Suicide Kings

21

Wednesday,

December 16

In the Jungle, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Rusty, I need you. We should never have split up. I can’t do this. I can’t.

But there was no choice. She’d already lost one of her charges to the jungle, and she worried about Rusty, about where he was and who might be after him. The despair threatened to overwhelm her: they might both be dead soon, Wally lost in the jungle somewhere, and her with these children who clung to her as if she were their only hope.

She kept the kids crawling forward as long as they could during the daylight hours, and huddled together with them around a small fire at night, when the sounds of the jungle surrounded them and their imaginations jumped at every noise. She fed them from the food her seed pouch could produce-strangely, to Jerusha, it seemed the jungle wasn’t the best place to forage and find food. You are their only hope. She could nearly hear Rusty saying it. Cripes, Jerusha, you’re all they have. You gotta do this.

So she would: without much hope, without much optimism. Because going forward was the only path she had. Because they would all die if she gave up now.

They came across a village one day. With some trepidation, Jerusha sent Cesar into the village to inquire about a telephone. She had the children wait well away while she crept closer in case Cesar ran into trouble. She carried one of the automatic weapons with her, though she knew it would be her last choice-her hand stayed near the seed pouch.

But Cesar came back safely, shaking his head. “No telephone,” he said. “They say the lines are all cut down around here. There are no phones. You have to go all the way to Kalemi, they told me. There maybe they have phones.” He shrugged. “It’s a long walk to Kalemi. But we can get there.” She almost laughed at his confidence, wishing she were as sure as he was.

Late that afternoon, they came to a river. Jerusha wasn’t certain whether this was the Lukuga looping across their path, or some other stream, but there it was: a slow-moving brown ribbon in the green landscape, a hundred yards across.

Jerusha muttered under her breath, checking the compass. Yes, east was that way, across the river; yes, the current was moving north. She looked to her right. Upstream, the river curved ominously to the west before becoming lost in the trees and brush and the high understory of the jungle. She could turn south and follow the river, hoping it would curve east again soon and allow them to continue toward the lake.

Or they could try to cross. Here.

She hesitated. She wanted to cry, to break down and let the fears run their course, but she couldn’t. The children crowded around her as they always did when they stopped. She could feel their hands clutching at her, their voices calling.

“Let’s all rest for a bit,” she told them, and the kids dropped gratefully to the ground. They pressed next to her and each other as she sat, snuggling up to her in a mass of dusky skin and ragged clothes.

Waikili did not sit. On the outside of the rough circle around her, he turned slowly with his blind eyes as if seeing a vision. “Bibbi Jerusha,” he said. “They awful close.”

Jerusha sighed. She turned, looking back over her shoulder into the green expanse behind them, imagining she could see motion there in the green twilight. “All right,” she said, “then we have to go across.”

“But Bibbi Jerusha,” Naadir said, her skin pulsing bright even in the sunlight. “I can’t swim!”

Others echoed the cry: Abagbe, Gamila, Chaga, Hafiz…

“We’re going to walk across,” she told them. “You just have to trust me.”

The seeds in her pouch were dwindling, but there were still several kudzu seeds, and she’d stripped the seed pods from some of the local vines she’d found as they’d walked. She walked to where the banks of the river seemed to be closest together, dropping several seeds there a few feet apart from each other. The vines erupted from the ground, and she directed their growth as if it were a symphony, weaving the tendrils in and out from themselves so that they formed a tight mat that slid down the shallow bank and out into the water, the tendrils writhing and curling as they grew, the roots digging deeper into the earth and the base of the vines thickening. The children watched, shouting and laughing as the mat-three or four feet wide now-slid across the river pushed by the growth behind it, the current tugging it downstream.

Gardener shot quick tendrils out from the front of the improvised bridge, letting them shoot forward until they reached ground on the other side and wrapped themselves tightly to the trees there, lifting the bridge out of the water so that it rained droplets down into the river. She sent more tendrils out to strengthen the structure, to stabilize it with forearm-thick vines. It took minutes and it tired her tremendously. “Go on,” she said to Cesar when it was finished. “Start getting them across.”

Cesar gulped audibly, but he stepped onto the vines. They gave way under his weight, creaking and sagging. He took another step. Another-and then he was out over the water. He bent his knees, pushing at the bridge; bouncing. It nearly reached the river’s surface at the middle of the span but it held, and Cesar grinned at Jerusha. “Tres bon,” he said. He gestured to the children, and they started across, four of them carrying the stretcher with Eason.

“Waikili?” Jerusha asked. He was still staring with his featureless face back the way they’d come.

“Soon,” he answered. “Not long now.” He shivered, visibly, and his hands went to his head. “It hurts to hear them,” he said. “It hurts.”

Jerusha went to him, crouching down to cradle the boy in her arms. She glanced back over her shoulder to watch the children crossing the river. Cesar was already across and Eason’s stretcher were almost there, the rest following, some helping those who couldn’t walk over easily themselves or were too frightened to step onto the vines. “Hurry!” Jerusha called to them. “Rapidement!” She picked up Waikili and ushered the remaining children onto the bridge.

Holding Waikili, she started across the span herself. The vines gave more than she expected under her weight, and she slowed her pace so that the children ahead could reach the other side before she dragged the vines down too much, handing Waikili to Cesar, who had come back to help her. “Get him across,” she said. “Now!”

She heard the warning shouts even as she reached the three-quarter mark, even as Cesar and Waikili reached the other side. “Bibbi Jerusha! Behind you!”

Carefully, watching her feet on the tapestry of vines, she half turned. A group of perhaps a half-dozen people had emerged from the jungle on the far bank: PPA soldiers, accompanied by a man in a leopard fez and two small boys. One of the children was taller and more muscular, with large eyes; the other was smaller and emaciated, ribs showing starkly under stretched skin. They were no older than the children she was shepherding.

As she watched, the larger boy’s form seemed to shift and change, and a strange beast dropped to all fours on the bank where he’d stood: huge and hunched, a hyena larger than any lion, misshapen, monstrous, with gigantic black jaws. It opened them and roared challenge across the river.

Leopard Men. Child aces. Jerusha’s stomach churned.

The man in the leopard fez held up his hand in front of the were-monster. He started across the bridge, smiling. “You!” he called to Jerusha in heavily accented English. “It will do you no good to run.”

Jerusha closed her eyes. Her plants…

She imagined those roots on the western bank withering, dying, turning brittle and releasing their hold on the earth. As the Leopard Man shifted form, as the snarling, feral creature faced her on the bridge, Jerusha dropped, hugging the vines. There was a loud snap as the support for the improvised bridge gave way, and Jerusha was suddenly in the water, still clinging to the vines as the current took her downstream.

She heard a feline yowl of distress behind her. As she desperately clawed her way forward, she felt the children pulling at the vines also. As soon as her feet could touch the mud at the bottom of the river, she had the supporting tendrils wrapped around the trees on the other side release as well. “Let it go!” she shouted to the children as she clambered up the muddy slope. They tossed the remnant of the bridge into the river. “Run!” She gestured at the children. “Into the trees!”

She could hear the shouts from the opposite bank, and the click of weapons being readied. She didn’t dare look behind. She threw herself into the underbrush as automatic weapons cut loose, the bullets tearing chunks from the trunks and leaves all around her. She crawled forward. The firing stopped abruptly.

Gasping for breath, she chanced a look behind her. On the far side of the river, three of the soldiers were dragging a wet and furious Leopard Man from the water. The monstrous hyena thing was only a boy again, and the emaciated child simply stared across to where they’d vanished. They’d cross the river in pursuit, Jerusha was certain, but they’d have to find another way across. She’d bought herself time, but nothing else. If they could find help… Make that telephone call

…

A hand touched hers: Cesar. “Follow me, Bibbi Jerusha. They’re all waiting for you.”

Kongoville, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Siraj’s money was deposited in the bank. Monsieur Pelletier was very popular. Mathias had been introduced as the location scout for Monsieur Pelletier, and was set up in a Hilton in downtown Kongoville. Noel had checked the room for bugs and found a boatload. The Leopard Men and the Chinese and Indians were definitely listening. Good.

A portion of Prince Siraj’s money went to buy a house on the outskirts of the city. Noel settled Mollie there, well supplied with food, Cokes, and a stack of romantic comedy DVDs. Jaako was with Cumming in Chicago. Noel didn’t want to think about how they would amuse themselves.

Noel had gone into the center of the city to monitor the traffic and security around the bank during the night. Tomorrow he would show Mollie the yacht. He hoped he wouldn’t have to actually get her into the hold of the boat. All she had to do was open a doorway.

On the way he’d checked in on Mathias and found him eating a room-service meal and reading Proust. Whatever floats your boat, Noel thought, and he realized that what floated his boat was just what he was doing. Pitting himself against implacable foes, and finding the victory.

He loved the game. It had been hard to leave it. But he loved Niobe more. And their son to come.

On the Lualaba River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Wally took to calling the little girl Ghost. She haunted him.

Every waking moment of the day, she stalked him. Patiently. Relentlessly. And, like rubbing a lamp to summon a genie, merely closing his eyes for a few minutes brought her out of hiding. Always with that big knife.

It didn’t matter how far he traveled, nor how fast. Pushing the throttle of his stolen boat as far as it could go made no difference. Ghost kept up with him.

Sometimes, if he turned his head just right, and strained to see the riverbank through the corners of his eyes, he’d catch a brief glimpse of something pale drifting through the trees. Pacing the boat. Waiting for him to nod off again.

He’d tried sleeping in the boat, in the middle of the river. It made no difference. She floated across water as easily as she floated through the thickest jungle. In the end he gave up on that, because the boat didn’t have an anchor, so sleeping there presented additional risks beyond getting stabbed in his sleep.

And that was the problem. If he wasn’t traveling through the jungle-during rainy season, patches of skin crumbling away, new rust spots appearing daily, and with a dwindling supply of S.O. S pads-Ghost’s knife wouldn’t have been much of a problem against his iron skin. But he was. And sooner or later Ghost would figure it out; she was too persistent not to.

This far he’d been lucky. She kept aiming for the neck. Trying to slit his throat. How long before she found the holes in his shoulder, his arm, his legs?

Wally did the only thing he could: he didn’t sleep. Jerusha would have told him it was pointless. That nobody could go without sleep forever. And she would have been right. It was impossible not to sleep.

The cottony fog of exhaustion filling his head made the simplest tasks-reading a map, steering the boat, pitching a tent-almost insurmountable challenges. It felt like he was doing everything underwater, or that there was a layer of glass between him and the world. Two sleepless nights had turned him into a zombie. How far to Bunia?

But he pushed on. Because the longer he stayed at it, the farther he drew Ghost away from Jerusha and the kids. Ghost was a problem for Wally, but Jerusha wouldn’t have a chance against her.

He traveled the river from sunrise to sunset, from the first light of morning until the last glow of sunset faded in the west. And during the long, dark nights, he huddled by his campfire, fighting an exhaustion more powerful than any crocodile.