Dictator

99

Moses Mabeki screamed as the lion clamped his foreclaws on either side of his stomach, holding him tight in a terrible dance of death. Then his mouth opened, and even where he lay Carver was engulfed in the hot, fetid stench of rotten meat that hung on that carnivore breath.

Frantically, Carver rolled to one side, then scrambled away as the lion drove Mabeki to the ground, the gun falling from his hand as his outflung wrist snapped against the rock that had been Carver’s shelter.

The massive, savagely regal head lowered over Mabeki whose screams rose to an even higher pitch. The great curved fangs tore into his shoulder and the base of his neck, ripping and gnawing at his flesh while the fur round the old lion’s mouth became matted with hot, fresh blood.

From the far side of the rock came the sound of men shouting. Mabeki must have gone on ahead, wanting his own, personal moment of triumph. Now the rest of his people were catching up. More shots were fired. Carver heard the ricochets of bullets against the rock walls of the defile.

The lion paused for a moment, raised his head and looked with perfect feline night-vision towards the source of the disturbance. Again he roared, and now the men’s earlier bravado was replaced by cries of panic and the sound of running feet as they raced one another to escape the presence of the man-eater.

The lion returned to his long-awaited feast. Mabeki’s screams were now just barely audible whimpers. Carver looked on, mesmerized. This was the same beast that he had encountered less than ten minutes earlier. He could see the fresh bullet wounds in its flank and haunches.

And then, just a couple of feet beyond its twitching, hairy-tufted tail, Carver noticed his gun, lying discarded on the ground. He had to reach it without catching the lion’s attention. With infinite care, keeping his movements as slow and imperceptible as possible, Carver wriggled his way across the ground.

Lobengula had switched his attention to Mabeki’s right arm. Placing his front paws on Mabeki’s chest, to keep it still and give himself some leverage, he dug his teeth in just above the man’s elbow and shook his head to wrench the limp, unmoving arm out of the elbow joint, growling contentedly to himself as it did so.

Carver kept moving. He was almost there. Slowly, slowly, he reached out his hand and felt his fingertips touch the stock of the gun.

The lion’s tail gave another impatient twitch, the brushy end swishing by just inches from his outstretched fingertips. Carver tightened his grip and gently pulled the gun towards him.

Lobengula was relishing the taste and feel of fresh, blood-warmed meat. His wounds were forgotten. There was nothing on his mind but the feast he had in store.

And then, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something moving by the tip of his tail. He raised his head from his meal and looked round.

Carver didn’t wait to be attacked himself. He just switched his M4 to automatic fire and emptied an entire magazine into the lion’s body and head. There was a part of him that felt sad, almost ashamed at the slaughter of such a magnificent beast. But there was another, far greater part of him that had no intention whatever of being the second course. There was a horrible moment when it seemed that even this might not be enough, when the lion’s fighting spirit was so great that he attempted to charge through the torrent of bullets. But just as he seemed to be gathering himself for one last leap a round must have hit his heart, for his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell, stone dead, to the ground.

But even if the lion was dead, Moses Mabeki was not. His neck and shoulder had been opened up like a corpse on the dissecting table and his arm had been severed from his body, yet somehow the lion had missed his heart and his airpipe and he was still breathing. Just.

‘Help me,’ he whispered. ‘For the love of God, please help me.’

So now, all of a sudden, you discover religion, Carver thought.

He discarded the empty magazine from his M4 and rammed in a fresh one. Mabeki was lying at his feet, his car-crash face and his twisted mouth and the white bones and torn muscles of his ripped and blood-soaked body clearly visible.

‘Sure,’ said Carver, ‘I’ll help you.’

Then he pressed the trigger, and once again he did not let go until the magazine was empty.

When the killing was done, an emptiness came over him. He looked at all the bodies and wondered what the hell the point of any of it had been. Zalika’s lovely face was still untouched, and as she lay there in the pale-blue moonlight it was almost possible that she was waiting for him to come and wake her with a kiss. But hers was a sleep that would never end. Carver put a third magazine into his M4, more out of habit than anything else, and walked away down the gully.

He’d gone about a hundred metres when he heard the groan up ahead. Carver’s walk became a jog, then a run, then a flat-out sprint.

Justus was alive. Zalika hadn’t killed him. And Carver was going to get him across the border if it was the last thing he ever did.

Six Months Later…