put my phone away. Alice’s embarrassment deepened, her eyes going damp.

“You got it wrong, Dr. Sususa,” I told her, trying to do it gently.

Just as wrong as anyone could ever get. The habitat which sustained big game is now completely gone. No elephants out there, nor rhinos. No buffalo, zebras, wildebeest anymore. Industrialization wiped the crocodiles and hippos from our rivers. And there are certainly no big cats.

“I’ll have to think again,” Alice conceded after a while, her head lowered and her voice a whisper.

“Yes, I think that’s best.”

I should have been annoyed at her for dragging me out of my home on such a far-fetched premise. But she looked so forlorn, I didn’t have the heart.

There was more about Nkomo on the eight A.M. bulletin the next day. Followed by even worse news. Earlier this morning, a colleague of Alice’s had gone through her sat-com records of last night, found the stuff about the big cats, and reported it to their superior. Who had suspended Alice on the spot. The story had leaked out.

The newscasters were practically in fits about it, calling her “Dr. Alice in Wonderland.”

“If Simon Nkomo were still alive, Dr. Sususa, there’d be one question he’d ask: What’s eating you?”

“What’s the connection between Dr. Alice Sususa and Tweetie Pie?” Steve Petrie asked me, when I picked him up from his house around nine. “They both tawt they taw a puddy-tat!”

I didn’t laugh.

Things in Binaville had pretty much returned to normal. There was police tape all over the place, of course. And a few kids hanging around there. But the whole circus that had surrounded the corpse’s first discovery? Those things vanish just as suddenly as they appear. The tides of time were closing over poor Mr. Nkomo, without leaving any ripples.

There was one small thing that was different. Over near the scrubland where the body had been found, a group of about a dozen homeless men had gathered. Ragged, bearded, old beyond their years. Most of New Harare’s derelicts wind up out on the edge of town. They’re less hassled by cops and hoodlums, and there are plenty of easy pickings on the farms.

A stretch black limo with reflective windows suddenly came rolling up the street. It pulled right off the pavement, went across the grass toward the little band.

I immediately recognized the tall, middle-aged guy who got out from the back. You could hardly not do, dressed the way he was.

America has its militias, Europe its neo-fascists. Africa has assholes like this so-called “Chief Manuza,” leader of the tiny but vociferous Tribal Party. Excuse the language, but these people make me terribly annoyed.

He was wearing old-style tribal robes. There were open sandals on his feet, and balanced on his round head was the kind of pillbox hat Kissi used to wear to the Federation Day races. He was carrying a fly-whisk, and he twitched it in his hand as he walked over to the hobos.

Then he did something that left me amazed, coming from a man so arrogant. He actually squatted down before the filthy derelicts. And started up a conversation with them.

Steve started across toward them, but I grabbed his arm, holding him back. All I wanted to do was watch.

After a while, Manuza started nodding. Then he handed them some objects — it was too far away to make out what. And, next moment, he did something even more peculiar.

Got up to his feet, and threw himself into a hopping dance, twirling around on the spot. The hobos watched him intently, following his every movement.

Once done, he bade them farewell, then got back into his limo. All the ragged men stood up, began to melt away into the landscape.

Steve turned to me. “What the hell was that about, Abe? Why didn’t you go talk to him?”

I shook my head softly. “We’d have found out nothing. You know what Manuza’s like around authority. And with you here? Even worse. Imagine how that racist pig would act, confronted by a white policeman.”

Then I clapped him on the shoulder.

“Let’s see if we can turn up any of those hobos he was talking to.”

We searched through the brush for twenty minutes, but they were gone. I called to Petrie, and we went back to my car.

“I’m going back into town,” I told him. “Go from house to house, perhaps. Try to pick up anything the local cops have missed.”

He nodded. There was a bus that he could take back home.

I won’t say my blood was actually boiling as I went back along the highway, but it certainly was on the simmer. I knew quite a lot about this Chief Manuza. His real name was Saul Agusi, and he came from a normal blue-collar family in Sherwood Park. The fake name he’d adopted from the history books, an old-time supreme headsman.

And the policies that he and his small handful of fanatics advocate? The reclaiming of the old ways. The return to villages, and tribes, and superstition. “Identity,” they call it.

The Tribal Party had just two cramped rooms in an office block in a seedier part of town. I was kept waiting for ten minutes, before the “Great Chief” would have me in his sanctum. There were posters on the walls around me, all with slogans such as TRIBE IS PRIDE and NOT EUROPE, NOT AMERICA, THIS IS AFRICA! At a desk opposite me, a secretary sat. A perfectly lovely woman in her early twenties, made to look ridiculous by the get-up she was wearing, some kind of sarong thing, with a tall white turban on her pretty head.

Manuza insisted on seeing my badge, actually taking it out of my hand. And while he studied it, I looked at the artifacts he’d decorated his office with. Shields and spears, clubs and hatchets, and even bangles made up of what appeared to be lions’ claws. I eyed those carefully. They gave me pause.

Satisfied at last, the man handed me back my badge, a sarcastic grin crossing his pockmarked face.

“So, Lieutenant Enetame.” His voice was a croaky drawl. “An African name that approximates an English word. ‘Entamed.’ How appropriate.”

He was looking me up and down with apparent disdain. It was a struggle to keep calm under such scrutiny. Did he seriously expect me to dress like him? Did he seriously expect all of us to embrace the awful days of yesteryear? Go back to poverty and hunger, corruption and conflict, massacre and the belief in bad spirits? Was that the kind of prospect he was offering my son?

I asked him straight out, “What were you doing at Binaville, with those homeless men?”

“I went there as soon as I heard about the lions.” He said it perfectly seriously.

“There are no lions.”

Manuza snorted, and then rocked his head from side to side.

“Those men. Those derelicts. By force of circumstance, admittedly, they live closer to the old ways than anyone else in this great prison of a city. Closer than me, and a thousand times closer than you. They live off the land, under the open sky. And at night they gather round and tell stories, thus exchanging knowledge. They have seen the lions.”

Was I dealing with a complete madman here?

“Two of their number, in fact, have been killed by them, not that the authorities would care. That is why I gave them the protective amulets, and showed them the dance which might appease the mighty lion chief.”

Something could be learned, I decided, by going along with this nonsense for a little while.

“You think hopping around will stop a big cat?”

But the man grinned hugely, his manner superior. “No, you do not understand. The real free lions are gone. These are ghost lions. Spirit lions.”

“Really?” It was hard keeping a straight face.

“Born out of the heart and soul of ancient Africa herself,” he went on, “and come to avenge her. And they are just the first, you see. More spirits will join them. And they will rip to shreds your false gods and will smash and tear your chained society, till the people see the truth and reclaim what they once were.”

I was wasting my time here, I could see. I’d come all this way for nothing.

“You can change the way a people dress, and feed, and live, and even dream,” he was still ranting as I started getting up, “but you can never change that which is deepest in their hearts!”

I thanked him for the speech and let myself out, with relief.

One thing nagged at me, however, as I drove back to the office. And was still bothering me when I arrived back home. Those artifacts on the walls, those lions’ claws. Could it be that some of Manuza’s people...?

No. It was a perfectly insane idea. But could someone be faking lion attacks, to try and revive some of the ancient superstitions? It was as lunatic a theory as I’d ever come up with. But Manuza was a lunatic, I had no doubt of that.

I arranged for Josh to spend a second night next door, then prepared myself. I got my gun out of my bedside drawer and checked it carefully. Then I drove back to the outer edge of town, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Binaville was as quiet once again. I cruised silently into the lee of the Nkomo farmhouse and switched off my engine and lights. I wound up my window to keep out the insects, settled back, and waited for something to happen.

After a while I began noticing something odd. There were a few tiny monkeys in a nearby tree, although they seemed rather quiet and nervous. Where were all the other little creatures? The fields were completely empty, and I couldn’t understand how that could be.

At about ten o’clock, a distant shriek brought me jerking up. It was coming from the sparsely wooded slopes. But I calmed down quickly enough to recognize it had to be those baboons I’d heard about. The noise stopped, soon after, and I settled back.

Some time around midnight, I sat up again, believing I had noticed something through my heavy lids. I peered beyond the windshield, and then even switched my headlights on. They revealed nothing whatsoever. So I must have dreamt it.

By about two A.M., I had fallen asleep.

“Heavy night?” Steve Petrie grinned, when I stumbled into the office the next morning. “Don’t tell me that you got lucky, you old dog?”

My back was killing me, and I was not in the mood for such remarks. So I’m afraid that I was rather sharp with him.

He’d had no success with the farmer’s neighbors. I explained what I had been up to. And he looked incredulous at first.

“Yes, I know it sounds farfetched,” I nodded. “But I’m going to spend a couple more nights up there, just to make quite sure.”

“So I’m not your partner any longer?”

“You?” I blinked at him with surprise. “I don’t expect you to do stakeout duty, man. You’ve got a little kid.”

“And so have you. I’ll take the next shift, okay? You genuinely look like you could use some rest.”

“Oh, and by the way,” he added. “Happy Federation Day.”

I stared at him awkwardly as he walked away. The most important event in the African calendar, and I had been so busy, so engrossed, I’d completely forgotten it.

Fortunately, Josh was happy to watch the big parade on the web-vee. I slumped in my armchair, feeling a hundred years old. The crowds in Moya Plaza were enormous. They yelled and hooted, many of them waving furled umbrellas, as the marching bands and floats went by. The weather had taken one of those unexpected turns that we are used to in these parts. Come early evening, the sky had blackened, and there was the occasional rumble of thunder, although no lightning or rain as yet.

“So far, so good!” a reporter in the crowd informed the studio. “We’re all praying that it holds off, and the weather doesn’t spoil things!”

Then, the camera swung to a float on which stood a gigantic inflated Rockin’ Rooster, the God of Good Eating in the Enetame household. Josh leapt to his feet, delighted.

The phone rang.

It was Petrie, calling from his car in Binaville, but the interference from the coming storm was so bad I could barely make him out.

“Steve! Speak louder!”

“There’s something... the fields. Halfway to...”

I could hear enough to tell that he was genuinely frightened.

“Abe, what... do? There’s... moving out there!”

“Stay there! Do not get out of your car, Steve! I’m coming out...”

But the connection had gone dead.

I phoned both my neighbors, but they were not at home. When I stuck my head out onto the street, most of the windows around me were dark. The parade, I understood. I even tried calling Mathilda, but I just got her machine.

Ten minutes had passed since Petrie’s call, and he’d sounded so desperate. And I hated what I was about to do, but I could see no other choice. I hurried Josh into his coat and shoes, and literally bundled him into my car. Belted him in tightly, before speeding back toward the highway.

He looked fascinated, and as pleased as Punch with the excitement.

“Where are we going?”

“Just a job I have to do.”

“Are you going to shoot some bad guys?”

I hadn’t even bothered putting on my jacket — he was staring at my gun.

“No!” I told him sternly, concentrating on the road. “That’s just on the web-vee. You must be quiet now, okay?”

Good as gold, he did what I asked.

Steve’s car was not visible when we arrived at the Nkomo place. By this time, I was sweating. Lord Almighty, was I crazy, bringing my son here? I swung the nose of the Impala out toward the wasteland again, putting my beams on full. And yes, more than halfway out toward the mountains, there was Petrie’s Assegai Victor, the driver’s door wide open. I could make out no sign of the man.

Inwardly, I cursed him for not listening to me. And myself, for not getting here sooner.

We bumped out across the scrub till we were some thirty meters from the other car. There I stopped. Got out carefully, my hand on my Walther. I told Josh, as sternly as I’d ever told him anything, “Lock all the doors and stay here. Do you understand? Do not let anyone in, unless it’s me.”

He nodded, not the slightest bit worried. Perhaps he thought that this was simply a game.

I waited till he’d shut himself inside, then went across to Steve’s car. The young Caucafrican was nowhere to be seen. There was a flashlight in his open glove compartment. I clicked it on, swung the beam around me. Then looked back at where I’d parked, with my stomach flipping slightly. Josh was peering back at me through the dark windshield, looking very small indeed. I held up a finger, indicating he should stay exactly where he was. Then I began to search the ground around me much more thoroughly.

The beam of my flashlight soon alighted on another gun, just lying there on the hard earth. Steve’s. I picked it up and sniffed it. It had not been fired.

Just three meters further on, I found a pool of blood.

It was fresh. My heart was pounding, and I could hear my own breath in my nostrils. There were drag marks, leading off from here toward the silent, shadowed mountains. Thunder kept on rumbling overhead.

This was going to take me even further from Josh. And I hated that. But what if Steve was still alive? I stared back, making sure that my boy was okay. And then I drew my pistol and followed the trail at a crouch, expecting to be confronted by — what? — at any moment. A crazed Tribalist with claws strapped to his fingertips? Or perhaps even a catlike ghost.

I was at the foot of the mountains before too much longer, was in front of a huge bush. Except that the trail led inside it.

I parted the branches, shone my beam. And finally understood.

Behind it, there was an opening carved in the rock, doubtless to the old uranium mine. This entrance must have lain abandoned for the best part of fifty years. How long had it been since any light had shone in it at all?

How would Josh feel, as he watched me disappear? I was angry with myself, feeling like the most negligent of fathers. But I went inside.

Before too much longer, the main corridor started to branch off into more tunnels. I recalled the place’s history. People thought they’d really struck it rich here, half a century ago, and had been grievously disappointed. There was only one medium-sized seam, which had been mined out in the first two years. That hadn’t stopped them looking though, trying to find another one. This whole place had to be a warren. And... what exactly was happening down here now?

A thin trail of blood across the rock floor led me deeper, till my nose screwed up. An awful, pungent stench was growing stronger by the second.

It was mostly decayed human flesh — in my job, you become familiar with that. But there was something else as well. A heavy, choking, animal stink, like all the zoos in the world in a heat wave. A smell that churned my stomach, and made something in me want to run.

I didn’t. I needed to find out what was really going on. So I went forward. To find myself in a wider section, virtually a cave.

There they all were, piled up in a corner. Only one of the cadavers wasn’t decomposed. Parts of both legs and the face had been chewed away. But there was blond hair — it was Steve Petrie. A lump formed in my throat.

As for the rest, they were merely bones with mold on them. Some of them were dogs and little antelope, and a strange, fanged skull that I supposed might have belonged to a baboon. But the rest were human. Two of the skulls were child-sized, the vanished little girls. Others were of adults. There were scraps of ragged clothing mixed in. My beam alighted gently on the remains of a gingham frock.

Why wasn’t Simon Nkomo here, then? Why had he been left halfway? The distance, I realized. Whatever had killed him hadn’t been able to drag him the entire way from the farmhouse.

But what kind of wild animal could have survived down here, hidden in this way? And what kind of beast had the intelligence to leave its victim on an anthill?

I turned around on the spot very slowly, waiting for a snarl, a leaping carnivorous shape. Nothing came.

And if the creature wasn’t here, then where...?

I stiffened

Josh!

Running, back up the tunnels. Through the bush. Back across the wasteland, faster than I’d run in years, every fiber in my body propelling me onward. I could see the car before much longer. Could make out Josh standing up on his seat, turning round and round and staring.

There were large, dim shapes on the move, outside my vehicle.

“Josh! Keep the doors locked!” I was bellowing now.

Large heads turned toward me, in the dimness. I could make out glowing eyes. I stumbled to a halt ten meters from Petrie’s car, my gun held out. And, at that moment, a bolt of lightning finally flashed over our heads. The creatures hunkered down, closing their eyes. They were obviously used to living in the dark, and didn’t like this sudden brightness. But, for a moment, I could see them very clearly.

And I could have sworn, in that first instant, I was looking at Manuza’s Spirit Lions. There were twelve of them. An entire pride.

I think I went very rigid at that point. Except for my heart, which slammed around my chest like a wild animal.

There was hardly any yellow in their fur, the pigment bled away until they were the selfsame color as the shadows. They seemed a touch smaller than the lions in the zoo, their legs shorter, their bodies lower slung. And their paws seemed overly large, adapted to padding over rock perhaps?

The brilliance faded. Darkness claimed the landscape once again. And from that point on, all I could make out were blurry shapes.

Their eyelids slid back open. They were unnaturally large eyes, glowing a faint luminous green.

I could smell them. A low growling began. And... they were making the grass crackle with their tails. These were not ghosts.

My thoughts churned furiously. For how long, how many generations, had this pride lived in the old uranium mines? How in the world had they managed to escape attention?

I looked directly at the one nearest the car, the largest one and with the thickest mane, presumably their leader. Peering deep into its gaze, I thought that I could see intelligence. Low cunning at least. Caution, and a patience that seemed measureless. Had this one kept the others safe for these decades? Kept them hidden and away from harm?

Some of the others were drifting toward me. I came back quickly to myself. Drew a bead on the nearest one, and fired. The glow of its eyes vanished again. But a moment later, I could hear soft stirrings in the brush around me. Fear was dripping off me with my sweat by now.

Petrie’s car door was still hanging open, not too far away.

I swung my weapon left and right, firing a couple of blind shots to keep the cats at bay. Then I was running again. And threw myself into the Assegai, yanking the door shut behind me.

Something slammed against it, on the other side. Claws raked down the glass. Something else landed on the roof, making it buckle slightly.

Steve had left the keys in the ignition, thank the Lord. I fumbled with them till the engine turned. Switched on the lights. And, with one hand on the horn, began swinging the car around in circles, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The creatures on top of and beside me disappeared when I did that, and the others shied away.

People in Binaville began noticing the racket. Blinds were pulled up, and then doors coming open. The green eyes around me vanished again. For good, this time?

I pulled the Assegai across and skidded to a halt next to my own car. Waited a few seconds, satisfying myself that the pride had completely gone. They wouldn’t dare hang around with all this attention.

Then I sprang out, clambering back into my own driving seat. Hugged Josh tightly. And finally got us away from there.

The picture that we made as we went back along the highway? It was a recreation of another scene, from own my past, a long time ago. The grave little boy and his silent, grim-faced father, thinking about what they’d just seen. Except now, I’d turned into Pappy. And Joshua had replaced the younger me.

After a long while, my mind started working properly again. And I wondered what action the authorities would take, when they heard about the lions.

Send people to study them? Round them up for some zoo? No, I figured. They would simply take the straightest, most expedient course, and send hunters in. Or even block up the tunnels, then fill the place with gas.

No muss, no fuss, no more dead farmers.

If I told them.

There were certainly good reasons why I ought. The two girls and the derelicts, Nkomo, and poor Steve. Excellent reasons in each case.

And yet, I was remembering things too.

That far-gone past, when I had been a year younger than Josh was, and the Mukuvisi Woodlands were still there.

That damned giraffe on the Mutare Road. The startling look in its one good eye.

How terrified it had been. And yet, it had kept on struggling, hanging onto its existence right up to the end.

And were these lions any different?

They had nearly killed me, terrified me to the core. And yet, when I’d first seen them clearly, there had been a quality to them that can’t be seen in any of their captive kind. The way they stood, and the way they moved. A strength, a spirit that can only come with freedom. It was something wondrous I’d never encountered before. They had managed to keep going despite all the odds against them. Managed to survive, in spite of everything that modem Africa had done.

And could I, in all conscience, have a hand in ending that?

They were simply marking out their final days, I could see that the more I thought about it. Lack of prey was forcing them further from the tunnels. That was why they’d gone in the Nkomo house. And sooner rather than later, someone else would come across them. Then the men with gas would come.

But I was remembering one other thing too. That expression on my father’s face of something refound, only to be snatched away.

Maybe Manuza was right, and you cannot change what’s deepest in the heart. Whatever. By the time I finally pulled off the road, I had pretty well made up my mind. Whoever betrayed the pride, it was not going to be me.

I held Josh by both shoulders, felt he wasn’t even trembling. I peered down at him gravely and said, “I’m so sorry. Are you all right? You must have been scared.”

“I was a little bit.”

But then he gazed up at me with his eyes full of the kind of wonder I had once been capable of. Then lost, until tonight.

“But I’m very glad I saw the lions. Aren’t you, Dad? Aren’t you?”